"Lax" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... think not, John. Well, you couldn't come to a more charming place than this, Miss Worsley, though the house is excessively damp, quite unpardonably damp, and dear Lady Hunstanton is sometimes a little lax about the people she asks down here. [To SIR JOHN.] Jane mixes too much. Lord Illingworth, of course, is a man of high distinction. It is a privilege to meet him. And that member of Parliament, Mr. ...
— A Woman of No Importance • Oscar Wilde
... readily, because at that time no one had a notion of what we call respect for the text, for the idea of the author. As rigidly as the text of the Bible was maintained intact in the very minutest details, so lax was the treatment of the Talmud, which was at the mercy of individual whim. Naturally, the less scrupulous and less clearsighted allowed themselves the most emendations. Accordingly, Rabbenu Gershom felt called ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... was still denied him. His priestess, strengthened by religious passion, was bold to touch with hers his divine hand, on the finger of which demoniacally glittered the murder-token. The hand was so cold and lax that even the smooth warmth of her soft fingers failed to put ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... hawks and hounds—even fine new ships, were bestowed by him, from the wealth of the old merchant Gilbert, as well as from the revenues of his archdeaconry, and of several other benefices, which the lax opinions of his time caused him to think no shame to keep in his ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Parisian. She was a little cold, a little prim, a little pedantic, a little self-conscious. Neither her reserved manners nor her strong domestic tastes, nor the vein of Puritanism that ran through her opinions, harmonised with the lax and sceptical society around her, and it was no sacrifice to her to exchange the splendours and the gaieties of Paris for her peaceful retreat on the ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... impulse from within, not dimly shown, Nor plainlier in the greatest than the least: And, through the known discovering the unknown, Acknowledgest thy Maker, power supreme, Might, and dominion, deeming His alone. Nor His the lax dominion mayst thou deem That builds up empire, and when built, neglects. Lo! where, afar, sidereal orbits gleam, What first impelled, impelling still, directs: Urges and guides each solar chariot, The mundane mass of every globe connects, By ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... world—it is only the love you call guilty that lasts. There is a stimulus in sin and mystery that will fan the flame of passion and keep love alive even for an inferior object. The ugly women know this, and make lax morals a substitute for beauty. An innocent intrigue, a butterfly affection like ours, will seldom outlive the butterfly's brief day. Indeed, I sometimes admire at myself as a marvel of constancy for having kept faith so long ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... children of subscribers; that is to say, it is an essential principle of the institution that it must help those whose parents have helped them, and that the unfortunate children whose father has been so lax, or so criminal, as to withhold a subscription so exceedingly small that when divided by weeks it amounts to only threepence weekly, cannot, in justice, be allowed to jostle out and shoulder away the happier children, whose ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... myself, and the utterly rotten life I had led, that this, my old friend, even, could not be sure of my chivalry. I loathed the lax, cheap honor of the world and its hypocrisy. I could not even be indignant with the Duchesse, judging me from that standpoint. She was right, but I did tell her that men had a slightly different angle in looking upon such things in England, ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... on the other side, claimed and strenuously maintained that the only explosion was that of the ship's own magazines, declaring in support of this theory that discipline on all American men-of-war was so lax as to invite such a ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... prize, or who is or has been by trade or employment for wages a mechanic, artisan or labourer, or engaged in any menial duty, besides insisting upon the usual restrictions in regard to taking money and competing with professionals. In association football the rules are much more lax, for although amateurs are clearly distinguished from professionals, an amateur may even become a regular member, though unsalaried, of a professional team without losing his amateur status. The Rugby game was, up to 1895, entirely controlled by the Rugby Football ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... there was some want of confidence between the trading side of the Hudson's Bay Company and that which Lord Selkirk represented, in the Colonizing enterprise. Also at this time the laws in regard to the safety of vessels, the comfort of passengers, or precautions for health were very lax. While the records of emigration experiences of British settlers to Canada and the United States are being recited by men and women yet living in Canada, the want of resource and the neglect of life and property by Governments ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... the days when I was at an art school. An art school is different from almost all other schools or colleges in this respect: that, being of new and crude creation and of lax discipline, it presents a specially strong contrast between the industrious and the idle. People at an art school either do an atrocious amount of work or do no work at all. I belonged, along with other charming people, ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... which is concerned with science, its value, its position, its teachings, and how it should be taught. No one who has followed the domestic difficulties due to our neglect of the warnings of scientific men can fail to see how we have had to suffer because of the lax conduct of those responsible for these things ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... very foundations the incursion of one of the "nobler sex." From the first morning when there resounded the multiplied ringing of bells, and the creaking of boots on the staircase, the glory of the feminine dynasty was departed. Its easy laisser-aller, its lax rule, and its indifference to regular forms were at an end. Mrs. Rothesay could no longer indulge her laziness—no breakfasting in bed, and coming down in curl-papers. The long gossiping visits of her thousand-and-one acquaintances subsided into frigid morning calls, at which the grim ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... came the deluge and the country was flooded with women indecently unclad, who flapped about on the stage displaying their persons and their incompetence lavishly. The authorities have been very lax as regards such performances, many of which were so obviously crude and clumsy that it was clear that a succes de scandale was sought deliberately. Of course some of the performers may have had merit. Later on (in 1910) there arrived some brilliant Russian ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... turns out to be on the square," I replied. "He might be a lax mayor, too good-natured to uphold law in a wild country. And his Southern pride would fire at interference. I don't like him, but for his daughter's sake I ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... that long ago this small tribe, whose home was in the Big Black country, was at the head of a loose confederation embracing most of the nations from the Atlantic coast quite into Texas; and adds that the expedition of De Soto severed its lax bonds and shook it irremediably into fragments. Whether this is worth our credence or not, the comparative civilization of the Natchez, and the analogy their language bears to that of the Mayas of Yucatan, the builders of those ruined cities which Stephens and Catherwood have ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... her lax hand, moving each separate finger up and down, eyes lowered. "Why not? Doesn't it ever strike you, mamma, that you and me are—are kidding ourselves along on this war business, pretending to each other there ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... many:—the desolating King Philip's War; persistent interference with their chartered Liberties; dissensions in the Boston Church and quarrels of magistrates and clergy; the rise of "an anti-ministerial spirit" and the growth of worldliness and lax living among the people. "What are the reasons that have provoked the Lord to bring his judgments upon New England?" Such was the primary question which the Synod of 1679 was called upon to answer. "Declension from the primitive foundation work, innovation in doctrine and worship"—this, ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... his life had poor Mr Lennard been so perplexed and troubled. He was invited to reconsider opinions which he had held, in a somewhat lax fashion it may be granted, all his life. He had to search for his son, and prevent him if possible from becoming a slave to the system he had just heard so strongly denounced, and he was painfully anxious ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... "you have promised to obey me; till this minute you have kept your word; are you getting lax ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... all the effect I had anticipated; the hat fell from his lax grasp and lay unheeded, while my uncle stared at me in speechless surprise. "These garments, sir," I continued, lowering my voice mysteriously, "are merely a disguise, for it seems there was a possibility of my being apprehended as Galloping ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... one. You hear of even immoral or irreligious books being written by men of decent character; there is a late writer who says that David Hume's sceptical works are not at all the picture of the man. A priest may write a treatise which would be called really lax on the subject of lying, which might come under the condemnation of the holy see, as some treatises on that score have been condemned, and yet in his own person be a rigorist. And, in fact, it is notorious from St. Alfonso's Life, that he, who has the repute of being so lax a moralist, had ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... the need of it soon enough," promised the other. She crossed to the piano. "What kind of music do you want? No; don't tell me. I should be able to guess." Half turning on the bench she gazed speculatively at the lax figure on the rug. "Chopin, I think. I've guessed right? Well, I don't think I shall play you Chopin to-day. You don't need that kind ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... family. We have seen also by what cruel sufferings of body and mind he expiated his fault. Tortured by remorse, and by disease the effect of remorse, he had quitted the Court; but he had left behind him men whose principles were not less lax than his, and whose hearts were far harder ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... there was not a rocking chair in her house until all her boys were big boys; she had thumped them all to sleep in a straight-backed, high, wooden chair. But with this her thumping had ceased; she was known to be as lax in her government as the father was strict ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... saw others, and then more at another point in the wall. It was a long lax line of men in ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... doctrinal articles of the Church of England or their equivalents in the Westminster Assembly's catechisms. Thus, while the Dissenter might alter the terms of his liturgy to a degree not allowed to the Churchman (though the latter would in those lax days go pretty far sometimes), he was still supposed to be 'sound' on the fundamental creeds. It would appear to be a fortunate accident for Unitarian development in some of these old Dissenting congregations that, either the ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant
... above all, strange to see Earraid on the Sunday, when the sound of the tools ceased, and there fell a crystal quiet. All about the green compound men would be sauntering in their Sunday's best, walking with those lax joints of the reposing toiler, thoughtfully smoking, talking small, as if in honour of the stillness, or hearkening to the wailing of the gulls. And it was strange to see our Sabbath services, held, as they were, in one ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the time for my recitations without great inconvenience, and occasionally allowed one exercise to encroach upon the succeeding, and this upon the next, and thus sometimes the last was excluded altogether. But such a lax and irregular method of procedure is ruinous to the discipline of a school. On perceiving it, at last, I put the bell into the hands of a pupil, commissioning her to ring regularly, having, myself, fixed the times, saying that I would show my pupils that I could be confined ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... lax was) They discharged while they were able: Tolerated thus the tax was, Till it ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not be surrendered. It had been torn by internal dissensions and the bonds of discipline had always been very lax. It had originally been held together by a lively expectation of the advantages to be obtained from the pillage of Manila. That hope had disappeared, and the leaders had become the lords of life and property each in his own province. It was a force which could disintegrate, ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... military habits, and habitual disregard of laws and constitutional provisions, entirely unfit for the office of president." John C. Calhoun he looked upon as "a smart fellow, one of the first amongst second-rate men, but of lax political principles and an inordinate ambition, not over-delicate in the means of satisfying itself." Clay he considered to be a man of splendid talents and a generous mind; John Quincy Adams to be 'wanting to a deplorable ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... introduction together. This law a Parliament of Sirens had passed, and the slightest breach of it was a bitter offense Equilibrium governs the world. These ladies were bound to be overstrict in something or other, being just a little lax in certain things where ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... having habituated himself long to a hot climate, as Jamaica, for instance, should come late in life to reside in a colder climate, as England, for example, must run very great hazard indeed—nay, he could almost venture to predict, would fall a victim to the sudden tension of the lax fibres. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... went out to interview the farmer, sparsely bearded, lank, and long-necked and seamy-skinned, his face ineffectual yet shrewd, a poor white of the South strung on wiry nerves, instead of lax muscles, the outcome of the New Jersey soil. He shuffled determinedly in his great boots, heavy with red shale, standing guard over his fine vegetables. He nodded phlegmatically at Anderson. He never smiled. Occasionally his long ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... mood of craven apology and left him with his head in his hands. To Kenny's disgusted glance he was like the Irish Grogach of folk lore, who tumbles around among the hills with a good deal of head and a lax body without much hint of bones. Well, Brian had thrashed somebody too. There were times when it couldn't be helped. And Brian had lived in a corncrib at seven cents a day. ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... tired that his legs seemed incapable of support. He wiped the razor blade and put it away with a lax nerveless hand. He realized that he had been again at the point of murder. He had been saved by the narrowest margin in the world. For a moment the fact that he had been saved absorbed him, and then the imminent danger of his position, his ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... is, the sort of isolation in which the new Christian is quite likely to find himself when first he attempts to put Christian principles into practice. We imagine one brought up in the ordinary mixed circles of society, where there are unbelievers and lax Christians mingled together, and where there are no principles firmly enough held to interfere with any sort of enjoyment of life which offers. Such an one—a young woman, let us suppose—in the Providence of God becomes ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... dictate," said he, "but where it seems to me that you are wholly wrong in that your ideas foster in women those lax views of the family life that are so prevalent in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... will explain once more that he can't explain"—and so on. Whether the attempt justified itself or not would depend largely on the acting. In any case, it is clear that the author, though as a rule somewhat lax in his craftsmanship, was ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... and lax now, shivering in the chill under the reaction from his excitement, turned away, stepped back to his own lodge, and contrived a little light, after the frontier fashion—a rag wick in a shallow vessel of ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... circumstance, as old Sophy had described it to the Reverend Doctor. It was that delicious process of the tuning of two souls to each other, string by string, not without little half-pleasing discords now and then when some chord in one or the other proves to be overstrained or over-lax, but always approaching nearer and nearer to harmony, until they become at last as two instruments with a single voice. Something more than a year of this blissful doubled consciousness had passed over him when he found ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... at the gas, with a gesture that was among Edwin's earliest recollections, and then he fixed his eyes dully on the fire, with head bent and muscles lax. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... to matters nearer at hand, and allowed his gaze to wander over the galleon's spacious decks. They were disgracefully dirty, speaking of the lax discipline that had been permitted to prevail by the easy-going officers of the ship, and he gave a sharp order which presently brought all hands on deck, considerably refreshed, as he could see, by even the short spell of rest ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... a Cromwell or a Monk. In short, a revolution procured by a national vertigo does not promise a crop of legislators. It is time that composes a good constitution: it formed ours. We were near losing it by the lax and unconditional restoration of Charles the Second. The revolution was temperate, and has lasted; and, though it might have been improved, we know that with all its moderation it disgusted half the nation, who would have brought back ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... politeness. Bryce stepped forward with extended hand, which the Colonel grasped in a manner vaguely suggestive of that clammy-palmed creation of Charles Dickens—Uriah Heep. Bryce was tempted to squeeze the lax fingers until the Colonel should bellow with pain; but resisting the ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... for us business men, Mr. Hodder. I mean, of course, we're sometimes a little lax in our duties—in the summer, that is. Don't shoot the pianist, he's doing his—ahem! You ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... were no Board Schools in those days, and education was somewhat lax, but it will do no harm to note a piece of orthography, which will show the standard at which the middle lower class had then arrived. It is copied from The Times of 29 June, 1837. "(From an Evening ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... and put the wallet back in his breast carefully, his eyes half-shut with weariness, his handsome face drawn and thin, his limbs lax ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... conditions in Naples have been deprivation and oppression; and cause and effect have so long been convertible, that it is often difficult to know one from the other. The prevalence of brigandage demands measures on the part of the government compared with the severity of which martial law is lax and mild; and the crime which provokes these harsh measures has revived again from the disaffection which they produce. All authorities on the subject are agreed that brigandage finds its shield and support in the fears of the people, and the complete system of espionage which the robbers are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... inauguration time were seekers after office for themselves or their friends, and from every county and town the country over came pleas of service rendered and claims for reward. But Jackson needed little urging. He thought, and rightly, that many of the incumbents had grown lax in the performance of their duties, if indeed they had ever been anything else, and that fresh blood was needed in the government employ. He believed that short terms and rapid rotation made for alertness and efficiency. He felt that one ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... limited, of asking questions on foreign and colonial affairs, with the object of embarrassing Ministers, and without regard to the consequences abroad. It gradually became a dangerous growth, greatly facilitated by the lax procedure, as it then existed, of the House of Commons in regard to supplementary questions. This procedure often allowed question time to degenerate into a sort of ill-regulated debate. Mr. Gladstone's habit of allowing himself very frequently to be drawn into giving a further answer, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... listen to what I did say, and do say. My dear Dora, unless we learn to do our duty to those whom we employ, they will never learn to do their duty to us. I am afraid we present opportunities to people to do wrong, that never ought to be presented. Even if we were as lax as we are, in all our arrangements, by choice—which we are not—even if we liked it, and found it agreeable to be so—which we don't—I am persuaded we should have no right to go on in this way. We are ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... the House. Whether any further punishment could be inflicted on him was a perplexing question. The English law touching forgery became, at a later period, barbarously severe; but, in 1698, it was absurdly lax. The prisoner's offence was certainly not a felony; and lawyers apprehended that there would be much difficulty in convicting him even of a misdemeanour. But a recent precedent was fresh in the minds of all men. The weapon which had reached Fenwick might reach Duncombe. A bill of pains ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... from a contusion in which the skin is forcibly displaced from the subjacent tissues, and lymph vessels are thereby torn across. The cyst is usually situated between the skin and fascia, and contains clear or blood-stained serum. At first it is lax and fluctuates readily, later it becomes larger and more tense. The treatment consists in drawing off the contents through a hollow needle and applying firm pressure. Apart from injury, lymph cysts are met with as the result of the distension of lymph spaces and ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... grace and glory, honour and immortality, and eternal life. He is in the church, he hath the ordinances rightly administered, yet he wants the most part, till he find Jesus Christ in all these. Many seek corn, wine, or any worldly good thing, saying, "Who will show us any good?" Fie upon such a lax and indifferent spirit, that hath no discretion or sense of things that are good, that sees not one thing needful, and no more good than is necessary. But the child of God is a seeker different from these also, he seeks the favour and countenance ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... Lord's Day has already become universally so lax that I think there may be some value in preserving an accurate record of how our Sundays were spent five and forty years ago. We came down to breakfast at the usual time. My Father prayed briefly before we began the meal; after it, the bell was rung, and, before the breakfast ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... shirt twisted into a rope.... Oh, my dear fellow, I see what you are thinking! You fancy that there has been a want of common prudence—that the warders were lax—that they had let him retain his braces, his cravat or his shoe laces!... Well, it was ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... denial, and when Mrs. Cameron went away to consult the doctor who attended Dr. Maybright, she coolly waited in an adjoining room, and when the good woman returned, once more placed herself within earshot. No Maybright would dream of eavesdropping, but Flower's upbringing had been decidedly lax with regard to this and ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... and steel are invariably buried with the defunct, in case he should find himself chilly on his long journey—an unnecessary precaution, many of the orthodox would consider, on the part of such lax religionists. When they go boar-hunting—the most important business in their lives—it is a sorcerer, with no other defence than his incantations, who marches at the head of the procession. In the internal arrangements of their tents, ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... were slowly augmented by deportations from Sydney, and they were subject to the absolute will of the officers. It is in vain to look for systems in a community so small, and separated by so great a distance from public opinion. Management was lax or rigid, according to the temper of the moment; and no object was contemplated by those who had power, except to render its exercise subservient to their private views. Previous character had no marked influence in determining the lot: a life of crime ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... avert one's eyes from the spectacle presented by the luckless Ellen Berstoun, were it not that her unhappy condition makes the contrast between lax and proper principles the more poignant. No mate with two thousand pounds a year for her! Instead, merely a hopeless passion for an impecunious subaltern sweltering in far-off India. That was poor company throughout the long series of monotonous months that were now her portion. The brown ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... from one of the two stories which dealt with the "business woman," whose motto seems to be, "Business Before Grammar," even as it is the motto of the editor. The other "business woman" was not quite so lax. She tried as hard to speak correctly as the author could let her, and won a certain amount ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... Hartigan's eye and made him remark: "It isn't going to be such a walk-over as our fellows think." And the trainer of Red Rover, as he noted the round barrel, clean limbs, and flaring nostrils of the buckskin, had for a moment just a guilty twinge as he recalled how lax he had been in the training after that run ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... governor as to the mode in which the money should be raised; and so no assistance was furnished to Washington from that quarter. The youthful commander had here a foretaste, in these his incipient campaigns, of the perils and perplexities which awaited him from enemies in the field, and lax friends in legislative councils in the grander operations of his future years. Before setting off for Redstone Creek, he discharged Trent's refractory men from his detachment, ordering them to await Colonel Fry's commands; they however, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... dreams upon the wings of imagination, accosted by a messenger from the young woman, who brought him some billet appointing a meeting, a gold chain, or a diamond. We have observed that young cavaliers received presents from their king without shame. Let us add that in these times of lax morality they had no more delicacy with respect to the mistresses; and that the latter almost always left them valuable and durable remembrances, as if they essayed to conquer the fragility of their sentiments by ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... cantos upon the already familiar episode of Francesca, that "lily in the mouth of Tartarus." Hunt took Dryden's "Fables" as his model in versification, employing the heroic couplet with the frequent variation of the triplet and the alexandrine. The poem is not at all Dantesque in its lax and fluent sweetness, and in that colloquial, familiar manner which is constant in all Hunt's writing, both prose and verse; reminding one, at its best, of Chaucer, who was, indeed, one of his favourite masters. Hunt ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... own day," he replied, "such an occurrence would be almost impossible; but you must remember that we are talking of the last century—a century in which, I regret to say, the clergy of the Church of England were sadly lax in the performance of their duties. The followers of Wesley and Whitefield could scarcely have multiplied as they did if the flocks had not been cruelly neglected by their proper shepherds. It was a period in which benefices were bestowed constantly on men obviously unfitted for the holy ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... rising of our young statesmen . . . Brilliant orator . . . Unblemished career . . . Well-known integrity of character . . . Represents what is best in English public life . . . Noble contrast to the lax morality so common among foreign politicians.' They will never say that ...
— An Ideal Husband - A Play • Oscar Wilde
... accompanied by Bela Moshi Wilmshurst made his way along the side of the track until he came in touch with the hostile party. The Huns, suspecting nothing, were resting. Two Askaris had been posted as sentries, but they, too, were lax, little thinking that there was any danger of a surprise. The prisoner was seated at the base of a large tree, another Askari mounting guard over him. His back was turned in Wilmshurst's direction, but the subaltern was able to discern that ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... by Castiglione, grew up at the little court of Urbino, and you should read it.' I am glad always to have his opinion of books. At Mr M'Pherson's, he commended Whitby's Commentary, and said, he had heard him called rather lax; but he did not perceive it. He had looked at a novel, called The Man of the World, at Rasay, but thought there was nothing in it. He said to-day, while reading my Journal, 'This will be a great treasure to us ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... "You are. Lax you may be in practice, but you are too good to stay long satisfied with present conditions. I am frank, ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... not consult with other churches in its formation, because it did not make a public profession of repentance on behalf of its members, because baptism was administered on less stringent terms than was customary and too lax admission was given to the sacraments, and because the admission of females to full church activity had a direct tendency "to subvert the order and liberty of the churches." Though the Brattle Street Church was for a time severely ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... feet of the animal were tied (no record-breaking deed) and Santa leaned against the corral for the same space of time, panting and lax. ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... that direction were not subjected to the scrutiny that fell to the share of those travelling from it towards the West, or, rather, to the scrutiny ordained by the Government; for Wilding had more than one opportunity of observing how very lax and indifferent were the constables and tything-men—particularly in Somerset and Wiltshire—in the performance of this duty. Wayfarers were questioned as a matter of form, but in no case did Wilding hear of any one being detained upon ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... still more gently and with half-shut eyes through her illuminated house. She turned the lights out in her room and undressed herself in the darkness. She laid herself on the bed with straight lax limbs, with arms held apart a little from her body, with eyelids shut lightly on her eyes; all ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair
... those in Genoa, and even in Rome itself, where, to the political exasperation against the pontifical government,—whose existence is owing simply to the presence of three thousand French soldiers,—is united the contempt which the lax habits of the clergy and the puerile ceremonies of worship inspire in the minds of all men who have received the least education. This is precisely what is now taking place in all the ramifications of the great ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... been the punctuation. In the original this consists principally of dashes and commas, often quite capriciously distributed. Here also, I have been lax in reducing the text to the requirements of modern standards, and have left much latitude to the reader to arrange ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... Be neither too lax nor too precise in your use of language: the one fault ends in stiffness, the other in slang. Some one told the Emperor Tiberius that he might give citizenship to men, but not to words. To be sure, Louis XIV. in childhood, wishing for a carriage, called for mon carrosse, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... Mohammedanism, and are sincere in their practice of piety and the obligations of religion and charity; but they have always indulged in the fancies and ideas of the great school of free-thinking philosopher Sofis, whose observance of the ordinances of severe and joyless life is notedly lax. ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... species of mock triumph, and caused his confession to be printed and scattered over the country that people might see the real character of the man. For a time he appears to have been detained in lax custody about the court, but after he had made an attempt to escape and reach the sea-coast, and been re-captured, he was sent to the Tower. There he got into communication with the unfortunate Earl of Warwick, and entered into a plot for effecting his own and the ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... in literature as in life, a code of his own, which, if sometimes lax where others were stringent, was always stringent in higher matters, where others were lax. Even the friendship of Emerson could not coerce him into that careful elaboration which gives dignity and sometimes a certain artistic monotony to the works of our great essayist. Emerson never wilfully ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... the title of the Marquise de Pompadour. This story, unadorned, may sound paltry, even commercial, but we should not fall into the error of judging it by twentieth century standards. The morals of the French Court, never austere, were especially lax in the reign of Louis XV., and galanteries were the fashion, rather than the exception; while for the post of King's favorite there was a continual ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... lax that night, and there was much visiting to and fro in the rooms. The proctor and the professors were kept busy registering new students and did not pay much attention to the older ones, including Tom and his chums, who ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... priesthood with the comforts of the world or in an attempt to evade restrictions as to the number of monks. In later times this second motive was certainly prevalent, but the celibacy of the clergy is not strictly insisted on by Lamaists and a lax observance of monastic rules[686] was common under the ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... Seminary had been shockingly lax since the long illness of the principal had left the easy-going first assistant teacher at the head of affairs. The girls ran all over the rules,—had private theatricals, suppers, and games of all sorts in their rooms at all hours of day or night. In the course of the evening ...
— Hooking Watermelons - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... Rationalists, the Gallicans, and not a few of the doctors of the Sorbonne, though divided on nearly every other issue, made common cause against the Society. They were assisted in their campaign by Madame de Pompadour, the king's mistress, for whom the Jesuit theology was not sufficiently lax, and by the Duc de Choiseul, the king's prime minister. The well-known Jesuit leanings of Louis XV. and of the royal family generally, imposed a certain measure of restraint upon the enemies of the Society, until the famous La Valette law ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... particularly, raise the compensation of those officials to a large sum. It has always seemed to me as if this system must at times work perniciously. It holds out an inducement to dishonest men, should such get possession of those offices, to be lax in their scrutiny of goods entered, to enable them finally to make large seizures. Your attention is ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... as the time drew closer for the election, there was every intimation that the contest would be an unusually "hot" one, and that there would be much bribery and corruption. It was said by some that police methods were very lax at that time, and that the saloons, which ought to be closed on election day, would be almost ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... edge to Lady Gertrude's voice which it was impossible to misinterpret. "Professional musicians are very lax—I suppose you would call it Bohemian—in their ideas. That I can quite believe. But you have someone else to consider now. Roger would hardly wish his future wife to be stopping alone at a flat ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... not check his teasing for a car of his own. However lax he might be about early rising and the prosody of Vergil, he was tireless in tinkering. With three other boys he bought a rheumatic Ford chassis, built an amazing racer-body out of tin and pine, went ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... "to my mind, at least, that the bonds of matrimony should be slipped thus lightly. But the age is somewhat lax and the world now views with complaisance the mad antics of half-grown lads and wenches who trip toward the altar as carelessly as if the ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... Gibbon has written Dane by mistake for Dace, or Dacian. Lax ti kinoV?. Chalcondyles, Von ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... the same month he censured the princes and ministers who were lax in reporting upon this edict, and ordered them to do so at once, and it was not long until a favourable report was given and, for the first time in the history of the empire, a great university was launched by the government, destined, may ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... the mores are put under police regulation and later under positive law. It is sometimes said that "public opinion" must ratify and approve police regulations, but this statement rests on an imperfect analysis. The regulations must conform to the mores, so that the public will not think them too lax or too strict. The mores of our urban and rural populations are not the same; consequently legislation about intoxicants which is made by one of these sections of the population does not succeed ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... with the wind scampering through the skeins of bare tree branches. The lake lay locked in ice, skaters in the ecstasy of motion lunging across it. Beneath the mink lap-robe Mrs. Fischlowitz snuggled deeper and more lax. ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... circle. It denies the name of duty to many offices that are called duties. But if I can discharge its debts, it enables me to dispense with the popular code. If any one imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... 1921.—Says lax parents make boy felons. Judge Talley analyzes youthful crime. Defiance begins ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... changing impulses must run unawares into fatal dangers. The moment, however, that society emerges from the early pressure of the environment and is tolerably secure against primary evils, morality grows lax. The forms that life will farther assume are not to be imposed by moral authority, but are determined by the genius of the race, the opportunities of the moment, and the tastes and resources of individual minds. The reign of duty gives place to the reign of freedom, and ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... prosody were rather lax. No one will be surprised at it; he could say like Ovid, but for other reasons: "I had but to write, and it was verses." He is ready for everything; order them, and you will have at once verses to order. These verses are slightly deformed, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... she took heart. With no resources other than heavily mortgaged real property, she found herself forced to do something for a living. In the course of events we see Mrs. Morrell keeping a flashy boarding-house, hanging precariously on the outer fringe of the lax society of the times, frowned upon by the respectable, but more or less sought by the fast men and young girls only too numerous among the ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... accused the Arminians of being more lax than Papists, and of filling the soul of man with vilest arrogance and confidence in good works; while the Arminians complained that the God of the Gomarites was an unjust God, himself the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... for misconduct and to frame a government for ourselves. There follows a curious little moral exhortation which shows how far the good Dr. Price was from forgetting his duties as a preacher. He had been distressed by the lax morals of some of his colleagues in the agitation for Reform, and he pauses to deplore that "not all who are zealous in this cause are as conspicuous for purity of morals as for ability." He cannot reconcile himself to the idea of an immoral ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... more delicately faithful and true are Colonel James and his wife. They are both very good sort of people in a way, who live in a lax and frivolous age, who have plenty of money, no particular principle, no strong affection for each other, and little individual character. They might have been—Mrs. James to some extent is—quite estimable and harmless; but even as it is, they are not to be wholly ill spoken of. Being ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... others—you are made a chief in order that you may be as he that serveth; privilege means responsibility—not enjoyment. There is nothing so mean as to take the loaves and fishes of any post, and not to do its duties; to order others about, and to be lax with yourselves. A ruler is contemptible who does not rule himself. Whether we are teacher, or prefect, or head of a form, or a leader in any way, it ought to make us hot, and sore, and ashamed, in exercising our rightful rule over others, whenever we are conscious (as we must ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... to be very lax in these barracks," commented Mrs. Dean. "I am afraid I ought to call upon General to help me enforce my orders. Under the circumstances I'll be lenient, though, and stretch the time to fifteen minutes. There, I hear General ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... an extreme instance, the second act of his Cabellos de Absalon is transferred almost bodily from the third act of Tirso's Venganza de Tamar. It would be easy to add other examples of Calderon's lax methods, but it is simple justice to point out that he committed no offence against the prevailing code of literary morality. Many of his contemporaries plagiarized with equal audacity, but with far less success. Sometimes, as in El Alcalde de Zalamea, the bold ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... one-night-stand company would be less brutalizing to the finer sensibilities, and less lowering to the ideals of a young girl, than the method of work required of many newspaper reporters in America to-day. The editor who scores the actress for lax morals seems often to ignore the fact that there is a mental as ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... doubt that many of the garrisons are very far from being efficient. They have been stationed in the forts for many years. Discipline, both among officers and men, is sure to have become lax, and there will be much that young men, going freshly into the matter, will see needs amendment. That the walls are often weak, and the cannon so old as to be almost useless, I am well aware; for sometimes newly-appointed governors have sent ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... began to be received into the unknown upper world. His fame soon spread from among his fellow-rebels on the benches, and began to reach the ushers and monitors of this great Ayrshire academy. This arose in part from his lax views about religion; for at this time that old war of the creeds and confessors, which is always grumbling from end to end of our poor Scotland, brisked up in these parts into a hot and virulent skirmish; and Burns ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said to the girls; "but when you neglect your work, or are idle and careless, or cross and sulky, I don't intend to amuse you in the evenings. I was brought up on a stricter plan than the girls of the present day, and I mean while I am with you to bring you up in the same way. I prefer it to the lax way in which young ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... Hutchinsons," it was necessary to hunt him up, from public-house to public-house, early in the morning. It is because these things are universally known,—because he was seen staggering in the road, and spoken of by drivers and lax artisans as an alehouse comrade, that I speak of him here, in order that I may testify how he was beloved and cherished by the best people in his neighborhood. I can hardly speak of him myself as a personal acquaintance; for I could not venture on inviting him to my house. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... and the discipline of Dr Jolliffe was more lax than many parents and guardians quite liked; and yet few of the boys who went there were rich. It was very rarely, that is, that one of them had not to make his own way in the world. And the number, which was limited, was always complete. For results speak for themselves, and ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... think it matters who anybody is in Cairo!" he said with a fine carelessness. "The people whose families are all guaranteed respectable are more lax in their behavior than the people one knows nothing about. As for the Princess Ziska, her extraordinary beauty and intelligence would give her the entree anywhere—even if she hadn't money to back those ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... twelve,[FN96] when the King being minded to have him taught the arts and sciences, bade build him a palace amiddlemost the city, wherein were three hundred and threescore rooms,[FN97] and lodged him therin. Then he assigned him three wise men of the Olema and bade them not be lax in teaching him day and night and look that there was no kind of learning but they instruct him hterin, so he might become versed in all knowledge. He also commanded them to sit with him one day in each of the rooms by turn and write on the door thereof that ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... disregarded the various privileges which lay open to him: others in his place would have frequented the passages, hung about the yards and grown familiar with the tap, where spirits were openly bought and sold. Money could do much in those days of lax discipline, and the man who could pay and could give need have very few wants unsatisfied. But Adam's only desire was to be left undisturbed and alone; and as this entailed no undue amount of trouble after their first curiosity had been satisfied, it was not thought ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... a social circle is also dependent upon the convictions and opinions of those who compose it. There is a social conscience which is very lax in one group and will allow almost any departure from the moral law, but in another group it is very strict in its requirements. The social conscience is constantly weakened in one case by persons joining the first group, who are weak in moral principle; and as constantly ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... matter out of the priests' hands, and Joash is not afraid to assume a high tone with the culprits, and even with Jehoiada as their official head. He was in some sense responsible for his subordinates, and probably, though his own hands were clean, he may have been too lax in looking after the disposal of the funds. Note that while Joash rebuked the priests, and determined the new arrangements, it was Jehoiada who carried them out and provided the chest for receiving the contributions. The king wills, the high priest executes, the rank and file of the priests, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... waistcoat, with a pipe in his hand. He discharged all the duties of his station with great fidelity, unquestionable honesty, and much outward decorum, but, if we may believe his contemporary, Nanny Smith, who, as housekeeper, shared the sway of the household with him, he was very lax in his minor morals, and used to sing loose and profane songs as he presided at the table in the servants' hall, or sat taking his ale and smoking his pipe by the evening fire. Joe had evidently derived his convivial notions from the race of English ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... did not suspect you of any improper idea, when you offered to share my uncertain fortunes. Render me, I pray you, the same justice at this moment. My moral principles are very lax, it is true, but I am as proud as yourself. I never shall reach my aim by any subterfuge. No; strive to study art. I find you beautiful and seductive, but I am governed by sentiments superior to personal interests. I was profoundly touched by your sympathetic leaning toward me, and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... terrible cry from Hutchinson! He made one last convulsive effort and it doomed him. Slowly he lost his balance. Cordts's dark, evil, haunting face swung round. Both men became lax and plunged, and separated. The dust rose from the rough steps. Then the dark forms shot down—Cordts falling sheer and straight, Hutchinson headlong, with waving arms—down and down, vanishing in the depths. No sound came up. A little column ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... upon one another, and are admitted from necessity, to accommodate human affairs, and to prevent that which courts are by every possible means instituted to prevent,—A FAILURE OF JUSTICE. And this necessity is not confined within the strict limits of physical causes, but is more lax, and takes in moral and even presumed and argumentative necessity, a necessity which is in fact nothing more than a great degree of expediency. The law creates a fictitious necessity against the rules of evidence in favor of the convenience of trade: an exception ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the Survey officer walked back to kneel beside the dead Throg. He worked the grip of the blaster under the alien's lax claws and inspected the result with the care of one arranging a special and highly important display. Shann's protest became vocal. "We'll ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... younger days and what I see to-day in my old age, the state is altogether different and we are bearing witness to this and it is hoped we shall be more attentive in future." Though he speaks regretfully of lax or incorrect discipline, he does not complain of the corruption of the faith by Tantrism and magical practices. He does however deprecate in an exceedingly curious passage the ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... assuming that every nation contains righteous men, accepted of God, why should we not complete our theory by assuming that every nation also possesses prophetic (in some cases more than prophetic) revealers? Some rather lax historical students may take a different view, and insist that we have a trustworthy tradition of the life of Jesus, and that 'if in that historical figure I cannot see God, then I am without God in the world.' [Footnote: Leslie Johnston, Some Alternatives to Jesus ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... it, but I had a good deal better time tonight than at the frolic last year," Muriel confided to her chums between yawns. Discipline being lax they had gathered in Ronny's and Lucy's room after the dance for a cup of hot chocolate ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... teeth standing straight, and square and separate, and though they never were brushed, they glisten with the cleanest and smoothest ivory polish; he has a good-sized mouth, not too compressed, like a skin-flint's, nor too open or lax like a fool's. He has a chin, throat, and chest, showing energy of soul and body combined; and if twenty years older, he would do fine honors ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... the corn agitation, (obstinately pursued through the session,) we may remark—and we do so with pain—that all laws whatsoever, strong or lax, upon this question are to be regarded as provisional. The temper of society being what it is, some small gang of cotton-dealers, moved by the rankest self-interest, finding themselves suffered to agitate almost without ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... is, that if every person were, every seven years, duly and properly vaccinated, small-pox might be utterly exterminated; but as long as there are such lax notions on the subject, and such gross negligence, the disease will always be rampant, for the poison of small-pox never slumbers nor sleeps, but requires the utmost diligence to eradicate it. The great Dr Jenner, the discoverer of cow-pox as a preventative of small-pox, strongly advocated the ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... forth for his place of business, after lunching at home with his mother. Florence was the person who placed it there; she came hurriedly from somewhere in the neighbourhood, out of what yard or alley he did not notice, and slipped the little oblong sheet into his lax fingers. ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... must look at the character of the performances at each theatre, considering only whether they were or were not beneficial to morality. In the past, under a regime happily now at an end, public opinion had been shamefully lax, and official control purely nominal; plays had been repeatedly performed, and even welcomed as classics, which he did not hesitate to say were full of incidents that were revolting to all well-regulated minds. SHAKSPEARE, who, with his undoubted talents, ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... His father's lax figure stiffened. He dropped the wheel, then the hammer. But not on the instant did he turn. His posture was strained, doubtful. Then he sprang erect, and whirled. Pan saw his father greatly changed, but how it ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... he had scored a hit. The insolence, the jaunty confidence, were stricken from him as by a buffet in the face. For a moment body and mind alike were lax and stunned. Then courage flowed back into his ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... this gross impertinence, she seemed to herself to be watching herself after a long degringolade, which had brought her, not to the gutter, but to the smart restaurant, the smart music-hall, the smart night club; the smart everything else that is beyond the borderland of even a lax society. This was Miss Schley's comment upon her. The sting of it lay in this fact, that it followed immediately upon the heels of the unpleasant scene at Arkell House. Otherwise, she thought it would not have troubled her. ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... sections of the country are interested in canning mountain trout and others live where there is an abundant supply of either fresh-water fish or salt-water fish. Heretofore we have been wasteful and lax about the fish supply. But as we have learned to can vegetables and meats so we are going to learn to can fish. Fish is really canned the same in every step after preparation as peas and ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... would virtually disfranchise many conscientious antislavery men; while, on the other hand, they enacted that each inhabitant who had paid his territorial tax should be a qualified voter for all elective officers. Under so lax a provision Missouri invaders could in the future, as they had in the past, easily give an apparent majority at the ballot-box for all their necessary ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... identified with the State which he had served with distinction both in her own Legislature and in Congress. He had the reputation of being somewhat unscrupulous as to political methods, somewhat careless in personal conduct, somewhat lax in personal morals; but to the one great object of his life, the destruction of slavery and the elevation of the slave, he was supremely devoted. From the pursuit of that object nothing could deflect him. Upon no phase of it would he ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... York State. When a man of his character and previous history assumes the right to baptize and administer the sacrament, he is certain to arouse the animosity, not only of orthodox church members, but of members of the community who are lax in their church duties. Goldsmith illustrates this kind of feeling when, in "She Stoops to Conquer," he makes one of the "several shabby fellows with punch and tobacco" in the alehouse say, "I loves to hear him, the squire sing, bekeays he never gives us nothing that's low," and another responds, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... should be sent to Kentucky as soon as we were again in possession of West Virginia. Most of these regiments came under my command again later in the war, and I became warmly attached to them. Their drill and discipline were always lax, but their courage and devotion to the national cause ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... who, after many adventures in dodging about the village, and seeing Jacques and the two women servants safely past the lax cordon of rebels, without taking advantage of the situation to take refuge in the Fort himself, had come back to his beloved dogs with a presentiment that something had gone wrong with the others, and that his services might be required. ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... the best of everything, and these our circumstances allowed us to give her. For the rest, though in kitten days suspected of having caught a mouse, she had never been known in after life to do anything which the most lax of economists could describe as useful. She would lie all day in the best arm-chair enjoying real or pretended slumbers, which never affected her appetite at supper-time; although in that eventide which is the feline morn she would, if certain of a sufficient ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... The lax figure stirred and Alden's blonde head was raised slowly. "I don't know." His voice came very thickly. "I—I'm ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... British officer. From the age of eighteen he had been his own master except during the intervals which he had spared from South Africa and spent at Oxford, when he was temporarily subject to the lax discipline of a University. While his contemporaries were amusing themselves at college, or performing routine duties in the Army or the Civil Service, or preparing to enter a profession, Rhodes was spending ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... reached: the tide of frenzy was turning, had turned, was already ebbing. She felt it, was conscious that he also had become aware of it. Then his grasp slackened, grew lax, loosened, and almost spent. She ventured to unwind her limbs from his, to relax her ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... the northern temperate zone, was of such a character that the true conifers show rings of growth, not larger, nor much less distinct, than those of many of their modern congeners. The Sigillariae and Calamites were not, as often supposed, composed wholly, or even principally, of lax and soft tissues, or necessarily short-lived. The former had, it is true, a very thick inner bark; but their dense woody axis, their thick and nearly imperishable outer bark, and their scanty and rigid foliage, would indicate no very rapid growth or decay. In the case of the Sigillariae, ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... that is fulle swete and righte delicyous, and more swete than hony or sugre; and it comethe of the dew of hevene that fallethe upon the herbes, in that contree; and it congelethe and becomethe alle white and swete: and men putten it in medicynes for rich men, to make the wombe lax, and to purge evylle blood: for it clensethe the blode, and puttethe out malencoyle. This lond of Job marchethe to the kyngdom of Caldee. This lond of Caldee is fulle gret: and the langage of that contree is more gret in sownynge, that ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... Mark was still staring at her, still smiling. But now he toppled slowly toward her and stumbled, and as his body, with a hideous, slithering sound, slipped down to the floor, his arm fell lax, and the still smoking revolver slid to ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... there is no security whatever for anything more than temporary success, too often succeeded by a sorrowful fall. The flesh is too strong for us, and even if it were not so, the devil is; these two together, besides the lax example of the world, are sure to overpower the weak one. Young Christians need to put away at once the sin, whatever it is, that "so easily besets" them, or they will be entangled by it. There is no real and thorough deliverance, except by renouncing ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... are attended, but only in the hospital can the underlying principles be applied with complete thoroughness and persistence. The hospital is constantly alert, whereas in private houses carelessness or ignorance, or both, often lead to lax technique. As a result, statistical evidence indicates that two to three infections occur among those delivered at home ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons |
