"Sinecure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... under the energetic admiral, no sinecure. He was kept constantly moving from one point to the other, to see that all was going on well, and to report the progress made. The work never ceased, night or day, and for the first week neither Francis, nor his commander, ever went to bed, contenting themselves ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... upon the Irish establishment. Royal mistresses, a host of needy Germans, a Danish Queen banished for adultery, lived in England or abroad upon incomes drawn from the impoverished Irish Exchequer. Nor was it only a question of pensions. Quantities of valuable sinecure offices were habitually given to Englishmen who never came near the shores of Ireland. In short, the English policy towards Ireland was similar to Spain's policy towards her South American Colonies, minus the grosser forms of physical cruelty and oppression. Yet Ireland, like the American Colonies ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... when government is most important—is but a vast continuous commentary on these reflections. It would, indeed, be absurd to press against Presidential government AS SUCH the singular defect by which Vice-President Johnson has become President—by which a man elected to a sinecure is fixed in what is for the moment the most important administrative part in the political world. This defect, though most characteristic of the expectations[4] of the framers of the Constitution and of its working, is but an accident of this particular case of Presidential ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... expert handlers of the sword; and the event was, that the whole train of fifty or sixty waggons, of which about a tenth remained full, were hurried away at full gallop down to the Boulevard, leaving the scaffold a sinecure. At the barrier a new arrangement took place; the wounded were piled into the carriages along with us, and the whole were marched under escort to the grand depot of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... tapping the lid of his jeweled snuffbox in all fashionable companies. He was the cadet of a patrician family (when not the ambitious son of a low family), with a polite taste for idleness and intrigue, for whom no secular sinecure could be found in the State, and who obliged the Church by accepting orders. Whether in the palace on the Grand Canal, or the villa on the Brenta, this gentle and engaging priest was surely the most agreeable person to be met, and the most dangerous to ladies' hearts,—with ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... not a heavy one, and you may think me entitled to very small thanks; for let me tell you your existence here will be no sinecure. I intend to make you slave and toil for me as you have never toiled before. At length I have you in my power. Ha, ha, ha!" And he laughed wildly. "Your wealth will avail you nothing here, your refinement, your education, your romantic aspirations. ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... of Mr. Rigby, who held the appointment of Master of the Rolls in Ireland, rendering it probable that a vacancy would shortly occur in that office, the friends of Mr. Grenville proposed that it should be given to him, and that he should hold it as a sinecure—a mode of reward for public services which was in accordance with the practice of the period. There were some difficulties, however, attending it, which did not escape the penetration of Mr. Grenville. In the first place, it had ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... sociably disposed as the little tomtit—for that is also one of his names—bird study would be a delight, and almost a sinecure. Trustful and fearless, he often comes within a few feet of you, and fixes you with his keen little eyes, which dart out innumerable interrogation points. Sometimes he calls his own name in a saucy way, "Chick-a-dee-dee, chick-a-dee-dee," which, being interpreted, ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... Governor, or Voivoda, to give him his proper Montenegrin title, corresponding to our word Duke, is therefore no sinecure. His position calls for more diplomacy and acumen than any other in the country. A false move, a thoughtless action or word could plunge the tribes of Northern Albania and Montenegro in a fierce warfare. But a few weeks ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... Hundreds. In this, however, he found himself wrong. The injured honour of all the Tillietudlemites rose against him with one indignant shout; and a rumour, a horrid rumour, of a severer fate met his ears. He applied at once for the now coveted sinecure,—and was refused. Her Majesty could not consent to entrust to him the duties of the situation in question—; and in lieu thereof the House expelled him by ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... le Baron, I feel ashamed to accept your money for such a sinecure as this. I will tell the story to my friend Lupin. He ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... his, you know. And even if his health does give out, his college pals will always find him some sort of sinecure. So ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Servente" is the phrase Used in politest circles to express This supernumerary slave, who stays Close to the lady as a part of dress, Her word the only law which he obeys. His is no sinecure, as you may guess; Coach, servants, gondola, he goes to call, And carries fan and tippet, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... have nothing for you to do, and as far as I am concerned your duties will be a sinecure until the day we arrive in Chili. Katherine, you must take ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... hay has gone to the devil already," he muttered, "and he'll have the wheat too! The whole shoot has gone to the deuce!" For the innkeeper of the csarda does not live by only doling out wine, but is a bit of a farmer besides, and his business is no sinecure. ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... elation. He saw the issue quite clearly and knew the pathway which must be trodden. He was not personally ambitious for the sake of making an impression or gaining power. He knew that in too many cases men had in the past made their position a sinecure in the Labor Movement and he condemned their action. The Movement must be served and not lived on. Not personal betterment, but the betterment of the whole lot. Whatever it demanded of service from anyone should be given willingly, no matter in what direction ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... the desert, and "D" Company did flank guard. My platoon formed the outer screen and we marched strung out in single file. There were cavalry patrols beyond us again, and anyway no Arab could come within five miles without our seeing him, so our guarding was a sinecure. ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... in the middle of May, and then work began in good earnest. The post of lady superintendent was by no means a sinecure. At 5.30 every morning she might have been seen unlocking the doors for the kitchen-women. She was often round the wards at 6.0, and all through the busy day until 11.0 at night she was kept fully employed, giving out stores, superintending her nurses, presiding at meals, ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... lady's-maid, so that she might have present employment and a home before her marriage, and then travel free of expense with the family to Scotland, where she should be handed over to her rightful owner. The office of lady's-maid was, however, a mere sinecure, so the bride had plenty of time to devote to the garden. Old Liz, meanwhile, was carefully confined to another part of the house so that she might not discover the plot, and the tiger, from whom no secrets could by any possibility be kept, ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... passed a short and merry time at the University, fashioned as nearly as might be on the mode of life of a man about town. In 1740 he was appointed to the vague-sounding office of Clerk of the Irons and Surveyor of the Meltings in the Mint, a sinecure which, after the manner of the time, required no personal attention from the holder. Even in those early days Selwyn, who went by the sobriquet of "Bosky," had many friends—not only among college boys, but in London society. "You must judge ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... important quarrels, there were the incessant internal bickerings between the nobles and the populace, which at that time divided every Italian city against itself. Altogether, the position of Magistrate in such a town, at such a time, could have been no sinecure, and it is difficult to understand how the hard-working painter could have found time or inclination to accept the citizen's duties, which were so weighty an occupation ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... out from their perches upon wandering flocks of vagrant rooks, but are never tempted to new adventures. The old fellow is very wise. Like a fat old office-holder, he knows enough to appreciate a sinecure in which the rewards are liberal and the service nominal. His devoted follower never falters in his dutiful imitation of ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... after this, I——d embarked on board a steamer for Louisville, on his way to join the head-quarters of his corps, somewhere upon the Missouri. The Republic allows no sinecure pay to its soldiers: most of these gallant men pass the best half of their lives upon the frontier, wasted by sickness, removed far from society or sympathy, poorly paid and worse thanked, enjoying very little present consideration, and without hope of future fame. It must require an ardent ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... President of Chile was no sinecure. He had not only to attend to the organization of the new State, but also to employ to the utmost his judgment, tact, and diplomacy, with which qualities he was so well endowed, in allaying the disputes and jealousies between the patriot leaders. There is no ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... Enos assumed the office of peace-maker for the village, Uncle Jaw's efficiency rendered it no sinecure. The deacon always followed the steps of Uncle Jaw, smoothing, hushing up, and putting matters aright with an assiduity that ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the leader of the House, on whichever side he stood. He was occasionally in opposition, and the champion of opposition politics in his earlier career; but at length, unfortunately alike for his feelings and his fame, he grew indolent, accepted an almost sinecure place, and indulged himself in ease and silence for full ten years. A loss like this was irreparable, in the short duration allotted to the living supremacy of statesmanship. No man in the records ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... state. He condemned political institutions worked for the benefit of a class, and leading, especially in legal matters, to endless abuses and chicanery. The abuses everywhere imply 'inequality' in some sense; for they arise from monopoly. The man who holds a sinecure, or enjoys a privilege, uses it for his own private interest. The 'matter of corruption,' as Bentham called it, was provided by the privilege and the sinecure. The Jacobin might denounce privileges ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... FAIRCHILD,—I am guilty in your sight, but my affairs besiege me. The chief-justiceship of a family of nineteen persons is in itself no sinecure, and sometimes occupies me for days: two weeks ago for four days almost entirely, and for two days entirely. Besides which, I have in the last few months written all but one chapter of a History of Samoa for the last eight or nine years; and while I was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... golden mean, a kind of city uncle modified by Cheeryble.[20] And as he was precise and conscientious in all the steps of his own blameless course, he looked for the same precision and an even greater gravity in the bearing of his deity, my father. It was no sinecure to be Coolin's idol; he was exacting like a rigid parent; and at every sign of levity in the man whom he respected, he announced loudly the death of virtue and the proximate fall of ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... met there. He would make a pattern colonel if he lived. Under the simple lines of his uniform one apprehended the ripple and play of unclogged muscles. If all men were like Stonor the tailor's task would be a sinecure. ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... so good as to promise these two posts—the appointment of justice of the peace and the sinecure for my friend—I will undertake to bring you the property, almost intact.—Almost intact, I say, for the co-operation of the legatee and several other persons is absolutely indispensable, and some obligations will be incurred. You will not redeem ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... the above the casual person will perhaps believe that a singer's life is really not a bit of a sinecure, even when he has attained the measure of this world's approval and applause afforded by the ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... stopping her ears. "So your conscience may be at ease; you may suppose that you have said every thing that is wise, and good, and proper, and sublime, and that you deserve to be called the best of friends; you shall enjoy the office of censor to Lady Delacour, and welcome; but remember, it is a sinecure place, though I will pay you with my love and esteem to any extent you please. You sigh—for my folly. Alas! my dear, 'tis hardly worth while—my follies will soon be at an end. Of what use could even ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... pretty position for a man just promoted to the proud position of Corporal. As they rolled me about and yelled like Indians, I could see that an official position in that regiment was to be no sinecure. All official positions have more or less care and responsibility, but this one seemed to me to have too much. Finally they spilled me out of the barrel, and I was a sight to behold. My first idea was to order the whole two hundred ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... another profession than literature. The notary was dead and the business had been taken over by some one else, so that this danger no longer threatened him; but the candid friend was inquiring about a second sinecure. "What a terrible man!" ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... have trouble with her," said Anna-Rose, not heeding his consolations. "It isn't a sinecure, I assure you, being left sole guardian and protector of somebody as pretty as all that. And the worst of it is she's going on getting prettier. She hasn't nearly come to the end of what she can do in that direction. I see it growing ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... his secretary, George Lord Lyttelton, the elegant if somewhat amateurish author of "Dialogues of the Dead" and other works; the friend of Fielding, the neighbor of Shenstone at Hagley, and the patron of Thomson, for whom he obtained the sinecure post of Surveyor of the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... carried her aunt's prayer-book, feeling like the priests, the Sons of Levi, which bare the Ark of the Covenant; and Aunt M'riar carried the Tin of the Shoulder of Mutton, and took great care not to spill any of the Gravy. The office of the Sons of Levi was a sinecure by comparison. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... of wet flannels and closed telephone-booths—and across from each of them there was usually a canteen, swarming with life, presided over indolently by an officer who, with the aid of a side-car, usually managed to make his detail a pleasant and chatty sinecure. ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... self-registration of magnetical and meteorological phenomena, L500." Every year the invention will save fully L500 worth of human toil; and the reward seems small when we see every year millions voted for warlike, sinecure, and other worse ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... the Scottish moors, combined with its novelty, gave it great success, and Thomson went on to write also of Summer, Spring and Autumn, publishing the whole work as 'The Seasons' in 1730. He was rewarded by the gift of sinecure offices from the government and did some further writing, including, probably, the patriotic lyric, 'Rule, Britannia,' and also pseudo-classical tragedies; but his only other poem of much importance is 'The Castle of Indolence' (a subject appropriate to his own good-natured, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... the man that holds down this job don't earn his salt, Jose. It's what they call a sinecure," Alan was saying at the very instant the ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... wonderful house-place, where the only chance of collecting a few grains of dust would be to climb on the salt-coffer, and put your finger on the high mantel shelf on which the glittering brass candlesticks are enjoying their summer sinecure; for at this time of year, of course, every one goes to bed while it is yet light, or at least light enough to discern the outline of objects after you have bruised your shins against them. Surely nowhere else could an oak clock-case and an oak table ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... length, however, he gave way to years, and retired from public life. His party handsomely acknowledged his services by a retiring pension, which Mr Pitt, when minister, exchanged for the clerkship of the pells, thus disburdening the nation by substituting a sinecure. For many years before his death, Barre was unfortunately deprived of sight; but, under that heaviest of all afflictions, he retained his practical philosophy, enjoyed the society of his friends, and was cheerful to the last. He was at length seized ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... ward in the new Hospital at Marlborough was filled to its utmost capacity and Evadne found her work no sinecure. The force of nurses was inadequate to the demand. Often she would be called from her rest to minister to the critical cases which were her special care, and she would go down to the ward saying softly, "The Master is come and calleth for ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... army of girl and women workers in this great metropolis is, indeed, a vast one, and work for them is no sinecure. If they cannot work so thoroughly or efficiently as men, at least it is for them greater toil than for the sterner sex. Of a more delicate organisation, of less robust frame, of smaller powers of endurance, the "buffets of ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... passed away since I had planted a signal staff upon its parapet to angle upon; being then engaged, as chief of a hydrographic surveying party, in surveying the approaches to Boston Harbor. Then its garrison consisted of a superannuated sergeant whose office was a sinecure; now it held an armed garrison, who drilled and paraded every day, with all the "pomp and circumstance" of war, to the patriotic tune of "John Brown's body lies a-moulding in the grave, but his spirit is marching on;" and it was crowded with ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... the expedition, upon the strength of my being a sailor, I packed the Long Doctor with a paddle in the bow, and then shoving off, leaped into the stern; thus leaving him to do all the work, and reserving to myself the dignified sinecure of steering. All would have gone on well, were it not that my paddler made such clumsy work that the water spattered, and showered down upon us without ceasing. Continuing to ply his tool, however, quite energetically, I thought he would improve after ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... a fact that the fates were unusually kind to him. A Cabinet Minister made him a present of South Sea stock; Walpole appointed him a Commissioner of Lotteries; he was granted an apartment in Whitehall; Queen Caroline offered him a sinecure post in her Household. Because he thought Gay ill-used, the greatest man of letters of the century quarrelled with Lady Suffolk; for the same reason a Duchess insulted the King and wiped the dust of the Court from her shoes, and a Duke threw up his employment under the Crown. All ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... affectionate gratitude, secured it for his friend with a further step to the coveted rank of marquess. Thereafter the public life of the family was characterized by honour and integrity; and the Garter, re-bestowed as soon as surrendered, became a habit. The second marquess held a sinecure under Lord Aberdeen; another flitted to and fro in shadowy retirement as a Lord-in-Waiting; a third, exploring the United States for the broadening of his mind, married ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... Chateaubriand's secretary, and the place was no sinecure. Besides manuscripts and letters which his master signed, Pilorge copied everything. The illustrious author, attentive to the demands of posterity, preserved with religious care copies of his most trifling notes. The tragedy which Chateaubriand ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... less advantage than he had anticipated. Probably he expected too much, and had expressed his sanguine hopes in a song of triumph on the occasion. He had been promised, both by Charles I. and Charles II., the Mastership of the Savoy, (a forgotten sinecure office;) but lost it, says Wood, 'by certain persons, enemies to the Muses.' He brought on the stage at this time his old comedy of 'The Guardian,' under the title of 'Cutter of Coleman Street;' ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... in that is that red weakens an hour. The change has come. There is no search. But there is, there is that hope and that interpretation and sometime, surely any is unwelcome, sometime there is breath and there will be a sinecure and charming very charming is that clean and cleansing. Certainly ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... of those towards whom she was somewhat lacking in Reverence." But it is droll enough to fancy the scene—the pretty schoolgirl gravely rebuking her delinquent master for the too great partiality her own bright eyes had won for her. Poor man! His was no sinecure. To hold rule over a parcel of unruly girls, with the graces of one so tugging at his heartstrings! His path might at least have been spared the thorn of having his fault denounced by the very voice ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... in 1884, for his defence of P.N. Fitzgerald, the leader who beat Parnell and Archbishop Croke so badly at Thurles the other day; and he is in a fair way now to be denounced with equal fervour by the Nationalists as a County Court judge in Donegal. He finds this post no sinecure. "I do as much work in five days," he said to-night, "as the Superior Judges do in ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... could withstand the temptation of bouncing from L100 a year at Sligo, to L300 in Tipperary? This is the miserable sum of money for which the merchants and landowners and nobility of England are exposing themselves to the tremendous peril of losing Ireland. The sinecure places of the Roses and the Percevals, and the 'dear and near relations,' put up to auction at thirty years' purchase, would almost ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... could be heard crossing the hall, and the raising of the drawing-room window and opening of the shutters were clearly audible. Winter, whose office had been a sinecure hitherto, now came into ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... the Hotel de Ville, a little man, and spirited, who had hung on at his post during the German occupation, and done his best to protect his fellow-townsmen against the lust and rapine of the Huns. Under such circumstances the office of municipal magistrate is no sinecure. It is, in fact, a position of deadly peril, for by the doctrine of vicarious punishment, peculiar to the German Staff, an innocent man is held liable with his life for the faults of his fellow-townsmen, and, it may be, for those of the enemy also. Doubtless it appeals to their ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... had no scientific leanings except a taste for botany. Although the constantly renewed cries for some not clearly defined system of public support for men of letters are, as a rule, absurd, there is no doubt that Mr Arnold was the very man for a sinecure, and would have justified the existence of Pipe or Hanaper to all reasonable men. But his political friends had done away with nearly all such things, and no one of the very few that remained fell to his lot. His father had died in ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... it will readily be seen, as Schindler plaintively asserts, that the office of friend to Beethoven was no sinecure. But he appreciated the advantage of living in the reflected glory of the great master, and such tact as he possessed was brought to bear, to continue the relations of friend, counsellor and general factotum, which ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... with the army, he immediately pushed on to Orizaba (April 19), where he arrived (April 20) just as General Prim, with the Spanish contingent (and the newspaper staff which, gossip related, had traveled in his suite to herald his exploits—truly a sinecure!), were leaving by the same garita on their way to the coast. General Zaragoza, with the Liberal army, retreated from the city by one gate as the French entered by the other, with all the bells of the city ringing in token of popular rejoicing—under compulsion. General ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... found our sinecure of hot noon-tide filched from us by the cooler hours. The cattle, wearied of standing, and perhaps somewhat hungry and thirsty, grew more and more impatient. We rode continually back and forth, turning the slow movement ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... except for the size of it, than that of an electrician or a Standard Oil magnate. But to "enlighten" the world (as our learned civic guardians "Englished" it) requires abler qualities. And so poor Liberty, instead of having a sinecure as a mere illuminator, must be converted into a Chautauqua schoolma'am, with the oceans for her field instead of the placid, classic lake. With a fireless torch and an empty head must she dispel the shadows of the world and teach it its A, ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... unreasonable, for Pitt's health seems now to have been beyond doubt so shattered by his hereditary malady, that he was already in old age though only fifty-eight. It was natural, therefore, that he should choose a sinecure office, and the ease of the Lords. But a popular idol nearly always suffers by removal from immediate contact with the popular sympathy, be the motives for ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... as they presented themselves from time to time, though not always with success, and his first perusal of the list of tenants handed him by Whimple showed him that the job of rent collecting would be no sinecure. He knew his own district very well; the work and conditions, the family life, and many other details of a more or less intimate nature, were matters of knowledge to him. He read the list over again as he turned down a street to make his first call, and then passed the first house on his list, ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... is now better, and I ride about again. My office here is no sinecure, so many parties and difficulties of every kind; but I will do what I can. Prince Mavrocordato is an excellent person, and does all in his power; but his situation is perplexing in the extreme. Still we have great hopes of ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... may also mention that I never touch cheese, or hare, or rabbit, or eel, and I would have to be in the last stage of starvation before I could eat cold lamb or cold veal; so it will be seen by these confessions that my cook's berth is not a sinecure, and that these complimentary dinners, as dinners, are to a great extent wasted upon me. I once, in fact, was asked to a dinner at a club, and I could not touch one single dish! But my friends kindly provided some impromptu dishes without cheese or oysters and other, to me, objectionable things. ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... being was fiercely alert in its readiness to leap upward at any suspicion that her duties were not worth the payment made for them and that for any reason which might include Lord Coombe she was occupying a position which was a sinecure. She kept her serious little room in order herself, dusting and almost polishing the reference books, arranging and re-arranging the files with such exactness of system that she could—as is the vaunt of the model of orderly perfection—lay her hand upon any document "in the dark." She was punctuality's ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... that if the railroad influence should control these appointments, the power to suspend the long and short haul clause would be the chief and perhaps the only power exercised by the commission. There was great danger that the office of Interstate Commerce Commissioner might become a sinecure for servile railroad lawyers, as similar State officers had been before, and that a public trust might be turned into an additional corporation agency for evil. The selection of the commissioners, and especially that of Judge T. M. Cooley, of Michigan, was greatly to the ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... Fabian policy, conservative policy; neglect &c. 460. inactivity &c. 683; rest &c. (repose) 687; quiescence &c. 265; want of occupation, inoccupation[obs3]; idle hours, time hanging on one's hands, dolce far niente[It]; sinecure, featherbed, featherbedding, cushy job, no- show job; soft snap, soft thing. V. not do, not act, not attempt; be inactive &c. 683; abstain from doing, do nothing, hold, spare; not stir, not move, not lift a finger, not lift a foot, not lift ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Warham's board at Lambeth, and in spite of an unpromising beginning the acquaintance turned out wonderfully well. The Primate loved him, Erasmus wrote home, as if he were his father or his brother, and his generosity surpassed that of all his friends. He offered him a sinecure, and when he declined it he bestowed on him a pension of a hundred crowns a year. When Erasmus wandered to Paris it was Warham's invitation which recalled him to England. When the rest of his patrons left him to starve on the sour beer of Cambridge it was Warham ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... on and on, down and down. He begins to confide all his maudlin woes to Evan, and that young man is ever ready with sympathy and advice that is not calculated to make Jasper Lamotte's position, as bear trainer, a sinecure. ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... medical skill, that he gave him and his family a cabin, and spot of land, in the islands—a cabin near the palace; and at Harry's request made him his wood-ranger and his gamekeeper—the one a lucrative place, the other a sinecure. ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... poker."—"Fancy H. ten days after the casting of that farce, wanting F.'s part therein! Having himself an excellent old man in it already, and a quite admirable part in the other farce." From which it will appear that my friend's office was not a sinecure, and that he was not, as few amateur-managers have ever been, without the experiences of Peter Quince. Fewer still, I suspect, have fought through them with such perfect success, for the company turned out at last would have ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... He told me that Montmorin had asked that Carmichael be appointed to the court of France, but that he and Beaufort and other of my friends had insisted on my appointment. 'Tis a matter of indifference to me. Whoever is appointed—Short, Carmichael, Madison, or myself—will have no sinecure in France. Unhappy country! The closet philosophers who are trying to rule it are absolutely bewildered, and I know not what will save the state unless it be a ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... thin jailer is unknown in the provinces. The place, to begin with, is almost a sinecure, and a jailer is a kind of innkeeper who pays no rent and lives very well, while his prisoners fare very ill; for, like an innkeeper, he gives them rooms according to their payments. He knew David by name, ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... never at his books Or with his pen, save when he scrawls a card; Constant at routs, familiar with a round Of ladyships, a stranger to the poor; Ambitions of preferment for its gold, And well prepared by ignorance and sloth, By infidelity and love o' the world, To make God's work a sinecure; a slave To his own pleasures and his patron's pride.— From such apostles, O ye mitred heads, Preserve the Church! and lay not careless hands On skulls that cannot teach, and will ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... less inclined to be patient with Colette, as she seemed to take a delight in gathering round herself all the young men who were most likely to exasperate Christophe: disgusting little snobs, most of them wealthy, all of them idle, or jobbed into a sinecure in some government office—which amounts to the same thing. They all wrote—or pretended to write. That was an itch of the Third Republic. It was a sort of indolent vanity,—intellectual work being ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... and say all sorts of brilliant things, and that puts a great burden on the author. If you proclaim boldly at the start that she's a beauty, the illustrator has got to look after her, and the author has a comparative sinecure." ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... subject of the causes was frequently very trivial, yet the patience of the sovereign was by no means exhausted. I thought, in general, that the pleaders were satisfied with the Bey's decision. One sees, by this, that the Bey's place is no sinecure; and I am told that few monarchs in Christian countries have so much personally to do. The Bey sits every day in the court, from eight in summer, and from nine in winter, till mid-day; and illness, or absence from town, is his only excuse for non-attendance. His other ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... described in writing, in the most elaborate manner); and everyone of them turns, by a strange fatality, on a criminal trial!" It had all to be set right by him, and editorship on such terms was not a sinecure. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... to bring us back instantly into touch with some of the few better and rarer memories round which the selfishness of life is always building a thicker crust. For one thing, at that moment I was deeply grateful—that I knew my friends. My task was made a sinecure. ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... firm hand. Indeed, they generally needed not only a firm hand, but a firm hand grasping a serviceable walking-stick. Add to these Harrison himself, and others of a similar calibre, and it will be seen that Graham's post was no sinecure. It was Harrison's custom to throw off his mask at night with his other garments, and appear in his true character of an abandoned villain, willing to stick at nothing as long as he could do it strictly incog. In this capacity he had come into constant contact with Graham. Even in the dark ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... Petrarch gives us to understand that he thought the Pope's professions were merely verbal. He says: "To hold out treasures to a man who demands a small sum is but a polite mode of refusal." In fact, the Pope offered him some bishopric, knowing that he wanted only some benefice that should be a sinecure. ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... certain passages of Faust, part II, Eduard von Hartmann's "Philosophy of the Unconscious," and Lermontoff's "Hero of our Times," I am convinced that to love a man very good-looking, or, on the contrary, a perfect horror, is no sinecure. ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... unjust both to Halifax and Congreve; for immediately after the production of Congreve's first play, "The Old Bachelor," Halifax gave him a place in the Pipe Office, and another in the Customs, of L600 a year. Ultimately he had at least four sinecure appointments which together afforded him some L1,200 a year. See Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," edit. Cunningham.—W. ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... abandoned to weakness, poverty, and unpopularity, and even that no bishop was sent to superintend the exertions, or sustain the efficacy, or cement the connexion of the Church in America with the Church in England. The whole of the united provinces were, by the absurd fiction of a sinecure law, "in the diocese of London!" Of course, in the first collision, the Church was swept away like chaff before the wind. An Episcopal Church has since risen in its room; but it has now no farther connexion with its predecessor than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... was no sinecure, for everyone started tea-drinking afresh to encourage the travellers, and amidst the babble of voices Jack's sotto voce explanations made the conversation intelligible, and took away the feeling of being left out in the cold. At a touch of real sympathy the false sentiment ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... crow mamma is no sinecure. My heart went out to the poor souls who must be torn between anxiety for their dear "cantankerous" offspring, and fear of their deadly enemy, man. I watched with deep interest their method of training. One day I saw a baby get an object lesson in his proper attitude toward mankind, ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... made England the first country in the world; that his name was mentioned with awe in every palace from Lisbon to Moscow; that his trophies were in all the four quarters of the globe; yet that he was still plain William Pitt, without title or ribbon, without pension or sinecure place. Whenever he should retire, after saving the state, he must sell his coach horses and his silver candlesticks. Widely as the taint of corruption had spread, his hands were clean. They had never received, they had never given, the price of infamy. Thus the coalition gathered to itself ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... developed into a monomania. Perhaps Franklin was correct in charitably saying that at times he was "insane." He began by asserting that Franklin was old, idle, and useless, fit only to be shelved in some respectable sinecure mission; but he rapidly advanced from such moderate condemnation until he charged Franklin with being a party to the abstraction of his dispatches from a sealed parcel, which was rifled in some unexplained way on its passage home;[61] and finally he even reached the extremity of alleging financial ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... Sceptic in these party days Who wafts to neither shrine his puffs of praise! For him no pension pours its annual fruits, No fertile sinecure spontaneous shoots; Not his the meed that crowned Don Hookham's rhyme, Nor sees he e'er in dreams of future time Those shadowy forms of sleek reversions rise, So dear to Scotchmen's second-sighted eyes. Yet who that looks to History's damning ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... up and put him back into his bed again—his body glowing through his night-dress, and his eyes staring wildly about him. It was evidently impossible to leave him, and so I spent the rest of the night nodding and shivering in the armchair. No, it was certainly not a sinecure that I had undertaken. ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... this criticism was true; also that Miss Betsy's task was no sinecure, and she therefore thought it best to ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... for some time, Sabine expressed a wish to rest. Instantly benches were set, the table got ready, and an ubiquitous waiter brought a giant coffee-pot and the number of cups required. Sabine's office was no sinecure. She chose Anton for her adjutant, and it was a pretty sight to see how kindly she gave each one his cup, how watchful she was lest the sugar-bowl and the cream-jug should be interrupted in their rounds, ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... functions of milliner and dressmaker, encouraged thereto by the family for her unerring taste and skill. Her salary, however, had been proportionately increased, and it did not decline when her office as governess became practically a sinecure as her pupils passed beyond the sphere of the schoolroom. Perhaps George Osgood, father of John Osgood, and owner of Wandenong, did not make an allowance to Barbara Golding for her services as counsellor ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... away to commence her round of household duties, which in those days was no sinecure; whilst Wendot stood in the midst of the great hall with a strange shadow upon his face. Griffeth, who was eagerly discussing his ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... their walks along the bay, for this was the favorite with the girls, and they could not but comment upon his increased manliness of bearing. He had found his position no sinecure. There were many farmers along the river who, while undeniably patriotic, saw no reason why they should not take the hard money of the British in New York in exchange for supplies, and this contraband trade had to be kept ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... only this to say, further, gentlemen," he concluded. "It is no sinecure to hold public office and administer a public trust and I am moved to protest most earnestly against the public tendency to discredit politics and the men who are devoting their energies—frequently at great personal ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... only depended upon the whim of Napoleon, but had long been intended as an hereditary sovereignty for Jerome. Another Dutchman asked him not to ruin his friend and his family for what he was well aware could never be called a sinecure place, and was so precarious in its tenure. "Foolish vanity," answered the Minister, "can never pay enough for the gratification of its desires. All the Schimmelpennincks in the world do not possess property enough to recompense ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... in the old days at Bent's Fort. The man was selected on account of his skill in the use of the rifle, and his knowledge of the habits of the game, his duty being simply to supply the command with all the fresh food possible—a position which, it will at once be understood, was no sinecure, involving constant activity ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... his father's house, and married. He then went abroad (with a barmaid) till 1773, when his father died. In January, 1774, he took his seat in the House of Lords. In November, 1779, Lyttelton went into Opposition. On Thursday, 25th November, he denounced Government in a magnificent speech. As to a sinecure which he held, he said, "Perhaps I shall ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... old man, a great lover of little girls, who combined the sinecure of his bishopric with that of almoner to a second-hand empress, whose name will remain celebrated in the annals of devout gallantry or of gallant devotion, the Bishop, a worthy pastor for such a sheep, passed the greater portion of ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... demerit of Romanism into a parliamentary discussion. If this measure had been thrown out, I fear Ireland would have been awfully embittered. Yet I hope the fierce opposition will stop any future scheme of keeping the sinecure church untouched and endowing the priests with imperial money.... Thus I halt between ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... girls' hair. After school I had to mend clothes, sew, set the table again, take a turn at nursing the baby, and on washing-day iron. This sounds a lot, but in reality was nothing, and did not half occupy my time. Setting the table was a mere sinecure, as there was nothing much to put on it; and the only ironing was a few articles outside my own, as Mr M'Swat and Peter did not wear white shirts, and patronised paper collars. Mrs M'Swat did the washing and a little scrubbing, also boiled the beef and baked the bread, which formed our ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... detested work of any kind. Yet the chaplain had almost as much business on his hands as the bursar of a great college, in the administration of Carew's affairs, besides filling an office which was by no means a sinecure, in that of his master of the ceremonies. Many a rudeness in that house would have been bitterly avenged, and many a quarrel would have had a serious termination, but for the good offices of Parson Whymper. Nor would Mr. Byam Ryll have been considered by every body ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... recruiting officer for colored troops was by no means a sinecure; on the contrary, it was attended with hardships, annoyances and difficulties without number. Moving about from place to place; often on scant rations, and always without transportation, save what could be pressed into service; sleeping in barns, out-houses, ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... You will stoop from your solitary splendour and say to the devoted beggarman, 'Allow me to offer you the post of King Consort; it is a mere sinecure, and confers only the semblance and not the reality of power; but I hope you will accept it, as I have nothing better to give you, and if you are submissive and obedient I will make you as comfortable as ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... Duchesse's widowed aunt was made happy by a pension of six thousand livres a year; and her son-in-law, de Guiche, in addition to his dukedom, was rewarded further for his fortunate nuptials by valuable sinecure offices at Court. ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... exist for the sole purpose of taxing the king's gifts of plate? Its object falls naturally within the chamberlain's province, and ought to be under his care and inspection without any fee. Why should an office of the robes exist, when that of groom, of the stole is a sinecure, and that this is a proper object of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... them charming companions. Often as a carriage dashes by, the pedestrian is able to catch a glimpse of some jewelled and turbaned sultana, of dazzling beauty, attended by her maid, who does not always possess a sinecure, for the mistress is often haughty, proud, and petulant, very hard to please, and exacts great deference from her inferiors. Many of them live in regal splendour, and everything that wealth and pampered luxury can bestow is theirs, as long as their personal ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... have no sinecure. Crime would perhaps be less, for some of the motives of crime we may suppose would pass away. But if Socialism were carried out with any fulness, there would be more contraventions. We see already new sins ringing up like mustard—School Board sins, factory sins, Merchant ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mad piece of waggery of that Prince of good fellows, Sir WALTER RALEIGH. The aged Knight is always up to some of his nonsense!" After playing a game of quoits with Lord BALMARINO and the Tower Headsman (whose office is a well-paid sinecure), I returned to Newgate, greatly pleased with my morning's promenade. In the afternoon, entertained the Governor at dinner, who declared that he could never get so good a meal in his own quarters. "Strap me, no!" I exclaimed: "and, were it not that our food was excellent, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... the reins of government, the whilom recluse had discovered that the management of such a wide property was indeed no sinecure; and moreover—as his brother, who certainly understood such matters in a thoroughly practical manner, had warned him—that a person of his own philosophical, over-benevolent and abstracted turn of ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... A goodly sinecure, no doubt! but made More easy by the absence of all men— Except his Majesty,—who, with her aid, And guards, and bolts, and walls, and now and then A slight example, just to cast a shade Along the rest, contrived to keep this den Of beauties cool as an Italian convent, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... this she realized, and for one moment she felt like running up-stairs with her aunt, and hiding herself between two of the thickest feather-beds, in spite of the heat of the season. But, courage once more, Joe Harris! The playing of detective en amateur is not always a sinecure or a pleasant labor; but if it succeeds—aye, ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... scruples, Elsmere,' said the Liberal tutor with emphasis. 'No one can say a living with 1200 souls, and no curate, is a sinecure. As for hard town work, it is absurd—you couldn't stand it. And after all, I imagine, there are some souls worth saving out ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... birth. He is overwhelmed by the sudden importance he has acquired from his office, and by the amount of work (for which he gets no pay) entailed by it,—the office of British Consul having been a comparative sinecure before the war. ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... proud and often honourable nobles would ante-chamber and cringe for sinecures, pensions, indemnities, privileges, importune and supplicate the King, the King's mistress, pandar or lacquey. And the sinecure, pension, indemnity or privilege was always deducted out of the bread—rye-bread, straw-bread, grass-bread—which those parched, prone human animals described by La Bruyere were extracting "with desperate obstinacy"—out of the ever more sterile ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... Harry presented himself in readiness for work, and found that his post would be no sinecure. The correspondence which he had to go through was enormous. Requests for favours, letters of congratulation on Robespierre's speeches and motions in the Assembly, reports of scores of provincial committees, denunciations of aristocrats, ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... The larger orders he drew, the thinner and the more transparent he became; and at last, when the shadow of his person had become to him a vague and unreal memory, he repented, and applied to be reinstated in his comfortable sinecure ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... to answer cold prose when your arguments are those of warm poetry. Not that prose has power to conquer poetry, but that the languages are so hopelessly dissimilar. They need an interpreter and the post is not a sinecure. ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... him appointed to the postmastership, which, since all the work was done by assistants, was the one sinecure in town, the one reward for political purity. But it proved that Mr. Bert Tybee, the former bartender, desired ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... two later there arrived here a certain major of the United States Army, a large, broad-chested, rather pompous person of about forty-eight or -nine, who from taking his ease in one sinecure and another had finally reached the place where he was unable to endure certain tests (or he thought so) which were about to be made with a view to retiring certain officers grown fat in the service. As he explained to ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... two-and-twenty, with a child in her hood, walk twelve miles to the ships and back again the same day for the sake of a little bread-dust and a tin canister. When stationary in the winter, they have really almost a sinecure of it, sitting quietly in their huts, and having little or no employment for the greater part of the day. In short, there are few, if any, people in this state of society among whom the women are ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... the age of 41 so out of touch with the spirit of strenuous effort which has invaded every corner of our national life that I am anxious to confer on the State or, failing that, some meritorious millionaire the privilege of providing for my modest needs. A snug sinecure with a commodious residence and a good car—cheap American motors are of course barred—represent the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... former letter, (and not in this—I add, for fear of mistakes, for the only one mentioned in the first part of this epistle is elderly and bookish, two things which I have ceased to admire,) and love in this part of the world is no sinecure. This is also the season when every body make up their intrigues for the ensuing year, and cut for partners for the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... debate, he put his hand on his heart, saying, "I am the trusty guardian of my own honour."—"Then," replied Sir Boyle Roche, "I congratulate my honourable friend in the snug little sinecure to which he has ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... difficulty, and at considerable expense, for the fame of the Heavenly Twins was wide-spread, and their parents were determined besides not to let any candidate engage himself under the pleasing delusion that the task of teaching them would be something of a sinecure. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... allowed no games at cards or dice to be played for money, as he strongly disapproved of gambling. He was a strict Sabbatarian, and allowed the musicians to have a rest on the seventh day. This was as well, for the post of musician on a pirate ship was no sinecure, as every pirate had the right to demand a tune at any hour of the day or night. He used to place a guard to protect all his women prisoners, and it is sadly suspicious that there was always the greatest competition amongst the worst characters in the ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... she seemed more than ever severe and hard; yet probably there never was a time when every pulse of her heart was beating more warmly for the child, and every thought of the future was more entirely regulated with reference to her welfare. It is no sinecure to have the entire devotion of a strong, enterprising, self-willed friend, as Agnes had all her life found. One cannot gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles, and the affection of thorny and thistly natures has often as sharp an acid and as long prickers as wild gooseberries,—yet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... during the best portion of the day, he would find his fingers so completely dead, that he could not hold his pen. But there is no situation, under any of the powers that be, that has not some drawback. People may say that a sinecure is one that has not its disadvantages; but such is not the case—there is the disgrace of holding it. At all events, Joey's place was no sinecure, for he was up early, and was employed the whole ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... that morning in a somewhat disturbed frame of mind. It was beginning to dawn upon her that her position as sick nurse to Mr. Phillips was meant to be a sinecure. She was allowed to sit by the sick man's side sometimes whilst the doctor took a promenade or ate a meal in the saloon, but apart from that, the usual exercise of her duties was not required from her. She was ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... readily be seen by the foregoing sketch that a clerkship in the Railway Mail Service is far from being a sinecure, either mentally or physically. As the country increases in population and the system becomes more complex, it is found to be important to the public that the clerks should be insured against removal except for the following reasons: "Intemperance, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... a man but with the view "Of selling my own works. "The tip's a good one, as for literature "It gives no man a sinecure." ...
— Hugh Selwyn Mauberley • Ezra Pound
... and the sense of rest and security which came from being settled down in England, with their children beside them. Arthur's prospects improved from day to day as he became more widely known and appreciated, while Peggy was an hourly comfort and delight. Her post as only daughter was no sinecure, for a delicate mother left all the household management in her hands, while an exacting father grumbled loudly if she were not ready to bestow her company upon him at a moment's notice. Like most men who have lived in India and have been accustomed to an unlimited ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... sinecure. Old Mr. Beagle had so much affectionate confidence in Gissing that he referred almost everything to him for decision. Mr. Beagle junior, perhaps a little annoyed at the floorwalker's meteoric translation, spent the summer afternoons ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... until time of dessert, I can give no consecutive account, for as footman, under the orders of this enthusiastic parlour-maid, my place was no sinecure, and but few opportunities of observation through the crack of the door were afforded me. All that was clear to me was that the chief guest was a Mr. Teidelmann—or Tiedelmann, I cannot now remember which—a snuffy, mumbling old frump, with whose name then, however, ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... Joint Chief Clerk of the Pleas in the Queen's Bench, a sinecure conferred on him by his father, who was Lord Chief Justice of the ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... him with a clouded brow, but the man of the world knew whom he had to deal with. On Wednesday morning Jacobina was inducted into the comforts of the hearth of mine host;—and her four little kittens mewed hard by, from the sinecure of a basket ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and two butts of the best Malaga; and though it has been usual to catch a mouse or two, for form's sake, in public once a year, yet to you, sir, we shall not stand on these things,' I cannot say I should jump at it; nay, if they would drop the very name of the office, and call me Sinecure to the King's Majesty, I should feel a little awkward, and think everybody I saw smelt a rat about me; but I do not pretend to blame any one else that has not the same sensations; for my part, I would rather be serjeant trumpeter ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... the effect of quieting the Committee for the time. Lincoln turned again to his political scheme, but not until he had made another military appointment from which at the moment no one could have guessed that trouble would ever come. He gave to Burnside what might be called the sinecure position of Commander of the Department of the Ohio ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... do some chaperoning at last, am I?" queried her father. "The job has ceased to be a sinecure. I suppose I'll have to do all the talking, since young girls, of course, may only speak when spoken to and then must answer with a yes or no. Really, my dear, you're setting yourself an ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... of a large household in the sixteenth century was no sinecure. It was not the fashion then to depute to the hands of underlings the supervision of the details of domestic management; and though the lady of the Hall might later in the day entertain royalty itself, the early ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... fellow-worker in a righteous cause?" The vender smiles, seems inclined to jocularity, to which the gentlemen in black are unwilling to submit. They have not been moving among dealers, and examining a piece of property here and there, with any sinecure motive. They view the vender's remarks as exceedingly offensive, return a look of indignation, and slowly, as if with wounded piety, walk away. The gentlemen in black are most sensitive when any comparison is made between them and ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... this able man got into frightful hot water. He said publicly that a miserable moral and political tone resulted from the nation's retaining a lot of sinecure offices—Hereditary Grand Falconer, and all that sort of thing. He pointed out that the Duke of Edinburgh had been given a naval command without much naval training, and he advocated promotion by merit instead of by claims due to birth. He allowed himself to criticize some large grants ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... King William the Fourth, still announces to a heedless world the tolls to be paid for entry by the ships that never arrive; and a superannuated official in a wooden leg and a gold cap-band retains the honourable sinecure of a harbour-mastership, with a hypothetical salary nominally payable from the non-existent fees and port dues. The little river Cale, at the bottom of whose combe the wee town nestles snugly, has cut itself ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... filled the high and arduous position of wife to such a man as Barty Josselin is well known to the world at large. It was no sinecure! but she gloried in it; and to her thorough apprehension and management of their joint lives and all that came of them, as well as to her beauty and sense and genial warmth, was due her great popularity for many years in an ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... which exist only because everybody does as you do, let us honor that man and seriously consider the advisability of following his example. Such a man is the able-bodied, able-minded pauper. Were he a gentleman doing his best to get a pension or a sinecure instead of sweeping a crossing, nobody would blame him; for deciding that so long as the alternative lies between living mainly at the expense of the community and allowing the community to live mainly at his, it would be folly to accept what is to him personally ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... whatever to draw upon mine; so that my time was taken only with being, for them, some remarkable person or thing that the game of the moment required and that was merely, thanks to my superior, my exalted stamp, a happy and highly distinguished sinecure. I forget what I was on the present occasion; I only remember that I was something very important and very quiet and that Flora was playing very hard. We were on the edge of the lake, and, as we had lately begun geography, the lake was the Sea ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... this luck—" said Reginald. "He does, and he is quite pleased; but how do you suppose I can be pleased? Thrust into a place where I am not wanted—where I can be of no use. A dummy, a practical falsehood. How can I accept it, Ursula? I tell you it is a sinecure!" ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... girls and often it demanded the services of the mayor. I shall regret to the end of my days that I did not keep a scrapbook devoted to Mayor Rolph's activities. For being mayor of San Francisco is no sinecure. But as most of his public duties seemed to involve floods of pretty girls—well, if I were a man it would be my ambition to be mayor of San Francisco for the rest ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin
... a policy of concession is that it would only lead to further demands in the future. In reply to this Peter makes vigorous use of Spencer Perceval's official career. Perceval had held a sinecure for several years; at the time of writing he was Chancellor of the Exchequer; and he had just attempted, and been defeated in attempting, a most nefarious job, by which the revenues of the Duchy of Lancaster were to have been secured to him ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... of fresh water would be constantly required; ice for this purpose must be perpetually carried in from the coast, and it would be necessary to arrange that everyone in turn should perform this office, as it would be no sinecure to clamber up the sides of the crater for 900 feet, and descend the same distance ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... gown to match, my old college tutor and professor of Arabic. Poor old Jones had been the best and the most shy of university men. As there was never any undergraduate in his time (it is different now) who wished to learn Arabic, his place had been a sinecure, and he had chiefly devoted his leisure to "drawing" pupils who were too late for college chapel. The sight of a lady of his acquaintance in the streets had at all times been alarming enough to drive him into a shop or up a lane, and he had not survived the creation of the first batch of married ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... what Robina had been reckoning on. For, if it had been Gwenda she had been thinking of, she would have kept her instead of handing her over to Lady Frances. The companion secretaries of that distinguished philanthropist had no sinecure even ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... "stableman." There were two of these for each sub-division, who were on duty for the whole day in the lines. Their function, in addition to the usual duties, was to draw forage, watch the horses, and prepare all the feeds in the nose-bags, ready for the drivers. The post was no sinecure, for in addition to the three standard oat feeds, there was oat straw to be put down after dinner, and, at eight o'clock at night, a final supper of chaff, except for invalids, who got special feeds. A list of these was given ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... first week, that to be housekeeper to a young duchess, in an American village and with American servants, was no sinecure. ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... open Desert is no sinecure. When I go under the shade from the sun the wind blows unpityingly, when in the sun the flies torment me. Our grand slave-driver Haj Essnousee, is most determinedly bent on showing himself a perfect master in his profession. This afternoon he set ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... our oldest sister and tea-maker general. She had no sinecure office of it; but, in spite often of the most remarkable demands, she dispensed the beverage with the most perfect justice and good humour. Not unsatisfactory were the visits paid to the sideboard, covered as it was with brawn, and ham, and tongue, ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... percentage for the lead raised from them, those who worked upon the government lands refused to pay any longer, asserting that it was not legal. The superintendent of government soon found that his office was a sinecure, as all attempt at coercion in that half-civilised country would have been not only useless but dangerous. The government have gone to law with their tenants, but that is of no avail, for a verdict against the ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... too true. George the First was dead, George the Second had succeeded and with the change of government Gay hoped to obtain the "sinecure" which would have kept him in comfort to the end of his days. He was bitterly disappointed. The post bestowed upon ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... by a deputy-governor. His position was indeed no sinecure. The two proprietaries, who appointed him, could at any time deprive him of office. The Assembly could refuse to vote his salary, and if he displeased the king of England, he might lose, not only ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... himself. For some twenty-four years he survived his flight from England, to which country he never returned. For a time he was an assiduous writer of begging-letters and the plague of his friends. At length he obtained the appointment of consul at the good old Norman town of Caen. This was almost a sinecure, and the Beau took care to keep it so. But no one can account for the extraordinary step he took soon after entering on his consular duties. He wrote to Lord Palmerston, stating that there were no duties attached to the post, and recommending its abolition. This act of suicide is partly ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... taken a heavy load upon himself but he felt that he was to labor for his race and his country. At least one half of his students were too wild to attend the ordinary public or private schools, or to profit by them if admitted. With such material, his work could not be a sinecure. But he had a taste for it, and he gave his whole heart and soul to ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... were still encamped here, I organized a football match and acted as referee, which in a tropical sun is no sinecure, I can tell you. On Wednesday I rode into Kroonstadt and had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Lowry, Mr. Lane, the Canadian chaplain, and Mr. Carey, the resident Wesleyan minister, and we ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... time of much business and excitement set in, and the lengthening spring evenings were no sinecure to Wilmet, as the flitting day approached, being rather hurried on by the old bookseller, who wanted to be at Marshlands in time to admire his hyacinths and sow his annuals. Mr. Audley would take rooms at the Fortinbras Arms for the remainder of his stay ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... against me; the ground I tread upon is so hollow, that I am afraid, not only of falling myself, but of involving my royal master in my ruin. It is time for me to retire." Bute retired as proudly as he had exercised his office, for he neither asked for pension nor sinecure, and his retirement was followed by that of Sir Francis Dashwood, chancellor of the exchequer, and of Fox, who were elevated to the peerage: the former as Baron le Despencer, and the latter as Baron Holland. Mr. George Grenville succeeded to the premiership, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... became a supporter of government when the profusion of ministers had greatly increased, and their crimes multiplied beyond example. At such a critical moment, I will suppose this gentleman to be corrupted by a great sinecure office to muzzle his declamation, to swallow his invective, to give his assent and vote to the ministers, and to become a supporter of government, its measures, its embargo, and its American war. I will suppose, that with respect ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... puts on a new pair until they are at least a year old; and he parted with his last footboy because he one day discovered a perceptible difference between the polish of the right and left foot. In winter, he wears and recommends cork soles. His toilet is no sinecure; and on the table are always to be found, besides his dressing-box, which contains an assortment of combs, scissors, tweezers, pomades, and essences, not easily equalled, a bottle of "Eau de Cologne, veritable," a Packwood and Criterion strop; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various
... consideration, after treating Jones so badly, leaving him at a moment's notice. It's really great nonsense, if you come to think of it. He wants her services, and I do not; but because she gets into a rage about nothing he must find her a comfortable sinecure. What am I to do with a lady-clerk? I don't want one ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin |
