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Idler   /ˈaɪdələr/  /ˈaɪdlər/   Listen
Idler

noun
1.
Person who does no work.  Synonyms: bum, do-nothing, layabout, loafer.



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"Idler" Quotes from Famous Books



... the mask, smooth and sterile, of the hunger for adornment, for gold bands and jewels and perfume, for goffered linen and draperies of silk and scarlet. She was the naked idler stained with antimony in the clay courts of Sumeria; the Paphian with painted feet loitering on the roofs of Memphis while the blocks of red sandstone floated sluggishly down the Nile for the pyramid of Khufu the King; she was the flushed voluptuousness ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... The Idler may be ranked among the best attempts which have been made to render our common newspapers the medium of rational amusement; and it maintained its ground in this character longer than any of the papers which have ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... produced a number of successful plays, notably Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan and The Importance of being Earnest, Pinero's Second Mrs Tanqueray, The Princess and the Butterfiy, His House in Order and The Thunderbolt; C. Haddon Chambers's The Idler; H. A. Jones's Masqueraders; Alfred Sutro's John Glayde's Honour and The Builder of Bridges; Carton's Liberty Hall and The Tree of Knowledge; Anthony Hope's Prisoner of Zenda and Rupert of Hentzau; and Stephen Phillips's Paolo and Francesca, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... gaed by, and the idler sort commenced to think mair lichtly o' that black business. The minister was weel thocht o'; he was aye late at the writing—folk wad see his can'le doon by the Dule Water after twal' at e'en; and he seemed pleased wi' himsel' and upsitten ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various

... was to impress upon the popular mind the reality of the objects of faith, and the truth of the histories of Scripture, by giving visible form to both. That function has now passed away, and none has as yet taken its place. The painter has no profession, no purpose. He is an idler on the earth, chasing the shadows of his ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... was added to some editions of the Idler, when collected into volumes, but not by Dr. Johnson, as Mr. Boswell asserts, nor to the early editions ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... give this woman freedom. He would devote himself to restoring her to the air and sunshine. What nobler ambition! He was an idler, he had never done anything for anybody. He was only a killer of time, a vagrant, but now was his opportunity—he would do for this beautiful soul what no one else on earth could do. She was slipping ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... songs of welcome and strains of music; and as long as each man asks on account of his wants, and asks what he wants, no man will discover aught amiss or deficient in the vast and many-chambered storehouse. But if, instead of this, an idler or scoffer should wander through the rooms, peering and peeping, and either detects, or fancies he has detected, here a rusted sword or pointless shaft, there a tool of rude construction, and superseded by later improvements (and preserved, perhaps, to make us more grateful ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... took a stolen look At the sky, so soft and blue; And a leaflet green, with its silver sheen, Was seen by the idler too. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester

... a sudden stop, for a time, to all these labors. The mother wrote, in the utmost distress, to say that DIETRICH had disappeared from his home, it was supposed with the intention of going to India "with a young idler not older than himself." His brother immediately left the lathe at which he was turning an eye-piece in cocoa-nut, and started for Holland, whence he proceeded to Hanover, failing to meet his brother, as he expected. Meanwhile ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden

... of Idlenes be it enacted, that if any men be founde to live as an Idler or renagate, though a freedman, it shal be lawfull for that Incorporation or Plantation to w^ch he belongeth to appoint him a M^r to serve for wages, till he shewe apparent signes ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various

... in Colorado; and there is yet a middle term, which combines the medical benefits of the new system with the moral drawbacks of the old. Again the invalid has to lie aside from life and its wholesome duties; again he has to be an idler among idlers; but this time at a great altitude, far among the mountains, with the snow piled before his door and the frost flowers every morning on his window. The mere fact is tonic to his nerves. His choice ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... "Out upon thee, idler!" was the warm reply. "Art thou come to vex me with thy doubts and scout thy sovereign's pious intentions?" ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... Ye idler things, that soothed my hours of care, Where would ye wander, triflers, tell me where? As maids neglected, do ye fondly dote, On the tair type, or the embroider'd coat; Detest my modest shelf, and long to fly Where princely Popes and mighty ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe

... various times when I have helped you a little you have said to me, 'We can get along very well now'; but in a very short time I find you in the same difficulty again. Now, this can only happen by some defect in your conduct. What that defect is, I think I know. You are not lazy, and still you are an idler. I doubt whether, since I saw you, you have done a good whole day's work in any one day. You do not very much dislike to work, and still you do not work much, merely because it does not seem to you that you could get much for ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... Earl of B., with whom she travelled much on the Continent, where she met Lord Byron, her Conversations with whom she pub. in 1834. This is the only one of her books which has any value. The others were slight works on Travel, such as The Idler in Italy, annuals, and novels. She became bankrupt and went to Paris, where she lived under the protection of ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... and down, With idler, knave, and tyrant! Why for sluggards cark and moil? He that will not live by toil Has no right on English ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley

... house of K'ang, her name being Hwa-mei, though from the nature of her charm she is ofttime called the Golden Mouse. But touching this affair of your own immediate danger: we being both but common men of the idler sort, it is only fitting that when high ones threaten I ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah

... sorrow sighing, While his heart was filled with anguish, To the blue lake's rocky margin, And he spoke the words which follow: "Tell me, Untamo, thou sleeper, Tell me all thy dreams, O idler, Where to find the realm of Ahto, Where dwell Vellamo's fair ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous

... crowd, which is inevitable amid the circulation of Parisian humanity. Oh, how deeply she feels the value of a minute! Her gait, her toilet, the expression of her face, involve her in a thousand indiscretions, but oh, what a ravishing picture she presents to the idler, and what an ominous page for the eye of a husband to read, is the face of this woman when she returns from the secret place of rendezvous in which her heart ever dwells! Her happiness is impressed even on the unmistakable disarray of her hair, the mass of whose wavy tresses has not received ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... dreamy moments, but he was far too practical to let the poet in him rule his life. One sensed, by the most cursory glance, that here was a type of virile young American who could not only dream, but make his dreams come true. No idler he! And he had no use for idlers. He had dared to come to this far country, establish himself on a ranch, and seek to win out in the face ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne

... who did everything, said to himself, one day, "Why should I work for this idler? It is better for us to separate; I will work for myself alone, and he can do as he likes." He ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various

... the teaching of Christ was authorized of heaven—no man who believes this only, that his doctrine has obtained and preserved its heavenly character from the successful, unanswerable, appeal which it makes to the human heart—can dispute this fact. Is he an idler, then, or a dreamer in the land, who comes forth, and on the high-road of our popular literature, insists on it that men should assume their full moral strength, and declares that herein lies the salvation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... that faculty for seeing, and commenting on all that he saw in nature, which became his chief characteristic. He was especially fond of essays; one of his first purchases with his own money was a full set of Dr. Johnson, and for a whole year he lived on 'The Idler' and 'The Rambler' and tried to imitate their ponderous prose. His first contributions to literature, modeled on these essays, were promptly returned. By chance he picked up a volume of Emerson, the master who was to revolutionize his whole manner of thinking; and as he had fed on Dr. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... noiselessly to the door. His mouth had settled into a hard, unyielding, thin line; and a dangerous light flickered in his eyes. Temporarily the idler had stepped aside, giving place to the real man that was Maitland—the man ready to fight for his own, naked hands against firearms, if it need be. True, he had but to step into the gun-room to find weapons in plenty; but these must be then loaded to be of service, and precious moments wasted ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance

... from the hour of rising, is, I actually believe, more injurious to the nerves than hard drinking. It paralyzes exertion. I never saw an Irish labourer, with his hod and his pipe, mounting a ladder, but I was sure to discover that he was an idler. I never had a groom that smoked much who took proper care of my horses; and I never knew a gentleman seriously addicted to smoking, who cared much for any thing beyond self. A Father Matthew pledge against the excessive use of tobacco would be of much more benefit ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... Career. London. Rambler and Idler. The Dictionary. Other Works. Lives of the Poets. Person ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... Arrogant, masculine, naive, rowdyish, Laugher, weeper, worker, idler, citizen, countryman, Saunterer of woods, stander upon hills, summer swimmer in rivers or by the sea, Of pure American breed, of reckless health, his body perfect, free from taint from top to toe, free forever from headache and dyspepsia, clean-breathed, Ample-limbed, ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... proved such an energetic, devoted wife, that Jean felt that he had more than got his right arm back again; yet he was no idler, for he found that with practice he could do many things with his left arm, and at length adopted the business ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood

... became more and more a devoted Brahmsite; he accepted himself as the guardian of the great classical tradition (which never existed); and he wrote more and more dull music. It is idle to tell me he is austere when my inner consciousness tells me he is merely barren, and idler to ask me feel beauty when my ears report no beauty to me. He had no original emotion or thought: whenever his music is good it will be found that he has derived the emotion from a poem, or else that there is no emotion but only very fine decorative work. ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman

... shouldered his rifle, taken one last, silent look at the cabin on Bayou des Acadiens, stood for a few moments with his hand in Bonaventure's above one green mound in the churchyard at Grande Pointe, given it into the schoolmaster's care, and had gone to join his son. Of course, not as an idler; such a perfect woodsman easily made himself necessary to the engineer's party. The company were sorry enough to lose him when Claude went away; but no temptation that they could invent could stay him from following Claude. Father and ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... servant and faithful caterer has been a sad idler and vagrant for the last month, thinking more of his own pleasures than of your needs and requirements. Forgive him, he is again a working bee and seeking honey for your hives. Have patience, irate correspondents; we have absconded ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... think I have turned idler, Sophy," he said laughing, and showing his white teeth, "all I can say is, that idling over natural history and ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn

... full charge of the poultry plant, and are quite up to Sam in his best days. Of course I have had all kinds of troubles with all sorts of men; but we have such a strong force of "reliables" that the atmosphere is not suited to the idler or the hobo, and we are, therefore, never seriously annoyed. Of one thing I am certain: no man stays long at our farm-house without apprehending the uses of napkin and bath-tub, and these are strong ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter

... we substitute sherry, a chop, and a club in Pall-Mall, for white spruce beer, sandwiches, and a tavern; replacing the curricle and footman by a cab and tiger, the remainder, with trivial alterations, may stand good of the fashionable idler of to-day, as of him of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... moral anathema, which was denounced against these frivolous and paid trades by the narrowminded earnestness of the Roman character. "The trade of a poet," says Cato, "in former times was not respected; if any one occupied himself with it or was a hanger-on at banquets, he was called an idler." But now any one who practised dancing, music, or ballad-singing for money was visited with a double stigma, in consequence of the more and more confirmed disapproval of gaining a livelihood by services rendered for remuneration. While accordingly the taking part in the masked ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... want to know why we believe thus and so; and particularly why we act as we do. Why do you keep this day? What do you mean by this ceremony? Do you think that it is wrong to do this or that? Such people wander about observing; but their observation we understand is the observation of an idler who does not expect to be influenced by what he observes, but only to be amused. These are they who run after the latest thing in heresy, the newest thing in thought. What is observable about them is that they never seriously contemplate doing anything ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... for its fifteen days' repression, burst forth in his reply: "I will say what I have in my heart," he cried, "since concealment is hateful to me. What thanks does the victor in countless battles gain? He and the idler are equally honored, and die the same death. Many nights' slumber have I lost on the battle field; many cities have I conquered, abroad and here upon the Trojan coast, and of the spoil, the greater part has gone to Agamemnon, who sat idle in his fleet; yet ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... his eye he saw Marigny's helper looking at him. Without undue exaggeration, he craned his neck, rounded his shoulders, and carried himself with the listless air of a Piccadilly idler. He reflected, too, that a bare-headed man in evening dress would not readily be identified with a leather-coated chauffeur, and Dale, he hoped, was sufficiently endowed with mother wit to frame ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... was the president of the Committee on Biblical Revision, and he crossed the ocean fourteen times as a fraternal internuncio between the churches of Europe and America. His prodigious capacity for work made Dr. Samuel Johnson seem an idler, and his varied attainments and activities were ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

... and there with strong red marks; a forehead and nose a la Louis XV., a serious mouth, a tall figure, thin, or perhaps wasted, like that of a man just recovering from illness, and finally, a bearing that was midway between the indolence of a mere idler and the thoughtfulness of a busy man. If this portrait serves to depict his character, a sketch of this man's dress will bring it still further into relief. Rabourdin wore habitually a blue surcoat, a white ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac

... ill-regulated, it is, to a great extent, his own fault; and so it is simple retribution, that, while he lies slothfully sleeping or aimlessly dreaming, the fatal habit settles on him like a vampyre, and sucks his blood, fanning him all the while with its hot wings into deeper slumber or idler dreams! I am not such a hard-souled being as to apply this to the neglected poor, who have had no chance to fill their heads with wholesome ideas, and to be taught the lesson of self-government. I trust the tariff of Heaven ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... be called upon to recite. And when he was called upon, he would stand up and take what the class called a "dead set;" that is, he could not recite at all. Sometimes he would make such ludicrous blunders that the whole class would burst into a laugh. Such are the applauses an idler gets. He was wretched, of course. He had been idle so long that he hardly knew how to apply his mind to study. All the good scholars avoided him; they were ashamed to be seen in his company. He became ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... is the voice of God. We will go up with thee, and bore the mountain; and thou shalt be our king, for thou art wisest, and the spirit of the All-Father is on thee; and whosoever will not go up with thee shall die as a coward and an idler." ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... nearer to his heart; Wordsworth shaded away into a vague mistiness, in which the Cross at times was lost; Milton had more devotion in his absence from church than Wordsworth in his presence there; Wordsworth was an "idler in the land;" Milton an ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... swam sluggishly along shore, her lofty canvas flapping in the faint air. On her spotless quarter-deck, Rupert Venner, wealthy idler and owner of the vessel, lounged in a deck-chair a picture of the utter finality of boredom. His guests, Craik Tomlin and John Pearse, made perfunctory pretense of admiring the lovely coast scenery along the port hand; but their air was that of men surfeited ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle

... measures contravened—and this by fraud? And than Robespierre's anger there were few things more terrible in '93. It was an anger that shore away heads as recklessly as wayside flowers are flicked from their stems by the idler's cane. ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... have some show of public duty to perform. The priests denounce the bill as "spoliation and robbery" of course, and prophesy all manner of things against so wicked a kingdom. Doubtless it is daring impiety in the eyes of Rome to forbid a man with a shaven crown and a brown cloak to play the idler and vagabond. We are only surprised that the people of Piedmont have so long suffered their labours to be eaten up by an order of men ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... 'You are an idler—I have heard that from your uncle—self-indulgent, fond of trivial pleasures. Such men never succeed in life. But if you were certain to be Lord Chancellor—if you could this moment prove yourself possessed of a splendid ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... in one of his letters: "We must economize," he wrote to the priests of the seminary, "and have only watchful and industrious domestics. We must look after them, else they deteriorate in the seminary. You have the example of the baker, Louis Lemaire, an idler, a gossip, a tattler, a man who, instead of walking behind the coach, would not go unless Monseigneur paid for a carriage for him to follow him to La Rochelle, and lent him his dressing-gown to protect him from the cold. Formerly ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath

... known the whole mysterious case at once to Mr. Craigie, the chief magistrate of Aberdeen. Not for a single instant did Mr. Comyn suspect a hoax, or imagine the affair to be only the mischievous trick of some idler. Indeed, such was not likely; the times were superstitious, nor were there any persons connected or at variance with the family who were liable to be suspected of having played off such a foolish and wicked jest at the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various

... best in her hands, and she had nursed rare night blooming cereus for seven years in the hope that it would arrive at perfection the following June. Her marriage had been a disappointment to her, for her husband, a pleasant, good-looking fellow, had turned out an idler; her children, with the exception of Archie, the youngest, had never filled the vacancy in her life; but in her devotion to flowers there was something of the ecstasy and all of the self-abandonment she had missed in ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... The way is by free schools and free colleges, supported by public taxes. Sects and parties may have as many seminaries as they choose, and with rules of study and conduct so easily to be complied with, and administrations so lax, that the most contemptible idler or the most independent and self-willed simpleton shall see in them nothing to conflict with his habit or temper; but the graduates of these seminaries will not ascend the pinnacles of fame nor direct the affairs of nations: such affairs will ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... to feel that he was the superior of this showy idler, that his own garments and dinner pail and used hands were the titles to a nobility which could justly look down upon those who filched from the treasury of the toiler the means to buzz and flit and glitter in dronelike ease. "As for these Whitneys," he thought, ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... ways and inoffensive enough, but a rare hand at gossiping about the beach and the walls—you might find him at all odd hours either in these public places or in the door of his shop, talking away with any idler like himself. And how I came to get into talk with him on that particular night was here: Tom Dunlop, Maisie's young brother, was for keeping tame rabbits just then, and I was helping him to build hutches ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher

... but an idler," said the beautiful lady, "making acquaintance. I am of little use as yet. I was very hard worked before I came here, and they think it well that we should sit in the sun and take a little rest, ...
— A Little Pilgrim - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

... he feigned to delight himself in the company of every idler he came across; he scorned loudly such stupid sport as ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... betrayal, thieves bribed by the State. We hang upon the word of the first servant Whom we may please to punish. Then he bethought him To take from us our privilege of hiring Our serfs at will; we are no longer masters Of our own lands. Presume not to dismiss An idler. Willy nilly, thou must feed him! Presume not to outbid a man in hiring A labourer, or you will find yourself In the Court's clutches.—Was such an evil heard of Even under tsar Ivan? And are the people The better off? Ask them. Let the pretender But promise them ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin

... not" wait upon "I would," I owe you one I would do what I pleased Ice, to smooth the —, be thou chaste as Idea, teach the young Idiot, tale told by an Idler, busy world an If is the only peacemaker If all the world and love were young Ignorance, let me not burst in —is bliss —of wealth Ill wind turns none to good Ills, bear those, we have —the scholar's life assail —, a prey to hastening Image of God in ebony Imagination bodies forth ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various

... But he who, with industrious zeal, Contributes to the common weal, Has the true secret understood Of private and of public good. Be off with you!" He raised his hand, Which the vain insect dared withstand; It smote the parasite of pride And there the idler fell, and died. ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay

... an effort, but a sharp pain in his wrist apprised him that he was trying to free his hands. He gave the struggle his attention, as an idler might observe the feat of a juggler, without interest in the outcome. What splendid effort!—what magnificent, what superhuman strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor! Bravo! The cord fell away; his arms parted ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce

... to-day. After all, I am not an idler. I earn my right to live. When I publish my History the world will be the richer by something, poor though it may be. I vow I have been more greatly, more nobly employed of late years, than I was when I earned my living at school-slavery teaching to children the most ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... still worn it in his bosom, not as an early dewdrop, but as a diamond of pure white lustre,—it is a pity to lose it, then. And thus, when Kenyon saw how much his friend had now to hide, and how well he hid it, he would have wept, although his tears would have been even idler than those ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... so much George already knew,—had been for some months now the comrade and helper of both the Maxwells. His friends still supposed him to be merely the agreeable and fashionable idler. In reality, Naseby for some years past had been spending all the varied leisure that his commission in the Life Guards allowed him upon the work of a social and economic student. He had joined the staff of a well-known ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... The idler about the streets of Rome may, from time to time, catch sight, on blank walls and dead corners, of long white strips of paper, covered with close-printed lines of most uninviting looking type, and headed with the Papal arms—the cross-keys and tiara. If, being like myself ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey

... that I can't make my own living. I only want a little time to take breath, don't you see, and a crust and a bed for a few days, such as you might give any wayfarer. Meanwhile, I will look after things around the place. I fancy I was never an idler here since the day I learnt to ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... then and afterward, drew the conclusion that Lincoln was an idler. Long before, as a farm-hand, he had been called "bone idle."(9) And of the outer Lincoln, except under stress of need, or in spurts of enthusiasm, as in the earlier years with Logan, this reckless comment had its base of fact. The mighty energy ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... time, and you have made acquaintances and got your relations round you; or if you have got a good big house like this, and a wife and children and mother and sister, and everything comfortable. I don't like that way of living all in rooms next door to each other. But I am not an idler. I try to be, but I can't manage it; it goes against the grain. My business habits are too deep-seated. Then, I haven't any house to call my own, or anything in the way of a family. My sisters are five ...
— The American • Henry James

... wood-demons, and other show-cattle of the Smithfield muses! May you be visited by a locust tribe of scribblers, who shall conspire to torment that groaning martyr, the Press, with ducal lampoons, drowsy epics, and zig-zag heroics! With Hope the upholsterer, and Bryon the idler, with Joe Miller in quarto, Genius in thin duodecimo, Leadenhall romances, and Puritan biography: and should your worship ever find yourself deviating from the path of virtue, may Hannah Glasse preserve your temperance, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold

... clubs, spending their energies in gayeties and sports, with hardly a sense of the responsibilities which their privileges entail. Fortunately, however, there is, in America at least, a pretty widespread sense of shame among men about such shirking, and the idler has to face a certain amount of mild contempt. Upon women the pressure of public opinion has not yet become nothing upper-class ladies who spend their time at cards, at teas, at the theater, who think of little but dress and gossip, or of the latest novels and music, who evade their natural duties ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... him as a permanent colleague on their staff. Henceforward existence was no concern to the literary vagabond, who on his own showing had had four teachers: the cook on the Volga steamer, the advocate Lanin, the idler whom he describes in ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald

... to which I replied thus, for my thoughts were lulled to repose by the constant humming of our loquacious guide. I was only vaguely conscious that no doubt the persons and things would have appeared worthy of attention to me if I had been there alone as an idler, for in that case, I should certainly ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... man is an idler who kills time with study. Beware of his false knowledge: it is more ...
— Maxims for Revolutionists • George Bernard Shaw

... cannot say that he was ever an industrious man; the circumstances of his life have not called on him to be so; and yet he can hardly be called an idler. Since his appointment to his precentorship, he has published, with all possible additions of vellum, typography, and gilding, a collection of our ancient church music, with some correct dissertations on Purcell, ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope

... broke out again,—"see what a life it is, getting and spending, living handsomely and doing the proper thing towards society, and all that,—rubbing through the world in the old hereditary way; though I needn't growl at it, for I enjoy it enough, and find it a pleasant enough way, Heaven knows. Lazy idler! enjoying the sunshine with ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson

... he managed, by studying with a book before him at his meals, carrying it in his pocket that he might utilize every spare moment, and studying nights and holidays, to pick up an excellent education in the odds and ends of time which most boys throw away. While the rich boy and the idler were yawning and stretching and getting their eyes open, young Burritt had seized the opportunity and improved it. At thirty years of age he was master of every important language in Europe and was studying ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... sung—as during his too short life above them all sang Burns—for Scotland's sake. Dear is the band that ties the humbly educated man to the true national poet. To many in the upper classes he is, perhaps, but one among a thousand artificers of amusement who entertain and scatter the tedium of their idler hours. To the peasant the book lies upon his shelf a household treasure. There he finds depicted himself—his own works and his own ways. There he finds a cordial for his drooping spirits, nutriment for his wearied strength. Burns is his brother—his helper in time of need, when ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... walking about; he is told, and he sees, that there are no resident gentry in the neighbourhood to afford them work; he compassionates their condition; concocts a paragraph, and imputes the misery he witnesses to absenteeism. Let them accompany the idler to his home, and inspect his farm: he will find, out of a holding of from three to four Irish acres, perhaps an acre on which there was no attempt made at all to raise a crop, independent of untilled headlands, amounting to at least fifth of the ground under cultivation in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... with the Grand Monarque in one of his caustic sketches,—this would be as exciting, one might suppose, as to sit through a play one knows by heart at Drury Lane or the Theatre Francais, and might furnish occupation enough to the curious idler who was only in search of entertainment. The mechanical obstacles of half-illegible manuscript, of antiquated forms of speech, to say nothing of the intentional obscurities of diplomatic correspondence, stand, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... notice of the other written works of Sir Joshua—his "Journey to Flanders and Holland," his Notes to Mason's verse translation of Du Fresnoy's Latin poem, "Art of Painting," and his contributions to the "Idler." The former is chiefly a notice of pictures, and of value to those who may visit the galleries where most of them may be found; and in some degree his remarks will attach a value to those dispersed; the best part of the "Journey," perhaps, is his critical discrimination ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... naught. Better go down upon your marrow bones And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones Like an old pauper in all kinds of weather; For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these and yet Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen The martyrs ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats

... many years. He had been in college, but his eyes had given out there, and he had been obliged to leave in the middle of his junior year, though he had kept up a pleasant intercourse with the members of his class, with whom he had been a great favorite. He was a good deal of an idler in the world. I do not think his ambition, except in the case of securing Mary Dunn for his wife, had ever been distinct; he seemed to make the most he could of each day as it came, without making all his days' works tend toward some grand result, and go toward ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... found, and I told him only YOU knew. He wants to see you; go to him. It may be luck to you." Rutli went. The stranger, an English Alpine climber of scientific tastes, talked with him for an hour. At the end of that time, to everybody's astonishment, he engaged this hopeless idler as his personal guide for three months, at the sum of five francs a day! It was inconceivable, it was unheard of! The Englander was as mad as Gottlieb, whose intellect had always been under suspicion! The schoolmaster pursed up his lips, the pastor shook his head; ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte

... with allegories," his companion objected petulantly. "The eternal blackness exists surely enough, even if my metaphor is faulty. I am disposed to be philosophical. Let me ramble on. Here am I, an idler in my boyhood, a harmless pleasure-seeker in my youth till I ran up against tragedy, and since then a drifter, a drifter with a slowly growing vice, lolling through life with no definite purpose, with no ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... father, with a newspaper in his hand, came to stimulate him, by showing the advertisement of a prize offered by the Society of Leyden, and decreed to the author of a piece of poetry, signed with these words, "An Author 18 years old," who was invited to make himself known. "You ought to blush, idler," said old Bilderdyk to his son. "Here is a boy only of your age, and though so young, is the pride and happiness of his parents; and you——." "It is myself," answered young William, throwing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various

... of 1758 Johnson put forth the first of a series of essays, entitled the Idler. During two years these essays continued to appear weekly. They were eagerly read, widely circulated, and indeed, impudently pirated, while they were still in the original form, and had a large sale when collected into volumes. The Idler may be described as a second part of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... snore; hypnology[obs3]. dull work; pottering; relaxation &c. (loosening) 47; Castle of Indolence. [Cause of inactivity] lullaby, sedative, tranquilizer, hypnotic, sleeping pill, relaxant, anaesthetic, general anaesthetic &c. 174; torpedo. [person who is inactive] idler, drone, droil[obs3], dawdle, mopus[obs3]; do-little faineant[Fr], dummy, sleeping partner; afternoon farmer; truant &c. (runaway) 623: bummer|!, loafer, goldbrick, goldbicker, lounger, lazzarone[It]; lubber, lubbard[obs3]; slow ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... God ever made an idler," she said, with high gravity that widened the gulf between them. "To whom much is given, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... such importance for so many years. Wilkes, who had known him intimately, describes him, in his letters to the electors of Aylesbury, as "the most abandoned man of the age." He is even said not to have been a man of business; yet the Admiralty was a place which can scarcely be managed by an idler, and the Secretaryship of State, in this country, can never be a sinecure. He had certainly one quality which is remarkable for conciliation, and without which no minister, let his talents be what they may, has ever been personally popular; he was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... stingy old Father Time. He arrayed himself in the regalia of millionaires and presidents; he took himself to the quarter where life is brightest and showiest, and there dined with taste and luxury. With ten dollars a man may, for a few hours, play the wealthy idler to perfection. The sum is ample for a well-considered meal, a bottle bearing a respectable label, commensurate tips, a smoke, cab ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... the World is the making of cities and palaces. But it is not for Man. What is Man? He only prepares my cities for me, and mellows them. All his works are ugly, his richest tapestries are coarse and clumsy. He is a noisy idler. He only protects me from mine enemy the wind; and the beautiful work in my cities, the curving outlines and the delicate weavings, is all mine. Ten years to a hundred it takes to build a city, for five or six hundred more it mellows, and is prepared for me; then I inhabit it, ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany

... into the village post-office, where as usual a group of citizens lounged and lingered on one pretext or another, the appearance of "Jim Stuart and Georgie Warne" should cause no comment whatever. To-night more than one idler noted, as often before, the fashion in which the two were outwardly suited to each other. Both were the possessors of the superb health which is such a desirable ally to true vigour of mind, and since both were understood to be, in the village usage, "highly educated," their attraction ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond

... answer Boyd Connoway, the village do-nothing, enterprising idler and general boys' abettor, beckoned us across the road. He was on the top of a little knoll, thick with the yellow of broom and the richer orange of gorse. Here he had stretched himself very greatly at ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... never considered his position sufficiently exalted for a former business man with a tilbury, and, by gradual degrees, by dint of deeming every sort of occupation beneath him, he had grown old and incapable, a genuine idler with low tastes, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... feelings. Mrs. Stanley and her young friend Hazlehurst, much as they esteemed and respected each other, disagreed on many subjects. Harry made a point of looking at both sides of a question; he was loyal to his country, and willing to serve it to the best of his ability—not at all inclined to be an idler, and play the drone in the bee-hive, whether social or political. Mrs. Stanley had much regretted his being in any way connected with public life, but she seldom attempted ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... of "cattivo Dio" between his teeth. A Scotchman or a Yorkshireman wraps his plaid around him and looks with contempt on an idle race who are "afraid of a sprinkle." But the peasant of North Italy is no more of an idler than the peasant of the Lowlands. The truth is, that both he and his home are absolutely unprepared for bad weather. His clothes are thin and scanty. His diet is low. The wonder is how he gets through a hard day's work on food which an English pauper would starve upon. ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... talking nonsense," he said sulkily, though he shrank from meeting her fiery look. "And if I am idle, there are plenty of people idler than me—people who live on their money, with no land to bother about, and nothing to do for ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... almost said, anything but that; making bad worse, the improvident more improvident, the liar more ready to lie, the idler more ready to idle. But the Charity which is Humanity, which is the spirit of pure pity, the Spirit of Christ and ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... relish of amusement in other things. A lad with a sickly constitution and no very active mind, who can just retain what is pointed out to him, and has neither sagacity to distinguish nor spirit to enjoy for himself, will generally be at the head of his form. An idler at school, on the other hand, is one who has high health and spirits, who has the free use of his limbs, with all his wits about him, who feels the circulation of his blood and the motion of his heart, who ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... with an ancient and owl-like demeanour, and prove dry, stockish, and dyspeptic in all the better and brighter parts of life. Many make a large fortune who remain underbred and pathetically stupid to the last. And meantime there goes the idler, who began life along with them—by your leave, a different picture. He has had time to take care of his health and his spirits; he has been a great deal in the open air, which is the most salutary of all things for both body and mind; and if ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... off the Biera Mar to thread its way through many tree-lined streets—it is a misdemeanor, punishable by fine, to cut down a tree in Rio de Janeiro—it carried a young American with the air of an accomplished idler, who has been mildly bored by the incomparable view from the waterside boulevard. When it stopped at the foot of one of the slum covered morros that dot all Rio, and a liveried doorman came out of a splendid residence to ask the visitor his name, the taxi ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various

... merely clever, had not had a particle of what is called genius, been merely a hardworking able gentleman, of good character and fortune, he might be half-way up the hill by this time; whereas now, what is he? Less before the public than he was at twenty-eight,—a discontented anchorite, a meditative idler." ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... me if Charley were out of the way? She knows me too well. She's a utilitarian. She would say, 'Cousin Phil is interesting, but he hides his talent in a napkin. He studied law, and now neglects to practise it because his uncle left him two or three thousand dollars a year.' To her I am only an idler, when ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... obtain in the world are riches and honours; what is not easy to combine with them is leisure. These two blessings cannot be enjoyed together, but, as it happens, you hold one along with the other, so that we might as well dub you the 'rich and honourable idler.'" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... their day peculiarly—and on the warm afternoons, they bask up and down the thoroughfares in the gaudiest of orange and scarlet bandannas. But their day is fast passing away; and in place of the simple, happy creatures of a few years gone, we find the discontented and besotted idler—squalid and dirty. ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... is this: Thou shalt live of thine own work, that thou mayest have to give to the needy. This is your bounden duty, and if you do not so God will pronounce you not a Christian but a thief and robber. In the first place, because you are an idler and do not support yourself, but live by the sweat and toil of others; in the second place, because you withhold from your neighbor what you plainly owe him. Where now shall we find those who keep this commandment? Indeed, where should ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther

... of the rest, some months later, pouring tea for me in her flat. There is not much in it. She said that she had taken very little account of Jack's companion; had just reckoned him up for a chance idler in his company—"a sort of super-commercial traveller"; so she described him; "not at ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... were life-long workers for goodor children of such men and women, who had hazarded their lives for the Lord Jesus,and she, an idler all her life! Hazel put her head down in her hands, ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner

... the little Samoan village. He weeded taro, he carried stones for the building of the new church, he helped to lay out nets, he speared fish, he played cricket and ta ti'a. By nature neither an idler nor a shirk, he was consumed, besides, with a desire to repay the kindness and hospitality of his hosts; and the old chief, his friend from the start, now became his captain, to whom he rendered ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... rare intervals he used to call at Grandmamma's house; and that by some people he was said to be the outcast son of rich parents and a pure, saintly soul, while others averred that he was a mere peasant and an idler. ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy

... live; no idler let me be, But in thy service hand and heart employ. Prepared to do thy bidding cheerfully— Be this my highest and my ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... now, but still he persevered; and his toil was well repaid, too, when he gave his mother the scanty payment which he received at the end of the week, and felt that he had done his best—that he had helped her forward—that he was no longer an idler supported by her sorrow—but that he had braced the burden of labour on to his own shoulders also, weak as they were, and had taken his place, though dying, among the manful workers of the world. Jessie brought a small weekly contribution also, neatly ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various

... go with all my heart, for she is idler and more useless than ever, and does naught from morning to night but sit at the window, watching the folks in the street, and turning from red to pale and pale to red as though she were a bride looking for the arrival of her bridegroom. I have ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... himself well-deserving of his fellowmen. But a man who does none of these things, who does not even try to do them, who never attempts to learn the rudiments of any branch of knowledge so that he may at least do what he can towards promoting it—such a one, born as he is into riches, is a mere idler and thief of time, a contemptible fellow. He will not even be happy, because, in his case, exemption from need delivers him up to the other extreme of human suffering, boredom, which is such martyrdom to him, that he would have been better off if poverty had given him something ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer

... the novelist. In the same year he resumed his intention of an edition of Shakspeare, of which he issued proposals, and which he promised to finish in little more than a year, although nine years were to elapse ere it saw the light. In 1758, he began the "Idler," which reached the 103d No., and was considered lighter and more agreeable than the "Rambler." He has seldom written anything so powerful as his fable of "The Vultures." In 1759, his mother died, at the ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... Heinsius, Jan. 7/17. "The loss," the King writes, "is less to me than it would be to another person, for I cannot live there. Yet it is serious." So late as 1758 Johnson described a furious Jacobite as firmly convinced that William burned down Whitehall in order to steal the furniture. Idler, No. 10. Pope, in Windsor Forest, a poem which has a stronger tinge of Toryism than anything else that he ever wrote, predicts the speedy restoration ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... me, I think a great deal, and say nothing; but if the young Pontalba, who now studies type-setting with the Prince Imperial, was not the baby whose clothes I once saw examined at a cafe there is no truth in these "Leaves of an Idler." ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong

... of the skull is lowered or narrowed; the broad brow cramped; the features finer cut, but losing in force what they gain in fineness. Look, for instance, at this Vandyck of Sir John Suckling,—only the next generation after the great men; but his portrait is that of an idler, his head that of a man without great thoughts or great interests. The age of imagination had passed; the age of fancy was setting in. Here and there in the later days one finds a man who might belong to the earlier time;—for instance, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... her encouragement; who cannot devise words of exhortation? and what idler than such words ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... I had become settled on board the "Medora," was to send word to my friends of my arrival in the Crimea, and solicit their aid. I gave a Greek idler one pound to carry a letter to the camp of the 97th, while I sent another to Captain Peel, who was hard at work battering the defences of Sebastopol about the ears of the Russians, from the batteries of the Royal Naval Brigade. I addressed others to many of the medical ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole

... appointed master of the horse and first gentleman of the bed-chamber. From that moment the favourite became supreme. He was entirely without education, possessed little experience in affairs of state, and had led the life of a commonplace idler and voluptuary until past the age of fifty. Nevertheless he had a shrewd mother-wit, tact in dealing with men, aptitude to take advantage of events. He had directness of purpose, firmness of will, and always ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Higham, as it provides food for the antiquarian and the student of Nature; while its position near the 'Medway smooth, and the Royal-masted Thame,' affords to the artist many an opportunity for a picture, while the idler has the privilege of lovely views." Mr. Roach Smith was of opinion that Higham was the seat of "a great Roman pottery." A Monastery of importance existed here for several centuries, Mary, daughter of King Stephen, being one of the Prioresses; ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... failed to bring it written out, he had to write it twice; if he was turned in a second lesson he was sent to detention, i.e., he was kept in during play hours; if this process was long-continued he was sent to the headmaster in disgrace, and ran the chance of being flogged as an incorrigible idler. Mr Paton, who was devoted to a system, made no allowance for difference of ability, or for idiosyncrasies of temperament; he was a truly good man, at bottom a really kind-hearted man, and a genuine Christian; but the system which he had adopted was his "idol of ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... last,' he cried, when he saw me. 'You idler! dawdle! sloth! gee up, do make haste! You ought to have been here an hour ago! To-morrow I am going to read to Harel a grand drama ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars



Words linked to "Idler" :   loon, poke, lounger, sunbather, clock watcher, lazybones, daydreamer, shirker, dillydallier, dallier, woolgatherer, dawdler, ne'er-do-well, lagger, no-account, trailer, dilly-dallier, drone, mope, slacker, slug, laggard, good-for-nothing, nonworker, sluggard, whittler, lie-abed, good-for-naught, spiv, goof-off, idle, goldbrick, couch potato, trifler, slugabed



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