"Sloth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hardly knew how many were their followers, how few yours. Their line was then withdrawn to the brow of a steep hill; it had before been gathered together to storm, but on your appearance was not deployed for battle. Meanwhile you, having slain some of their best men whom not sloth but courage had made the rearmost of the troop, occupied the level ground alone, though such a fight gave you not so many comrades as your table is wont to contain guests. And when you returned to the town at your ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... young man. He waxed wroth. In a country with a backbone every Randall Holmes in the land would have been chucked willy-nilly into the army. But the country had spinal disorders. It had locomotor ataxy. The result of sloth and self-indulgence. We had the Government we deserved ... I need not quote further. You can imagine a fine old fox-hunting Tory gentleman, with England filling all the spaces of his soul, blowing off the steam of ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... games, Forsake; their comrades gay, And quit proud homes and youthful dames, For famine, toil, and fray? Yet on the nimble air benign Speed nimbler messages, That waft the breath of grace divine To hearts in sloth and ease. So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... the haunts whereof I told thee? Well I know thou didst not, since they saw no tiger! Behold our faces blackened through thy sloth and folly, ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... thickets, and stealthily repair to the maize, yucca, and anana fields, where they scratch up the root and eat the grain and fruit; but the slightest noise drives them back to their holes. In the deeper recesses of the forest resounds the monotonous, drawling cry of the sloth. Here we have a symbol of life under the utmost degree of listlessness, and of the greatest insensibility in a state of languid repose. This emblem of misery fixes itself on an almost leafless bough, and there ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... is nothing else than robbery; therefore they never engage in it, but in the view of indulging their sloth, when they have pillaged the flocks, and ravaged the fields before they are reaped. One day that the fields were covered with the whole flocks of the village, one of the keepers ran up, quite out of breath, ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... is the sluggish, scaly armadillo, which loves the detestable termites—those white ants which, with their sharp mandibles, gnaw to pieces paper, clothes, wood, the whole house in fact. Then there is the climbing sloth, with its round monkey head and large curved claws. All day long it remains sleepily hanging under a bough, and only wakes up when night falls. It lives only on trees and eats leaves. In far-back ages there were sloths as large as rhinoceroses and elephants. We have, too, ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... seemly, holy. But to what end? To the end that they may be able to do that which, if the laity do it, they will not be able to do. Who knows not that idleness cannot subsist without money? Spend thy money on thy pleasures, and the friar will not be able to live in sloth in his order. Go after women, and there will be no place for the friar. Be not longsuffering, pardon not the wrong-doer, and the friar will not dare to cross thy threshold to corrupt thy family. ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... can take them away. But if the mind, ensnared by corrupt passions, abandons itself[3] to indolence and sensuality, when it has indulged for a season in pernicious gratifications, and when bodily strength, time, and mental vigor, have been wasted in sloth, the infirmity of nature is accused, and those who are themselves in fault impute their delinquency ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... and our rage. Look on us with our sins oppressed! I, too, have trodden mine heritage, Wickedly wearying of the best. Burn from my brain and from my breast Sloth, and the cowardice that clings, And stiffness and the soul's arrest: And feed my brain with ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... When of the rights of men we heard, which to all should be common, Were of a righteous equality told, and inspiriting freedom? Every one hoped that then he should live his own life, and the fetters, Binding the various lands, appeared their hold to be loosing,— Fetters that had in the hand of sloth been held and self-seeking. Looked not the eyes of all nations, throughout that calamitous season, Towards the world's capital city, for so it had long been considered, And of that glorious title was now, ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... with power from on high.' There is no such force for the spreading of Christ's Kingdom, and the witness-bearing work of His Church, as the possession of this Divine Spirit. Plunged into that fiery baptism, the selfishness and the sloth, which stand in the way of so many of us, are all consumed and annihilated, and we are set free for service because the bonds that bound us are burnt up in the merciful furnace ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... they leave us much information to enable us to diagnose it. They called it a calenture, or fever, and attributed it to "the sudden change from cold to heat, or by reason of brackish water which had been taken in by our pinnace, through the sloth of their men in the mouth of the river, not rowing further in where the water was good." We cannot wonder that they died from drinking the water of that sluggish tropical river, for in the rainy season such water is often poisonous to the fish in the sea some half-a-mile ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... me to request yar kind hattention for a moment. (Stand back there, you boys, and don't beyave in such a silly manner!) We har now arrived at the Haswail, or Sloth Bear, described by BUFFON as 'aving 'abits which make it a burden to itself. (Severely.) The Haswail. In the hajoinin' cage observe the Loocorricks, the hony hanimal to oom fear is habsolootly hunknown. When hattacked by the Lion, he places his 'ed between ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 17, 1890. • Various
... law consist in keeping an everlasting bright look-out on your own side, and jamming all other varments slick through a stone wall, as the waggon-wheel used up the lame frog? (Hear, hear.) I say—and mind you I'll stick to it like a starved sloth to the back of a fat babby—I say, gentlemen, this country, the United States (particularly Kentucky, from which I come, and which will whip all the rest with out-straws and rotten bull-rushes agin pike, bagnet, mortars, and all their almighty fine artillery), ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... he was to make a league with the Protestant nobles of Scotland, Knox summoned Chatelherault, and the gentlemen of his party, then in Glasgow. They wished Norfolk to come to them by Carlisle, a thing inconvenient to Lord James. Knox chid them sharply for sloth, and want of wisdom and discretion, praising highly the conduct of Lord James. They had "unreasonable minds." "Wise men do wonder what my Lord Duke's friends do mean, that are so slack and backward in this ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... say: 'In the heathen classics you find no consciousness of sin.' It is very true—God be thanked for it. They were conscious of wrath, of cruelty, avarice, drunkenness, lust, sloth, cowardice, and other actual vices, and struggled and got rid of the deformities, but they were not conscious of 'enmity against God,' and didn't sit down and whine and groan against non-existent evil. I have done wrong things enough in my life, and do them ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... public, and yet their necessities as great. Innumerable circumstances reduce men to want; and pressing poverty obliges some people to make their cases public, or starve; and from thence came the custom of begging, which sloth and idleness has improved into a trade. But the method I propose, thoroughly put in practice, would remove the cause, and the effect would ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... reddened again. But he had become accustomed to her ways; rather, perhaps, he had begun to recognize the quaint justice that underlaid them, or, possibly, some better self of his own, that had been buried under bitterness and sloth and struggled into life. "But whatever he says," he returned eagerly, "cannot alter my feelings to YOU. It can only alter my position here, and you say you are above being influenced by that. Tell me, Nelly—dear Nelly! have you nothing ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... all this misery, was committed when our scientists began to create a new world of steel and iron and chemistry and electricity and forgot that the human mind is slower than the proverbial turtle, is lazier than the well-known sloth, and marches from one hundred to three hundred years behind the ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... there is a wise enriching of the self, a thorough fitting for that service. The more of a man you are, the brighter your intellect, the broader your sympathies, the better your service to the world may be. The sloth that sinks the soul in indifference to its own development is the most sinful ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... his wrath, flung the power of attorney at the head of the innocent maidservant, and was only forcibly withheld from horse-whipping the rascally messenger by whose sloth and drunkenness the disappointment ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... had let her arms fall by her sides—round, smooth arms with a pretty dimple at the elbow. Her wrists were delicate; her hands, which did not betray the servant, were embellished with a lady's fingernails. And lazily, with graceful sloth, she allowed her indolent figure to curve and sway;—a figure that a garter might span, and that was made even more slender to the eye by the projection of the hips and the curve of the hoops that gave the balloon-like roundness to her skirt;—an ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... both the hammock sentinels came the mournful sounds of living things unseen. From the depths beyond drifted the weird plaint of the sloth, crying in the night, "Oh me, poor sloth, oh-oh-oh-oh!" Goat suckers repeated by the hour their monotonous refrains, "Quao quao," or "Cho-co-co-cao," while a third earnestly exhorted, "Joao corta pao!" ("John, cut wood!"). Tree frogs and crickets clacked ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... among such a crew; to restrain their excesses, curb their lawless acts of violence, and secure some semblance of decency in their conduct toward the natives. Many of them, we read, were so given over to idleness and sloth, that they actually made the islanders beasts of burden, to carry them on their backs. It is a most unhappy fact that the missionaries of the cross were often accompanied by bands of miscreants, who wantonly ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... only this frivolous ambition of being thought masterly inciting them on one hand, but also their natural sloth tempting them on the other. They are terrified at the prospect before them, of the toil required to attain exactness. The impetuosity of youth is distrusted at the slow approaches of a regular siege, and desires, from mere impatience of labour, to take the ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... those who suffer from it or who are participants, as mere witnesses, in its tyranny. It is the obsession of man by the flower. In the shape of the flower his own paltriness revisits him—his triviality, his sloth, his cheapness, his wholesale habitualness, his slatternly ostentation. These return to him and wreak upon him their dull revenges. What the tyranny really had grown to can be gauged nowhere so well as in country lodgings, where the most ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... these doughty Pacifists having told you how much their one object is to secure peace, then proceed to tell you that this thing which they hope to secure is a very evil thing, that under its blighting influence nations wane in luxury and sloth. And of course they imply that our own nation, about a third of whom have not enough to eat and about another third of whom have a heart-breaking struggle with small means and precariousness of livelihood, is in danger of this degeneration which comes from too much wealth and luxury ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... destined never to come off. Tracey Tanner went to work for Graham and Duncan. The Citizen gained eighteen subscribers; four old ones paid up their accounts. Babies were born, people married and died, loved and hated, lived in striving or sloth, accomplished or failed. Roland Barnette paid ostentatious attentions to Bess Gabriel, who tolerated him simply because she didn't much like Josie; but, blighted by Josie's supreme indifference, this budding passion drooped and failed by mutual consent of ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... bold, why wilt thou never cease The fathers from their tombs to summon forth? Why bring them, with this dead age to converse, That stifled is by enemies and by sloth? And why dost thou, voice of our ancestors, That hast so long been mute, Resound so loud and frequent in our ears? Why all these grand discoveries? As in a flash the fruitful pages come, What hath this wretched age deserved, That dusty cloisters have for it reserved These hidden treasures ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... This indecent sloth is very much owing to that luxury and excess men usually practise upon this day, by which half the service thereof is turned to sin; men dividing the time between God and their bellies, when, after a gluttonous ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... valedixi; syrenis istius cantibus surdam posthac aurem obversurus.—I bid farewell to Sloth, being resolved henceforth not to listen to her ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... who style themselves the patriarchs of the Eastern churches." For such an embassy, a time and character less propitious could not easily have been found. Benedict the Twelfth [3] was a dull peasant, perplexed with scruples, and immersed in sloth and wine: his pride might enrich with a third crown the papal tiara, but he was alike unfit for the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... Babington conspiracy. 67. Weston, alias Edmonds. His exorcisms. Mainy. The basis of Harsnet's statements. 69. The devils in "Lear." 70. Edgar and Mainy. Mainy's loose morals. 71. The devils tempt with knives and halters. 72. Mainy's seven devils: Pride, Covetousness, Luxury, Envy, Wrath, Gluttony, Sloth. The Nightingale business. 73. Treatment of the possessed: confinement, flagellation. 74. Dr Pinch. Nicknames. 75. Other methods. That of "Elias and Pawle". The holy chair, sack and oil, brimstone. 76. Firing out. 77. Bodily diseases the work of ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... a quadruped you view Attached to any tree, It may be 'tis the Wanderoo, Or yet the Chimpanzee. If right side up it may be both, If upside down it is the Sloth. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... lilac, in an atmosphere of liquid gold, in glory. And thus Fra Angelico worked on, content with the dearly purchased science of his masters, placid, beatic, effeminate, in an aesthetical paradise of his own, a paradise of sloth and sweetness, a paradise for weak souls, weak hearts, and weak eyes; patiently repeating the same fleshless angels, the same boneless saints, the same bloodless virgins; happy in smoothing the unmixed, unshaded tints of the sky, and earth, and dresses; laying on the gold ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... also conducive to health. A medical authority of highest repute affirms that "excessive labor, exposure to wet and cold, deprivation of sufficient quantities of necessary and wholesome food, habitual bad lodging, sloth, and intemperance are all deadly enemies to human life, but they are none of them so bad as violent and ungoverned passions;" that men and women have frequently lived to an advanced age in spite of these; but that instances are very rare in which people of irascible tempers ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... church to-day is that everywhere and in all its operations and influences it is on the side of sloth of mind; that it banishes brains, it sanctifies stupidity, it canonizes incompetence. Consider the power of the Church of England and its favorite daughter here in America; consider their prestige with the press and in politics, their hold upon literature ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... families, and well may they be proud of a social position, which is due to the honest industry and hereditary virtues of several generations. Whilst some of patrician extraction, crushed under the weight of vices, or made inert by sloth, or labor-contemning pride, and degenerating from pure gold into vile dross, have been swept away, and have sunk into the dregs and sewers of the commonwealth. Thus in Louisiana, the high and the low, although the country has never suffered from any political or ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... Pot, a Spit, or any Utensil to cook her Victuals, might as well be found among the Tartars as with her. She took every thing from her Sister at what Price she pleased, unsight unseen, and bought the Pig in the Poke. Necessity roused her from Stupidity and Sloth, she encouraged her Tenants to apply to Trades, assured them of a ready Market, and rewarded those that did their Work the best; and, at present, has every thing within herself. And tho' it must be owned a very unreasonable, ...
— The True Life of Betty Ireland • Anonymous
... Church, for the purpose of electing some new Bishops, Augusta rose to address the assembly. He spoke in the name of the younger clergy, and immediately commenced an attack upon the old Executive Council. He accused them of listlessness and sloth; he said that they could not understand the spirit of the age, and he ended his speech by proposing himself and four other broad-minded men as members of the Council. The old men were shocked; the young ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... Aurelius with blissful heart anon Answered thus; "Fie on a thousand pound! This wide world, which that men say is round, I would it give, if I were lord of it. This bargain is full-driv'n, for we be knit;* *agreed Ye shall be payed truly by my troth. But looke, for no negligence or sloth, Ye tarry us here no longer than to-morrow." "Nay," quoth the clerk, *"have here my faith to borrow."* *I pledge my To bed is gone Aurelius when him lest, faith on it* And well-nigh all that night he had his rest, What for his labour, and his hope of bliss, His woeful heart *of penance ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... have effected comparatively little in incorporating the issues of Christ's work in the consciousness and characters of mankind. Much of the slowness of that progress of Christianity is due to the faithlessness and sloth of professing Christians. But it still remains true that God lifts His foot slowly, and plants it firmly, in His march through the world. So, both in regard to the progress of truth, and the diffusion of the highest, and of the secondary, blessings of Christianity through the nations, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... profoundest admiration for the imperial heroes who bore the burdens of a throne in those days of tribulation. They succeeded in restoring the ancient glories—but glories followed by a deeper shame. They attempted impossibilities when their subjects were sunk in sloth and degradation. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... and writer; but it is a gross imposition upon common reason, to terrify us with their strength. For Popery, under the circumstances it lieth in this kingdom; although it be offensive, and inconvenient enough, from the consequences it hath to increase the rapine, sloth and ignorance, as well as poverty of the natives; is not properly dangerous in that sense, as some would have us take it; because it is universally hated by every party of a different religious profession. It ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... sloth's determined foe; Of scholars chief, who to the Veda cling; Rich in the riches that ascetics know; Glad, gainst the foeman's elephant to show His valor;—such was Shudraka, ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... draw the conclusion that this singular quadruped, like the sloth, is not a walker on the ground of its own free-will, but ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... this day But is got up and gone to bring in May. A deal of youth ere this is come Back, and with white-thorn laden home. Some have despatch'd their cakes and cream, Before that we have left to dream: And some have wept and woo'd, and plighted troth, And chose their priest, ere we can cast off sloth: Many a green-gown has been given, Many a kiss, both odd and even: Many a glance, too, has been sent From out the eye, love's firmament: Many a jest told of the keys betraying This night, and locks ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... enough to make one laugh to see the big lubber try to whisper hints, and shiver and shake, as he showed me a knot in his matted locks and asked if it were not the enemy's tying. I told him 'twas tied by the enemy indeed, the deadly sin of sloth, and that a stout Dutchman ought to be ashamed of himself for carrying such a head within or without. But I scarce bethought me the impudent Schelm could have ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... despising his person, refused to admit him to her presence; and for the love of this lady who had so unkindly treated him, the noble Orsino, forsaking the sports of the field and all manly exercises in which he used to delight, passed his hours in ignoble sloth, listening to the effeminate sounds of soft music, gentle airs, and passionate love-songs; and neglecting the company of the wise and learned lords with whom he used to associate, he was now all day long conversing with young Cesario. Unmeet companion no doubt his grave courtiers thought ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... monitory voice, Prescribes her duties, or directs her choice; Yet, timely provident, she hastes away To snatch the blessings of a plenteous day; When fruitful Summer loads the teeming plain, She crops the harvest, and she stores the grain. How long shall sloth usurp thy useless hours, Unnerve thy vigour, and enchain thy powers? While artful shades thy downy couch enclose, And soft solicitation courts repose, Amidst the drowsy charms of dull delight, Year chases ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... opposed in principle to all philanthropic activity. "Philanthropy gives a beautiful witness touching those who engage in it, but it cannot prevent the misfortunes which torture the race; nay, it strengthens them needlessly, and offers premiums to sloth and incompetence. Only exertion of all forces in untiring and iron labor can save mankind from the cancer of poverty which tortures it. Were there no help behind any man's shoulders, no hands would drop down unoccupied; each man would exercise his own strength, and misery would ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... placed on the stage for Henry the Sixth; he in it asleep. To him the lieutenant, and a pursuivant (R. Cowley, Jo. Duke), and one warder (R. Pallant). To them Pride, Gluttony, Wrath, and Covetousness at one door; at another door Envy, Sloth, and Lechery. The three put back the four, ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... and the most pernicious of all vices, for they lead to all the others. By idleness and sloth man remains ignorant, he forgets even the science he had acquired, and falls into all the misfortunes which accompany ignorance and folly; by idleness and sloth man, devoured with disquietude, in order to dissipate it, abandons himself to all the ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... a world yielding enough and to spare for all, the endless succession of wise men, from the Contributing Editor of Proverbs unto this day, who have hymned the praise of diligence and docility, the scorn of sloth. Yet not one sage of the bountiful bunch has ever ventured to denounce the twin vices of industry and obedience. True, there is the story of blind Samson at the ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... adviser in matters of business or pleasure, and governed alike the army, the courts of justice, and the women. Thus was spent a reign of seventeen years, during which the king had never but once, when he met Antiochus in battle, roused himself from his life of sloth. ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... the estate be so meane and inconsiderate that it will not reach to a free education, then that orphan [shall] be bound to some manuall trade ... except some friends or relatives be willing to keep them." 1660-61. "To avoid sloth and idleness ... as also for the relief of parents whose poverty extends not to giving [their children] breeding, the justices of the peace should ... bind out children to tradesmen or husbandmen to be brought up in some good and ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... or invented, an effeminate debauchee, sunk in luxury and sloth, who at the last was driven to take up arms, and, after a prolonged but ineffectual resistance, avoided capture by suicide, cannot be identified. Asurbanipal (A[)s]ur-b[a]ni-apli), the son of Esarhaddon and grandson of Sennacherib, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... as old as the time of the Druids— Friendship may match with that monarch of fluids; 840 Each supples a dry brain, fills you its ins-and-outs, Gives your life's hourglass a shake when the thin sand doubts Whether to run on or stop short, and guarantees Age is not all made of stark sloth and arrant ease. I have seen my little lady once more, 845 Jacynth, the gypsy, Berold, and the rest of it, For to me spoke the Duke, as I told you before; I always wanted to make a clean breast of it: And now it is made—why, my ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... the presence of rudiments of horns in the female of Cervulus moschatus; on the horns of goats and sheep; on crests of male antelopes; on the beard of the ibex; on the Berbura goat; on sexual differences in the coloration of Rodents; ornaments of male sloth; on the colours of the Elands; on the Sing-sing antelope; on the colours of goats; on Lemur Macaco; ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... a vast Variety of these Inclinations among Mankind. Some there are who have no bent to Business at all; but, if they could indulge Inclination, would doze out Life in perpetual Sloth and Inactivity: Others can't be altogether Idle, but incline only to trifling and useless Employments, or such as are altogether out of Character. Both these sorts of Men are properly good for nothing: They just live, and help to[I] consume the Products of the Earth, but answer no valuable End ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... establish, and that he felt not so much the love of liberty as repugnance to authority." It may, at least, be credited to Johnson for moderation, that he requires only four of the Seven Deadly Sins, to wit, Pride, Envy, Anger, and Sloth, to explain Milton's political tenets. Had he permitted himself another sentence, an easy place might surely have been made for Gluttony, Luxury, and Covetousness, the three whose absence cannot fail to be remarked by any lover of thorough and detailed treatment ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... was a fellow of Lincoln whilst Johnson was an undergraduate, and was learning at Oxford the necessity of rousing his countrymen from the religious lethargy into which they had sunk. "Have not pride and haughtiness of spirit, impatience, and peevishness, sloth and indolence, gluttony and sensuality, and even a proverbial uselessness been objected to us, perhaps not always by our enemies nor wholly without ground?" So said Wesley, preaching before the University of Oxford in ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... dreams were epitomized in Joan. She was the ideal that he had placed on the secret altar of his soul. She struck, all vibrant with youth, the one poetic note that was hidden in his character behind vanity and sloth, cynicism and the ingrained belief that whatever he desired he must have. And as he drove away from Easthampton and the Hosack house he left behind him Alice and all that she was and meant. She receded from his mind like the white cliffs ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... among the mammals are known as the placentals, or those which bring forth mature young. In this class are found the ant-eaters, sloth, manatee, the whale and porpoise, the horse, cow, sheep, and other hoofed animals; the elephant, seal, the dog, wolf, lion, tiger, and all flesh eating animals; the hares, rats, mice, and ail other gnawing animals; the bats, moles, and other insect-feeders; then come the ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... did you speak the truth," answered she; "for if you were really in love with me, you would not have turned to see another woman." And the Persian poet Jami, in his Baharistan, relates that a man with a very long nose asked a woman in marriage, saying: "I am no way given to sloth, or long sleeping, and I am very patient in bearing vexations." To which she replied: "Yes, truly: hadst thou not been patient in bearing vexations thou hadst not carried that nose of ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... luxury of our lives might introduce diseases, did not our daily exercise prevent them. This gives us an appetite and relish for our dainties, and at the same time an antidote against the evil effects which sloth, united with luxury, induces on the habit of a human body. Our women we enjoy with ecstasies at least equal to what the greatest men feel in their embraces. I can, I am assured, say of myself, that no mortal could reap more perfect happiness from the tender passion than my fortune had decreed me. ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... Doctor had completed the survey of India, he opened his batteries on the sloth and selfishness of too many of Christ's professed followers; he poured contempt upon the men who said: "They are not so green as to waste their money on the farce of Foreign Missions." "No, no, indeed," he continued, "they are not green, ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... to the sloths were certain huge beasts, now extinct, which formerly inhabited the same Continent—such as the Megatherium and Mylodon, which rivalled or exceeded our largest rhinoceroses in bulk. They fed on the same food which nourishes the sloth, but obviously the branches of no tree could sustain such monsters. They obtained their leafy pasture, therefore, by a different method. Rearing themselves on their massive hind legs and powerful tail, as on a tripod, they embraced the trees with their vigorous arms, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... and occupied in a perpetual round of empty ceremonies, while the real business of government was managed by the council of state. In Tonquin the monarchy ran a similar course. Living like his predecessors in effeminacy and sloth, the king was driven from the throne by an ambitious adventurer named Mack, who from a fisherman had risen to be Grand Mandarin. But the king's brother Tring put down the usurper and restored the king, retaining, however, for himself and his descendants the dignity of general of all the forces. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... sort were glad to see him go, but his old companions with whom he had shared so many dangers and privations were filled with grief. "He ever hated baseness, sloth, pride and indignity," said one of them. "He never allowed more for himself than for his soldiers with him. Upon no danger would he send them where he would not lead them himself. He would never see us want what he either had or could by ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... By either name she found an easy way Into my heart, whose sentinels all proved Unfaithful to their trust, the luckless day She entered there. "Prudence and reason both! Did you not question her? How was it pray She so persuaded you?" "Nor sleep nor sloth," They cried, "o'ercame us then, a CHILD at play Went smiling past us, and then turning round Too late your heart to save, a woman's face ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... ideas of peace on a basis of compromise had disappeared on either side. The end, it was seen clearly, must be either absolute slavery for all but the privileged, or a system of life founded on equality and Communism. The sloth, the hopelessness, and if I may say so, the cowardice of the last century, had given place to the eager, restless heroism of a declared revolutionary period. I will not say that the people of that time foresaw the life we are leading now, but there was a general instinct amongst them towards the ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... Patriot has a long time perceived that, in the direction of affairs relative to this war with England, there have been manifested an inconceivable lukewarmness and sloth; but they discover themselves still more, at this moment, by the little inclination which, in general, the Regencies of the Belgic Provinces testify to commence a treaty of commerce and friendship with the new Republic of the Thirteen ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... Europe, Asia and Africa; and that on an average it was built up more stupendously than that of to-day, we can see from the cave-bear and the mammoth. South America is the home of a peculiar order of mammalia—of the edentata, to which belong the sloth, the armadillo, and the like. All its predecessors are to be found also in the Pliocene strata of South America, and only there; and mostly in gigantic, but otherwise completely related, forms. New Zealand has no indigenous mammalia, but in ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... at Wethermel in much content, and much it pleased him to look upon the beauty of Elfhild and the fairness of the life that men lived in the Dale. At last he said: "Now I must shake off my sloth somewhat, and it will be a case of farewell." "Will it?" said Osberne. "Yea," said the Knight, "for I will to Eastcheaping, and there I will set me to gather men, and I look to it that, ere three months are ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... dream; you sleep away your hours In desperate sloth, miscalled philosophy. Up, up, for honour's sake; twelve legions wait you, And long to call you chief: By painful journeys, I led them, patient both of heat and hunger, Down from the Parthian marches to the Nile. 'Twill do you good to see their sun-burnt faces, Their scarred ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... Did he live in a London suburb he would be pointed out to the rising generation by anxious fathers as the very model for them to follow. The village ought to be proud of them, but the village secretly and aside hates them, being practical commentaries on the general sloth and stupidity. This energy of work, too, is like the saints of Utah, who have made an oasis and a garden where was a desert. After labouring from morning till night they like the sound of a feminine voice and the warmth of a feminine welcome in the ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... morally and physically courageous. Though as a youth he had been idle, he was never addicted to pleasure; his accession brought him work which was congenial to him, he overcame his natural tendency to sloth and, so long as his health allowed, discharged his kingly duties with diligence. His intellectual powers were small and uncultivated, but he had plenty of shrewdness and common sense; he showed a decided ability for kingcraft, not of ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... to those minds which instead of exercise give themselves up to sloth. They are like the razor here spoken of, and lose the keenness of their edge, while the rust of ignorance spoils ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... practically have substituted for the theological virtues, Faith, Hope and Charity, the ascending degrees of belief, resignation, money. This is partly due to our religious inheritance and partly to mental and spiritual sloth which dislikes the effort of thinking, preferring easy acquiescence in conditions that are the resultants of blinded vision. For dependency upon money is not something merely of the present, but a condition in the spiritual sphere ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... our present employment of it! This, from 'in' and 'doleo,' not to grieve, is properly a state in which we have no grief or pain; and employed as we now employ it, suggests to us that indulgence in sloth constitutes for us the truest negation of pain. Now no one would wish to deny that 'pain' and 'pains' are often nearly allied; but yet these pains hand us over to true pleasures; while indolence is so far from yielding that good which ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... under its character of a trade—emblem, nationally expressive, it was symbolic of old and new ideas, of conservatism and progress, of routine and enterprise, of drudgery and adventure—and of a certain easy-going optimism that would have appeared the Father of Sloth itself if it had not been so stubbornly, so ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... maiden, nor any drugs to equip Disease with the vigour of that young man. Do not riches bring us to solicitude instead of rest, envy instead of affection, and danger instead of safety? Can they prolong their own possession, or lengthen his days who enjoys them? So far otherwise, that the sloth, the luxury, the care which attend them, shorten the lives of millions, and bring them with pain and misery to an untimely grave. Where, then, is their value if they can neither embellish nor strengthen our forms, sweeten nor prolong our lives?—Again: Can they adorn the mind more than the ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... "Secondly, because sloth is a kind of disease in a well-ordered Common-wealth wee further charge and command by the vertue of our absolute authority, that no man bee found winking, or pincking, or nodding, much lesse snorting, upon paine of forfaiting twelve ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... as they are commonly called, beasts. Of cetacea, or whale-like mammals, sixty-five; ruminantia, or cud-chewers, one hundred and seventy-seven; pachydermata, or thick-skinned mammals, such as the horse, hog, and elephant, forty-one; edentata, like the sloth and ant-eater, thirty-five; rodentia, or gnawers, such as the rat, squirrel, and beaver, six hundred and seventeen; carnivora, or flesh-eaters, four hundred and forty-six; cheiroptera, or bats, three hundred and twenty-eight; quadrumana, or monkeys, two ...
— The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science - A Discourse • William Denton
... all we love that you may loathe Intrigue and darkness, that you may disperse The ranks of ugly tyrannies and, worse, The sodden languor and complacent sloth. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... us lie down on the bed of sloth and security, and persuade ourselves that there is no danger They are daily administering the opiate with multiplied arts and delusions, and I am sorry to observe, that the gilded pill is so alluring to some who call themselves the friends of Liberty. But is there no danger when ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... in the eyes of the new-comers, whom, even in the most trifling details, it was the official policy to lead astray. Now, however, there is no cause for concealment; the Roi Faineant has shaken off his sloth, and his Maire du Palais, together, and an intelligible Government, which need not fear scrutiny from abroad, is the result: the records of the country being but so many proofs of the Mikado's title to power, there is no reason for keeping up any show of mystery. ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... at the prospect before us. That appearance of glory which we once had in view—that hope—that laudable ambition of serving our country, and meriting its applause, are now no more: all is dwindled into ease, sloth, and fatal inactivity. In a word, all is lost, if the ways of men in power, like certain ways of Providence, are not inscrutable. But we who view the actions of great men at a distance can only form conjectures agreeably to a limited perception; and, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... "she doesn't get it. Probably, because she always grows fat, from sheer lack of will-power to resist sloth and gluttony—the only agreeable vices left her; and by no stretch of the imagination can a fat woman be converted into either ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... preparations against him, Vitel'lius, though buried in sloth and luxury, resolved to make an effort to defend the empire; and his chief commanders, Va'lens and Cecin'na, were ordered to make all possible preparations to resist the invaders. 6. The first army that entered Italy with a hostile intention ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... the age in which they lived. Such monks as I have met[285] maintained that extreme forms of tapas were good for the nerves of ancient saints but not for the weaker natures of to-day. But in avoiding rigorous severity, they have not fallen into sloth ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... its heavy build. Its food is the young leaves of the Eucalyptus, and it is said that the Native Bear cannot be taken to England because it would die on board ship, owing to there being no fresh gum leaves. The writers are incorrect who call the animal a sloth. ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... fought it out against all comers; and who shall say that he does not merit the glowing eulogy on himself which he inserts in his General History? "What shall I say but this, we left him, that in all his proceedings made justice his first guide, and experience his second, ever hating baseness, sloth, pride, and indignity, more than any dangers; that upon no danger would send them where he would not lead them himself; that would never see us want what he either had or could by any means get us; that would rather want than borrow; or starve than not pay; that loved ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... money for the minister's salary, and for other expenses of the church, wholly by voluntary and eagerly given contributions,—the "Lord having directed him to make it clear by Scripture." He believed that tithes and church-taxes were productive of "pride, contention and sloth," and indicated a declining spiritual condition of the church. But it was a strange voluntary gift he wished, that was forced by dread of the pillory ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... he said, in confusion. "I acknowledge the sloth, but not the implied laxness anent ranching. Believe me, I have learned an ample lesson to-day. I now have a fuller appreciation of our worthy foreman; a fair knowledge of the horse, most accurately termed 'outlaw', as the bruised condition of my ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... books, the old books, the mother loves them best; They leave no bitter taste behind to haunt the youthful breast: They bid us hope, they bid us fill our hearts with visions fair; They do not paralyze the will with problems of despair. And as they lift from sloth and sense to follow loftier planes, And stir the blood of indolence to bubble in the veins: Inheritors of mighty things, who own a lineage high, We feel within us budding wings that long to reach the sky: To rise above the commonplace, and through the cloud to soar, And join the loftier company ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... nourishment. It is easily caught when at a distance from its burrow; its flesh resembles lean mutton in taste, and to us was acceptable food. Another species of this animal has been discovered in New South Wales, which lives in the tops of the trees and, in manners, bears much resemblance to the sloth. ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... so the thousands of students who preceded them have spent theirs, and, if matters do not mend, so will those yet to come spend theirs, and be brutalized, while wounded dignity and youthful enthusiasm will be converted into hatred and sloth, like the waves that become polluted along one part of the shore and roll on one after another, each in succession depositing a larger sediment of filth. But yet He who from eternity watches the consequences of a deed develop like a thread through the loom of the centuries, He ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... Holy Ghost, to cast off error and ignorance, and to acknowledge the true faith, since 'the just man liveth by faith'; while he is anointed between the shoulders, that he may be clothed with the grace of the Holy Ghost, lay aside indifference and sloth, and become active in good works; so that the sacrament of faith may purify the thoughts of his heart, and strengthen his shoulders for the burden of labor." But after Baptism, as Rabanus says (De Sacram. iii), "he is forthwith anointed on the head by the priest with ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... stamp than their predecessors, "the Church had quite lost its esteem over the nation." Clarendon, whom he calls "more the friend of the Bishops than of the Church," had, in his opinion, endowed them and the higher clergy too well, and they were sunk in luxury and sloth. The Latitudinarians infused into the Church life, energy, and a sense of duty: they were, he adds, good preachers and acceptable to the king, who, "having little or no literature, but true and good sense," liked sermons "plain, clear, and short." "Incedo per ignes," ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... at last,' he cried, when he saw me. 'You idler! dawdle! sloth! gee up, do make haste! You ought to have been here an hour ago! To-morrow I am going to read to Harel a grand drama in ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... What miserable economy! what feeble foresight! What principle of political economy is better established than that a monopoly is a curse to both producer and consumer? To the first it pays a premium on fraud, sloth, and negligence; and to the second it supplies the worst possible article, in the worst possible way, at the highest possible price. In agriculture, in manufactures, in the professions, and in the arts, it is the greatest bar to improvement with which any branch of industry can be cursed. The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... from the natives having seen large skeletons embedded in cliffs? I remember finding on the banks of the Parana a skeleton of a Mastodon, and the Gauchos concluded that it was a borrowing animal like the Bizcacha. (684/1. On the supposed existence in Patagonia of a gigantic land-sloth, see "Natural Science," XIII., 1898, page 288, where Ameghino's discovery of the skin of Neomylodon listai was practically first made known, since his privately published pamphlet was not generally seen. The animal was afterwards identified ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... knights, stuck full of arrows, beaten with mallets, pierced by lances, crushed by maces, became frenzied with rage and shame at their inaction. They cried aloud, "Alas! we shall be convicted of cowardly sloth and disgraced forevermore!" Then, suddenly, exasperated beyond endurance, they faced about, and with a loud shout, "Holy Sepulchre aid us!" charged furiously into the midst of the infidels. Hundreds they slew, but their disobedient act threw ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... disposition of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshaling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience; for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need proyning by study; and studies ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... charitable, while they turn away disgusted with filth and laziness: not out of pride, but because they see that it is next to impossible to mend the condition of those who degrade themselves by dirt and sloth; and few people care to help those who will ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... why the great brute was armed with such enormous paws. The use that he was putting them to was precisely that for which nature had intended them. The sloth-like creature was herbivorous, and to feed that mighty carcass entire trees must be stripped of their foliage. The reason for its attacking us might easily be accounted for on the supposition of an ugly disposition such as that which the fierce and stupid rhinoceros of Africa possesses. ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... that they would even pay two tributes to be free from the church. They love their old beliefs and revelries so strongly that they would lose their souls for them. Without any fear, how would they attend to their duties?" The missionaries also desire to break up the native habits of sloth and vagabondage, by compelling the Indians to live in villages; but many Spaniards oppose this policy. Medina recounts the difficulties between the friars and the ecclesiastical authorities, in Bishop Salazar's time, regarding the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... much pride on this collection of virtues, but rather bring yourself to account for your faults. Take just one, the first that comes, impatience, sloth, gossip, uncharitableness, sulkiness, whatever it may be, ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... but knew how you the purpose cherish Whiles thus you mocke it: how in stripping it You more inuest it: ebbing men, indeed (Most often) do so neere the bottome run By their owne feare, or sloth ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... velvety place on the tan-bark sidewalk before he put his feet firmly down and squared himself on them to give the two-finger whistle for his chum, which is the terror to the nervous. Much of the boy had gone out of him. He moved with the motion and sloth of decrepit age. Next week you will not know him for the same boy. His feet will be hardened, he will dance over the macadam mixed streets with the callosity of a stone-crusher, and the fugacious cat will be lucky if it gets its tail through the fence in time. The mourner's ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... And certain it is, that trials, and even persecution often develop the power of Christian principle, and the strength of religious faith; while ease and outward prosperity seem to lull the souls of believers into an unworthy sloth and a sinful conformity with the world around them. The soldier of Christ must maintain a warfare; and when will he be more likely to be constantly awake to his duty, than when surrounded by the open and avowed enemies ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... change in him in those months; and, indeed, there had been little or no change, for he had an equable and practical, though imaginative, disposition, despite his avoirdupois, and his new purpose did not stir him yet from his comfortable sloth. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of mankind. It is the design of Christ to establish an interest in the world; and this is to be maintained, not by fear, but by firmness: not by temporal compliances, but by holy resistance; not by sloth, inactivity, and shrinking into a corner, but by "putting on the whole armour of God." Not to be for Christ is to be against him—neutrality is enmity—a refusal to enlist under his banners is ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... historians, commenced in 1737, under the inspection and at the expense of the community of Saint Maur, will long show that the revenues of the Benedictines were not always spent in self-indulgence, and that the members of that order did not uniformly slumber in sloth and indolence, when they had discharged the formal duties ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... circumstances, to prove highly beneficial to us. The offensiveness and noxiousness look very much like a direct command from the Author of Nature, to do that which shall turn the refuse to a good account—namely, to bury it in the earth. Yet, from sloth and negligence, it is often allowed to cumber the surface, and there do its evil work instead. An important principle is thus instanced—the essential identity of Nuisance and Waste. Nearly all the physical annoyances ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... are efforts made to reclaim the vicious, to bring up their children in the way they should go, in the hope that when they are old they will not desert it. The grown-up will not go to church; in manufacturing towns they will not even put on Sunday's clothes, but revel in intoxication or sloth in their working-dresses all the Lord's day; except when softened by misfortune, or roused by calamity, they will not listen, even at home, to the voice of religious counsel. Children may learn their catechism, and repeat their responses at school; but when they become men ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... of the Esmeralda she was a sloth when compared with the speed of the wave from such an earthquake. From the glare of the illumination to perfect darkness the contrast was sudden and extreme. But the blackness of the ocean was soon whitened by the snowy plumes of the avalanche of water which was now racing us, far astern as ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... off this sloth and awake: I will sing till I've stiffened your lip against every knave that would take A share of ...
— The Green Helmet and Other Poems • William Butler Yeats
... occupation. But as the boy Patrick was one day in the fields with his flock, a wolf, rushing from the neighboring wood, caught up a ewe-lamb, and carried it away. Returning home at evening from the fold, his aunt chided the boy for negligence or for sloth; yet he, though blushing at the reproof, patiently bore all her anger, and poured forth his prayers for the restoration of the ewe-lamb. In the next morning, when he brought the flock to the pasture, the wolf ran up, carrying the lamb ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... my faint soul, wherefore? Shake first from thine own powers dull sloth's control; Then lift thy voice with an exulting "Therefore Thou, too, shalt ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... to pay a heavy and disgraceful tribute for the corn which was absolutely necessary for the support of his capital. But a sudden and most extraordinary change took place in the character of Heraclius: he roused himself from his sloth, indolence and despair; he fitted out a large fleet; exerted his skill, and displayed his courage and coolness in a storm which it encountered; carried his armies into Persia itself, and succeeded in recovering Egypt and the other provinces which ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... laziness and ignorance of the people is their own and their country's bane. They are all totally unaware of the treasures at their feet. This dreadful sloth is in part engendered by the excessive bounty of the land in its natural state; by the little want of clothes or other luxuries, in consequence of the congenial temperature; and from the people having no higher object ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... perfection, and left it in its beginning, as he had to go to the other villages. He charged some Christians to continue in preparing and cultivating those souls so that they might be ready on his return to receive baptism. But human weakness, united to the sloth, which almost as if native to him, accompanies the Indian, was the reason that when the religious returned after an interval of four or six months, instead of finding the work advanced, he found that which he himself had done in it lost. And idolatry always triumphed, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... a hard government that should tax its people one-tenth part of their TIME, to be employed in its service, but idleness taxes many of us much more, if we reckon all that is spent in absolute sloth, or doing of nothing, with that which is spent in idle employments or amusements that amount to nothing. Sloth, by bringing on disease, absolutely shortens life. Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... prairie life demand the habit of early rising, and more often does the tiny human atom, which claims for its home the vast tracts of natural pasture, gaze upon the sloth of the orb of day than does that glorious sphere smile down upon a ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... ourselves, we all know the speed produced by the employment of steam; we have experienced it either on railroads, or in boats when crossing the sea; but such a flight is like the travelling of a sloth in comparison with the velocity with which light moves. It flies nineteen million times faster than the best race-horse; and yet electricity is quicker still. Death is an electric shock which our heart receives; the freed soul soars upwards on the ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... is it that every one is so sanguine about the one, and so hopeless about the other? Why do we hear of the capacity and the intelligence of the former, and only of the latter what pertains to their ignorance and their sloth? Oh! unjust generation of men! have not my poor countrymen all the qualities you extol in these same Peninsulars, plus a few others ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... its wild state, spends its life in trees, and never leaves them but from force or accident. The eagle to the sky, the mole to the ground, the sloth to the tree; but what is most extraordinary, he lives not upon the branches, but under them. He moves suspended, rests suspended, sleeps suspended, and passes his life in suspense,—like a young clergyman distantly related ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... treasure, but he was known to hate bribes so much that nobody could at first be found to make him the offer. One man was sent to Megalopolis, but when he saw Philopoemen's plain, grave, hardy life, and heard how much he disapproved of sloth and luxury, he did not venture to say a word about the palace full of Eastern magnificence, but went back to Sparta. He was sent again, and still found no opportunity; and when, the third time, he did speak, Philopoemen thanked the Spartans, but said he advised them ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... world was sinking in a slough Of sloth, and ease, and selfish greed; God surely sent this scourge to ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... had spoken except herself. The council was divided. Two were for keeping to the treaty that had been signed with King William, two for accepting the will. Monseigneur, drowned as he was in fat and sloth, appeared in quite another character from his usual ones at these councils. To the great surprise of the King and his assistants, when it was his turn to speak he expressed himself with force in favour of accepting the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... at parting, thy behest to me Was that all sloth I should eschew and flee, And keep good Watch until the Night was done: Now must my Song and Service pass for none? For soon ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... counsellor, and chaplain, was always welcome as one of the home circle and family, till he broke away from such delights to labour in his task of reviving religion in the land. A little band of men were gathering round, clergy awakening from their sloth or worldliness, young nobles who began to see what chivalry meant, burghers who rejoiced in order; and hope and encouragement strengthened the ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... things: the progress is towards finer and finer discrimination according to minute differences. Yet even at this stage of European culture one's attention is continually drawn to the prevalence of that grosser mental sloth which makes people dull to the most ordinary prompting of comparison—the bringing things together because of their likeness. The same motives, the same ideas, the same practices, are alternately admired and abhorred, lauded and denounced, according ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... time I was puzzled to know how to answer my friend's complaints. All I knew was that, to strike one blow on the metal and drop the hammer because it jarred his fingers, argues sloth, not the "artistic temperament." Oh, mon ami, that "artistic temperament." "Is this all? Up again!" If you are discouraged I can only suggest a course of reading in the lives of dramatists. I recall a few offhand—Lessing, Moliere, ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... help against sin, For he strengtheth man to stand, and stirreth man's soul, And though thy body bow, as boate doth in water, Aye is thy soule safe, but if thou wilt thyself Do a deadly sin, and drenche[14] so thy soul, God will suffer well thy sloth, if thyself liketh, For he gave thee two years' gifts, to teme well thyself, And that is wit and free-will, to every wight a portion, To flying fowles, to fishes, and to beasts, And man hath most thereof, and most is to blame But if he work well therewith, as Dowell him teacheth.' ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... were slow in matters of love, it was his only sloth. In action he was swift and thorough, and his perception in all matters pertaining to ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... institution of slavery, Fee maintained that sealing up the mind of the slave, lest he should see his wrongs, was tantamount to cutting off the hand or foot in order to prevent his escape from forced and unwilling servitude.[2] "If by our practice, our silence, or our sloth," said he, "we perpetuate a system which paralyzes our hands when we attempt to convey to them the bread of life, and which inevitably consigns the great mass of them to unending perdition, can we be guiltless in the sight of ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... sloth's determined foe; Of scholars chief, who to the Veda cling; Rich in the riches that ascetics know; Glad, gainst the foeman's elephant to show His valor;—such was Shudraka, the ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... setting such an example of sloth," she said, and squeaked at her own temerity and ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris |
