"Sloth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... steady inward bliss called sukha [Footnote ref 1] instilling the mind. The formation of this first jhana roots out five ties of avijja, kamacchando (dallying with desires), vyapado (hatred), thinamiddham (sloth and torpor), uddhaccakukkuccam (pride and restlessness), and vicikiccha (doubt). The five elements of which this jhana is constituted are vitakka, vicara, plti, sukham ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... 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 to ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... highest nobility, if not the richest. I love birth, and ancestry, when they are incentives to exertion not the title deeds to sloth. Who would not prefer being the descendant of a Stephenson, an Arkwright, or a Crompton, or any other of those great architects of their own fortunes, and to feel some of their noble energies, firing their blood to ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... blood festers, and all that seemed plausible in the open air is now monstrous, full of vice and despair. Whereas, outside, the man stood like a rock, and let Fate seam or bleach him bare; here, within walls, he rages, shows his teeth, blasphemes, or sinks into sloth. You will find him heaped against the walls like ordure, hear him howl for blood in the bull-ring, appraise women, as if they were dainties, in the alamedas, loaf, scratch, pry where none should pry, ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... schemes there are some that they know not; but against such as they do know they fight on as bravely as though no others existed; and these men will be often victorious. We shall have added most strangely to our safety and happiness and peace the day that our sloth and our ignorance shall have ceased to term fatal. What should truly be looked on as human and natural by our intelligence ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... will I espouse the lady, whether or not she give consent: for never did I see any one so fair, nor desire any as I do her. Happy I am to have met with her. Now make quickly and without delay a proper bier for this dead knight. Halt not for the trouble, nor from sloth." Then some of his men draw out their swords and soon cut two saplings, upon which they laid branches cross-wise. Upon this litter they laid Erec down; then hitched two horses to it. Enide rides ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... read it straight through. These books are to be given out at the beginning of Lent. It is important that one or two seniors should be appointed to go round the monastery at the hours when brethren are engaged in reading, in case some ill-conditioned brother should be giving himself up to sloth or idle talk, instead of reading steadily; so that not only is he useless to himself, but incites ...
— Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods - The Rede Lecture Delivered June 13, 1894 • J. W. Clark
... 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 ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... clownish type still held the thrones of collegiate power. Yet the eye of an imaginative scholar as he gazed upon the grey walls, reared by piety, munificence, and love of learning in a far-off time, might well discern behind an unattractive screen of academic sloth, the venerable past, not dim and cold, but in its traditions rich, nourishing, and alive. Such an one could see before him present days of honourable emulation and stirring acquisition—fit prelude of a man's part to play in a strenuous future. It is from Gladstone's introduction ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... never to be seen in him anything trite or vulgar. Parsimonious in nothing but his time, whereof he made as much improvement, with as little loss as any man in it, when he had any to spare from his drudging practice, he was scarce patient of any diversion from his study: so impatient of sloth and idleness, that he would say, he could not do nothing. He attended the public service very constantly, when he was not withheld by his practice. Never missed the sacrament in his parish, if he were in town. Read the best English sermons ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... him, and men declare He mowed in the branches as ape and bear, And last as a sloth, ere his body failed, And he hung as a bat in the forks, and wailed, And sleep the cord of his hands untied, And he fell, and was caught ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... venerable and decrepit God of the Groves, what the state of religion must be among the people in general is easy to be imagined. In truth, I regard the Typees as a back-slidden generation. They are sunk in religious sloth, and require a spiritual revival. A long prosperity of bread-fruit and cocoanuts has rendered them remiss in the performance of their higher obligations. The wood-rot malady is spreading among the ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... persons 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 regal and the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... glance at the books. He knew their backs by heart. And books in quantity no longer intimidated him. Despite his grave defects as a keeper of resolves, despite his paltry trick of picking up a newspaper or periodical and reading it all through, out of sheer vacillation and mental sloth, before starting serious perusals, despite the human disinclination which he had to bracing himself, and keeping up the tension, in a manner necessary for the reading of long and difficult works, and despite sundry ignominious backslidings into original sluggishness—still ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... I would not, were I fifty times a prince, be a pensioner on the dead! I honor birth and ancestry when they are regarded as the incentives to exertion, not the titledeeds to sloth! I honor the laurels that overshadow the graves of our fathers; it is our fathers I emulate, when I desire that beneath the evergreen I myself have planted, my own ashes may repose! Dearest! couldst thou but see with ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... nature of human infirmity, remedies are more tardy in their operation than diseases; and, as bodies slowly increase, but quickly perish, so it is more easy to suppress industry and genius, than to recall them. For indolence itself acquires a charm; and sloth, however odious at first, becomes at length engaging. During the space of fifteen years, [7] a large portion of human life, how great a number have fallen by casual events, and, as was the fate of all the most distinguished, by the cruelty of the prince; whilst we, the few ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... impoverishment of the life. There can be no true giving of the life in service unless 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 of all ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... whom I love, hearken unto me. The Nine-bow barbarians overrun the ancient land of Khem; nine nations march up against Khem and lay it waste. Hearken unto me, my son, and I will give thee victory. Awake, awake from sloth, and I will give thee victory. Thou shalt hew down the Nine-bow barbarians as a countryman hews a rotting palm; they shall fall, and thou shalt spoil them. But hearken unto me, my son, thou shalt not thyself go up against them. Low in thy dungeon ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... Ah, how the lyre is loth, Or powerless now, to give what all men seek! Either it deadens with ignoble sloth Or deafens ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... carefully shunned the mention of atrocious charges. She dwelt only on the proofs which your past life and your own confessions had afforded of unsteady courage and unwarrantable principles; your treatment of the Woodbury girl; your correspondence with Thomson; your ignoble sloth; your ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... might my ill-past hours return again! No more, as then, should Sloth around me throw Her soul-enslaving, leaden chain! No more the precious time would I employ In giddy revels, or in thoughtless joy, 5 A ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and it seemed to him that from the moment he left the ground till now he had been like a drowsy man shaking off his sloth, like a drugged man recovering consciousness, like a man who was supposed to be dead rapidly coming to life again. With every inch added to the height from the ground, he felt stronger, more active, fuller of nervous and muscular energy. His fingers gripped each branch as firmly as if they ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... bear found only in the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere? Is the ursus arctos of Europe confined to these limits? Are the bears of South America?—the sloth bear of India and Ceylon?— the bruang of Borneo?—and his near congener, the bruang of Java and Sumatra? Why, these last are actually dwellers among palm-trees—as the cocoa-planters know to their cost! Even Mr ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... is perhaps the strongest argument against the theory of direct creation and the radical toto coelo distinction between man and beast that has yet been advanced. We cannot at the moment lay our hands upon any thorough and trustworthy account of the valves in the veins of the sloth: as that animal spends its life hanging, back downward, the structure of the veins would be interesting in this connection.—ED. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... thirty million years the bird arrived, and the kangaroo, and by and by the mastodon, and the giant sloth, and the Irish elk, and the old Silurian ass, and some people thought that man was about due. But that was a mistake, for the next thing they knew there came a great ice-sheet, and those creatures all escaped across the Bering ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... be thought 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; sloth, by bringing on diseases, absolutely shortens life. Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears, while 'The used key is always bright,' as Poor Richard says. 'But dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... Mitchell gave to three pigeons, respectively, 272 drops of black drop, 21 grains of powdered opium, and 3 grains of morphia without any effect.[72] On the other hand, horses show a like susceptibility to man to the action of drugs. In the island of Ceylon, a sloth can take 10 grains of strychnia with safety,—chickens presenting a like immunity to the poisonous effects of this alkaloid. While the dog offers such a contrast to the action of drugs as compared ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... laugh and give him all the credit. But when Bakkus, in the morning, clamouring against insane punctuality, and demanding another hour's sloth, refused to leave his bed, he came up against an incomprehensible force, and, entirely against his will, found himself on the stroke of eleven ready to begin the performance on the sands. Sometimes he felt an almost irresistible ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... dare be bounden, if the Queen's Grace and all her noble company were to sup in this kitchen at five o' the clock, I should come in and find never a kettle nor a pan on at the three-quarter past. If thy uncle wasn't a sloth, and thine aunt a snail, I'm not hostess of the King's Head at Colchester, thou'rt no more worth thy salt—nay, salt, forsooth! thou'rt not worth the water. Salt's one and fourpence the raser, and that's a deal too much to give for thee. ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... gods, Or she would never cease her prayers to Jove, Until he took from her the heavy curse Of immortality. With closer vows, The knight then sealed his worship and forswore All other aims and deeds to serve her cause. Thus passed unnoted seven barren years Of reckless passion and voluptuous sloth, Undignified by any lofty thought In his degraded mind, that sometime was Endowed with noble capability. From revelry to revelry he passed, Craving more pungent pleasure momently, And new intoxications, and each hour The ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... where a scanty subsistence could only be earned by a life of extreme temperance and toil, and where it was often to be sought, sword in hand, from an enemy far superior in numbers. Whatever may have been the vices of the Spaniards, they cannot have been those of effeminate sloth. Thus a sober, hardy, and independent race was gradually formed, prepared to assert their ancient inheritance, and to lay the foundations of far more liberal and equitable forms of government, than were ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... 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 with a Glossotherium, closely allied ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... seek it amidst the perils of war. My father, the sultan of Harran, has many enemies. Why does he not call me to his assistance? Why does he leave me here so long in obscurity? Must I spend my life in sloth, when all my brothers have the happiness to be fighting by his side?" "My son," answered Pirouze, "I am no less impatient to have your name become famous; I could wish you had already signalized yourself against your father's enemies; but we must ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... Coleridge, Vol. I., deals rashly, unjustly, and almost maliciously, with some of our own particular friends; and yet, until late in this summer, Anno Domini 1844, we—that is, neither ourselves nor our friends—ever heard of its existence. Now a sloth, even without the benefit of Mr. Waterton's evidence to his character, will travel faster than that. But malice, which travels fastest of all things, must be dead and cold at starting, when it can thus have lingered in the rear for six years; and therefore, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... 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 mill; ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... on the coast of Patagonia, whither we had gone to shoot the great Sloth, known to be the largest of animals, though we found his size to have been under-estimated. David, his father and I had flung our limbs upon the beach and were having a last pipe before turning in, while Mary, attired in barbaric splendour, sang and danced before us. It was a lovely evening, and ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... by profitable topics, roams on forbidden ground. Folded arms are accompanied by a distempered imagination. The tongue of the idle often setteth a world on fire; for scandal and gossip vegetate to rankness in the garden of sloth. The degradation, therefore, is not on the side of work. Be not ashamed to labor; for it is Heaven's decree that all should labor. Conceal not your industry. It is honorable, and honored by all good minds. In a republic especially, where the follies of caste should never enter, let woman, ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... which there is no life. She 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 impossible ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... 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 ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... run their destined course, disappear from the face of the globe, to be replaced by a new creation of far less magnitude—the mild llama, the savage jaguar, the nimble monkey with prehensile tail, the ant-eater, arborial and terrestrial; the diminutive sloth, thick-skinned tapir, alligators, turtles, and manatees; lizards, serpents; the beautiful denizens of the air with superb plumage, numerous species of humming-birds, gorgeous butterflies and beetles, vieing in their shining hues with the ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... we have defined what early rising is; seven, to those who have nothing to do,—as soon as ever business calls, to those who have. Was ever bed of sloth more eloquently reprobated than in the following lines ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... lightkeeper was frail. During the unbroken solitude of the winter months, when inspection is scarce possible, it must seem a vain toil to polish the brass hand-rail of the stair, or to keep an unrewarded vigil in the lightroom; and the keepers are habitually tempted to the beginnings of sloth, and must unremittingly resist. He who temporises with his conscience is already lost. I must tell here an anecdote that illustrates the difficulties of inspection. In the days of my uncle David and my father there was a station which ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ought to hear; Idle their hands, and dull their soul; While sloth, or ignorance, or fear, Fetters ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... are the Orientals of Europe, but St. Petersburg is a German town, German industry corrects the old Muscovite sloth and cunning. The immigrant strangers rise to the highest offices, for the crown employs them as a counterpoise on the old nobility; as burgher incorporations were used by the kings ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... that we have no knowledge of the Miocene mammalian fauna of the Australian and Austro-Columbian provinces; but, seeing that not a trace of a Platyrrhine Ape, of a Procyonine Carnivore, of a characteristically South-American Rodent, of a Sloth, an Armadillo, or an Ant-eater has yet been found in Miocene deposits of Arctogaea, I cannot doubt that they already existed in ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... blood of the sow and the tallow of the bull, its atmosphere discourages one artist while inviting another to rake up the showered rewards of a "boom" patronage. Feeling that naught but sleepiness and sloth should be censured, it resents even a kindly criticism. Quick to recognize the feasibility of a scheme; giving money, but holding time as a sacred inheritance. It is a re-gathering of the forces that peopled America and ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... intelligence than in years. Content to leave the cares of government to his favorites, he sought only for repose and pleasure. Yet in this, as has been the case in more than one other instance, the most turbulent lot fell to him who would gladly have chosen quiet and sloth. ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... 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 leisure what came to meet ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... may be dulled by neglect of duty, by sloth in prayer, by inattention to the Bible, by indefinite, hesitating testimony, and by carelessness, when we should be careful to walk soberly and steadfastly ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... into competition with rich, landed, skilled neighbors. To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. He felt the weight of his ignorance,—not simply of letters, but of life, of business, of the humanities; the accumulated sloth and shirking and awkwardness of decades and centuries shackled his hands and feet. Nor was his burden all poverty and ignorance. The red stain of bastardy, which two centuries of systematic legal defilement of Negro women had ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Physicians by Debauch were made; Excess began, and Sloth sustains the Trade. By Chace our long-liv'd Fathers earn'd their Food; Toil strung the Nerves, and purify'd the Blood; But we their Sons, a pamper'd Race of Men, Are dwindled down to threescore Years and ten. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... not much, Than trying what to do with wit and strength. 'Falls to make something: 'piled yon pile of turfs, And squared and stuck there squares of soft white chalk, And, with a fish-tooth, scratched a moon on each, And set up endwise certain spikes of tree, And crowned the whole with a sloth's skull a-top, Found dead i' the woods, too hard for one to kill. No use at all i' the work, for work's sole sake; 'Shall some day knock it down again: so He. 'Saith He is terrible: watch His feats in proof! ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... he could contain himself no longer—and then he would take that ship home where he lived and keep it there carefully, expecting the owners to come for it, but they never did. And he would try to get the idleness and sloth out of the sailors of that ship by compelling them to take invigorating exercise and a bath. He called it "walking a plank." All the pupils liked it. At any rate, they never found any fault with it after trying it. When the owners were late coming for their ships, ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... you 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
... long the ignoble sloth, how long The trust in greatness not thine own? Surely the lion's brood is strong ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... no thanksgiving, 900 If with one blow dividing the sheer life I might make end, and one pang wind up all And seal mine eyes from sorrow; for such end The Gods give none they love not; but my heart, That leaps up lightened of all sloth or fear To take the sword's point, yet with one thought's load Flags, and falls back, broken of wing, that halts Maimed in mid flight for thy sake and borne down, Mother, that in the places where I played An arm's length from thy bosom and no more 910 Shalt find ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... y yolk on'ly proc'u ra tor scoff mon'grel mi cros'co py nonce be troth' drom'e da ry cost proc'ess zo ol'o gy won't doc'ile al lop'a thy wont prov'ost au tom'a ton shone grov'e1 hy drop'a thy sloth fore'head La oc'o on forge joc'und pho tog'ra phy doth ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... sir," said Drake. "You mean that I have brought Glory back to a life of danger and vanity, and sloth and sensuality. Very well. I deny your definition. But call it what you will, I have brought her back to the only life her talents are fit for, and if ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... winter away, [p 7] Arriv'd, from the north, to be merry and gay. The Panther ferocious—the Lynx of quick sight, The Preacher[1] and Glutton[1] came hither that night. The Camel, so often with burthens opprest, Was glad for a while from his labour to rest. The Sloth, when invited, got up with much pain, Just groan'd out, "Ah, No!" and then laid down again. The Fox, near the hen-roost, no longer kept watch, But hied to the feast, better viands to catch. The Monkey, so cunning, and full of his sport, [p 8] To show All his Talents came to ...
— The Elephant's Ball, and Grand Fete Champetre • W. B.
... time, whereof he made as much improvement, with as little loss as any man in it: when he had any to spare from his drudging practice, he was scarce patient of any diversion from his study; so impatient of sloth and idleness, that he would say, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... with thee inclosed, I will loathe my pen and paper Art shall never be supposed, Sloth ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... and have their being, and that foulness is painful as the accompaniment of disorder and decay, and always indicative of the withdrawal of Divine support. And the practical analogies of life, the invariable connection of outward foulness with mental sloth and degradation, as well as with bodily lethargy and disease, together with the contrary indications of freshness and purity belonging to every healthy and active organic frame, (singularly seen in the effort of the young leaves when first their inward energy ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... prayers is non-repetition; the taint of houses, non-repair; the taint of the body is sloth; the taint of a ...
— The Dhammapada • Unknown
... of divine moments that they abolish our contritions also. I accuse myself of sloth and unprofitableness day by day; but when these waves of God flow into me I no longer reckon lost time. I no longer poorly compute my possible achievement by what remains to me of the month or the year; for these moments confer a sort of omnipresence ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... thou have of us, brother? you ask. I desire that you serve Christ with zeal and not with sloth and indifference. I desire that you do not mourn, but in thankfulness raise your hands to heaven, whenever your brother or your son enters the service of Christ. The time is come when Christ will work not only in you but through you and in others; whoever hears, let him say: ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... scene at the king's residence. The alii, rousing from his sloth and rubbing his eyes, rheumy with debauch and awa, overhears remark on the doings of a new company of hula dancers who have come into the neighborhood. He ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... now thy spite is spent, Frost and ice and branches bent! Fogs and furious storms are o'er, Sloth and torpor, sorrow frore, ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... acquaintance with the proprietor had ripened into friendship. It was Mr. Cashell who revealed to me the purpose and power of Apothecaries' Hall what time a fellow-chemist had made an error in a prescription of mine, had lied to cover his sloth, and when error and lie were brought home to him ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... by thy Holy Spirit, so to shun sloth and negligence, that every day may discharge part of the task which thou hast allotted me; and so further with thy help that labour which, without thy help, must be ineffectual, that I may obtain in all my undertakings such success as will most promote thy glory, ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... packed you away inside it and never known you were there; but, luckily for the children who lived on earth when it did (if there were any), it did not eat flesh, but only the leaves of trees and other vegetable things. It was called the giant ground sloth, and, as you may judge from this name, was not very quick in its movements. It was not found in England, but in South America, and there are now no more like it in existence; and if we had not got its skeleton we should never have known ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... fought and died for her. The War was over, but another had yet to be waged against poverty and sordid environment; against the disabilities of birth; against the abuse of wealth; against the mutual suspicions of Capital and Labour; against sloth, ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... grimacing, as fully represented the four-footed animals as the parrots did the bipeds. We found there the mongoose, but little larger than a squirrel; an animal almost as intelligent as the monkey, but far more interesting and attractive. The hideous-looking sloth, with his coarse hair, resembling Carolina moss, his repulsive physiognomy, his strong, crooked claws, his long and sharp teeth, darkly dyed with the coloring matter of the trees and shrubs which constituted his diet, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... his attention. In the Brazilian forest Darwin had his first experience of the wealth of animal and plant life in the tropics, and, like all naturalists, he was very enthusiastic over it. Among the animals that particularly attracted his attention was the sloth, a peculiar creature climbing slowly about the trees, small of size and sluggish of habit. Another animal that interested him greatly was the little armadillo with its interesting habit of curling up ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... 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. But wherefore pursue I the topic through every detail? They accuse themselves ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... fact slaves also. So this man not only bought his own freedom at a cost of at least 1,000 dollars, but left a little fortune of 700 more at his death: and then we are told of the universal idleness, thriftlessness, incorrigible sloth, and brutish incapacity of this inferior race of creatures, whose only fitting and Heaven-appointed condition is that of beasts of burthen to the whites. I do not believe the whole low white population of the state of Georgia could furnish such ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... discussion on the steel of Damascus, Joseph could not bring himself to believe that Nicodemus' interests in heroic warfare were more than intellectual caprice: and he regarded as entirely superficial Nicodemus' attacks on the present-day Jews, whose sloth and indolence he reproved, saying that they had left the heroic spirit brought out of Arabia with their language, on the banks of the Euphrates. One hero, he admitted, they had produced in modern times (Judas Maccabeus), and Joseph heard for the first time that this great man always ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... of Longshaw abode 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 over, I shall have a good host on ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... dwell therein, and the same nation that was sometime first in Ireland, and all according thereto in tongue, in manners, and in kind. The men are light of heart, fierce, and courageous on their enemies. They love nigh as well death as thraldom, and they account it for sloth to die in bed, and a great worship and virtue to die in a field fighting against enemies. The men be of scarce living, and many suffer hunger long time, and eat selde tofore the sun going down, and use flesh, milk, meats, fish, and fruits more than Britons: and use ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... paths to Glory's height, There are no rules to compass greatness known; Each for himself must cleave a path alone, And press his own way forward in the fight. Smooth is the way to ease and calm delight, And soft the road Sloth chooseth for her own; But he who craves the flower of life full-blown, Must struggle up in all his armor dight! What though the burden bear him sorely down And crush to dust the mountain of his pride, Oh, then, with strong heart let him still ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... and intensified in these. We have strengthened anew these rocky foundations of a nation's greatness. Men lapped in luxury have patiently bowed to toil and weariness. Men living in self-indulgence have shaken off their sloth, and roused the old slumbering fearlessness of their race. Men, living for selfish ends, have been penetrated by the light of a great purpose, and have risen to the loftiness of human duty. Men, who shrank from pain as the sorest evil, have voluntarily accepted pain, and borne ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... "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 ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... 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 meal, their senses dozed and stupified, they ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... consisting of a series of twelve pastoral poems in imitation of the eclogues of Vergil and Theocritus. The poem is cast in the form of dialogues between shepherds, who converse on such subjects as love, religion, and old age. In three eclogues the poet attacks with Puritan zeal the pomp and sloth of the worldly clergy, and one is devoted to the courtly praise of the queen. It was at once recognized as the most notable poem that had appeared since the death of Chaucer, and placed Spenser immediately at the ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... disordered;" and he adds: "Whatever disorders[443] you see in the Church of England, you may find in Ireland, and many more, namely, gross simony, greedy covetousness, incontinence, and careless sloth." And then he contrasts the zeal of the Catholic clergy with the indifference of "the ministers of the Gospel," who, he says, only take the tithes and offerings, and gather what fruit else they may of ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... hands lie buried fathom-deep in his pockets, as if part of his brain lay there to be rummaged; and he sucks at his old pipe as if his head, like other venerable hulks, must be smoked out at intervals. His walk is that of a sloth, one foot dragging heavily behind the other. I meet him as I go to the post-office, and on returning, twenty minutes later, I pass him again, a little farther advanced. All the children accost him, and I have seen him stop—no great retardation indeed—to fondle ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... eternity—perhaps continually increasing. You cannot but dread the forfeiture of such an inheritance as the most insupportable evil!—Remember then—remember the conditions on which alone it can be obtained. God will not give to vice, to carelessness, or sloth, the prize he has proposed to virtue. You have every help that can animate your endeavours: You have written laws to direct you—the example of Christ and his disciples to encourage you—the most awakening motives to engage you—and you have, besides, the comfortable promise of constant assistance ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... collected there, led them out of their fortified camp, to show that he would not deliver up the country to the enemy. The Romans had lost many of their most capable leaders in the wars, and Fabius Maximus, who had the greatest reputation, was blamed by them for sloth and want of enterprise because of his excessive caution in avoiding a defeat. Thinking, therefore, that he was an excellent general for defence, not for attack, they cast their eyes upon Marcellus, and in order to combine his vigour and daring with the cautious and far-seeing ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... through all its orders, to the present fauna of 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 their place great cursorial ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... said immediately. "Trust me to rival the sloth in idleness. I promise you that I won't stir one step out of my ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... us. We all know what is likely to happen to an estate in the owner's prolonged or permanent absence—it deteriorates; his active interest and personal supervision are wanting, and the results are visible everywhere. Sloth and mismanagement, which his presence would check, go uncorrected, the daily duties are indifferently performed or remain undone, and soon the property as a whole bears unmistakeable traces of neglect. There is always ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... whole road to the capital; would probably have caused a rising in that great city; and, in any event, would have indefinitely prolonged the war, and multiplied the distractions of government. Merely from sloth and the spirit of procrastination, however, the rebel army halted at Gorey until the 9th, and then advanced with what seemed the overpowering force of 27,000 men. It is a striking lesson upon the subject of ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the sun. Then, climbing the ladder the angel points out, Dante feels him brush away the third obnoxious P., while chanting, "Blessed are the peacemakers." They now reach the fourth ledge, where the sin of indifference or sloth is punished, and, as they trudge along it, Virgil explains that all indifference is due to a lack of love, a virtue on which he ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... of those whose vices he could not reach to and calumnious murmuring against the pious, gluttonous enjoyment of food, the dull glowering anger amid which he brooded upon his longing, the swamp of spiritual and bodily sloth in which ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... as much as possible, never been careful but always indifferent to everything—this soon formed a habit, and after a while it couldn't be shaken off. Such a habit would be carried along into each employment, and if in time independence came and marriage, then who had to bear these habits—laziness, sloth, insubordination, discontent? The man himself had to bear them and all their consequences, distress and calamity, until death, through death, and before God's judgment seat. He told us to look and see how many thousands were a ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... system have the rulers been more incompetent and corrupt than under this which we call democratic. Is not the very word 'politician' everywhere a term of reproach? Is not a government office everywhere synonymous with incapacity and sloth? What a miserable position is that of a Member of Parliament, compelled to give his vote on innumerable questions of which he does not understand the rudiments, and giving it at the dictation of party chiefs who themselves are controlled by the blind and brainless mechanism of the caucus! ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... therefore, technical in origin, the natural efflorescence of highly cultivated agilities of brain, and hand, and eye, is worthy of all commendation. But there is another kind that goes under the name of slang, the offspring rather of mental sloth, and current chiefly among those idle, jocular classes to whom all art is a bugbear and a puzzle. There is a public for every one; the pottle-headed lout who in a moment of exuberance strikes on a new sordid metaphor for any incident in the beaten ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... may be the result of sloth. "Slothfulness casteth into a deep sleep." Prov. 19:15. Spiritual idleness soon results in spiritual dryness. That sophism of Satan's, "No time for prayer," is very dangerous. Any neglect of spiritual devotion ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... fatigue in an ill-treated frame—ah, all that is neither attractive nor amusing! Who knows whether, after a few months of this mental and physical rule, I should not have sunk into bottomless dejection, whether the sloth of those monastic gaols would not have crushed me and left me absolutely ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... found among females of the middle and higher ranks, who have no calls to exertion in gaining the means of subsistence, and no objects of interest on which to exercise their mental faculties, and who, consequently, sink into a state of mental sloth and nervousness, which not only deprives them of much enjoyment, but subjects them to suffering, both of body and mind ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... fatalities of Ireland appear in Spenser's account in all their well-known forms; some of them, as if they were what we were reading of yesterday. Throughout the work there is an honest zeal for order, an honest hatred of falsehood, sloth, treachery, and disorder. But there does not appear a trace of consideration for what the Irish might feel or desire or resent. He is sensible indeed of English mismanagement and vacillation, of the way in which money and force were wasted by not being ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... divided this night, share and share alike, among such of his relatives as have found it convenient to be present here between the strokes of half-past seven and eight. If some of our friends have failed us through sloth, sickness or the misfortune of mistaking the road, they have our sympathy, but they ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... the due 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 ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... to the effort. He travelled here and there, pervading the country like some spirit of unrest, threading the intricacies of city slums, north, south, east, and west, personally interviewing all manner of loathly creatures, damaged by vice and sloth and ignorance and crime almost out of all semblance of humanity. He had not dreamed that such beings existed upon the earth. Sometimes, unaware of the circumstances and the danger they courted, they caught up a child wherewith to deceive him, if it might be, generally ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... of the Delta region wore itself gradually away, and now again the sun was high in the mid-arc of the sky, glowing so warm that the earth, rich and teeming, seemed once more to quiver under its ardor. The sloth of ease and comfort was in the air. The big bees droned among the flowers at the lattice, and out in the glaring sunlight the lusty cocks led their bands betimes, crowing each his loud defiance. In the pastures, under the wide-armed oaks, the cattle and horses stood dozing. Life on the ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... door-nail!' But the world is wrong. Dead may be a door-nail; but deader and most dead is Gillman's Coleridge. Which fact in Natural History we demonstrate thus: Up to Waterloo it was the faith of every child that a sloth took a century for walking across a street. His mother, if she 'knew he was out,' must have had a pretty long spell of uneasiness before she saw him back again. But Mr. Waterton, Baptist of a new generation in these mysteries, took that conceit out of Europe: the sloth, says he, cannot like a ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... art laughing and scorning; Thou hast a nest for thy love and thy rest, And, though little troubled with sloth, Drunken Lark! thou wouldst be loth To be such a traveler as I. Happy, happy Liver! With a soul as strong as a mountain river, Pouring out praise to the Almighty Giver, Joy and jollity be ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... I continued. "Sins known and unknown. Sins committed through imprudence and evil example. Sins committed through forwardness and sloth." ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... suddenly move up closer to the wires, the bat opens both wings owl-like, in a most threatening manner; but if we make still more hostile motions the creature retreats as hastily as it can, changing its method of progress to an all-fours, sloth-like gait, the long free thumb of each hand grasping wire after wire and doing most of the leverage, the hind ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... Captain Kearney's decease, his acting successor made his appearance on board. The character of Captain Horton was well known to us from the complaints made by the officers belonging to his ship, of his apathy and indolence; indeed, he went by the soubriquet of "the Sloth." It certainly was very annoying to his officers to witness so many opportunities of prize-money and distinction thrown away through the indolence of his disposition. Captain Horton was a young man of family who had advanced rapidly in the service ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... any conception of the condition of marksmanship in the British Army?" Excellent, too, is the passage in which his subordinate speaks of crushing the enemy in America, and Burgoyne asks him who will crush their enemies in England, snobbery and jobbery and incurable carelessness and sloth. And in one sentence towards the end, Shaw reaches a wider and more genial comprehension of mankind than he shows anywhere else; "it takes all sorts to make a world, saints as well as soldiers." If Shaw had remembered that sentence on other occasions he would have avoided ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... inertness, dullness &c adj.; inertia, vis inertiae [Lat.], inertion^, inactivity, torpor, languor; quiescence &c 265; latency, inaction; passivity. mental inertness; sloth &c (inactivity) 683; inexcitability &c 826 [Obs.]; irresolution &c 605; obstinacy &c 606; permanence &c 141. rare gas, paraffin, noble metal, unreactivity. V. be inert &c adj.; hang fire, smolder. Adj. inert, inactive, passive; torpid ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... 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 ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... own priest, and I shrive myself Of all my wasted yesterdays. Though sin And sloth and foolishness, and all ill weeds Of error, evil, and neglect grow rank And ugly there, I dare forgive myself That error, sin, and sloth and foolishness. God knows that yesterday I played the fool; God knows that yesterday I played ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... is the number of similar, but apparently independent, structures, that we suffer from a perfect embarras de richesses. Thus, for example, we have the convoluted windpipe of the sloth, reminding us{83} of the condition of the windpipe in birds; and in another mammal, allied to the sloth, namely the great ant-eater (Myrmecophaga), we have again an ornithic character in its horny gizzard-like stomach. In man and the highest apes the caecum has a vermiform appendix, ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... scan an author. This means to take a rapid observation of his thoughts. Much of one's common reading matter should be scanned. All local news, much magazine literature, and many books should be used in this way. It is mental sloth and waste of time to pore over a newspaper or a book of light fiction, as one would a philosophy of history or a work of science. As Bacon aptly puts it, "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... 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 United ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... let those come to us, whosoever they be, who, pressed by the management of civil and domestic life, have felt this human hunger, and at one table with others who have been in like bondage, let them sit. But at their feet let us place all those who have been the slaves of sloth, and who are not worthy to sit higher: and then let these and those eat of my dish, with the bread which I will cause them to taste ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... shirk or thwart it. Which has done The wisdom of this venerable head; Who, well provided with the secret key To that gold alphabet, himself made me, Himself, I say, the savage he fore-read Fate somehow should be charged with; nipp'd the growth Of better nature in constraint and sloth, That only bring to bear the seed of wrong And turn'd the stream to fury whose out-burst Had kept his lawful channel uncoerced, And fertilized the land he flow'd along. Then like to some unskilful duellist, ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... hind legs from the back of a chair to which it clung, and clawed out with its forepaws like a cat. Its manner of clinging with its claws, and the sluggishness of its motions, gave it a great resemblance to a sloth. It uttered no sound, and remained all night on the spot where I had placed it in the morning. The next day, I put it on a tree in the open air, and at night it escaped. These small Tamanduas are nocturnal in their habits, and feed on those species of termites which construct ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... or do not will, that, in the real world in which we ourselves have to live and struggle, certain forces shall be operative,—that there shall be the beauty of health, as in the "Discobolus;" material love which is divine, as in the "Sistine Madonna;" that war shall be horrible; that sloth unstriven against shall triumph over love, as in "The Statue and the Bust;" that defiance of the social organism shall involve self-destruction, as in "Anna Karenina." The person or the combination of events expressing this idea we do not seek in our ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... He changes suddenly, when their change is sudden, and is as unlike what he was just before, as one fortune or external condition is unlike another. He moves when he is urged by appetite; else, he remains in sloth and inactivity. He lives, and he dies, and he has done nothing, but leaves the world as he found it. And what the individual is, such is his whole generation; and as that generation, such is the generation before and after. ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... yet night." Early rising is a great trial to some, but I think those who are conscientious often make a mistake between sloth and conscientious care of health: and the Virtuous Woman should be very careful of her health. Some girls think it fine not to be; they say, "Oh, well, I shall only die the sooner! Better to wear out than ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... approach the table and hesitatingly attack the pie. But the progress with eating is slow. In the plying of forks, in the cutting up and munching, there is a certain sloth and apathy. . . ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... grace of trust in treason knaves have lived and lied: By the force of fear and folly fools have fed their pride: By the strength of sloth ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... their minds, disturbed by so many simultaneous emotions, trembled with fear rather than deliberated. For they considered that neither had a more spirited or warlike enemy ever encountered them nor had the Roman state been ever so sunk in sloth, and unfit for war: that the Sardinians, the Corsicans, the Istrians, and the Illyrians, had rather kept in a state of excitement than exercised the Roman arms; and with the Gauls it had been more ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... life-long battle between your spirit and your flesh—your spirit trying to be master and guide, as it ought to be, and your flesh rebelling, and trying to conquer your spirit and make you a mere animal, like a fox in cunning, a peacock in vanity, or a hog in greedy sloth. But believe, too, that it is your sin and your shame if your spirit does not conquer your flesh—for God has promised to help your spirits. Ask Him, and His Spirit will teach them—fill them with pure, noble hopes, ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... fifty-two varieties of mammal quadrupeds, including three species of large felidae—the jaguar, the puma, or cougar, and the ocelot, a carnivorous cat-like animal, whose name is derived from the native Mexican word ocelotl. There are five varieties of monkeys in the tropical forests, as well as a sloth. There are forty-three classes of reptiles, including alligators and turtles, and several kinds of venomous serpents, and the great boa-constrictor. Upon the plateau and mountain ranges wolves and wild-cats abound, and the coyote is the wild inhabitant ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... said: "My intimacy and rank with his majesty the king is a banner that I have by toil and effort set up. It would not be well to level it with the ground by indulgence and sloth. Without supporting trouble it is impossible to arrive at the carrying off of treasure, and unaccompanied by the thorn we cannot reap the enjoyment ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... Rome, they study, keep and fear The Jewish law, whate'er in mystic book Moses has handed down,—to show the way To none but he who the same rites observes, And those athirst to lead unto the spring Only if circumcised. Whereof the cause Was he, their sire, to whom each seventh day Was one of sloth, whereon he took in hand ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... all, In spring the roses, apples in the fall: And, when cold winter split the rocks in twain, And ice the running rivers did restrain, He stripp'd the bear's foot of its leafy growth, And, calling western winds, accus'd the spring of sloth He therefore first among the swains was found To reap the product of his labour'd ground, And squeeze the combs with golden liquor crown'd His limes were first in flow'rs, his lofty pines, With friendly shade, secur'd his tender vines. For ev'ry bloom his ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... out of my settle-bed, with a malediction on the sloth that had bound me so fast, and made for the door. But some one had been before me, entering whilst I slept. On a broken chair were a basin and ewer, with soap and towels; beside the chair was my portmanteau; and on a deal box, neatly covered with a ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... interrupts their contemplation": these are "by far the worst of all." "There is another error," he proceeds, "of those who like to call themselves 'theopaths.' They take every impulse to be Divine, and repudiate all responsibility. Most of them live in inert sloth." As a corrective to these errors, he very rightly says, "Christ must be the rule and pattern of all our lives"; but he does not see that there is a deep inconsistency between the imitation of Christ as the ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... gradual, like a sea: Forth from the bosom of that peace upsoared Hope, starry-crowned, and winged, that liberates oft Faith, unextinct, though bound by Powers accursed That o'er her plant the foot, and hold the chain— Terror and Sloth. To noble spirits set free Delight means gratitude. Thus Laurence joyed: But soon, remembering that unworthy past, Remorse succeeded, sorrow born of love, Consoled by love alone. 'Ah! slave,' he cried, That, serving such a God, could'st dream of flight: How ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... to her,—that is to say, all who die through sickness or old age. She has there an abode with very thick walls, and fenced with strong gates. Her hall is Elvidnir; her table is Hunger; her knife, Starvation; her man-servant, Delay; her maid-servant, Sloth; her threshold, Precipice; her bed, Care; and her curtains, Anguish of Soul. The one half of her body is livid, the other half is flesh-colour. She has a terrible look, so that ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... told how Shaping defended his world, and tried to force Hator to acknowledge loveliness and joy. But Hator, answering all his marvellous speeches in a few concise, iron words, showed how this joy and beauty was but another name for the bestiality of souls wallowing in luxury and sloth. Shaping smiled, and said, 'How comes it that your wisdom is greater than that of the Master of wisdom?' Hator said, 'My wisdom does not come from you, nor from your world, but from that other world, ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... increased between one part of the country and another. Hence trade and commerce arose, by reason of the facilities afforded for the interchange of traffic. The people, being fairly educated by the parish schools, were able to take advantage of these improvements. Sloth and idleness gradually disappeared, before the energy, activity, and industry which were called into life ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... other persons of quality and gentry had done the same, but were looked on with an eye of contempt and ill-will, as enemies to art, ignorant, and ill common-wealth's men, preferring their own ease and sloth before the general ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... river stroll; And changed, since I was left alone, With tangled weed and rising shoal, The loss I mourn he seems to own: This is, how base soe'er his sloth, This is the ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... I have more than hopes, Mistress Deborah; for he that lives upon hope will die fasting. To apply one's self right heartily is to do more than hope. Sloth makes all things difficult; but industry all things easy. You are not eating, Mistress Deborah. (She rises.) Have my blunt ways offended you? Have I again displeased you? [Footnote: ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... much of what is vigorous in the character of its northern converts may be traced to the operation of its principles, in the development of their peculiar idiosyncrasy, which, unlike that of the unwarlike Singhalese, rejected sloth and effeminacy to aim at conquest and power. Looking to the self-reliance which Buddhism inculcates, the exaltation of intellect which it proclaims, and the perfection of virtue and wisdom to which it points as within the reach of every created being, it may readily be imagined, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... is regarded as the one irremediable evil possible to their country. 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... suddenly a few years later, a victim of sloth, drunkenness, and gluttony. He had taught his son, Prince Charles, to believe that the highest power on earth was the royal will. It was a terrible inheritance for the young man, for just as he was coming to the throne, the people were beginning ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... their flight be restrained by the danger resulting from it. Indeed we may consider the velocity with which an animal moves, as a sure indication of the perfection of its vision. Among the quadrupeds, the sloth has its sight greatly limited; whilst the hawk, as it hovers in the air, can espy a lark sitting on a clod, perhaps at twenty times the distance at which a man or a dog ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... 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 pick'd: yet we're ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy |
