"Idler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... presiding over a parish assembly, the making of roads, the establishment of charity workshops, all this is the intendant's business or that of the communal officers whom the intendant appoints or directs.[1314] Except through his justiciary rights, so much curtailed, the seignior is an idler in public matters.[1315] If, by chance, he should desire to act in an official capacity, to make some reclamation for the community, the bureaus of administration would soon make him shut up. Since Louis XIV, the higher officials have things their own way; all legislation and the entire ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... weeds, Man's mute companions following where he leads; Its dwarfed pale flowers, that show their straggling heads, Sown by the wind from grass-choked garden-beds; Its woodbine creeping where it used to climb; Its roses breathing of the olden time; All the poor shows the curious idler sees, As life's thin shadows waste by slow degrees, Till naught remains, the saddening tale to tell, Save home's last ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... The Idler: "A striking volume of ballad poetry. A volume to console one for the tantalising postponement of Mr. Kipling's promised volume ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... had been formulating itself in Sara Lee's mind. The trenches she could understand or was beginning to understand. But this alternately joyous and silent idler, this soldier of no regiment and no detail—was he playing a man's ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... breadth, deep tone and power, Suggesting glorious themes; Shaming the idler who would fill the hour With unsubstantial dreams. Be mine the dreams prophetic, shadowing forth The things that yet shall be, When through this gate the treasures of the North Flow ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... own purse and credit are not threatened, he will do the honours of his village generously. Any artist is made welcome, through whatever medium he may seek expression; science is respected; even the idler, if he prove, as he so rarely does, a gentleman, will soon begin to find himself at home. And when that essentially modern creature, the English or American girl-student, began to walk calmly into his favourite inns as if into a drawing-room at home, ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Argolic coasts are visible yet farther across he horizon. Again as we follow the purplish ridge of Mount Aegaleos as it runs down the Attic coast to westward, we come to a headland then to a belt of azure water, about a mile wide, then the reddish hills of an irregular island. Every idler on the citadel can tell us all the story. On that headland on a certain fateful morning sat Xerxes, lord of the Persians, with his sword-hands and mighty men about him and his ships before him, to look down on the naval spectacle and see how his slaves would fight. The island beyond is "holy ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... fact for which I am grateful now come to think of it, since otherwise I should not be here to-night. I wish to make the worst of myself, the very worst, for whatever I am not, at least I am honest. Now having told you that I am, or was half an hour ago, an idler, a good-for-nothing, prospectless failure, I ask you—if you care to hear ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... But every idler had his firelock close at hand, and all the time the sentinels on the bastions kept a sharp lookout. Every little while rapid firing broke the monotony of the long watch; the rolling drum called the garrison to the ramparts; wounded men groaned under the rough kindness ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... arises Arrogant, masculine, naive, rowdyish, Laugher, weeper, worker, idler, citizen, countryman, Saunterer of woods, stander upon hills, summer swimmer in rivers or by the sea, Of pure American breed, of reckless health, his body perfect, free from taint from top to toe, free forever from headache and dyspepsia, clean-breathed, Ample-limbed, ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... discriminating the deeds, tempers, and characters of men, would teach that there must be different allotments and experiences for them after death. It is not right, say reason and conscience, for the coward, the idler, fool, knave, sot, murderer, to enter into the same realm and have the same bliss with heroes, sages, and saints; neither are they able to do it. The spontaneous thought and sentiment of humanity would declare, if the soul survives the body, passing ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... there are idler boys," announced Fillet grudgingly; and it was open to anyone to hear in his words the further meaning; "but, on the other hand, there are many more studious and more deserving." The fact is, the little man was irritated that Radley should have tried to contradict ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... labor and good sense. Steel and the mind grow bright by frequent use; In rest they rust. A goodly recompense Comes from hard toil, but not from its abuse. The slave, the idler, are alike unblessed; Aye, in loved labor only is there rest. But he will read and range and rhyme in vain Who hath no dust of diamonds in his brain; And untaught genius is a gem undressed. The life ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... clear-skinned type. The eyes were very fine; the nose and mouth had the lines of distinction; the chin was—positive. Altogether the young man did not look the part he had that day been playing—that of the rich young idler who drives a hundred and fifty miles in a powerful car, over the worst kind of roads, merely for the sake of diversion ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... the right epithet to apply to parasitism? No doubt, in the human race, the idler who feeds at other people's tables is contemptible at all points; but must the animal bear the burden of the indignation inspired by our own vices? Our parasites, our scurvy parasites, live at their neighbour's expense: the animal never; and this ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... like: what oppressions they endured; how they were delivered; and above all what ideals of righteousness and truth and mercy they cherished, and how they came to think and feel about God. It makes little difference to us what particular idler at any particular time sat in the palace at Jerusalem sending forth tax-collectors to raise funds for his luxuries. It is of very great interest and concern to us if there were daughters like Ruth in the barley fields of Bethlehem, if shepherds tended ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... for it. He belongs to a class of men whom I hold in supreme contempt;—a blase idler, whose chief occupation in life is to kill time. Madeleine, forgive me! What a brute I am to speak so harshly when I come to thank you! But the sight of that senseless roue in your boudoir, and apparently ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... world are riches and honours; what is not easy to combine with them is leisure. These two blessings cannot be enjoyed together, but, as it happens, you hold one along with the other, so that we might as well dub you the 'rich and honourable idler.'" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... and Career. London. Rambler and Idler. The Dictionary. Other Works. Lives of the Poets. Person and Character. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... here again, you idler and good-for-nothing? What will become of you, you dunce? What will become ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... them with. The world rolls on, and brings in its course new actors, new scenes, a new drop-curtain, but men and women are always men and women. The loves, hopes, fears, disappointments or triumphs of to-day,—these, if nothing else, link us to a past generation. The idler on the club piazza, if not a Lauzun or Fersen, may no doubt arouse himself as nobly in a grand question of right or wrong (have we not seen it in our own generation?), unsheathe his sword and become, like Lytton's hero, "now ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... the brilliant and facile powers, the generous impulses and the occasional ambitions of his companion, he wondered whether these would ever lead to anything in the way of production, or even of consolidation of character, or whether would merely remain the passing sensations of an indifferent idler. Sometimes, indeed, he devoutly wished that Lavender had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... idler in the sun, In pity slacken here thy pace! A lad, whose course is nearly run, Is watching ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... the first year of his reign, 1547, ordains that if anyone refuses to work, he shall be condemned as a slave to the person who has denounced him as an idler. The master shall feed his slave on bread and water, weak broth and such refuse meat as he thinks fit. He has the right to force him to do any work, no matter how disgusting, with whip and chains. If the slave is absent ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... deeply engaged yourself. You look sourer and idler than the lion's head that dangles at your shoulder. The days are long here, though not too long. My handicraft will spare me for half an hour to sport with these exquisite and affable fragilities. I rather enjoy being laughed at. On Olympus ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... accomplished for him. It made him known and desirable. New journals enlisted him as a permanent colleague on their staff. Henceforward existence was no concern to the literary vagabond, who on his own showing had had four teachers: the cook on the Volga steamer, the advocate Lanin, the idler whom he ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... always up to some prank or other. In the vain hope of inducing him to learn something, he was sent to four schools in succession; but, with a single exception, every master under whom he was placed declared him to be an incorrigible idler. The exception was Dr. Eaton of Lostock, who predicted a great career for Clive, provided an opportunity were afforded him for the exercise of ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... out on the sand and closed his dim eyes, trying to picture Soriki in the small cabin which held the com, slouched in his bucket seat, his deceptive posture that of a lax idler, as he had seen him so many times. Soriki—his broad face with its flat cheekbones, its wide cheerful mouth, its heavy-lidded eyes. And having fixed Soriki's face, he tried to believe that he was now confronting the com-tech, speaking directly ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... fingers in her ears so she wouldn't hear. Kittie didn't. She explained to me afterwards that she thought it being her sister made things kind of different. It was all in the family, anyhow. So Kittie heard Josephine tell Mr. Morgan that the reason she did not marry him was because he was an idler and without an ambition or a purpose in life. And she said she must respect the man she married as well as love him. Then George jumped up quickly and asked if she loved him, and she cried and said she did, but that she would never, never marry ...
— Different Girls • Various
... And she would walk toward him, frightened and helpless until his arms closed about her. It was entirely a game to him. There were days, when Marion was trying, or the work of his department was nagging him, when he scarcely noticed her at all. But again the mischief in him, the idler, the newly awakened hunting male, took him to her with arms outheld and the look of triumph in his eyes that she ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... spirit were at its ear, breathing falsehood and temptation. The industrious man is seldom found guilty of a crime; for he has no time to listen to the enticings of the wicked one, and he is content with the enjoyments honest effort affords. It is the vicious idler, vexed to see the fortunes of his industrious neighbor growing while he is lounging and murmuring, who robs and murders that he may get unlawful gain. It is the merry, thoughtless idler who, to relieve the nothingness of his days, seeks the excitement of the wine-cup and the gaming-table. It is ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... happiness through this route. No one who partakes of His spirit can be an idler. The world is full of work awaiting labourers; the harvest is ripe. Those who try to imitate Christ will be planning for the extension of His Kingdom and for the comfort of God's creatures. The heart of the Christian—the center of life and love—will find satisfaction in being ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... not to have neglected is concerned. Idling always has been my strong point. I take no credit to myself in the matter—it is a gift. Few possess it. There are plenty of lazy people and plenty of slow-coaches, but a genuine idler is a rarity. He is not a man who slouches about with his hands in his pockets. On the contrary, his most startling characteristic is that ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... death-cry, ran to the cabin and found Boyd, blood-stained knife in hand, bending over the murdered man; Ed Thorpe, a tramp miner, who heard the same cry and who came up two or three minutes later; and, finally, Tim Williams, a town idler, who was on the mountain-side, hunting. The other two heard him fire his gun a few hundred yards away, and called to him. When he arrived, Boyd was still dazed and muttering to himself, as if overpowered by the horror of ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... could Sir Henry or any one else keep this a secret?" he protested. "Even his wife is scarcely on speaking terms with him because she believes him to be an idler, and the whole neighbourhood ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the victorious warfarer songs of welcome and strains of music; and as long as each man asks on account of his wants, and asks what he wants, no man will discover aught amiss or deficient in the vast and many-chambered storehouse. But if, instead of this, an idler or scoffer should wander through the rooms, peering and peeping, and either detects, or fancies he has detected, here a rusted sword or pointless shaft, there a tool of rude construction, and superseded by later improvements (and preserved, ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... reduce the labours of literature to a mere curious amusement: a finished composition is likened to a skilful game of billiards, or a piece of music finely executed; and curious researches, to charades and other insignificant puzzles. With such, an author is an idler who will not be idle, amusing or fatiguing others who are completely so. The result of a work of genius is contracted to the art of writing; but this art is only its last perfection. Inspiration is drawn from a deeper source; enthusiasm is ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... different towns instead of coming down for the day. He describes the party who were thus brought together twice a year, gossiping and arguing all day, with plenty of squabbling and of 'rough joking and noisy high spirits' among the idler, that is, much the larger part. He admits that the routine is rather wearisome: the same judgments and speeches seem to repeat themselves 'like dreams in a fever,' and 'droves of wretched over-driven heavy people come up from the prison into a kind ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Hans smoking idly in the doorway; but when she said a hasty word the boy's eyes seemed to grow big with a deep trouble, and she would check herself and work on in silence. But the more she worked, the idler grew Hans and the more ill-tempered; and he would laugh when he heard them pray to the angel to bless them. Instead of blessings new sorrow seemed to be born every day; for Hans was injured by a falling tree, and ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... instances illustrate the propulsive force of native genius, they also indicate what training must do when the impulsive genius is not there. No idler plea was ever entered for an idler than when he says,—'I have no bent for this, no interest in that, and no genius for the other.' The animal has his habitat, and stays fast. A complete man is intellectually and physically a cosmopolite. Till he has gained ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... extraordinary circumstances, without some return being made in labour. Even where relatives and friends supply money to the Colonists, the latter must take their share of work with their comrades. We shall not have room for a single idler throughout all our borders. ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... by no means an idler; he had developed a great business shrewdness, and two or three times in the week drove over to a neighboring river-town to look after the shipments to the West Indies in which he was now interested in company with the Squire. But this had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... many wise and busy people that the hill-folk pass the ten-month interval between the end and renewal of winter rains, with no drink; but your true idler, with days and nights to spend beside the water trails, will not subscribe to it. The trails begin, as I said, very far back in the Ceriso, faintly, and converge in one span broad, white, hard-trodden way in the gully of the spring. And why trails if there are no travelers ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... of faith, and the truth of the histories of Scripture, by giving visible form to both. That function has now passed away, and none has as yet taken its place. The painter has no profession, no purpose. He is an idler on the earth, chasing the shadows of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... knows who has tried it, or observed the habits of those who have, idleness is far more of a curse than labour. Few men—at any rate in the temperate zone—can be consistently idle and remain happy. The born idler is almost as rare as the born poet. Most men, and, it must be added, most women, are happier working. If holidays were the rule and work the exception the world would be a much less cheerful place than it is even to-day. Purposeful ...
— Progress and History • Various
... your favors are reciprocal," continued the young aristocrat, laughing. "I've half a mind to be something useful myself—Minister—editor—anything but an idler and a law-giver—just to experience the exquisite sensation of a new pleasure—the pleasure of revealing and publishing to the world something it knew not before. Why, you two fellows, in this dark and dirty little room, are the two greatest men in Paris ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... essential; better an unsuitable occupation than none at all, for the downward tendency of the complaint is sufficiently marked without the victim becoming an idler. Work gives stability. ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... commanded by boys from the Christian Brothers' school, who came there in their playtime, or with lesson-books to be conned; emblems of a past that had sunk down and well-nigh vanished under the earth, that lay by the water's edge now, like an idler taking the air, yet giving me strong food for thought, making the name of Combray connote to me not the little town of to-day only, but an historic city vastly different, seizing and holding my imagination by the remote, incomprehensible features ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... relieve anxiety of mind; in a third place, to unwrinkle a brow bent with the furrows of daily toil; in another, to fill the place of bad thoughts, or to suggest better; in yet another, to induce an idler to study the history of his country; in all, save where the perusal interrupted the discharge of serious duties, to furnish harmless amusement,—might not the author of such a work, however inartificially executed, plead for his errors and negligences ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... disgust. Our room was full of personal effects scattered about in disorder—albums, pictures, books, and the dear map we loved so much. We went to and fro about the little apartment; at brief intervals I would stop and kneel before Brigitte who would call me an idler, saying that she had to do all the work, and that I was good for nothing; and all sorts of projects flitted through our minds. Sicily was far away, but the winters are so delightful there! Genoa is very pretty with its ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... to work to-day. After all, I am not an idler. I earn my right to live. When I publish my History the world will be the richer by something, poor though it may be. I vow I have been more greatly, more nobly employed of late years, than I was when I earned my living at school-slavery teaching to children the ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... But a man who does none of these things, who does not even try to do them, who never attempts to learn the rudiments of any branch of knowledge so that he may at least do what he can towards promoting it—such a one, born as he is into riches, is a mere idler and thief of time, a contemptible fellow. He will not even be happy, because, in his case, exemption from need delivers him up to the other extreme of human suffering, boredom, which is such martyrdom to him, that ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... in this world we must earn it. The partridge makes its own nest before it occupies it. The lark, by its morning song, earns its breakfast before it eats it; and the Bible gives an intimation that the first duty of an idler is to starve, when it says if he "will not work, neither shall he eat." Idleness ruins the health; and very soon Nature says, "This man has refused to pay his rent; ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... mother. You know every girl that has ever kept company with him has been talked about. I don't like him. I can't stand him. He's a bad man, mother—a gambler, a drunkard, and an idler. He doesn't care for the characters he has ruined. He's fast running through the money his mother ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... an idler. He feared this accusation, and wept over it in secret, though he was convinced that he was no idler, but something different, that no one ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... house which the Seguin du Hordel family occupied in the Avenue d'Antin. Seguin's grandfather had been a mere tiller of the soil at Janville. Later on, his father, as a contractor for the army, had made a considerable fortune. And he, son of a parvenu, led the life of a rich, elegant idler. He was a member of the leading clubs, and, while passionately fond of horses, affected also a taste for art and literature, going for fashion's sake to extreme opinions. He had proudly married an almost portionless girl of a very ancient aristocratic ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... sudden stop, for a time, to all these labors. The mother wrote, in the utmost distress, to say that DIETRICH had disappeared from his home, it was supposed with the intention of going to India "with a young idler not older than himself." His brother immediately left the lathe at which he was turning an eye-piece in cocoa-nut, and started for Holland, whence he proceeded to Hanover, failing to meet his brother, as he expected. Meanwhile the sister received a letter to say that DIETRICH was "laid up very ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... he was supposed to be only an idler, or an apprentice who was airing himself and taking a day or two's holiday from the smithy, the shareholders in the different businesses down there were both agreeable and talkative. But when—and that not once only—he suddenly turned to, and darted ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... room in Paper Buildings—a row of goodly tenements, shaded in front by ancient trees, and looking, at the back, upon the Temple Gardens—that this, our idler, lounged; now taking up again the paper he had laid down a hundred times; now trifling with the fragments of his meal; now pulling forth his golden toothpick, and glancing leisurely about the room, or out at window into the trim garden walks, where a few early loiterers ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... table, they cast you out eternally from their bosom and condemn you, in turn, to wear the shackles prepared for them by your indifference or your maneuvers." In other words, whoever has a good roof over his head, or wears good clothes, man or woman, idler or industrious, noble or commoner, is available for the prison or the guillotine, or, at the very least, he is a taxable and workable serf at pleasure; his capital and accumulations, if not spontaneously and immediately handed over, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... ominous paper in the Bible, and determined to make known the whole mysterious case at once to Mr. Craigie, the chief magistrate of Aberdeen. Not for a single instant did Mr. Comyn suspect a hoax, or imagine the affair to be only the mischievous trick of some idler. Indeed, such was not likely; the times were superstitious, nor were there any persons connected or at variance with the family who were liable to be suspected of having played off such a foolish and wicked jest at the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... touch of the crowd, which is inevitable amid the circulation of Parisian humanity. Oh, how deeply she feels the value of a minute! Her gait, her toilet, the expression of her face, involve her in a thousand indiscretions, but oh, what a ravishing picture she presents to the idler, and what an ominous page for the eye of a husband to read, is the face of this woman when she returns from the secret place of rendezvous in which her heart ever dwells! Her happiness is impressed even on the unmistakable disarray of her hair, the mass of whose wavy tresses has not ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... after our arrival in the village, we took our departure from it—turning our faces towards the almost limitless wilderness of the west. I had endeavoured to add to our company but without success. The caravan had cleared Van Buren of its unemployed population; and not an idler remained—at least not one who felt inclined to adventure with us. Even the needy "loafer" could not be induced to try the trip—deeming ours too dangerous an expedition. To say the least, it was reckless enough; but impelled by motives far more ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... for the transmission of produce is their office, and the people who live there are such as are suited for this,—active, complaisant, inventive, business people. There are no provisions for the student or idler; to know what the place can give, you should be at work with the rest; the mere traveller will not find it profitable to loiter ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... though not described, the lives of a hard-working, prosperous population, filling the countryside, laying the foundations of fortunes which are to-day enriching descendants. It was a community without an idler, with trades and occupations so many as to be independent of other communities, hopeful, abounding in credit, laying plans for generations to come, and living bountifully, heartily from day ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... identical. I dare say that the highly civilized lady reading this will smile at an old fool of a hunter's simplicity when she thinks of her black bead-bedecked sister; and so will the superfine cultured idler scientifically eating a dinner at his club, the cost of which would keep a starving family for a week. And yet, my dear young lady, what are those pretty things round your own neck? — they have a strong family resemblance, ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... the features may certainly be easily reorganized; if we substitute sherry, a chop, and a club in Pall-Mall, for white spruce beer, sandwiches, and a tavern; replacing the curricle and footman by a cab and tiger, the remainder, with trivial alterations, may stand good of the fashionable idler of to-day, as of him ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... smooth and sterile, of the hunger for adornment, for gold bands and jewels and perfume, for goffered linen and draperies of silk and scarlet. She was the naked idler stained with antimony in the clay courts of Sumeria; the Paphian with painted feet loitering on the roofs of Memphis while the blocks of red sandstone floated sluggishly down the Nile for the pyramid of Khufu the King; she was the flushed ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... and of course the young man was very much pleased to show Sheila that he was no mere lily-fingered idler about town. He buckled to his work in earnest. With a few more casts he soon got into the way of managing the big rod; and every time the flies fell lightly on the other side of the pool, to be dragged with gentle jerks ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... object in that work being to counteract the virus scattered among His Majesty's subjects through the pages of the Edinburgh Review. Now, I wish to enlist you in our corps, not as a mere advising idler, but as an efficient labourer in our friend ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... that Master Hawkins departed from hence, I, having nothing to do, as an idler went to Lambeth to the bishop's palace, to see what news; and I took a wherry at Paul's Wharf, wherein also was already a doctor named Crewkhorne, which was sent for to come to the Bishop of Canterbury. And he, before the three Bishops of Canterbury, Worcester, and Salisbury, confessed that ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... was not a soul there save the two whom I had followed, and a surpliced clergyman, who seemed to be expostulating with them. They were all three standing in a knot in front of the altar. I lounged up the side aisle like any other idler who has dropped into a church. Suddenly, to my surprise, the three at the altar faced round to me, and Godfrey Norton came running as hard as ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... themselves into the tops, others ascending the topgallant yards, and running out to either yard-arm, till every part of the ship swarmed with life, those on deck pulling and hauling with might and main, the officers assisting, every idler putting a hand to a rope. The topsails were quickly clewed up and furled, the other sails were handed, but scarcely were the men off the yards, than the high bank of foam approached the ship. There was a loud ...
— Sunshine Bill • W H G Kingston
... might have seen him, for instance, in his study one Sunday morning in the January which the story has now reached; a glance at him showed that he was no idler in fields of art or erudition; blue-books were heaped about him, hooks bound in law calf lay open near his hand, newspapers monopolised one table. He was interested in all that concerns the industrial population ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... am afraid that I am rather an idler. My father left me a quarter of a million, and so I don't feel the ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... good and evil deeds; that happiness results from good deeds, and pain from evil ones; that acts, when done, always fructify; and that, if not done, no fruit arises. A man of (good) acts acquires merits with good fortune, while an idler falls away from his estate, and reaps evil like the infusion of alkaline matter injected into a wound. By devoted application, one acquires beauty, fortune, and riches of various kinds. Everything can be secured by Exertion: but nothing can be gained through Destiny alone, by a man that is wanting ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... bade them sing His love! He wrought not thus: A little hint He gives us and no more. Alone the willing see. Thus they sin less Who, if they saw, seeing would disbelieve. Hark to that note! O foolish woodland choirs! Ye sing but idle loves; and, idler far, The bards ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... the Wanderer repeated in his calm voice, and every syllable pierced her like a glowing needle. "And does not friendship give rights which ought to be used? If, as I think, Unorna, you look upon me as an idler, as a worthless being, as a man without as much as the shadow of a purpose in the world, it is but natural that you should despise me a little, even though you may be very fond of me. Do you ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... much preliminary consideration and inquiry, had matured and submitted to Stevenson the scheme of the Edinburgh edition, to which this letter is his reply. The paper on Treasure Island appeared in the Idler for August 1889, and was afterwards reprinted in the miscellany My First Book (Chatto and Windus, 1894). See Edinburgh edition, Miscellanies, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fault; and so it is simple retribution, that, while he lies slothfully sleeping or aimlessly dreaming, the fatal habit settles on him like a vampyre, and sucks his blood, fanning him all the while with its hot wings into deeper slumber or idler dreams! I am not such a hard-souled being as to apply this to the neglected poor, who have had no chance to fill their heads with wholesome ideas, and to be taught the lesson of self-government. I trust the tariff of Heaven has an ad valorem scale ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... accounts. For the last six months he had been gathering every possible saving together with a view to the History of Manchester, which he and John had planned to begin printing in the coming autumn. It went against him sorely to take from such a hoard for the purpose of helping Jules Montjoie to an idler and easier existence. The fate of his six hundred pounds burnt deep into a mind which at bottom was well furnished with all the old ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... times has erected into a dogma; an error that has resulted in the production of this anti-social phenomenon which we meet with every day; namely, that the degradation of the workman is the greater as his labor is more severe, and the elevation of the idler is higher as his idleness is more complete. But the study of the laws which maintain order in nature, released from the fetters of preconceived ideas, has led the Freemasons to that doctrine, far more moral than the contrary belief, that labor is ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... man could see in a flash the burning history of the one who is down, the whole of our reasonable population would take thought for the morrow—drink-shops would be closed, the dice-box would rattle no more, and the sight of a genuine idler would be unknown. Not a few of us have seen tragedies enough in the course of our pilgrimage, and have learned to regard the doomed weaklings—the wreckage of civilisation, the folk who are down—with mingled compassion and dismay. I have found in such cases that the miserable mortals never knew ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... youthful judges. There was no servility in his manner, for he neither courted nor shunned observation; nor, though he was as willing as ever to do a kind action for any one, did he allow himself to be persuaded to give up all his time to his idler school-fellows. There seemed more firmness and decision in his naturally yielding disposition, and those who knew not the power of assisting grace, looked and wondered at the firmness the sweet but weak boy could at ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... went, in sorrow sighing, While his heart was filled with anguish, To the blue lake's rocky margin, And he spoke the words which follow: "Tell me, Untamo, thou sleeper, Tell me all thy dreams, O idler, Where to find the realm of Ahto, Where dwell ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... is as pure as the rill that runs from the mountain side." An invidious turn has also been given to the expression "the income of six hundred labouring families," as though it meant that the wealthy idler is robbing six hundred labouring families of their income. It means no more than that the income which he is spending on himself is as large as six hundred ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... poor man calling me, and me nowhere to answer. The worst of it is, I seem the only person he has any faith in, and what I have been telling him about the father of us all, whose love never changes, will seem only the idler tale, when he finds I am gone, and nowhere to be found—as they're sure to tell him. There's no saying what lies they mayn't tell him about my going! Rather than go, I will sit on the door-step all night, just to be able to tell him in the morning ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... determined as ever to evade as much as possible academic learning. He was "far from an industrious boy, fond of idling, and discovered no symptoms by his progress either in Latin or Greek of that philology, so prominent a feature of his last work (Lavengro)." {20a} Borrow was an idler merely because his work was uncongenial to him. "Mere idleness is the most disagreeable state of existence, and both mind and body are continually making efforts to escape from it," he wrote in later years concerning this period. He wanted an object in life, an occupation that would ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... to the priests of the seminary, "and have only watchful and industrious domestics. We must look after them, else they deteriorate in the seminary. You have the example of the baker, Louis Lemaire, an idler, a gossip, a tattler, a man who, instead of walking behind the coach, would not go unless Monseigneur paid for a carriage for him to follow him to La Rochelle, and lent him his dressing-gown to protect him from the cold. Formerly he worked well ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... in the power of such a young woman—young angel, I might better say," added Guert, "to make anything she may please of me! I know I am an idler, and too fond of our Dutch amusements, and that I have not paid the attention I ought to have paid to books; but let that precious creature only take me by the hand, and I should turn out an altered man in ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... and down, With idler, knave, and tyrant! Why for sluggards cark and moil? He that will not live by toil Has no right on English soil! God's ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... Here is a veritable mortal who is not exact. He's not a good student. Here is none of your heavy-sides, a student who studies, a greenhorn pedant, strong on letters, theology, science, and sapience, one of those dull wits cut by the square; a pin by profession. He is an honorable idler who lounges, who practises country jaunts, who cultivates the grisette, who pays court to the fair sex, who is at this very moment, perhaps, with my mistress. Let us save him. Death to Blondeau!' At that moment, Blondeau dipped his pen in, all black with erasures ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... manual, mental, social, domestic, political and philanthropic, scientific and literary, is honorable. Any form of life without hard work of either hand or brain is shameful and disgraceful. The idler is of necessity a debtor to society; though there are forms of idleness to which, for reasons of its own, society never ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... responded Annette gently. Her voice was always sweet. One would never have known that Benoit was a drunken idler. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... replied, "I don't mean to be an idler, nevertheless I don't mean to be a doctor. I shall turn my mind to chemistry, and talking of that, I expect to test the powers of a particular ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... novelist. In the same year he resumed his intention of an edition of Shakspeare, of which he issued proposals, and which he promised to finish in little more than a year, although nine years were to elapse ere it saw the light. In 1758, he began the "Idler," which reached the 103d No., and was considered lighter and more agreeable than the "Rambler." He has seldom written anything so powerful as his fable of "The Vultures." In 1759, his mother died, at the age of ninety,—an event which deeply affected him. Soon after this, and to defray the ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... I regarded the nonchalance of my friend, and began to wish that I had left him to go through his own affairs as he might. But reflection did justice to his gallant spirit, and I mentally thanked him for having relieved me from the life of an idler. At this moment my name was pronounced by a familiar voice; it was Mordecai's. He had brought me some additional letters to the leaders of the party in Paris. We returned to the hotel, and sat down to our final meal together. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... Christianity. Read, too, if you can lay your hand on it, Bishop Horne's paper on conversation, in the Olla Podrida. In these two essays you will find many of the sentiments which I have expressed, only given in a much more engaging manner. In the 78th and 83d Numbers of the Idler, many common faults in conversation are exposed with a degree of humour, in which our great moralist ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... ground,—the self-restraint, the obedience, the diligence, the punctuality, the patience, the courtesy, the forbearance, the justice, the temperance,—these virtues, needful for those who compete in a struggle in which the idler and the debauchee can take no share, all these go equally toward the making ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... stern and black-browed Puritans would have thought it quite a sufficient retribution for his sins, that, after so long a lapse of years, the old trunk of the family tree, with so much venerable moss upon it, should have borne, as its topmost bough, an idler like myself. No aim, that I have ever cherished, would they recognize as laudable; no success of mine—if my life, beyond its domestic scope, had ever been brightened by success—would they deem otherwise than worthless, if not positively disgraceful. ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... London than in Paris, and yet the mass of the London population have a second- hand look which is not to be detected on the mass of the Parisian population. I think this is mainly because a Parisian workman does not in the least trouble himself about what is worn by a Parisian idler, but dresses in the way of his own class, and for his own comfort. In London, on the contrary, the fashions descend; and you never fully know how inconvenient or ridiculous a fashion is, until you see it in its last descent. It was but the other ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... she would say to herself, "my Fabian can never prove unfaithful to me. He is too much of an idler, and thinks only of ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... "Companion to the Map." The Voyage to the several Islands of the Great World, "is in a frame-work of the adventures of Sir Heedless Headlong, who neither reaches the Great World by a balloon, nor Perkins's steam-gun. He cruises about St. James's Straits, makes for Idler's Harbour, in Alba; is repulsed, but with a friend, Jack Rashleigh, journeys to Society Island, lands at Small Talk Bay, and makes for the capital, Flirtington. He first visits a general assembly of the leaders of the isle. At the house of assembly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... Colorado; and there is yet a middle term, which combines the medical benefits of the new system with the moral drawbacks of the old. Again the invalid has to lie aside from life and its wholesome duties; again he has to be an idler among idlers; but this time at a great altitude, far among the mountains, with the snow piled before his door and the frost flowers every morning on his window. The mere fact is tonic to his nerves. His ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fine Controversy risen, of mathematical, philosophical and at length of very miscellaneous nature, concerning that Konig-Maupertuis dissentience on the LAW OF THRIFT. Wonderful Controversy, much occupying the so-called Philosophic or Scientific world; especially the idler population that inhabit there. Upon this item of the Infinitely Little,—which has in our time sunk into Nothing-at-all, and but for Voltaire, and the accident of his living near it, would be forgotten altogether,—we must not enter into details; but a few words to render Voltaire's share ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... '"So you are an idler! Ah! well, we must teach you to work. You won't be the first we have cured of laziness. See how busy ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... been an idler in his prolonged absence. In the first place, he had striven with the whole force of a powerful will to subdue a useless passion, and had striven in vain. He had not, however, yielded for a day to a dreamy melancholy, but, in accordance with his promise ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... was bitterly disappointed that his only son should choose to be what he called "an idler"—generous to a fault and always out of money, dressing in a careless and eccentric way, which both amused and annoyed his friends and caused him to be ridiculed by strangers, preferring to roam the streets of old Edinburgh scraping acquaintance ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... really changed very much in the last few years. I had a notion, don't you know, that you were a sort of idler about town, the kind of man one might meet on the north side of Piccadilly every ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... discontent I need not mention. It cannot but be immediately considered, upon hearing this account of the soldier's condition, with how many reproaches he would receive his victuals, how roughly he would be treated, how often he would be insulted as an idler, and frowned upon as an intruder. Nor can it be imagined that such affronts, however they might be provoked, would be borne without return, by those who knew themselves not the authors of the provocation, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... upon whose walls the idler's knife had carved many a rude inscription, was the village school. There, amid those carvings, were seen the rough-hewn initials of many a man now "well-to-do in the world." Some, high above the rest, seemed as captains, and almost over-shadowed the diminutive ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... cannot say that he was ever an industrious man; the circumstances of his life have not called on him to be so; and yet he can hardly be called an idler. Since his appointment to his precentorship, he has published, with all possible additions of vellum, typography, and gilding, a collection of our ancient church music, with some correct dissertations on Purcell, Crotch, ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... straits, though to the world's eye he was a man of wealth. A gambler, with no inexpensive tastes, he had been always in need of money. The rights in his patent he had mortgaged long ago. He was not an idler; he was no sham foisted as a great man on an ignorant public. He had really some touch of genius, and he cultivated it assiduously. But the harder he worked, the greater was his need of gaiety and extravagance. Gifted with good looks and a charm ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... union to him. Time levied an additional charge upon him, in the form of two pretty mulattos, whose infantile pranks amply repaid the additional toil. A few years, and a severe cough and pain in his side compelled him to be an idler for weeks together, and Mag had thus a reminder of by-gones. She cared for him only as a means to subserve her own comfort; yet she nursed him faithfully and true to mar- riage vows till death released her. He became the victim of consumption. ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... by several unsuccessful experiments, he was sauntering home to dinner along the boulevards (the lounger in Paris is a man in despair quite as often as a genuine idler), when a book among a hamperful at six sous apiece caught his attention; his eyes were attracted by the yellow dusty title-page, Abdeker, so it ran, or the Art of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... out of the study with an ancient and owl-like demeanour, and prove dry, stockish, and dyspeptic in all the better and brighter parts of life. Many make a large fortune, who remain under-bred and pathetically stupid to the last. And meantime there goes the idler, who began life along with them—by your leave, a different picture. He has had time to take care of his health and his spirits; he has been a great deal in the open air, which is the most salutary of all things for both body and mind; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... served to introduce him to the townspeople of Winchester. The morning after his arrival, he found a crowd in the public square and learned that an auction sale of personal effects was about to take place. Everyone from the administrator of the estate to the village idler, was eager for the sale to begin. But a clerk to keep record of the sales and to draw the notes was wanting. The eye of the administrator fell upon Douglass; something in the youth's appearance gave assurance that he could "cipher.". ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... beach by the sea the summer idler sitting beneath the jutting rock, gazing far out upon the sea, yet ignoring the white sails that pass up and down before him, as well as the open volume upon his knee, while his thoughts float outward ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... his mind than the sentiment of disappointment and disgust. The impressions produced on the credulous imagination of childhood vanished. He went to the University; was sent abroad to travel: and on his return took that place in the circles of London which is so readily conceded to a young idler of birth and fortune. He passed quickly over that period of his life, as one of extravagance and dissipation, from which he was first drawn by the attachment for his cousin to which his letter to Strahan referred. Disappointed in the hopes ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... stir! There are others still, who, while sloth is sapping the primitive energy of their natures, expect to scale the fortresses of knowledge by leaps and not by ladders, and who count on success in such perilous gymnastics, not by the discipline of the athlete, but by the dissipation of the idler. Indolence, indeed, is never at a loss for a smooth lie or delicious sophism to justify inaction, and, in our day, has rationalized it into a philosophy of the mind, and idealized it into a school of poetry, and organized it into a "hospital ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... no crimes, was the friend of men, was no deceiver of man or woman; that I first served my own country faithfully, and after, every other in which I found bread; that I was never, during life, once intoxicated; was no gamester, no night rambler, no contemptible idler; that yet, through envy and arbitrary power, I have fallen to misery such as none but the worst ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... of summer always brings with it, to the idler and the man of leisure, a longing for the leafy shade and the green luxuriance of the country. It is pleasant to interchange the din of the city, the movement of the crowd, and the gossip of society, with the silence of the hamlet, the quiet seclusion of the grove, and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... handsomely and doing the proper thing towards society, and all that,—rubbing through the world in the old hereditary way; though I needn't growl at it, for I enjoy it enough, and find it a pleasant enough way, Heaven knows. Lazy idler! enjoying the sunshine with the ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... what volumes thou couldst tell To all who know thy language as I do, Of life and love and jealous hate! But now to tattle were too late,— Thou who hast ever been so true. Tell not to every passing idler here All those sweet tales that reached ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... town, you might be justified in indulging a fancy. But how and when, I should like to know, are you to enter Parliament now? This Parliament will last: it will go on to the lees. Lord Eskdale told me so not a week ago. Well then, at any rate, you lose three years: for three years you are an idler. I never thought that was your character. I have always had an impression you would turn your mind to public business, that the county might look up to you. If you have what are called higher views, you should not forget there is a great opening now in public life, which may not offer again. The ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... unconscious result of long experience, know the tramp at once, and can immediately distinguish him from the bona-fide 'harvester,' in quest of honest employment. The tramp, indeed, is the sturdy idler of the roads—a cousin-german of the 'beach-comber,' who is the plague of consuls and aversion of merchant skippers. In almost every port of any size the harbour is beset by a gang of idle fellows, whose pretence is that they are anxious to sign articles ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... our barest existence is the result of labor power applied to natures gifts. We must safeguard nature and improve the health and vitality of those who do the world's work. If, due to unforeseen circumstances, over which we have failed to exercise adequate control, there is some shortage, let the idler and the wastrel suffer. Under all circumstances the producers must have all those goods and services needed to preserve their ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... the hour of rising, is, I actually believe, more injurious to the nerves than hard drinking. It paralyzes exertion. I never saw an Irish labourer, with his hod and his pipe, mounting a ladder, but I was sure to discover that he was an idler. I never had a groom that smoked much who took proper care of my horses; and I never knew a gentleman seriously addicted to smoking, who cared much for any thing beyond self. A Father Matthew pledge ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... feeder of the boats that busily ply here. Quite obviously this is no resort of mere pleasure, and it is all the more pleasurable for that; it has set itself to live sturdily, not troubling to attract the idler and the luxurious. Fowey is not altogether content to repose on its memories, though these are great. Generations of those who laboured on deep waters have nestled in these riverside homesteads, these nooks and corners and precipitous byways; they were lusty fighters and dauntless ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... is as much of a necessity to man as eating and sleeping. Even those who do nothing which to a sensible man can be called work, still imagine that they are doing something. The world possesses not a man who is an idler in his own eyes.—WILHELM ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... all this; and yet a year ago I was wondering what to do with the rest of my life, Drusilla was running around telling people what kind of pictures to put on their walls, and what kind of draperies to put at their windows, and Derry was trying to pretend that he was not an elegant idler; and now—we are ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... Brussels, he was well known as an idler who stayed at the best hotels and patronized the most expensive restaurants, while his villa on the Riviera he had purchased from a Roumanian prince who had ruined himself by gambling. His gloved hand—gloved because of a natural deformity—was the hand which controlled most of the greater robberies, ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... idler about the villages seems to be amusing himself by working a ball of opium about in his hands, much as a boy delights in handling a chunk of putty. Lumps as large as the fist are freely offered me by friendly people, as they would ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... described as being gathered together in front of the hotel, had dispersed with the breaking up of the party, which Colonel Forrester, in compliment to those who entertained him, had been one of the last to quit; so that on passing through the streets not an idler was found to swell the sable crowd that bore the wretched prisoners onward to the common prison of the town. Just as they had arrived at this latter, and a tall and muscular negro, apparently enjoying some distinction in his master's household, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... of independence, of self-respect. A man who does something necessarily puts a value on himself. He feels that he is a part of the world's force. The idler—no matter what he says, no matter how scornfully he may look at the laborer—in his very heart knows exactly what he is; he knows that he is a counterfeit, a poor worthless imitation of ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... him as 'that unhappy man,'[211] and said he was 'owned by the atheistical wits of all England as their primate and apostle.'[212] Of course opinions thus promulgated by the leaders of a party descended with still further distortion to more ignorant partisans. Tom Tempest in the 'Idler' believes that King William burned Whitehall that he might steal the furniture, and that Tillotson died an atheist.[213] John Wesley, as has been already observed, held the Archbishop in much respect. He was too well read a man to listen to misrepresentations ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... broad brow cramped; the features finer cut, but losing in force what they gain in fineness. Look, for instance, at this Vandyck of Sir John Suckling,—only the next generation after the great men; but his portrait is that of an idler, his head that of a man without great thoughts or great interests. The age of imagination had passed; the age of fancy was setting in. Here and there in the later days one finds a man who might belong to the earlier time;—for instance, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... heedful; for so, in all this din of the great world's loom, thy subtlest thinkings may be overheard afar. Now, amid the green, life-restless loom of that Arsacidean wood, the great, white, worshipped skeleton lay lounging —a gigantic idler! Yet, as the ever-woven verdant warp and woof intermixed and hummed around him, the mighty idler seemed the cunning weaver; himself all woven over with the vines; every month assuming greener, fresher verdure; but himself a skeleton. Life folded Death; ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... ran out and told him that he had forgotten to settle for the wine. The lady had refused to do so. Courtlandt chuckled and gave him a ten-franc piece. In other days, in other circumstances, he would have liked to know more about the unknown who scribbled notes on composition paper. She was not an idler in the Rue Royale, and it did not require that indefinable intuition which comes of worldly-wiseness to discover this fact. She might be a friend of the Desimone woman, but she had stepped out of another sphere to become so. ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... Azotacalles (idler) Buscavidas (pryer) Cortaplumas (penknife) Chupaflores (humming-bird) Destripaterrones (navvy) Lavamanos (wash-hand stand) Limpiabotas (boot-black) Matamoros (boaster) Mondadientes (toothpick) Papahueros (ninny) Papamoscas (ninny) Papanatas ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... have gone across the Great Water to America, which is their true Canaan, where they flourish mightily, the more enterprising making a good thing of it, by prastering graias or "running horses," or trading in them, while the idler or more moral ones, pick up their living as easily as a mouse in a cheese, on the endless roads and in the forests. And so many of them have gone there, that I am sure the child is now born, to whom the sight ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... "Out upon thee, idler!" was the warm reply. "Art thou come to vex me with thy doubts and scout thy sovereign's pious intentions?" The young ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... a demi-god, a Dalai lama, living in solitary state; sublime, unapproachable; and the radiation of his dignity stretches through all the other members of the nautical hierarchy; hence all sorts of petty intrigues, disputes, grumblings, and jealousies, which, to the irreverent eye of an "idler," give to the whole little society the aspect of nothing so much as the court of Prinz Irenaeus in Kater ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... special task can do, Though trivial it may seem to thee. Thou canst not shirk God-given work And still be blest of Heaven, from sin be free. O idler in life's ripened harvest-field, Perform thy task, that rich ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... off from Isidore). Am not I a man! 'Tis as it should be! tut—the deed itself Was idle, and these after-pangs still idler! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... person to apply to for information is evidently my banker. He has been a resident in Rome for twenty years—but he is too busy a man to be approached, by an idler like myself, in business hours. I have asked him to ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... in Petersburg, Paris, Vienna, all over civilised Europe during the last five weeks, whether on business or on pleasure bent, nobody knew. He affected to be an elegant idler; but it was said by the initiated that wherever Smithson went the markets rose or fell, and hides, iron, copper, or tin, felt the influence of ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... waitress. She helped me when I was starving. And now I have to help her. She's as good as gold, Jessie, and you must be kind to her. It wasn't fair that she should die, just because I'd been an idler, a good for nothing! Bob—you'll be satisfied when you know what a lesson I've had. You can't imagine how I feel, coming out of it—it's like escaping from a nightmare! I can't quite believe it's over. (He stands staring before him). And then I think—I've ...
— The Pot Boiler • Upton Sinclair
... rise, perceived that in this respect society resembled nature. For does not society modify Man, according to the conditions in which he lives and acts, into men as manifold as the species in Zoology? The differences between a soldier, an artisan, a man of business, a lawyer, an idler, a student, a statesman, a merchant, a sailor, a poet, a beggar, a priest, are as great, though not so easy to define, as those between the wolf, the lion, the ass, the crow, the shark, the seal, the sheep, etc. Thus ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... from the office, and he was a martinet; lastly, Mr. Nicholson was ambitious for his family (in which, and the Disruption Principles, he entirely lived), and he hated to see a son of his play second fiddle to an idler. After some hesitation, he ordered that the friendship should cease - an unfair command, though seemingly inspired by the spirit of prophecy; and John, saying nothing, continued to disobey the order under ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... your honor," answered Marmaduke, "save, oh, bless my heart! save for this idler asleep by the chimney. I meant to send him about ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... overshadow it—never entered the door without bringing the sunshine. Where can the small, lonely creature have heard so many tunes, and airs, and snatches of old songs—as if some fairy bird had taught her melodies of fairyland? She is now in her tenth year, nor an idler in her solitude. Do you wish for a flowery bracelet for the neck of a chosen one, whose perfumes may mingle with the bosom-balm of her virgin beauty? The orphan of Wood-edge will wreath it of blossoms cropt before the sun hath ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson |
