"Idleness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... became apparent what a capable woman she was. She had not wasted anything in the long period of idleness; the maids became brisker and the fare better. One day she came to the cow-stable to see that the milking was done cleanly. She gave every one his due, too. One day they came from the quarry and complained that they had had no wages for three weeks. There was not enough money on the farm. "Then ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... site at the same price, or even less, but none was available. However, business was so good on the first afternoon and evening that he resolved to extend his Wangaroo season into the following week. This involved a day of idleness, an unemployed Sunday, a boon that rarely came to the partakers in Professor Thunder's godless enterprises, the day of rest usually being given over to travel and arduous preparations for a ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... plastered over open chinks. They applied their eyes to such crevices, and first of all discovered a blazing fire. Then a movement on one side drew their attention to the taller vagrant sitting quietly smoking his black pipe as though quite contented with his lot of idleness, so long as his wants were ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... of his resentment at restraint he saw no reason why he should differentiate between old Mr Bennett and the conventional banns-forbidding father of the novelettes with which he was accustomed to sweeten his hours of idleness. To him, till Katie explained the intricacies of the position, Mr Bennett was simply the proud millionaire who would not hear of his daughter ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... turn of mind than most of them, who seem to think of pleasure only, I decided to write a play during the summer. I would thus be improving my Vacation hours, and, I considered, keeping out of mischeif. It was pure idleness which had caused my Trouble during the last Christmas holidays. How true it is that the Devil ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... enabled one to avoid; a place whose very joys, indeed, would fill with dismay any but the absolutely pure in heart; a place of restricted area, moreover, while all outside was a speciously pleasant hell, teeming with every potent solicitation of evil, of games and sweets and joyous idleness. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... bear idleness and the lone company of my own thoughts no longer, my daughter, and I sets off to travel on my own account, taking money at back-doors, and living on broken meats I begged into the bargain, and working at nights instead of thinking. I knows a few arts, my daughter, of one sort and ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... attracts your eye while at work. This dissipation of time, to say nothing of its unfair appropriation of what belongs to the library, defeats the prompt accomplishment of the work in hand, and fosters the evil habit of scattering your forces, in idleness and procrastination. ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... very interesting, a fine, even a noble creature. The thought of a girl doing the sort of things she was doing made you reproach yourself for your idleness—your cowardice, I think you called it. Now what I'd like to discover is whether you've quite forgotten the impression she made—the ideal she left ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... to me when I confess besides that, in the face of all your kind encouragement, my Drama of the Angels[25] has never been touched until the last three days? It was not out of pure idleness on my part, nor of disregard to your admonition; but when my thoughts were distracted with other things, books just begun inclosing me all around, a whole load of books upon my conscience, I could not possibly rise up to the gate of heaven and write about my angels. You know one can't sometimes ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... imaginable sweets, and cakes, And here are drinking-cups, and long-necked flasks In wicker mail, and bottles broached from casks, In cellars delved deep, and winter cold, Select, superlative, and centuries old. What more can I desire? what book can be As rich as Idleness and Luxury? What lore can fill my heart with joy divine, Like luscious fruitage, and enchanted wine? Brimming with Helicon I dash the cup; Why should I waste my years in hoarding up The thoughts of eld? Let dust to dust return: No more for me,—my heart is ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... that woman will throw over this dear brother of ours, but not before she has spoiled him for hard work, and given him a taste for luxury and a contempt for our humdrum life. She will develop his love of enjoyment, his inclination for idleness, that debauches a poetic soul. Yes, it makes me tremble to think that this great lady may make a plaything of Lucien. If she cares for him sincerely, he will forget everything else for her; or if she does not love him, she will make him unhappy, for ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... prayers and supplications for the averting of this plague. This order consisted chiefly of persons of the lower class, who were either actuated by sincere contrition or who joyfully availed themselves of this pretext for idleness and were hurried along with the tide of distracting frenzy. But as these brotherhoods gained in repute, and were welcomed by the people with veneration and enthusiasm, many nobles and ecclesiastics ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... from idleness, partly from liking, and partly seeing that the girl had made up her mind to throw in her lot with me for good and all, I just took it as it came; but it meant a deal more than that, if I could have foreseen ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... poncho-wearing idlers watching them with an aspect of good-humoured contempt and pity on their faces, as if saying to themselves, "Poor fools! what a lot of labour and trouble they are going through to get silver and become rich, while we can be so much more happy and comfortable in our idleness and dirt and rags!" ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... swung around when he heard the name of Lida Kennard. The torpor of idleness and woeful ponderings had numbed his wits. The name of Lida seemed to have been dragged into the affair by Crowley. Ward did not understand how she could be involved in the matter. He put that thought into a ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... to run counter to the prevailing tendencies of the time. If the law is to be shaped by the prevailing habits of thought and tendencies of a nation, would not that mean that in Spain a direct encouragement would be given to idleness and religious intolerance; in England, to the commercial spirit; in Italy, to the love of the arts that may be the expression of a society, but by which no society can entirely exist; in Germany, feudal class distinctions ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... to remind your highness that my enforced idleness is making me forget my art, which I have not yet learnt thoroughly. Your majesty's generosity is therefore doing me an injury, and your majesty would do me a great benefit in giving me permission ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... time he could have found for this pre-arrangement of his thoughts, (of which few, from the apparent idleness of his life, suspected him,) must have been during the many hours of the day that he remained in bed,—when, frequently, while the world gave him credit for being asleep, he was employed in laying the frame-work of his wit ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... many an attentive stranger from among the thousands who still frequented that declining mart. It was rumored that an act of retributive justice was about to take place, for the peace of the town and the protection of the citizen. In short, curiosity, idleness, and revenge, with all the usual train of human feelings, had drawn together a multitude eager to witness ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... without labor or exertion. Yet I am quite sure in that case that your value as a human being would have been immeasurably less. I think I have seen in you the elements of passions, which luxury and idleness and the too early possession of irresponsible power, might have developed with fatal results. You have simply to reflect whether you would rather be an energetic, intelligent, self-controlled man, capable of guiding the ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... over all his own money to a bank at Cork, and ordered it to be put in your father's name. It was a good deal of money, for he would not give up the business when he married my mother, though she wanted him to; but he said that he could not live in idleness on her money, and that he must be doing something. And I know that he kept up the house in Oporto, while she kept up her place in the country. He told me that the sum he had sent over was L20,000. That will be enough to live ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... when the child was bigger, the feeling of hostility persisted dimly and obscurely. As she was ashamed of it, she transferred it to Olivier. She went on fancying herself ill: and her perpetual care of her health, her anxieties, which were bolstered up by the doctors, who encouraged the idleness which was the prime cause of it all,—(separation from the child, forced inactivity, absolute isolation, weeks of emptiness spent in lying in bed and being stuffed with food, like a beast being fatted for slaughter),—had ended by concentrating ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... her, though not true of the majority of women whom we have discussed. It seems difficult to believe that hard work and worry may bring the same results as idleness and dissatisfaction, but it is true that both deenergize the organism, the body and mind, and so are kindred evils. What's the matter with the poor is their poverty, while the matter with the ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... all, and none will ply either trade or art any longer; all toil would be done away with. Who would wish to hammer iron, build ships, sew, turn, cut up leather, bake bricks, bleach linen, tan hides, or break up the soil of the earth with the plough and garner the gifts of Demeter, if he could live in idleness and free from all ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... he emerged among those fellow passengers who had long ago claimed their steamer chairs and dedicated themselves to the idleness of ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... legislation for the Philippines. Nothing better can be done for the islands than to introduce industrial enterprises. Nothing would benefit them so much as throwing them open to industrial development. The connection between idleness and mischief is proverbial, and the opportunity to do remunerative work is one of the surest preventatives of war. Of course no business man will go into the Philippines unless it is to his interest to do so; and it is immensely to the interest ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... He was taken immediately to the Father, who questioned him long and patiently, but with no avail. He would say nothing farther than that he had run off to the canyon in the mountains for a day's idleness; and this he maintained, while the priest, wearied and harassed, ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... introducing enough mistakes of his own to supply the necessary local colour, he was able to escape to a great degree the discovery of his blank ignorance on all these subjects—an ignorance which would certainly have been put down as mere idleness and obstinacy. ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... enough, and you must not send me more, for though I enjoy looking at them MUCH, and it has been very useful to me, seeing so many different forms, it is idleness. For my object each species requires studying for days. I wish you had time to take up the group. I would give a good deal to know what the rostellum is, of which I have traced so many curious modifications. I suppose it cannot ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... really a serious disappointment to the young couple, for during the month money had been going out and none coming in. For even when Denasia had been making twenty-five pounds a week, they had lived and dressed up to the last shilling; so that a month's enforced idleness and illness placed them deeply in debt and uncomfortably pressed for the wherewithal ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... very fond of Levi West, whom he always called "our Levi," and whom he treated in every way as though he were his own son. He tried to train the lad to work in the mill, and was patient beyond what the patience of most fathers would have been with his stepson's idleness and shiftlessness. "Never mind," he was used to say. "Levi'll come all right. Levi's as bright as ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... light and the dew which we share with the weed and the worm, only as a succession of meaningless and monotonous accidents too common and too vain to be worthy of a moment of watchfulness, or a glance of admiration. If in our moments of utter idleness and insipidity, we turn to the sky as a last resource, which of its phenomena do we ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... the soldier's tonic. They will strengthen and restore when army grub and other restoratives, duly proportioned, wholly fail. The blues and all kinds of contagious diseases to which mortals are heir, caused by idleness and the lack of proper diversion of the mind, are soon uprooted by a good interesting letter from a fellow's most affectionate. Give soldiers full rations and regular mail, then there can nowhere be found ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... President may or may not have been influenced in the final determination of the moment for requesting Motley's resignation by the feeling caused by Sumner's personal hostility and abuse of himself." Unfortunately, this controversy had been entered into, and the idleness of suggesting any relation of cause and effect between Mr. Motley's dismissal and the irritation produced in the President's mind by the rejection of the San Domingo treaty—which rejection was mainly due to Motley's friend ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... will not help you. The most vulgar and ignorant people I know are among the wealthiest. There is a more genuine simplicity and naturalness among the contented and competent poor than any other class. You were wrong, Burton. Riches breed idleness, riches tempt one to the purchase of false pleasure. You would have been better back upon your stool in ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... together, and Philip, treated as one of the family, sat reading in the parlour, Sally came in and sat by the window to sew. The girls' clothes were made at home and Sally could not afford to spend Sundays in idleness. Philip thought she wished to talk and put ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... the tricks of fortune, or the power of man. Omar and his black swarm of intruders must be driven out or given as sacrifice to Zomara. Till this be done the curse of the god ye fear shall rest upon our land, and his presence shall nightly remind ye of your idleness. Will ye let the defiant prince overthrow ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... itself felt everywhere, high and low; and by long habit the people have become indolent and supine. The splendid robes of ecclesiastical Rome have a draggled fringe of beggary and vice. What a change there might be, if the energies of the Italians, instead of rotting in idleness, could have a free scope! Industry is the only purification of a nation; and as the fertile and luxuriant Campagna stagnates into malaria, because of its want of ventilation and movement, so does this grand and noble people. The government ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... purpose. Ledgers might be volumes of poetry, bills of lading mere street ballads, for all the respect that is shown to them. The older clerks stand staring aghast, feeling that the end of all things is surely at hand, and that the universe is rushing down into space, until, their idleness being detected, they are themselves promptly impressed for the sacrilegious work, and made to assist in the demolition ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... merchant lived over his place of business, so as to be on hand when buyers came; to ward off robbers; and to sweep the sidewalk, making all tidy before breakfast. Gainsborough pere was fairly prosperous, but not prosperous enough to support any of his nine children in idleness. They all worked, took a Saturday night "tub," and went to the Independent Church ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... as they took in the religious teachings of the early missionaries. If they could be made to realize that foul air, insufficient dress, putrid food, alternations of feast and famine, and long bouts of sedulous idleness are destroying them as a people and need not do so, then their decay might be arrested and the fair hopes of the missionary pioneers yet be justified. So long as they soak maize in the streams until it is rotten and eat it together with ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... ice-ribbed peaks above. The canyon was a scene of appalling desolation, but few of the long-booted men who hurried among the boulders had leisure to contemplate it. The men were working for Geoffrey Thurston, who did not encourage idleness. ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... much gratified by your remembrance, and sends you his warm regard. He wishes me to represent that he is very little to be pitied. That he suffers no pain, scarcely inconvenience, even, so long as he is idle. That he likes idleness exceedingly. He has bought a country place by Welwyn in Hertfordshire, near Lytton's, ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... dignity and sundry dams. He became a tranquil feature in the scene. The trees and towns saw themselves in him, as in a mirror. He carried the canoes lightly on his broad breast; there was no need to work hard against an eddy: but idleness became the order of the day, and mere straightforward dipping of the paddle, now on this side, now on that, without intelligence or effort. Truly we were coming into halcyon weather upon all accounts, and were floated ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mainly founded by leading merchants, 'with a view of affording to the junior members of the mercantile body opportunities of self-improvement, and inducements sufficiently powerful to enable them to resist those temptations to idleness and dissipation which unhappily abound in all large communities.' He took the opportunity of delivering his views on the subject of education in a speech, parts of which may still be read with interest, after all that has been spoken and written on ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... Besides, he had a bridle to finish which he was plaiting from the leather cut from the legs of an old pair of cow-boy boots which he had found; it would be worth ten dollars when finished. In spite of his good intentions Johnny spent the whole day in idleness at the home of Mrs. Peter; and, as it is no insult among the Indians for a buck to propose an elopement with his neighbor's wife, because it is a very common business transaction among them, Johnny again suggested the ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... skill pregnant, I could draw her picture. Thought, as a subtle juggler, makes us deem Things supernatural, which have cause Common as sickness. 'Tis my melancholy. How cam'st thou by thy death?—how idle am I To question mine own idleness!—did ever Man dream awake till now?—remove this object; Out of my brain with 't: what have I to do With tombs, or death-beds, funerals, or tears, That have to meditate upon revenge? [Exit Ghost. So, now 'tis ended, like an old wife's ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... nothing, we'd lose our minds. There isn't a man in this crowd, I am sure, who wouldn't work his head off to spare the women an hour of hardship. But the greatest hardship you women could possibly know would be idleness. There will be work for every one to do, and we can thank God for it, my friends. We will have to work for nothing. We will have to help each other. There is but one class on this island at present, and that is the ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... leaves—some brown and others gray as yet—and was dotted with a host of brightly-colored peaches. Fidgeting bees and flies were excavating the decayed spots in this wasting fruit, from which emanated a vinous odor. The bees hummed drowsily, their industry facilitating idleness in others. It was curious—he meditated, his thoughts straying from "an uninhabited island"—how these insects alternated in color between brown velvet and silver, as they blundered about a flickering tessellation of amber and dark green . . . in search ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... were there confined for life to the service of the altar by the double force of religion and the stone walls. They showed their zeal for their gods by the amount of want which they were able to endure, and they thought that sitting upon the ground in idleness, with the knees up to the chin, was one of the first of ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... did he care to think of their discernment now! In his first wanderings up and down the weary streets, he counterfeited the walk of one who had an object in his view; but soon there came upon him the sauntering, slipshod gait of listless idleness, and the lounging at street-corners, and plucking and biting of stray bits of straw, and strolling up and down the same place, and looking into the same shop-windows, with a miserable indifference, fifty times ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... attended with dancing and games. All these mental relaxations are lacking in our newer civilization; life is stripped of everything that is not distinctly practical; the dull round of weekly toil is only broken by the duller idleness of an American Sunday. Naturally, these people long for something outside of themselves ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... these reasons, the dominoes, after every thing that can be said of good anent them, were a black sight, and for months and months produced a scene of riot and idleness after working hours, that went far to render our housie, that was before a picture of decorum and decency, a tabernacle of confusion, and a hell upon earth. Whenever time for stopping work came about, down we regularly all sat, night after night, the wife, Benjie, Tommy Staytape, and myself, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... was a very different man, at this moment of leisure and idleness, from what he had been a few hours earlier. Then he trod the deck of his little cruiser with some such feelings as the man who exults in his strength and rejoices in his youth. Now he felt as all are apt to feel who are rebuked by misfortunes and disease. Nevertheless, his character had lost ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... night, Filching thy pleasures like a subtle thief? To me, when life besets me in such wise, 'Tis sweetest to break forth, to drop the chain, And grasp the freedom of this pleasant earth, To roam in idleness and sober mirth, Through summer airs and summer lands, and drain The comfort of ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... and Providence itself. For if, as I gather from your own words, sir, you stand in need of a little friendly assistance from us, we, on our side, are weary of wasting our wits in conversation and our strength in luxurious idleness. It is our mission to benefit mankind both here and hereafter, by despatching useless persons to Paradise and thus cheering the lives of the friends they leave on earth. Assured of this, as we are, all inactivity is unbearable to us. At the present moment we are, so to say, unemployed philanthropists; ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... days of labor; but observed festivals as intervals of idleness and pleasure. They kept up the Christmas carol, sent true love knots on Valentine morning, ate pancakes on Shrovetide, showed their wit on the first of April, and religiously cracked nuts on ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... movement. Parker Pillsbury, the fiery abolitionist from New Hampshire, broad-shouldered, dark-bearded, with blazing eyes and almost fanatical zeal, had become her devoted friend. He liked nothing better than to tease her about her idleness and pretend to be in search of more work ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... wrong? Did a period of idleness ever help a man in any profession? And is it not acknowledged by all who know anything about it, that continuous labour is more necessary in our profession than in ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... discrepancies constitute the more important points of origin of sexual pathology. In spite of all, there still exist a great number of tranquil men with monogamous instincts and not fond of change. Lastly, we must not forget that super-abundant feeding and idleness exalt the sexual appetite and tend to polygamy, while hard work, especially physical, and frugal diet ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... looking for the prettiest girls. If you were as much interested in business as you are in pleasure you would be of some use to me. But I guess you'll have to get a hustle on mighty goon, though, from the look of things. I won't be able to indulge you in your idleness much longer." ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... population, the employment afforded by companies, where no absenteeism can exist, is a great and timely boon, and may work more social wonders than any scheme of conciliation which the statesman has as yet devised. Idleness and lack of employment are the most fertile sources of agitation; let these be removed, and we may look, if not with confidence, at least with hope, for a cessation of the stormy evil. By all means, then, let Ireland have the precedence. She needs it more than the other ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... sure that we should not have been asked for them at all, had not one of the officials, who chanced to be less wilted by the intense heat than his fellows,—they had been gazing lazily at us, singly and in battalions, in the intervals of their rigorous idleness, for the last four and twenty hours,—suddenly taken a languid interest in us about one hour before our departure. The landlord said he was "simply ridiculous." On another occasion, a waiter in a hotel ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... Nina's Hive passed without special incident; and next morning a regular scheme of life was definitely laid down. "My lord governor," as Ben Zoof until he was peremptorily forbidden delighted to call Servadac, had a wholesome dread of idleness and its consequences, and insisted upon each member of the party undertaking some special duty to fulfill. There was plenty to do. The domestic animals required a great deal of attention; a supply of food had to be secured and preserved; fishing had ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... silent hours of the winter, and the warm summer nights when she slept in the prairie grass or camped with her people in the trough of a great landwave. Sometimes the hunger for its freedom, and its idleness, and its sport, came to her greatly; but she thought of her child, and she put it from her. She was ambitious for him; she was keen to prove her worth as a wife against her husband's unworthiness. This perhaps saved her. She might have lost had her ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... remains over for the crew of free-booters; and the injustice of the system begins to be recognised even in Samoa. One native is said to have amassed a certain fortune; two clever lads have individually expressed to us their discontent with a system which taxes industry to pamper idleness; and I hear that in one village of Savaii a law has been passed forbidding gifts under the penalty of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mills, tavern, farms, timber-lot and all, fall in to young Hugh Littlepage, who is off frolicking in Europe, doing no good to himself or others, I'll venture to say, if the truth were known. That is another of the hardships of the feudal system; it enables one man to travel in idleness, wasting his substance in foreign lands, while it keeps another at home, at the plough-handles ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... there is always opportunity to retreat with honour. The danger is only, lest we expect from the world the indulgence with which most are disposed to treat themselves; and in the hour of listlessness imagine, that the diligence of one day will atone for the idleness of another, and that applause begun by approbation will be continued ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... husband—she did not care if he lived or died. Clear, on his part, knowing that he could not live long, was quite willing to play the part of Vrain on condition that he had plenty to eat and drink, and could live in idleness and luxury. His wishes in this direction cost us a pretty penny, as he bought everything of ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... endeavors to keep him to his work were vain, for no sooner was his back turned than he was gone for that day. Mustapha chastised him; but Aladdin was incorrigible, and his father, to his great grief, was forced to abandon him to his idleness, and was so much troubled about him that he fell sick and died in a ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... when he was past five-and-twenty that there arose between them misunderstanding, at first only a small cloud no bigger than a man's hand. Harold suddenly declared that he was sick of gallivanting about the fashionable world; sick of idleness—sick of the silly purposeless existence he led; and thereupon announced his intention of studying medicine seriously and as a profession. Mrs. Purling was at first aghast, then argumentative, finally indignant. But Harold remained inflexible, and she grew more and more wrathful. It led at length ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... days that followed, Sir Rowland was forced to fret in idleness what time his wound was healing; but if his arm was invalided, his eyes and ears were sound, and he remained watchful for an opportunity to apply the knowledge he had gained. Richard mentioned the subject no more, so that Blake almost came to wonder whether the boy remembered what ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... and its delights; the last peddler had slung his pack and tramped in the same direction; the gypsies, who since early morning had sprawled upon the common land, had shaken themselves free from their idleness into an assumption of activity, and had marched off almost in a body to take their share in the profits of the occasion by a little judicious horse-coping and fortune-telling. One of their number, indeed, they left behind in the great, gaudy, green-and-red caravan that ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... visceral disturbances. This is not simply an inference:—it is a truth to which every medical man can bear witness; and it is one to which a long and sad experience enables us to give personal testimony. Various degrees and forms of bodily derangement, often taking years of enforced idleness to set partially right, result from this prolonged over-exertion of mind. Sometimes the heart is chiefly affected: habitual palpitations; a pulse much enfeebled; and very generally a diminution in the ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... ever homely wits. I rather would entreat thy company To see the wonders of the world abroad, Than living dully, sluggardis'd at home, Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness." ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... luminous than "because." She adored Rene and wanted him near her. He was a hero in her imagination, no matter what he did. Little difference was it to her whether he hauled logs for the English or smoked his pipe in idleness by the winter fire—what could it matter which flag he served under, so that he was true to her? Or whom he served if she could always have him coming to see her and calling her his little pet? He might crush an Irish Corporal's head every day, if he would but stroke ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... be plain to the reader that Mr. Weil's principal intention in this whole matter was to dispose of the ennui which idleness brings even to its most adoring devotees. He had a fair fortune, accumulated by a father who had denied himself every luxury to amass it. Drifting to New York, he had found the vicinity of the Hoffman House very agreeable, ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... East Haven Lyceum, however, either did not think of or did not care to advocate such a radical remedy as Mr. George proposed. They saw clearly enough that, apart from the unequal distribution of wealth, which may perhaps have been the prime cause of the trouble, idleness and thriftlessness are acquired habits, just as industry and thrift are acquired habits, and it seemed to them better to cure the ill habit rather than to upset society and then to rebuild it again for the sake of benefiting ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... still active, still with lots of fire in him, but the youth - ah, the youth where is it? For years after I came here, the critics (those genial gentlemen) used to deplore the relaxation of my fibre and the idleness to which I had succumbed. I hear less of this now; the next thing is they will tell me I am writing myself out! and that my unconscientious conduct is bringing their grey hairs with sorrow to the dust. I do not know - I mean ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... influence came into his life during the half idleness of his unsuccessful storekeeping. It is worth repeating in his own words, or what seems to be the fairly accurate recollection of his words: "One day a man who was migrating to the West, drove up in front of my store with a wagon which contained his family and household ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... Massieu, "What is laziness or idleness?" "It is a disgust from useful occupation; a disinclination to do anything; from which result indigence, want of cleanliness and misery, disease of body and the contempt of others." In writing this answer the gestures and looks ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... played when I tried to teach him! Then Fulk tried, and he was tame for three days, but then came idleness, wilfulness, anger, punishment, but he laughed to scorn all that we could find in our ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... medicine and surgery, I have never practised either. The study of each continues, nevertheless, to interest me profoundly. Neither idleness nor caprice caused my secession from the honourable calling which I had just entered. The cause was a very trifling scratch inflicted by a dissecting knife. This trifle cost me the loss of two fingers, amputated promptly, and the more painful loss of my health, for I have ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... thought Nisida within her breast, "I have not proved ultimately faithless to the solemn vows I pledged to thee upon thy death-bed! No; if for a time I yielded to the voluptuous idleness of love and passion in that now far off Mediterranean isle, yet, at last did I arouse myself to energy for young Francisco's sake, and I came back as soon as Heaven sent me the means of return to the place where my presence may best serve his interests, ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... malt, called Hertfordshire malt, is made, which is esteemed the best in England. As Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk are taken up in manufactures, and famed for industry, this county has no manufacture at all; nor are the poor, except the husbandmen, famed for anything so much as idleness and sloth, to their scandal be it spoken. What the reason of it is I ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... heart by those who have to support this mighty empire, with enemies on every hand—"We are in a perfect Fools' Paradise about our power. We have plenty of power if we would pay attention to our work, but the fault is, to my mind, the military power of the country is eaten up by selfishness and idleness, and we are trading on the reputation of our forefathers. When one sees by the newspapers the Emperor of Germany sitting, old as he is, for two long hours inspecting his troops, and officers here grudging two hours a week for their duties, one has ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... history will not need a portraiture of his character. He was evidently made for the position he so long occupied. He was an acknowledged leader in the Lord's host; a Moses and a Joshua, with traits of character resembling those both of Elijah, and of the Apostle Paul. To idleness, vagrancy, and drunkenness, besetting sins of the Nestorians, he was the old prophet; and in his longing desire to make them savingly acquainted with the gospel, he was the apostle. Their spoken language he reduced to a written form, and gave them, in their vernacular, ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... Queen Caroline. Her character was not spotless, for we hear of an intrigue, which her own mistress imparted in confidence to the Duchess of Orleans (the mother of the Regent: they wrote on her tomb Cy gist l'oisivete, because idleness is the mother of all vice), and which eventually found its way into the 'Utrecht Gazette.' It was Mrs. Selwyn, too, who said to George II., that he was the last person she would ever have an intrigue with, because she was sure he would tell the queen of it: it was well known that that ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... had never been charged with idleness, and now worked at odd jobs about the farms until he had procured a decent suit of clothes, when he applied to a master house painter for work as a journeyman, though he had never done anything of that kind. The master, pleased with ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... years 18— and 18— at Rome. The society was, as is usual in that metropolis of the old Christian world, numerous and diversified. In it there were found many intellectual foreigners and amongst them some distinguished Britons, who had a higher object in making this city their residence than mere idleness or vague curiosity. Amongst these my countrymen, there were two gentlemen with whom I formed a particular intimacy and who were my frequent companions in the visits which I made to the monuments of the grandeur ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... feel, but it's my opinion that this board has done too much for that lazy loafer already. Long's his sister, Thankful, lived, we couldn't say nothing, of course. If she wanted to slave and work so's her brother could live in idleness and sloth, why, that was her business. There ain't any law against a body's making a fool of herself, more's the pity. But she's been dead a year, and he's done nothing since but live on those that'll trust him, and ask help from the town. ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... summer snow, No one would covet it or think it worth The pains of conquering to force change on. Scattered oases where men dwelt, but mostly Sand dunes held loosely in tamarisk Blown over and over themselves in idleness. Sand grains should sugar in the natal dew The babe born to the desert, the sand storm Retard mid-waste my cowering caravans— "There are bees in this wall." He struck the clapboards, Fierce heads looked out; ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... advice that his friends can give Rolt [Footnote: Sir John Rolt resigned in February 1868, and died in June 1871.] is to resign. It is the only chance of long life. Let him not be afraid of ennui from idleness. He has a great love of the country and country pursuits, and that is all-sufficient. Age cannot wither it, nor custom stale its infinite variety. And it is so much better to be a looker-on than an actor in life. Aristotle, in the last chapter of his 'Nicomachean Ethics,' sets himself ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... spoke in her turn: "If you will follow me and be my friend, I promise you the reward of a good conscience, and the love and respect of your fellowmen. I cannot undertake to smooth your path with roses, or to give you a life of idleness and pleasure; for you must know that the gods grant no good and desirable thing that is not earned by labour; and as you ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... however, guard ourselves against the mistaken notion that sloth and idleness are synonymous of rest. It is not all activity, but the ordinary activity of common life, that is forbidden. It were a sacrilegious mockery to make God the author of a law that fosters laziness and favors the sluggard. Another extreme that common sense condemns is that the physical man ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... encourage your associates to talk about the 'butterflies of fashion,' and that sort of thing. There are no butterflies in this town, except young girls under twenty, and you surely won't quarrel with them. Yes, we are all workers; what could Idleness herself do with her time in such a place as this? You've got to work in self-defence. Do you see ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... had been possible, so absolutely unaltered was Hetty's treatment of him. She had been absolutely honest in all she said: she did honestly believe that his fancied love for her was a sentimental mistake, a caprice born of idleness and lack of occupation, and she did honestly intend to forget the whole thing, and to make him forget it. And so they went back to the farm, where the summer awaited them with overflowing harvests of every thing, and Hetty's hands were so full that very ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... world runs on, Motherless, wild; Our servitude and long duress, Our shameless, harem idleness, Both fail ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... relapse owing? I believe to this cause—that no use was made of renewed health and spirits; that time passed on in idleness, till the lapse of time brought with it a sense of neglected duties, and then relief was again sought for a self-accusing mind;—in bodily feelings, which when the stimulus ceased to act, added only to the load of self-accusation. This Cottle, is an insanity ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... hundred francs a month. The soldier had become a cashier in the year 1813, after his recovery from a wound received at Studzianka during the Retreat from Moscow, followed by six months of enforced idleness at Strasbourg, whither several officers had been transported by order of the Emperor, that they might receive skilled attention. This particular officer, Castanier by name, retired with the honorary grade of colonel, and a pension of ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... toward the judgment-bar, doing nothing for God or for man? Life is duty; every moment of it has its own duty. There is no malfeasance so sad and so terrible in its penalties as that which wastes the golden years in idleness or pleasure, ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... are some that are very virtuous and some that are very perverse; and a careless bee-keeper will often corrupt his people, destroy their respect for the property of others, incite them to pillage, and induce in them habits of conquest and idleness which will render them sources of danger to all the little republics around. These things result from the bee's discovery that work among distant flowers, whereof many hundreds must be visited to form one drop of honey, ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... selleth them, And delivereth girdles unto the merchant. Strength and dignity are her clothing; And she laugheth at the time to come. She openeth her mouth with wisdom, And the law of kindness is on her tongue, She looketh well to the ways of her household, And eateth not the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed, Her husband also, and he praiseth her, saying, Many daughters have done virtuously, But thou excellest them all, Give her the fruit of her hand, And let her works praise her in ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... watching his eye—humbly watching his eye, as he rules a ciphering-book for another victim whose hands have just been flattened by that identical ruler, and who is trying to wipe the sting out with a pocket-handkerchief. I have plenty to do. I don't watch his eye in idleness, but because I am morbidly attracted to it, in a dread desire to know what he will do next, and whether it will be my turn to suffer, or somebody else's. A lane of small boys beyond me, with the same interest ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... after all, that you are right, and I am wrong. Certainly, there is no disguising the fact that my life has become a real burden to me, and that business would be far preferable to a state of idleness." ...
— The Last Penny and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... more peaceably inclined, settles himself quietly down to sleep in the verandah, and leaves the family to the enjoyment of repose; but there are others who disdain thus to eat the bread of idleness, and who make it a point to raise an alarm every hour in the night. Personal courage or strength of body is by no means essential in a Ramoosee, all that is required of him being powerful lungs; this qualification he cultivates to ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... demi-god of Hawaii, was restless. Time hung heavy on his hands. Uneventful days of quiet had fallen upon the land. Adventure seemed to be in hiding, and no exploit invited to service this active youngster's shining spear or magic club. Idleness ...
— Legends of Wailuku • Charlotte Hapai
... the vessels; and because the Portuguese might learn of us, during this time, and much harm might result thereby." Besides. Spaniards as well as natives cannot be depended upon to keep the peace. By leaving New Spain before the beginning of October, 1562, much expense and the idleness of the ships will be avoided. In case land be discovered within Spain's demarcation. Urdaneta requests the king to provide for its colonization by supplying a captain and some of the people and religious—or even that the general himself remain there, "if the natives thereof beg ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair
... wings! One was going after the Laws, and one after the Aphorisms,[1] and one following the priesthood, and one to reign by force or by sophisms, and one to rob, and one to civic business; one, involved in pleasure of the flesh, was wearying himself, and one was giving himself to idleness, when I, loosed from all these things, with Beatrice, was thus gloriously received on high ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... provides excuse for the presence of many thousand people, who run hither and thither at certain hours of the day as though time were the essence of the contract, and no delay of any kind could be tolerated. As soon, however, as the pressing needs of the moment are satisfied, a period of luxurious idleness follows, and rest seems to be the chief desideratum of the average habitue or employe. The children, who are sitting around in large numbers, vie with their elders in matters of idleness, though they are occasionally aroused ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... was now fast departing. As Montesquieu observes, in the causes that led to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, those seasons of trials, tribulations, and struggle for existence are those of health and progress and healthy life, and the periods of luxury and idleness are those of degeneracy and decay. So with the prepuce, the luxury and idleness, voluptuousness and consequent feasting incident to its being supplanted in its original functions by the perineal cloth, ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... would be unable to see Cardinal Sanguinetti before eleven o'clock, he nevertheless availed himself of an early train, so that it was barely nine when he alighted at the little station of Frascati. He had already visited the place during his enforced idleness, when he had made the classical excursion to the Roman castles which extend from Frascati to Rocco di Papa, and from Rocco di Papa to Monte Cavo, and he was now delighted with the prospect of strolling for a couple of hours ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... manner I was soon able to collect a number of disciples, glad to live in idleness on the offerings continually brought to me, fully believing in my sanctity, entirely devoted to me, and ready to obey all ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... the class preceding. But they may safely be taken up into the latter, for the main ends of society, as being or sure to become its materials and tools. Their folly is the stuff in which the sound sense of the worldly-wise is at once manifested and remunerated; their idleness of thought, with the passions, appetites, likings and fancies, which are its natural growth, though weeds, give direction and employment to the industry of the other. The accidents of inheritance by birth, of accumulation ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... and down his luxurious study, thoughtfully smoking a cigar, his past life rose before him, with all its idleness and wasted years. He knew that with most women he had only to throw down the glove for it to be snatched up eagerly; women had loved him, petted and spoilt him ever since he could remember. But here was one who thought of him as nothing but ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... must go. Should I not go I feel I should die of grief and shame. You can have no idea how my blood boils and seethes in my veins at the thought of remaining here in idleness. I tell you that this business is not going to end thus, that we must be avenged. On whom, on what? Ah! that I cannot tell; but avenged we must and shall be for such misfortune, in order that we may yet ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... from being employed in any. The manufacturer has always been accustomed to look for his subsistence from his labour only; the soldier to expect it from his pay. Application and industry have been familiar to the one; idleness and dissipation to the other. But it is surely much easier to change the direction of industry from one sort of labour to another, than to turn idleness and dissipation to any. To the greater part ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... prevalent 'savoury' and 'cold shape,' and the unusual grace and skill with which the hostess carves. Even at very large dinners one occasionally sees a lady of high degree severing the joints of chickens and birds most daintily, while her lord looks on in happy idleness, thinking, perhaps, how greatly times have changed for the better since the ages of strife and bloodshed, when ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... or occupations, such as they were, filled his day pretty completely, and caused the young gentleman's time to pass rapidly and pleasantly, his father, it must be owned, had no such resources, and the good Colonel's idleness hung heavily upon him. He submitted very kindly to this infliction, however, as he would have done to any other for Clive's sake; and though he may have wished himself back with his regiment again, and engaged in the pursuits in which his life had been spent, he chose to consider these desires ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Beautiful dwellings may also be found on Lake avenue and Franklin street. The streets are thronged with a gay and brilliant multitude, engaged in riding, driving, walking, each enjoying to the utmost a facinating kind of busy idleness. But by the time the tourist has glanced at all this he will be thinking of clean napkins, and will be interested to know what may be ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... said that the recent short crop of sugar in Jamaica was a proof that the author had been misled in the favorable information he had collected, and also that this deficiency in the crop was a proof not only of the idleness, but of the immorality of the negroes. He accused my companion, John G. Whittier, of deserting him, after having been his warm friend; and on J.W.'s giving his reasons for so doing, he complained that the abolitionists ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... ship's company his wages when they were due; I had painted the steamer at St. George, while the passengers were travelling on shore; I had taken in a large supply of engine stores; and still had about eleven hundred dollars on hand. I felt that I was getting rich very fast, though a season of idleness might scatter ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... suffers at the end of a war, by the sudden dismission of a great number of soldiers and seamen, who having contracted a habit of idleness, and finding themselves without employment and the means of subsistence, engage in desperate courses and prey upon the community, it was judged expedient to provide an opening through which these unquiet spirits might exhale without damage to the commonwealth. The most natural ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... "style," a sort of small stiletto with which they commonly wrote on tablets. The ancient world becomes very near when we read, side by side with the election notices, a line from Virgil or Ovid scrawled in a moment of idleness, or a piece of abuse of a neighbouring and rival town—such as "bad luck to the Nucerians"—or a pretty sentiment, such as "no one is a gentleman who has not been in love," or an advertisement to the effect that there are "To let, from July 1, shops with their upper floors, ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... demisemiquavers, they make triple or double ones; and in lieu of producing sixty-four notes in a bar in four-time (adagio), they produce only thirty-two, or even sixteen. The action of the arm necessary for producing a true tremolo, demands from them too great an effort. This idleness is intolerable. ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... answer. It remained upon the shelf, for if I looked at it I was ordered away, and at last I regarded it with a sort of fear, as if it were a kind of incomprehensible animal. The day was passed in idleness and almost silence; perhaps not a dozen sentences were exchanged in the twenty-four hours; my companion always the same, brooding over something which appeared ever to occupy his thoughts, and angry if ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... anxious elders, such vagrant ways naturally take on the colours of idleness and a love of low company. Stevenson was, however, in his own fashion an eager student of books as well as of man and nature. He read precociously and omnivorously in the belles-lettres, including a very wide range of English poetry, fiction, and essays, and a fairly wide range ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... we had cherished the illusion that life abroad would be an easy business, merely consisting of firing practices in the trenches, followed by intervals of idleness in rest-camps, where cigarettes could be obtained for the asking, and tots of rum would be served out ad infinitum. This rum would have a certain charm of its own, make everybody merry, and banish all discomforts due to frost ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... this statement, I must add the one made to Sec. 149 (see note) of "Munera Pulveris," that if we could trace the innermost of all causes of modern war, they would be found, not in the avarice or ambition, but the idleness of the upper classes. "They have nothing to do but to teach the peasantry to kill each other"—while that the peasantry are thus teachable, is further again dependent on their not having been educated primarily in the common law of justice. See again "Munera ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Any teaching which involves moral discipline is better than mere anarchy and idleness. But they had a right to their opinion; and a right too, being the great majority of the islanders, to have that opinion respected by the Governor. Even now, it will be but too likely, I think, that the establishment ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... Mocitos del Dia' (Fops of the Period). The subject of the play is of local interest, with a moral exposing in farcical colours the foibles of the Cuban 'Pollo,' or dandy, whose taste for pleasure and idleness is only exceeded by his aversion for manual labour and for early matrimony. The characters are ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... twelve days of idleness I set off after church parade to visit the Hants Dressing Station where I knew Pirie was placed. I went along the Krithia road till I came to The Gully I once reached late one evening, when Thomson and I were sniped at. Here I chanced to meet my old cabin companion, Balfour, who directed ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... The issue is vital. Protection has already made its bid. It will assure the workman what is in his mind more than cheap food—namely, secure wages; it affects to give him all his life, or nearly all his life, a market for his labour so wide and so steady that the fear of forced idleness will almost be banished from it. The promise is false. Protection by itself has in no country annulled or seriously qualified unemployment. But the need to which it appeals is absolutely real; for the ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... at a time. It was nothing to me, except I think—and the Sahib sees this, too?—that it is foolish to make an army and break their hearts in idleness. Why have they not sent for men of the Tochi—the men of the Tirah—the men of Buner? Folly, a thousand times. We could have done ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... money in the bank and then if nothing more, the master would have received the interest on the loan. There is always something which every servant of Christ can do for him. There is never any real excuse for idleness and inactivity and failure to achieve something ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... to make you willing to do such work," added his father. "You had better do this than do nothing, for idleness is the parent of vice. Boys like you should be industrious, even if they do not earn their bread. It is better for them to work for nothing than not to ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... and pool on this lonely Austral beach, it is good and sweet for man or boy to be, and, if but in utter idleness, ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... Jew, named Vorpin, had a place just off the Grand Canal, called "Trois Folies," and by waiting till mid-evening for dinner, we could find the cafe well-nigh empty. The truth was I went there often alone when a fit of depression was on me, and it was no wonder these fits came. A week of idleness, taken by a person who comes from my class, and should be working eight and ten hours a day, is a misfortune often longed for and seldom recognized when it ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... in the drifts with your reckless driving," said good-natured Leonard. "Thunder is wild enough at any time; but of late, between the cold, high feeding, and idleness, he'll have to be broken over again; lucky if he don't break your neck in the operation. The little girl will feel strange enough, anyway, coming among people that she has never seen, and I don't intend that she shall be frightened out of her wits into the bargain by your harum-scarum ways. ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... failure of the cotton crop in America, caused by the civil war rending the country asunder, the Lancashire operatives were in a state of enforced idleness and famine, calling for the most ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... even the barbarians had now learned to pardon under the seductive influence of vices; and the intervention of the civil wars afforded a legitimate excuse for his inactivity. Sedition however infected the soldiers, who, instead of their usual military services, were rioting in idleness. Trebellius, after escaping the fury of his army by flight and concealment, dishonored and abased, regained a precarious authority; and a kind of tacit compact took place, of safety to the general, and licentiousness to ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... thought occupied her mind, Melissa, the sage enchantress, suddenly appeared before her. This virtuous and beneficent magician had discovered by her spells that Rogero was passing his time in pleasure and idleness, forgetful of his honor and his sovereign. Not able to endure the thought that one who was born to be a hero should waste his years in base repose, and leave a sullied reputation in the memory of survivors, she saw that ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... on deck. The vessel was at anchor; she lay, a thing of idleness, quiet and peaceful enough, in a sheltered cove, wherein, I saw at a glance, she was lost to sight from the open sea outside the bar at its entrance, and hid from all but the actual coastline of the land. And all was quiet on her clean, ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... thinking of knocking off for this morning and taking a walk. Won't you come? It's such glorious weather and no fog," he added, parenthetically, as if in justification of his idleness. ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... first, and a bit of wordy warfare with his father on the subject of idleness sent him off to a gipsy camp at Epsom Downs. How long he lived with the vagabonds we do not know, but his swarthy skin, and his skill as a boxer and wrestler, recommended him to the ragged gentry, and they ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... themselves a way through the forest. Too many of those composing this little army were deficient in soldier-like qualities. They had been recruited from the off- scourings of large towns and cities, enervated by idleness, debauchery, and every species of vice, which unfitted them for the arduous service of Indian warfare. Hence insubordination, and frequent desertion, were among the ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... Lord Jesus Christ, he commanded and exhorted those who neglected useful labor, "with quietness to work and eat their own bread." What must be the bearing of all this upon slavery? Could slavery be maintained where every man eat the bread which himself had earned?—where idleness was esteemed so great a crime, as to be reckoned worthy of starvation as a punishment? How could unrequited labor be exacted, or used, or needed? Must not every one in such a community contribute his share to the general welfare?—and mutual service and ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... darken, to grow dark. obscuridad f. obscurity, darkness. obscuro obscure, dark. observar to observe. obstruir to obstruct. ocasion f. occasion, opportunity. ocaso occident, setting (of sun). occidente m. occident, west. oceano ocean. ocio leisure, idleness. ociosidad f. leisure, idleness. ocioso idle. octubre m. October. ocultar to hide. oculto hidden. ocupar to occupy. ocurrir to occur, suggest itself. ochenta eighty. ocho eight. odalisca odalisk, beautiful Oriental woman. odiar to hate. odioso odious, hateful. oeste ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... out his days in busy idleness. Every day between twelve and three o'clock he was with the Duchess; afterwards he went to meet her in the Bois de Boulogne and ride beside her carriage. Sometimes the charming couple rode together, but this was early in fine summer mornings. Society, ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... a chorus of sweet sounds, the bleating of lambs from the meadows, the lowing of the cows being driven home to their milking, the song of birds, the hum of insects—bees and gnats—the one toiling, the others dancing in idleness: types and shadows of the human race, as Mr. Barlow remarked. To which Jenny added, "Yes; and of boys and girls—the girls ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... head, biting at the hat which stood in such elegant irrelevance to the remainder of his dress, and cried, "Meshach, he! he! he! Vesty, she! Vesty, Meshach! Vesty, Meshach!" but said nothing the village vagrant would teach it. He showed the patience idleness can well afford, and, feeding it a little, or withholding the food awhile, continued ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend |
