"Sluggard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to imitate them. We say, with a full consciousness of the responsibility which the avowal entails on us, that they do right. It is well in any art to watch and imitate the man who has best succeeded in it. The sluggard has been exhorted even to imitate the ant, and anyone who wishes to ride or drive well, or dress appropriately, or entertain in a country house, ought to study the way the English do these things, and follow their example, for anything worth ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... well-informed man, unless he is steeped to the very lips, in fraud and imposture, will ever claim to accomplish any thing of the kind. The bee-moth infects our Apiaries, just as weeds take possession of a fertile soil; and the negligent bee-keeper will find a "moth-proof" hive, when the sluggard finds a weed-proof soil, and I suspect not until a consummation so devoutly wished for by the slothful has arrived. Before explaining the means upon which I rely, to circumvent the moth, I will first give a brief ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... uttereth his voice, hailstones and coales of fire, who will not fall down and fear before him? The fire waxeth hot, and burneth round about us, and shall any sit still and be secure? The storm bloweth hard, & shall any sluggard be still asleep? This is a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and of blasphemy; who will not take up a lamentation? Let the Watchmen rouze up themselves and others, and strive to get their own, and their peoples hearts deeply affected, and even melted before the Lord: ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... Psalmist meant when, not thinking about a future retribution, but about the present life's experiences, he said, 'Thou wast a God that forgavest them, and Thou tookest vengeance of their inventions.' 'The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold, therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing,' and that will be his case whether he is forgiven, or not forgiven, by the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to work, David," he went on. "Hendry could earn a living teaching school, but I hadn't the brains, so I toiled away in the store from early morning until late at night. Teaching school was easier. He used to say that if the sluggard did actually go to the ant he would probably find him a most uninteresting creature to talk to. I guess Hendry was right. I do know that he had little of the virtue of the ant, but he was one of the most interesting men I ever heard talk. When ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... introduced in two novels by Sir W. Scott (The Talisman and Ivanhoe). In the latter he first appears as "The Black Knight," at the tournament, and is called Le Noir Fain['e]ant, or "The Black Sluggard;" also ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... thankfulness, that the tent, so surrounded as it was on both occasions, was a sight they never had expected to see. I was, to be sure, assisted by some of the best divines then in the land, but I had not been a sluggard myself ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... breath of life Should stir our dull and sluggard wills; For are we not created rife With health, ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... o'clock! arise, My pretty sluggard, open those dark eyes And see where yonder sun is! Do you know I made my toilet just ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... what do you think I'm frightened of? Not that stuck-up Mrs. Brobson, with her grand airs, and as lazy as the voice of the sluggard into the bargain. Just you make up your mind, mum, where you'd like to go, and when you'd like to start, and I shall walk into the nursery as bold as brass, and say I want Master Lovel to come and amuse his mar for half an hour; and once we've got him safe in this room, the rest is easy. ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... thoughts reverted to the fire artillery of the ancients; with that at his disposal he would hold the balance of power. The possession of a single score of rifles should enable him to demonstrate the feasibility of the attempt to his sluggard kinsmen, the Stockaders, and to the even more reluctant townsmen. He determined to take the first opportunity to make a careful search of the city armories and ammunition depots; in the mean time, it was his business ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... is deceived thereby is not wise. 2. The fear of a king is as the roaring of a lion: whoso provoketh him to anger sinneth against his own soul. 3. It is an honour for a man to cease from strife: but every fool will be meddling. 4. The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing. 5. Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water; but a man of understanding will draw it out. 6. Most men will proclaim every ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... with the familiar Du of the days before her mother died, "Art thou then so much better than others, that thou must for ever be only ornamental and an expense? Canst thou not live, except in luxury? Or walk, except on carpets? Or eat, except thy soup be not of chocolate? Go to the ants, thou sluggard; consider their ways, and be wise." And she wrapped herself in her cloak, and frowned defiance at ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... "You... you... sluggard,' breaking into a laugh. "If I were Fate, I'd just take you by the shoulders and shake you till you woke up. Then I'd go on shaking to keep you awake. You shouldn't be wasted on mere nonentity ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... rest as Heaven and opportunity shall permit. Come, prithee, have done: wring not thy tiny hands, nor fear farther persecution now. Thou hast done bravely, excellently. And now, away to Dorothy, and call up the old sluggard; we must have a substantial breakfast, after a night of confusion and a morning of joy, and thy hand will be needed to prepare for us some of these delicate cakes which no one can make but thyself; and well hast thou a right to the secret, seeing who taught it thee. Ah! ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... the fence corner, and the crap in the grass. What saith the Scriptur', Simon? 'Go to the ant, thou sluggard,' and so forth and so on. What in the round creation of the yearth have you ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... the prudent Ant thy heedless eyes, Observe her labours, Sluggard, and be wise; No stern command, no 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 ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... be found In a being devoid of heart, Whose efforts and deeds are all dead, Or act but a sluggard's part. ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... went from bad to worse, when Il Borgo became in little better case than had St. Elmo before it, La Valette never hesitated, never looked back, never ceased to hope that the sluggard Garcia de Toledo might send relief; and, if he did not, then would they all perish with arms in their hands, as had their brethren across that narrow strip of water who had held St. Elmo to the last man. ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... make us hardy and daring, and industrious, and strips the trees, and bares the fields, and takes away all food from the earth, and cries to us with the voice of its storms, "He that will not work, neither shall he eat." "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: who layeth up her meat in the summer, and provideth her food against the time of frosts." And then comes summer, with her flowers and her fruits, and brings us her message from God, and says to us ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... flying through the air, they do not take the donkey for a taunt, but for a heavenly portent. A tournament is held and very brave in their attire are all the combatants. But according to its rules the greatest sluggard wins the crown of honor. Even in the similes, which formed so important an element of epic decoration, the same principle of contrast is maintained. Fine vignettes from nature in the style consecrated by Ariosto and Tasso introduce ludicrous ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... soon see which has, notwithstanding, the faster pair of heels—the Ouzel Galley is no sluggard, Mr Carnegan, and we may still hope to run the stranger out of sight. Let her go along, my lad," said the captain to the man at the helm; "she sails best two points off the wind; we'll run on till dark, Owen, and if ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... awakened is also to be mentally and physically awakened. The sluggard and the self-indulgent can have no knowledge of Truth. He who, possessed of health and strength, wastes the calm, precious hours of the silent morning in drowsy indulgence is totally unfit to climb ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... morning up we rise Ere Aurora's peeping, Drink a cup to wash our eyes. Leave the sluggard sleeping; Then we go To and fro, With our knacks At our backs To such streams As the Thames ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... be having all the excitement you can wish. They say that life among artists is rather swift, and I don't think your husband can be called a sluggard. ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... such exquisite quality as to ravish the soul with delight. As the first beams of sunlight come streaming over the hills, ten thousand birds join in a mighty chorus of welcome to the newborn day and the world is flooded with song; and the whilom sluggard thrills under the spell of the scene and feels himself a part of the world that is vibrant with music. Can it be denied that this man is all the better citizen for his ability to appreciate the ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... who are intemperate with regard to sleep, seeing that the sluggard with his eyes shut cannot do himself or see that others ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... Lofthouse, and Bacchus, fined for intoxication, Jan. 5, 1911, for Bakehouse. But many odd names which are often explained as corruptions may also have their face-value. The first Gotobed was a sluggard, Godbehere was fond of this pious form of greeting, and Goodbeer purveyed sound liquor. With Toogood, perhaps ironical, we may compare Fr. Troplong, and with Goodenough a lady named Belle-assez, often mentioned in the Pipe ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... voice of the sluggard; I heard him complain, "You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again." The Sluggard. DR. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... of the Sluggard. I heard him complain "You have waked me too soon! I must slumber again!" As the door on its hinges, so he on his bed, Turns his sides, and his shoulders, ...
— Divine Songs • Isaac Watts
... leaf. He drops it and goes on his way. We do not know what this way is, but my guess is that he turns around and goes after another leaf. Whatever the nests of Attas possess, they are without recreation rooms. These sluggard-instructors do not know enough to take a vacation; their faces are fashioned for biting, but not for laughing or yawning. I once dabbed fifteen Mediums with a touch of white paint as they approached the nest, and within five minutes thirteen of them had ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... are you going then? Come, come, Idonea, We must not part,—I have measured many a league When these old limbs had need of rest,—and now I will not play the sluggard. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... the love of letters amongst a people too busy to give to letters any more. As such it is precious as the sign of an indestructible instinct. Perhaps the time is already come when it ought to be, and will be, something else; when the sluggard intellect of this continent will look from under its iron lids and fill the postponed expectations of the world with something better than the exertions of mechanical skill. Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... a sluggard, he had been up now for some hours, and had effected so great a metamorphosis in the surgery that the doctor himself would hardly have known it again: things in it previously never having been arranged to Jan's satisfaction. And now he was ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Shorn of her bishops, banks, and dividends, Another Babel soars—but Britain ends. And why? to pamper the self-seeking wants, 650 And prop the hill of these agrarian ants. "Go to these ants, thou sluggard, and be wise;" Admire their patience through each sacrifice, Till taught to feel the lesson of their pride, The price of taxes and of homicide; Admire their justice, which would fain deny The debt of nations:—pray who made ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... me, girl, when went'—(and there she stay'd Till after a deep groan) 'Tarquin from, hence?' 'Madam, ere I was up,' replied the maid, 'The more to blame my sluggard negligence: Yet with the fault I thus far can dispense; Myself was stirring ere the break of day, And, ere I rose, ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... bird it is great fun to show Mother what a sluggard she is. He calls to her to let her know it is getting-up time, and then she is so amazed! She cannot understand how it is possible for her little boy to get awake almost as soon as the robins do. Sometimes she asks if he is sure he is awake, and he tells her he is sure of it, ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott
... morning up we rise Ere Aurora's peeping, Drink a cup to wash our eyes, Leave the sluggard sleeping; Then we go too and fro, with our knacks at our backs, to such streams as the Thames if we ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... he had cast off his father, for the grandfather's blood ran riot within him, and had kindled to burning rage against the sluggard who had made his name a thing of reproach in all lands. With the overstrong bitterness of youth he had meant to die sword in hand, fighting for Ireland. The few burning words of Owen Ruadh had stripped all this false heroism ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... troublesome to the overworked and the idle gardener, while the best-kept land will be full of seeds blown upon it from the sluggard's garden, and the first shower will bring them up in terrific force. All that we have to say about them is that they must be kept down, for they not only choke the rising crops in seed-beds and spoil the look of everything, ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... and so far as you know any means of mending it, take those means, and have done; when you are examining yourself, never call yourself merely a "sinner," that is very cheap abuse; and utterly useless. You may even get to like it, and be proud of it. But call yourself a liar, a coward, a sluggard, a glutton, or an evil-eyed, jealous wretch, if you indeed find yourself to be in any wise any of these. Take steady means to check yourself in whatever fault you have ascertained, and justly accused yourself of. And as soon as you are in active ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... righteous, and occupy yourselves with the Torah, that your reward may be abundant in the world hereafter." The fourth: "I have waited for Thy salvation, O Lord!" The fifth: "How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? When wilt thou arise out of thy sleep?" The sixth: "Love not sleep, lest thou come to poverty; open thine eyes, and thou shalt be satisfied with bread." And the seventh verse sung by the cock runs: ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... our village lady says, "I ought to be the great lady herself. And what does she up yonder, the shameless sluggard, amidst all those men, in the absence of her lord?" And now the rivalry is set on foot. The village, while it loathes her, is proud thereat. "If the lady of the castle is a baroness, our woman is a queen; and more than a queen,—we dare not say what." Her beauty is a dreadful, a fantastic beauty, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... a biblical passage. Thus to the first man, a red-haired fellow, he said: "Proneness to dispute lights a fire, and proneness to fight sheds blood;" to the second, a slow, fat man: "Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise;" to the third, a small, black-eyed, bold-looking customer: "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." The first maid received the motto: "If you have cattle, take care of them, and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... "no barriers be, For you no sluggard rest; Each street leads downward to the sea, Or landward to ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... sire,' folk said. Also, I was alone, absolutely alone, in the world, since my mother had lost her reason two years before my father's death, and passed away in a frenzy. However, I had an uncle, a retired unter-officier who was both a sluggard, a tippler, and a hero (a hero because he had had his eyes shot out at Plevna, and his left arm injured in a manner which had induced paralysis, and his breast adorned with the military cross and a set of medals). And sometimes, this uncle of mine would rally me on my learning. For instance, ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... young, but I'm no sluggard, you know," said the lawyer. "I thought we might want a word or two before ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... Animals Unknown A Rule for Birds' Nesters Unknown "Sing on, Blithe Bird" William Motherwell "I Like Little Pussy" Jane Taylor Little Things Julia Fletcher Carney The Little Gentleman Unknown The Crust of Bread Unknown "How Doth the Little Busy Bee" Isaac Watts The Brown Thrush Lucy Larcom The Sluggard Isaac Watts The Violet Jane Taylor Dirty Jim Jane Taylor The Pin Ann Taylor Jane and Eliza Ann Taylor Meddlesome Matty Ann Taylor Contented John Jane Taylor Friends Abbie Farwell Brown Anger Charles and Mary Lamb "There Was a Little Girl" H. W. Longfellow The Reformation ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... not, methinks, without some better end Was this our Rome entrusted to thy care, Who surest may revive and best defend. Fearlessly then upon that reverend head, 'Mid her dishevell'd locks, thy fingers spread, And lift at length the sluggard from the dust; I, day and night, who her prostration mourn, For this, in thee, have fix'd my certain trust, That, if her sons yet turn. And their eyes ever to true honour raise. The glory is reserved for thy ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... unpardonable sin. There was toleration, forgiveness for every one but the sluggard. He said Solomon's description of the slothful should be written in letters of gold on the walls of the understanding. He explained it to them as a metaphor, and made them to understand that the field of the sluggard, overgrown with thorns and nettles, was only an image of the neglected and uncultivated mind. He gave them Doctor Watts' versification of it to commit to memory, and repeated it with them in concert. It is not strange that Mittie, who never came to him with a neglected ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... tombs a doleful sound. 'Tis the voice of the sluggard, I heard him complain, "You have waked me too soon, ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... upon a velocipede, rode a tin-sworded personage, shrieking incessant commands but not concerning himself with whether or not any military obedience was thereby obtained. Here was a revivifying effect upon young Ramsey; his sluggard eyelids opened electrically; he leaped to his feet and, abandoning his grandfather without preface or apology, sped across the lawn and out of the gate, charging headlong upon ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... calling on us to help him and ourselves and one another. And so, wearily and little by little, but surely and steadily on the whole, was brought home to the young boy, for the first time, the meaning of his life—that it was no fool's or sluggard's paradise into which he had wandered by chance, but a battlefield ordained from of old, where there are no spectators, but the youngest must take his side, and the stakes are life and death. And he who roused this consciousness in them showed them at the same time, by every word he spoke in the ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... "Why! what a sluggard you are! I've been to the field and come back again, and I'm having a nice potful of ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... blacksmith's anvil sounds With slow and sluggard beat, Or stage-coach on its dusty rounds Wakes up ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... rake-straw, corresponds to Fr. Grattepaille. Golightly means much the same as Lightfoot (Chapter XIII), nor need we hesitate to regard the John Gotobed who lived in Cambridgeshire in 1273 as a notorious sluggard compared with whom his neighbour Serl Gotokirke was a shining example. [Footnote: The name is still found in the same county. Undergraduates contemporary with the author occasionally slaked their thirst at a riverside ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... concerns us but little, and a few particulars only are interesting, as, for instance, his mention of a monkey in the Gorgus Island, who was so lazy, that he was nicknamed the Sluggard, and of the inhabitants of Tecamez, who repulsed the new-comers with poisoned arrows, and guns. He also speaks of the Galapagos Island, situated two degrees of northern latitude. According to Rogers, this cluster of islands was numerous, but out of them all one only provided fresh water. Turtle-doves ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... handed on from nation to nation, from civilization to civilization, throughout all recorded time, from the dim years before history dawned down to the blazing splendor of this teeming century of ours. It dropped from the hands of the coward and the sluggard, of the man wrapped in luxury or love of ease, the man whose soul was eaten away by self-indulgence; it has been kept alight only by those who were mighty of heart and cunning of hand. What they worked at, ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... fop thou'lt prate, Like a washerwoman rate. Thou art but a simpleton. Now thou mayest—more shame to thee— Run away, because of me; Cupid, that young rogue, may glory Learning wisdom from thy story; Haste, thou sluggard, hence to flee As from glass is cut our wit, So, like lightning, 'twill be split; If thou won't be chased away, Let each folly also stay Seest my meaning? Think of me! Idle one, away ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... He worked there," she admitted, which was true enough, for nobody could honestly have called Prince Morrell a sluggard. ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... closed, which I remember thinking odd; and the house, with its white walls and green venetians, looked spruce and habitable in the morning light. Hour after hour passed, and still no sign of Northmour. I knew him for a sluggard in the morning; but, as it drew on toward noon, I lost my patience. To say the truth, I had promised myself to break my fast in the pavilion, and hunger began to prick me sharply. It was a pity to let the opportunity go by without ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... great stage of action which power creates. But when the State renounces all extension of power, and recoils from every war which is necessary for its expansion; when it is content to exist, and no longer wishes to grow; when "at peace on sluggard's couch it lies," then its citizens become stunted. The efforts of each individual are cramped, and the broad aspect of things is lost. This is sufficiently exemplified by the pitiable existence of all small States, and every great Power ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... understanding? Whence that abundance that even furnishes our luxury? Think of all the trees in their rich variety, the many wholesome herbs, and such diversity of foods apportioned among the seasons that even the sluggard might find sustenance from the casual bounty of earth. Whence come living creatures of every kind, some bred on solid dry land, some in water, others speeding through the air, to the end that every part of nature may yield us some tribute? Those rivers, too, that, with their pretty ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... his country in this its hour of need! I would not force him to serve. I could not think that the service of such a man was of any avail. Let the country be served by free men, and let them deal with the coward or the sluggard who flinches. ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... whirling sand, And look across the wastes of endless gray, Sole wreck, where once his hundred-gated Thebes Pained with her mighty hum the calm, blue heaven: 80 Shall the dull stone pay grateful orisons, And we till noonday bar the splendor out, Lest it reproach and chide our sluggard hearts, Warm-nestled in the down of Prejudice, And be content, though clad with angel-wings, Close-clipped, to hop about from perch to perch, In paltry cages of dead men's dead thoughts? Oh, rather, like the skylark, soar and sing, And let our gushing songs befit the dawn And sunrise, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... cause of their misery. But it is not often that the diligent experience "bad luck." They receive a reward for their labours, and thrift and honour attend their steps, according as it is written in the Bible: "The soul of the sluggard desireth, and hath nothing; but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat. Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... now call her) aspired to play a leading part in the affairs of Europe. France and Prussia were leagued in war against the forces of England, Austria, and Holland. This was a seductive game in which to take a hand, and thus we find her stimulating the sluggard kingliness in her lover, urging him to leave his debauches and to lead his armies to victory, assuring him of the gratitude and admiration of his subjects. Nothing less, she told him, would save his country ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... figure by the fireside. His throat rumbled thunderously; the words came with stormy bitterness. "You think this is a time for young men to be lyin' on beds of ease? I tell you there never was such a time before; there never was such opportunity. The sluggard is despoiled while he sleeps—yes, by George! if a man lays down they'll eat him before he wakes!—but the live man can build straight up till he touches the sky! This is the business man's day; it used to be the ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... muffled by the haze. The traffic seemed to move more slowly than usual, as though that haze clogged its wheels and congealed its oils. The very tugs and barges, on the river beyond, partook of the season's languor. They crept over the oily waves at a sluggard pace, their smoke-streamers dropping wearily ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... were not such as blaze in a battle-charge, such as Marshal Murat knew to lead. Those methods were entirely foreign to him. He has even been accused of cowardice, though, so far as I can judge, without justice. His circumstances—the lack of armies; the sluggard patriotism of his countrymen; his constant negotiations, not to say intrigues, with many persons; his perpetual efforts to raise moneys to equip forces to carry on the patriotic warfare—seem to have left him scant time to lead armies in person. His retirement to Breda on his first ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... the time they had made their rounds, and the greatest sluggard who ever reiterated "God bless the man who first invented sleep," would find himself drawn from his downy pillow at break of day, with ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... quantity of the paste of Attention had been used, that the paper was already falling off; odd pieces were lying here and there, and the most careless observer must have seen that he was in the dwelling of a sluggard. ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... the preceding verses, seems to have been a cant term among the early Shakers for a sluggard and selfish fellow, a kind of creature they have pretty thoroughly extirpated; and presumably by such free speech as is used ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... extricated myself from the group which forms round me whenever I stop but for a few minutes, I pursued my voyage of discovery by peeping into the kitchen garden. I dared do no more; the aspect of the place would have rejoiced the very soul of Solomon's sluggard of old—a few cabbages and weeds innumerable filled the neglected looking enclosure, and I ventured no further than the entrance into its most uninviting precincts. You are to understand that upon this swamp island of ours we have quite a large stock of cattle, cows, sheep, pigs, and poultry ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... the Constitution" was no sluggard. It was his habit to "Rise with the lark and greet the purpling east," to use one of his favorite quotations, and the carriage had hardly stopped when he appeared, and, exchanging kindly greetings with the Colonel, took ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... want me to get all hot?" drawled one fat sluggard of a friend. "I'll keep alive when the time comes." And he and his kind set the standard for all. Sometimes a chap who could warm up, who had the real stuff in him, would "loosen up" about his life on some long tramp with me alone. ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... adj.; languor &c. (inactivity) 683; drawl; creeping &c. v., lentor[obs3]. retardation; slackening &c. v.; delay &c. (lateness) 133; claudication|. jog trot, dog trot; mincing steps; slow march, slow time. slow goer[obs3], slow coach, slow back; lingerer, loiterer, sluggard, tortoise, snail; poke* [U.S.]; dawdle &c. (inactive) 683. V. move slowly &c. adv.; creep, crawl, lag, slug, drawl, linger, loiter, saunter; plod, trudge, stump along, lumber; trail, drag; dawdle &c. (be ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... trouble. Ours is not a gospel for those who love the soft pillow of faith. The Freethinker does not let his ship rot away in harbor; he spreads his canvas and sails the seas of thought. What though tempests beat and billows roar? He is undaunted, and leaves the avoidance of danger to the sluggard and the slave. He will not pay their price for ease and safety. Away he sails with Vigilance at the prow and Wisdom at the helm. He not only traverses the ocean highways, but skirts unmapped coasts and ventures on uncharted seas. He gathers spoils in ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... Interest being the greatest spring which animates the hand of industry, few would toil in cultivating and planting the land, if they did not expect to reap the fruit of their labour: Were it otherwise, the industrious man would be in a worse state than the idle sluggard. I frequently saw parties of six, eight, or ten people, bring down to the landing place fruit and other things to dispose of, where one person, a man or woman, superintended the sale of the whole; no exchanges were made but with his or her consent; and whatever we gave in exchange ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... falling-asleep, he had let it drop. "The way must have suddenly become smooth as a road in Venice, for I've felt no jolting this half hour. Flowers, Evelyn? and Haward afoot? You've been on a woodland saunter, then, while I enacted Solomon's sluggard!" The worthy parent's eyes began to twinkle. "What flowers did you find? They have strange blooms here, and yet I warrant that even in these woods one might come across London pride and ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... this sluggard who issues from his door! He knows he is suspected—that the finger is uplifted and the chin is wagging. And so he takes on a smarter stride with a pretense of briskness, to proclaim thereby the virtue of having risen early despite his belated ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... touch and taste; but I shall sit here a little while longer, for the wind blows pleasantly at my back. I shall remain here as long as the wind blows, and enjoy a little rest. It is comfortable to sleep late in the morning when one had a great deal to do," said the sluggard; "so I shall stop here as long as the wind blows, for it ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... men, who have the deepest theoretical respect for human rights, are apt to be carried away by the consciousness of superior strength, and to become despotic, if not harsh. To escape this fault, a man must be either a saint or a sluggard. And the tendency to race enmity lies very deep in human nature. Perhaps it is a survival from the times when each race could maintain itself ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... the sluggard, I've heard him complain, "You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again;" As the door on its hinges, so he on his bed, Turns his side, and his shoulders, and his ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... "Now, you young sluggard! do you mean to say that the atmosphere of this mansion, this temple of Chancery, is not enlivening, sprightly, and anti-slumbrous? Ho, there! do you presume to fall asleep over that beautiful and entertaining conveyance, you young savage! ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... to save the Lost, we must accept no Limitations to human brotherhood. If the Scheme which I set forth in these and the following pages is not applicable to the Thief, the Harlot, the Drunkard, and the Sluggard, it may as well be dismissed without ceremony. As Christ came to call not the saints but sinners to repentance, so the New Message of Temporal Salvation, of salvation from pinching poverty, from rags and misery, must be offered to all. They may reject it, of course. But we who call ourselves ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... offer, I should think, a fair sample of the materials which compose the best society in New South Wales; though, I must admit, that the bustling, thriving settler of New South Wales is a companion, rather ignorant though he be—far away preferable to the not more enlightened, but melancholy English sluggard of Boulogne. To form a due conception of the "upper classes" here, suppose all the natives of France annihilated, and the whole country belonging to the English residents of Boulogne. In that case, there would be an almost perfect resemblance between ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... sluggard princes or effeminate republics send forth any of their Captains, it seems to them that the wisest instruction they can give him is to charge him on no account to give battle, but, on the contrary, to do what he can to avoid fighting. Wherein they imagine themselves to imitate the prudence ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... he gave the oars to the alien and lay down in the stern and slept. And in his sleep he dreamed that he was lying in the House of the Raven, and his sisters came to him and said, "Rise up now, Hallblithe! wilt thou be a sluggard on the day of thy wedding? Come thou with us to the House of the Rose that we may bear away the Hostage." Then he dreamed that they departed, and he arose and clad himself: but when he would have gone out of ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... wife and children is the greatest of all possible spurs to exertion. Many a man, naturally prone to idleness, has become active and industrious when he saw children growing up about him; many a dull sluggard has become, if not a bright man, at least a bustling man, when roused to exertion by his love. Dryden's account of the change wrought in CYMON, is only a strong case of the kind. And, indeed, if a man will not exert himself for the sake of a wife and children, he can have no exertion ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... the shells of religion; even as the foolish virgins who were content with their lamps, but gave not heed to take oil in their vessels. These I take to be those whom the wise man calls the slothful: 'The soul of the sluggard desireth, and hath nothing; but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat' (Prov 13:4). The sluggard is one that comes to poverty through idleness—that contents himself with forms: 'that will not plough' in winter ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... king before him. "Fair king," said the earl gaily, "for a great while the thought has disturbed me, that peace and soft living are rotting away the British bone. Idleness is the stepdame of virtue, as our preachers have often told us. Soft living makes a sluggard of the hardiest knight, and steals away his strength. She cradles him with dreams of woman, and is the mother of chambering and wantonness. Folded hands and idleness cause our young damoiseaux to waste their days over merry tales, and dice, raiment to catch a lady's fancy and things ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... the time when her husband would be wanting every strong arm that could be mustered, his servant chose to be out fishing, instead of obeying orders. The girls pronounced him a coward, and Peder observed that to a coward, as well as a sluggard, there was ever a lion in the path. Erica doubted whether this act of disobedience arose from cowardice, for there were dangers in the fiord, for such as went out as far as the cod. ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... sluggard or a four-flusher, he may be sure these things will be found out and he cannot hope ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... to thoroughly arouse any one, no matter if he had been a sluggard, and surely Cuthbert could never be called that; so, with a toss of the blankets, he scrambled to his feet; then, remembering that he was in his socks, he hastened to snatch up his ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... how couldst thou so far lose sight of the besetting weakness of thy race, as thus, in a moment like this, on the critical edge of hazard and hope, to trust thy limbs and senses to the deceitful embraces of sleep? Black sluggard, avaunt! The Fighting Nigger be ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... world; the poor but aspiring must clamber up the wall, or push and struggle up the back stair, or, PARDI, crawl through any of the conduits of the house, never mind how foul and narrow, that lead to the top. The unambitious sluggard pretends that the eminence is not worth attaining, declines altogether the struggle, and calls himself a philosopher. I say he is a poor-spirited coward. What is life good for but for honour? and that is so indispensable, that we ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mediocre and obscure. Its earliest ancestors, Meroveus, from whom it got its name, and Clodion, the first, it is said, of the long-haired kings, a characteristic title of the Frankish kings, are scarcely historical personages; and it is under the qualification of sluggard kings that the last Merovingians have a place in history. Clovis alone, amidst his vices and his crimes, was sufficiently great and did sufficiently great deeds to live forever in the course of ages; the greatest part of his successors belong only to genealogy or chronology. In a moment of self-abandonment ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... over his leaders from a back bench above the gangway; Sir Wilfrid Lawson, increasingly wise, and not less gay than of yore; Mr. Lea, who has gone over to the enemy he faced in 1873; Sir John Lubbock, who, though no sluggard, still from time to time goes to the ants; Mr. Peter M'Lagan, who has succeeded Sir Charles Forster as Chairman of the Committee on Petitions; Sir John Mowbray, still, as in 1873, "in favour of sober, rational, safe, and temperate ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... be encouraged; but, at the same moment, others were enjoined to scourge the thief, which would point a moral not obscurely, that by pain endured for a brief season a man may earn the joyous reward of lasting glory. (18) Herein, too, it is plainly shown that where speed is requisite the sluggard will win for himself much ...
— The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians • Xenophon
... husbandmen had to wait until the rain made the ground soft enough for their ploughs to enter it, consequently many had to toil in cold, stormy, winter weather. To this the proverb alludes which says: "The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing." (Prov. ...
— Mother Stories from the Old Testament • Anonymous
... upon you, the fragments of you will be fit to go through the sieve of a corn-kiln, from the way in which they will destroy you with the flails of iron. Woe to him that shall wreak the Destruction, though it were only on account of those three! For to combat against them is not a 'paean round a sluggard.'" "Ye cannot," says Ingcel. "Clouds of weakness are coming to you," etc. "And after ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... thresher and steel-beaked sword-fish Only attempt to do what all do wish: The thresher backs him, and to beat begins; The sluggard whale leads to oppression, And t' hide himself from shame and danger, down Begins to sink: the sword-fish upwards spins, And gores him with his beak; his staff-like fins So well the one, his sword the other, plies, That, now a scoff and prey, this tyrant dies, And (his ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... his Excellency, raising his eyebrows, "I see clearly you are of the rascals. But a lad must have his fancies, and when your age I was hot for the exiled Prince. I acquired more sense as I grew older. And better an active mind, say I, than a sluggard partisan." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... wrote in one sentence profundities that commentating scholars busy themselves over for generations," he remarked. "Endless literary controversy is for sluggard minds. What more liberating thought than ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... Dieu! it is Serpice at last!" cried out Margot in joyous excitement as she and the others crowded round him. "Soul of a sluggard, don't waste time in laughing and capering like this! Speak up, speak up, you hear? Are we to fly at once to the mill and join him? Has he succeeded? Is ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... palace of the Louvre, he loitered the time away, practically a prisoner until the only friend he had with courage to speak out (Agrippa d'Aubigny) gave him a lecture. Agrippa lashed his master with the words "coward" and "sluggard," letting his faithful servants work for his interests while he remained the slave of a "wicked old witch." The Bearnais had been biding his time—"crouching to spring": but that slap in the face set him on fire. He could no longer wait for the right moment. He decided to make the first ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... disintegrated meals intoxicated the vision! There was the Athlete of the Dairy, commonly called Fresh Butter, in his gay yellow jacket, looking wore to the knife. There was turgid old Brown Sugar, who had evidently heard the advice, go to the ant, thou sluggard! and, and mistaking the last word for Sugared, was going as deliberately as possible. There was the vivacious Cheese, in the hour of its mite, clad in deep, creamy, golden hue, with delicate traceries of mould, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... the feelings of a cat in a strange garret, wandered about the sluggard town; and presently the blue-and-white sign of a telegraph office, with the mythological figure of a hastening messenger, suggested to her that a reassuring telegram was only Aunt Adelaide's due. Whereupon she began to rap on the door of the office, a scared ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... shaker, squeamer, Blockhead, sluggard, dullard, dreamer, Shirker, shuffler, crawler, creeper, Sniffler, snuffler, wailer, weeper, Earthworm, maggot, tadpole, weevil! Set upon thy course of evil, Lest the King of Spectre-land Set ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... Every man is indebted to the world; he owes it all his best possessions—his talent, time, and effort. And the individual who attempts to throw off this yoke of duty is violating one of nature's great laws. Even the lower forms of life afford example of this supreme law. Solomon startles the sluggard with his sharp admonition to betake himself to the ant. And Sir John Lubbock points men to the insect world to ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... have been called off from these to so apparently unimportant a circumstance. The act that had principally alarmed the cousins, and terminated, as we have seen, in the sudden attack of the sailor, had evidently been misconceived. The hand supposed to be feeling for the heart of the sluggard, had, in all probability, been placed on his chest with a view to arouse him from his slumber; while that which was believed to have been dropped to the handle of his knife, was, in reality, merely seeking the paper that contained the announcement, ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... grassy dell or convenient shady tree with a clear spring or dancing rivulet near by, invokes the tiffin coolie, and if a duly watchful eye has been kept upon that incorrigible sluggard, in short space the contents of the basket deck the sward. What have we here? Yes, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... the watchman lark, In his clear reveillee: 'Hearken, oh hark! 110 Press to the high goal, fly to the mark. Up, O sluggard, new morn is born; If still asleep when the night falls dark, Thou must ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... of frozen winter-rains, Of hard, white snows, of dull, loud-dripping thaw, Of showers and shine of spring, of March blasts raw, Of glaring August heats,—these dainty grains, This fruitage delicate. O sluggard soul! What harvest reapest thou as seasons roll? Mayhap to thee the slow results of time Bring also profit, though thy fruit, hung high, Escape the glance of careless passers-by, A seeming fragile husk ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... revolving in his Mind, all his Disappointments from his first Adventure with the Court-Coquet, who had entertain'd an utter Aversion to a blind Eye, down to his late Loss of his white Armour. See! said he, the fatal Consequence of being a Sluggard! Had I been more vigilant, I had been King of Babylon; but what is more, I had been happy in the Embraces of my dearest Astarte. All the Knowledge of Books or Mankind; all the personal Valour that I can boast of, has only prov'd an Aggravation ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... voice woke him up out of his beauty sleep, he would only turn round on his pillow and pretend to be deaf. But his master invariably persisted, and at a pinch would go into the apprentice's room and very soon have the sheets dragged off the bed and a jug of cold water emptied over the sluggard's head. ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... had forgot my selfe. Am I not King? Awake thou sluggard Maiestie, thou sleepest: Is not the Kings Name fortie thousand Names? Arme, arme my Name: a punie subiect strikes At thy great glory. Looke not to the ground, Ye Fauorites of a King: are wee not high? High be our thoughts: I know my Vnckle Yorke Hath Power enough to serue our turne. But ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... try all things and find all empty than to try nothing and leave your life a blank. To do this is to commit the sin of him who buried his talent in a napkin—despicable sluggard!" ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... one of the greatest faults; it was, in fact, a sin of the first magnitude in his vocabulary.—Indolence, he always said was the harbinger of every vice, of every evil. And the Songs of Solomon and his Proverbs were on every occasion ready to support his opinion. He would say to the sluggard, "Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise." He would forgive many a fault in a servant, but at habitual lyer in bed, he would get rid of immediately, unless he could break him of ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... mortal strife. [Firmly. It was not given to me to be your wife. That is the clear conviction of my heart! In courtship's merry pastime I can lead, But not sustain your spirit in its need. [Nearer and gathering fire. Now we have revell'd out a feast of spring; No thought of slumber's sluggard couch come nigh! Let Joy amid delirious song make wing And flock with choirs of cherubim on high. And tho' the vessel of our fate capsize, One plank yet breasts the waters, strong to save;— The fearless swimmer reaches Paradise! Let Joy go down into his watery grave; Our Love shall ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... the most senseless peasant in the Galtchinskoy district, was taking his old woman to the hospital. He had to drive over twenty miles, and it was an awful road. A government post driver could hardly have coped with it, much less an incompetent sluggard like Grigory. A cutting cold wind was blowing straight in his face. Clouds of snowflakes were whirling round and round in all directions, so that one could not tell whether the snow was falling from the sky or rising from the earth. The fields, the telegraph posts, and the forest could not be ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... may be, a favourite slave into the foundations of their palace. It was with his own life that my companion disarmed the envy of the gods. He fought his paper single-handed; trusting no one, for he was something of a cynic; up early and down late, for he was nothing of a sluggard; daily ear-wigging influential men, for he was a master of ingratiation. In that slender and silken fellow there must have been a rare vein of courage, that he should thus have died at his employment; and doubtless ambition spoke loudly in his ear, and doubtless ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... began to cut capers, as though to amuse his Generals, because they had been kind to him, an idle sluggard, and had not scorned his peasant toil. And he built a ship—not a ship exactly, but a boat—so that they could sail across the ocean-sea, up ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... your own wines and fig-trees like a taut ould patriark as you are, and overhaul them there adwentures o' yourn, in your own formilior woice. 'Tis the woice,' said the Captain, impressively, and announcing a quotation with his hook, 'of the sluggard, I heerd him complain, you have woke me too soon, I must slumber again. Scatter his ene-mies, and make ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... to the entangling snares Of Bacchus and of Comus. Him she leads To Cynthia's lonely haunts. To spread the toils, To beat the coverts, with the jovial horn At dawn of day to summon the loud hounds, She calls the lingering sluggard from his dreams, And where his breast may drink the mountain breeze, 180 And where the fervour of the sunny vale May beat upon his brow, through devious paths Beckons his rapid courser. Nor when ease, Cool ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... The humble-bees' drone again became ascendant—a sudden fear seized him. She was GOING; he should never see her! While he had stood there a dolt and sluggard, she had satisfied her curiosity and stolen away. With a sudden yielding to impulse, he darted quickly in the direction where he had heard her voice. The thicket moved, parted, crackled, and rustled, and then undulated ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... the foundation of the metaphor, it may be called an abbreviated form of comparison, the thing with which the comparison is made being directly predicated of that which is compared. Thus, when we say: A sluggard is vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes of those who send him, we have a metaphor, the sluggard being directly called vinegar and smoke. But if we say: "As vinegar to the teeth, and as smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to them that send him" (Prov. 10:26), ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... night To keep me at my books, and used to boast That I should rise above our humble lot. How oft I listened to her hopeful words— Poured from the fountain of a mother's heart Until I longed to wing the sluggard years That bore me on to what I hoped ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... and break in upon my delicious reveries. No old Hebrew prophet could be more indignant with the enemy who threatened to break down the carved work of his temples with axes and hammers. But his complaint is, after all, the voice of the sluggard. Let me dream a little longer; for much as I love my country and its institutions, I cannot rouse myself to fight for them. It is enough if I call their assailants an ugly name or so, and at times begin to write what might be the opening pages of ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... ordained by the Creator as a stimulus to endeavour, because "where least man suffers, longest he remains." Some of you may remember that he argues in that appendix that the old man who had learnt Chinese to distract his mind would have played but a sluggard's part in life if no affliction had befallen him, since he had never taken the pains to learn how to tell the time from a clock. "Nothing but extreme agony," says Borrow, "could have induced such a man to do anything ...
— George Borrow - A Sermon Preached in Norwich Cathedral on July 6, 1913 • Henry Charles Beeching
... summer, had warped what wreck remained, so that not a post or a board retained the position it was meant to hold, but everything was twisted from its purpose, like its owner, and degraded and debased. In this homestead of the sluggard, behind the ruined hedge, and sinking away among the ruined grass and the nettles, were the last perishing fragments of certain ricks: which had gradually mildewed and collapsed, until they looked like mounds of rotten honeycomb, ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens
... on the prudent ant thy heedless eyes, Observe her labours, sluggard! and be wise. No stern command, no 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, ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... the Chinese inscription, but he cannot tell the hour of the day by the clock within his house; he can get on, he thinks, very well without being able to do so; therefore, from this one omission, it is easy to come to a conclusion as to what a sluggard's part the man would have played in life, but for the dispensation of Providence; nothing but extreme agony could have induced such a man to do anything useful. He still continues, with all he has acquired, with all his usefulness, and with all his innocence of character, without any proper ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... not about the morrow, for sufficient to the day Is the evil (rather more so). Put your trust in God and pray! Study well the ant, thou sluggard. Blessed are the meek and low. Ponder calmly on the lilies — how they idle, how they grow. A man's a man! Obey your masters! Do not blame the proud and fat, For the poor are always with them, ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... rest awhile, When rest invites, and yet may be Neither a sluggard nor a craven. With strength renewed he quits the isle, And putting out again to sea, Makes sail for his ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... chapter[FN6] of war was Sahim, who crave his destrier between the two lines and played with swords and spears and turned over all the Capitula of combat till men of choicest wits were confounded. Then he cried out, saying, "Who is for fighting? Who is for jousting? Let no sluggard come out nor weakling!" Whereupon there rushed at him a horseman of the Kafirs, as he were a flame of fire; but Sahim let him not stand long before him ere he overthrew him with a thrust. Then a second came forth and he slew ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... that loves it, so that it will never be neglected. The grain crop is loved by the weevil, the Hessian fly, and the chinch bug; the watermelon, the squash and the cucumber are loved by the squash bug; the potato is loved by the potato bug; the sweet corn is loved by the ant, thou sluggard; the tomato is loved by the cut-worm; the plum is loved by the curculio, and so forth, and so forth, so that no plant that grows need be a wall-flower. [Early blooming and extremely dwarf joke for the table. Plant as soon as there is ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... cattle resounded from hill to hill across the wide bottom-lands and up and down the river upon either hand. Nature was waking from slumber—not to the full, boisterous wakefulness which greets the broad day, but the half-consciousness with which the sluggard turns himself for the light, sweet sleep of ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... such a woman. And even when she had lashed him with her tongue, as she did sometimes, he still laughed—after the smart was over—because he liked spirit. He would never have a horse that had not some blood, and he had never driven a sluggard in his life more than once. But wife and child and world, and all that therein was, existed largely because they were ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... traversed this garden of the sluggard, and were within a few steps of the door of the mansion, when Lambourne had ceased speaking; a circumstance very agreeable to Tressilian, as it saved him the embarrassment of either commenting upon or replying to ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott |
