"Lazy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... over the gateway, 'Stabling for Sixty Horses;' as indeed there might be stabling for sixty score, were there any horses to be stabled there, or anybody resting there, or anything stirring about the place but a dangling bush, indicative of the wine inside: which flutters idly in the wind, in lazy keeping with everything else, and certainly is never in a green old age, though always so old as to be dropping to pieces. And all day long, strange little narrow waggons, in strings of six or eight, bringing cheese from Switzerland, and frequently in charge, the whole line, of one man, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... in spirits and good humour. It may seem strange that a boy who was so lazy the day before, as to wish that hares ran about ready roasted, should work so hard this day at so severe a job as making a raft. But it was natural enough. There is nothing interesting to a dull and discontented ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... An idle, lazy child was to be taught to run. He had no liking for this or any other exercise, though he was intended for the army. Somehow or other he had got it into his head that a man of his rank need know nothing and do nothing—that ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... the boatman, with a lazy, significant glance at the consul, "it wull be a lesson to me not to trust to a lassie's GANGIN' jo, ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... not off, you lazy little wretches! You can manage all right if you like; I know perfectly well you can! It's just a piece of obstinacy. Pig policy doesn't pay with me, I assure you! I've been put in authority for ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... been to but few of the famous beauty spots around, we had had a delightfully lazy time; and as proof that we had not really been at Brighton there were, as I have said, the luggage labels. But we were to be able to show further proof. At this moment Simpson came out of the house, his face beaming ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... town. It would leave the railway at Sudleigh, and we had a faint hope of its forming in regulation style, and sweeping into Tiverton, a blaze of glittering chariots surmounted by queens of beauty, of lazy beasts of the desert sulking in their cages, and dainty-stepping horses, ridden by bold amazons. For a time, the expectation kept us bright and hopeful, although most of us had only taken a "cold bite" before starting; but as the eastern saffron pencilled ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... Elysees; on their sites we must build old, tottering, ill-shaped houses, six and seven stories high, confining narrow and dirty streets that wind in lanes and alleys into serpentine labyrinths, reeking with filthy odors and noxious vapors. Fill those narrow streets with a lazy, ill-clad people—men in short skirts and clogs, squatting on the steps of antiquated cafes, smoking canes steeped in opium, awaiting the beck of some political firebrand to tear each other to pieces—and in this description you ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... o'clock, when I left, about half the original stock remained. On the opposite corner was a group of children struggling for the possession of two lively kittens: wrangling, coaxing, defying, yielding, and pouting, gave animation to a scene, in which a pretty, saucy girl, and a lazy, lordly lad were the principal actors. Down came the lawyer to the fat, sleek, clean-looking negro barber, to be shaved, and then away up to the court house, with a jaunty, swinging, self-satisfied air, that said plainly enough—'Find me a smarter man than I, will you?' ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... foreground, and what shadowy, faint, cloud-like, tints of those far off mountains. The soft north wind that had greeted the travellers in the early morning, was blowing yet, soft and warm; it flickered the leaves of the oaks and chestnuts with a lazy summer stir; white sails spotted the broad bosom of the Shatemuc and came down with summer gentleness from the upper reaches of the river. And here and there a cloud floated over; and now and then a locust sang his monotone; and another soft breath of the North wind said that it was August; and the ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... lawyer, "were there the slightest possibility of any such outcome I should be glad to withdraw the charge; but, as a matter of fact, this person is a worthless, lazy fellow who has not a cent to his name, and who induced my client to cash his check by leading him to believe that he was a man of substance and position. No doubt he has spent the money, and if not we might as well try ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... went Willie and Tom together On a pleasure boat, in the lazy weather, And they sailed in the teeth of a friendly breeze Right into the harbour of 'Do-as-You-Please.' Where boats and tackle and marbles and kites Were waiting them there in this Land of Delights. They dwelt ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... their hearts and minds to others, without fear and yet without offence. I don't want men to attack things or to criticise things, but just to speak plainly about what is beautiful and wholesome and true. So you see this isn't a place for lazy and fanciful people—not a fortress of quiet, and still less a place for asses to slake their thirst! We don't set out to amuse ourselves, but to perceive things, and to say them if we can. My men must be sound and serious, ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Texas rain had begun to fall—an endless, lazy, unintermittent downfall that lowered the spirits of men and raised a reluctant steam from the warm stones of the streets and houses. Thus comes the "norther" dousing gentle spring and amiable autumn with the chilling ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... "You lazy loafer!" she cried, "must I work my arms off washing and toiling for the ugly likes of you? Are you a man or are you a ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... lazy Sunday stroll took us back to the river; and little by little the dread became less, and the wonder grew—and a little love crept in. In my boy heart I condoned its treachery and its giant sins. For, after all, it sinned through excess of strength, not through weakness. ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... who write a word or a sentence in capital letters for emphasis. Occasionally this may be done to advantage but the tendency is to overwork the scheme. At best it is a lazy man's way of trying to secure emphasis without the mental exertion of thinking up some figure of speech or some original expression that will give force to ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... them, as men or parents or workmen. It does not inspire them to Questing—man's real and most significant business. They do not know that which is good or evil in food, in music, colour, fabric, books, in houses, lands or faith. They live in a low, lazy rhythm and attract unto themselves inevitably objects of corresponding vibration. One observes this in their children, in their schools and most pathetically in their churches. They abide dimly in the midst of their imperfections, but with tragic ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... "The lazy hounds, why tarry they?" said Raymond. "Ill policy it is to plant such sluggish natures in our borders. They are like their own steers, fitter to tug a plough than for aught ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... the proprietor of black servants shocked the feelings of no Virginian gentleman; nor, in truth, was the despotism exercised over the negro race generally a savage one. The food was plenty; the poor black people lazy and not unhappy. You might have preached negro emancipation to Madam Esmond of Castlewood as you might have told her to let the horses run loose out of her stables; she had no doubt but that the whip and the corn-bag were ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... It would indicate that you were possessed of a mind of your own; that you weren't merely taking the lazy man's attitude and following in the footsteps ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... general physiognomy rather than a close portraiture of the provincial speech as I have heard it in the Midland or Mercian region. It is a just demand that art should keep clear of such specialties as would make it a puzzle for the larger part of its public; still, one is not bound to respect the lazy obtuseness or snobbish ignorance of people who do not care to know more of their native tongue than the vocabulary of ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... wall beneath wall, until, in a crater named "Newton,'' near the south lunar pole, they attain a depth where the rays of the sun never reach. Nothing more frightful than the spectacle which many of these terrible chasms present can be pictured by the imagination. As the lazy lunar day slowly advances, the sunshine, unmitigated by clouds or atmospheric veil of any kind, creeps across their rims and begins to descend the opposite walls. Presently it strikes the ragged crest of a ridge which had lain ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... to say, "My son is lazy; his temper is Polonese—hasty and changeable; he has no tastes; he cares nothing for hunting, for women, or for good living; perhaps he imagines that if he were in my place he would be happy; at first, he would ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 2 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... Rainham. "Why, it's her silver day; she had no business to tell you anything of the sort—and neither had you, to ask her to do it. Goodness knows it's hard enough to make the lazy thing do her own work. Just get your duster, and make sure as you come down that the children are properly dressed for the dancing class." She broke ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... somewhat lazy-looking figure, he was sitting at a table face to face with the Citizen-Deputy. On a chair beside him lay a heavy caped coat, covered with the dust and the splashings of a long journey, but he himself was attired in clothes that suggested the most fastidious ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... wind up; it turned and twisted in tantalizing lazy curves; it was in no hurry to surmount a hill that began to assume proportions of a mountain; it was leisurely, as were all things in Mexico except strife. That was quick, fierce, ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... society, by some summary process, and consigning them to those sinks of infamy on New Holland or Van Diemen's Land, or to mix them up with the dram-drinkers, the psalmsingers, and the languid and lazy Otaheitans, would, in either case, be a subject of deep regret to all who take an interest in their welfare; and to themselves would be the inevitable loss of all those amiable qualities which have obtained for them the kind and generous sympathy of their countrymen at home. We have a ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... her musings, to go, she said, to rouse up the lazy maids and menservants, to straighten up the confusion of everything in the Chateau after the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... don't have to examine your pet after all. Mighty cute little feller. Well, have fun with it. Come on, move along now." And, as they were departing with Black Eyes, still not believing their ears: "Darn this weather! Makes a man so lazy...." ...
— Black Eyes and the Daily Grind • Milton Lesser
... him: "Art thou dainty, alien? Wouldst thou have flesh? Well, give me thy bow and an arrow or two, since thou art lazy- sick, and I will get thee a coney or a hare, or a quail maybe. Ah, I forgot; thou art dainty, and wilt not eat flesh as I do, blood and all together, but must needs half burn it in the fire, or mar it with hot water; as they say my Lady does: or as the Wretch, the Thing ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... he told them to loose the topsail. To them it signified very little; but as I wished to be with poor Herbert, I was very much vexed at being kept up there doing nothing. At length several seamen did come into the top in a lazy, half-asleep sort of way. I found that they had all been tipsy the previous night, and were even then scarcely sober. They cut their jokes at us, loud enough for us to hear them, and addressed us as the three Master ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Bath Road at the rate of a mile every minute and a half.... It was good to be out of the thick heat of London, invaded by foreigners and provincials and turned into a city of pleasure and summer-frocks, so that its normal life was submerged, its character hidden. The town became as lazy and drowsy a spectacle as a field of poppies over which danced gay and brilliant butterflies. Very sweet was it then to turn away from it, and all that was happening in it, to the sweet air and to fly along between green fields and orchards, through little towns, at ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... short of an Indian, that has learn'd and seen the same Things; and those Negroes make the best Servants, that have been Slaves in their own Country; for they that have been Kings and great Men there are generally lazy, haughty, and obstinate; whereas the others are sharper, ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... ashamed of them; but thou'lt not speak too harshly of my flock to Hazael, who thinks if he complains enough he'll work me up into a good shepherd despite my natural turn for an indoor life. But I'd not have thee think that the flock perished through my fault, and see in them a lazy shepherd lying always at length on the hillside. I walk with them in search of pasture from daylight till dark, wearing my feet away, but to no purpose, as any man can see though he never laid eyes on a sheep before. But it was ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... good had deck'd great Pompey's crown Than death, if in his honours fully blown, And mature glories he had died? those piles Of huge success, loud fame, and lofty styles Built in his active youth, long lazy life Saw quite demolish'd by ambitious strife. He lived to wear the weak and melting snow Of luckless age, where garlands seldom grow, But by repining Fate torn from the head Which wore them ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... talked that over, and I have made up my mind to try her way first. There will be so little to do that with Lotty to run my errands and help me here and there, I shall only have enough work to keep me from getting lazy or homesick," ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... he cried savagely. "It is incredible that I can never be left in peace. What the devil has the guard got to do with me? Will you understand that I have nothing to do with the guard! There is a sergeant somewhere ... curse him for a lazy ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... pale she looked, how fragile she had become, how languid and listless she seemed of late, he had noticed that, and with no pleasant feeling did he remember, that he had done so, only to chide her for being lazy. How blind he had been, he saw plainly enough that she needed change of air, she should have it, she should pay his uncle Macdermott a visit, and take Izzie with her, but what should he do without Izzie, he asked himself, but ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... fire here just put them in the bar, will ye? for well be having the jooge, and the Major, and Mr. Jones down the night, without reckoning Benjamin Poomp, and the lawyers; so yell be fixing the room tidy; and put both flip irons in the coals; and tell Jude, the lazy black baste, that if shes no be cleaning up the kitchen Ill turn her out of the house, and she may live wid the jontlemen that kape the Coffee house, good luck to em. Och! sargeant, sure its a great privilege to go to a mateing where a body can sit asy, without joomping up and down so ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... union labor must be suppressed. The men are lazy; that's what's the matter with them. It is all nonsense to talk about working eight hours. Union labor, if it keeps on, will ruin this ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... eyes and smiled at me. I think this was the first time that she had given me more than just a trace of a smile; but now she smiled, a very sweet winning smile; and getting spryly out of the wagon she said that she had been a lazy and useless passenger all the time she had been with me, and that from then on she was going to do the cooking. I told her that I wasn't going to let her do it, that I was strong and liked to cook; and I stammered and blundered when I tried to hint that ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... in front of the barn were many more fat hens. Behind a pile of old boards just outside the cowyard was a spot of red. In the top of a tall tree not far distant was a spot of black. The smoke from the chimney of the farmhouse floated skyward in a lazy way. Looking down on the Great World, jolly, round, bright Mr. Sun saw no ...
— Bowser The Hound • Thornton W. Burgess
... came a couple arm in arm, their movements equally light and springy, but the one behind dragging a little, as though lazily. They wore rags and torn old hats and had no collars to their shirts. The lazy one had broken boots through which his toes showed plainly. The other who dragged him had a swarthy face like the gypsies who once had camped near their house in Essex long, oh, ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... follow us rather than go to the coast, I did not like to have a fine-looking woman among us unattached, and proposed that she should marry one of my three worthies, Chuma, Gardner, or Mabruki, but she smiled at the idea. Chuma was evidently too lazy ever to get a wife; the other two were contemptible in appearance, and she has a good presence and is buxom. Chuma promised reform: "he had been lazy, he admitted, because he had no wife." Circumstances led to the other women ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... and as many other "ilitys" as could be squeezed into his expressive features. It is hardly necessary after this description to say that Iiani was a very tall humbug, pleasant in manner when he had his own way. He was lazy to such a degree that he invariably fell asleep upon his mule after smoking innumerable cigarettes. In these cases his long body swayed to the right and left, and occasionally nodded forward to an extent that sometimes ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... great relief to the eye of the traveller after so many hours' journey thro' volcanic wastes. The town of Acquapendente is very ancient; it is very large, but ill-paved and dirty; the best buildings in it are, however, modern. The inhabitants appear lazy and dirty. On entering into conversation with some soldiers belonging to the Papal army, who were stationed at this place, I found that most of them had served under Napoleon. They spoke of him with tears of affection ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... (and taught his fellows) to avoid muskrat-traps, the big muskrat enjoyed his lazy summer life on Bitter Creek with a care-free spirit that is permitted to few, indeed, of the furtive kindred of the wild. There was no mink, as we have seen, to beware of; and as for hawks, he ignored them as none ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... verge, they could see the lodges of the Miami Indians, who had made this place their abode. They soon reached a spot where the oozy saturated soil quaked beneath their tread. All around were clumps of alderbushes, tufts of rank grass, and pools of glistening water. In the midst, a dark and lazy current, which a tall man might bestride, crept twisting like a snake among the weeds and rushes. Here were the sources of the Kankakee, one of the heads of the Illinois. [Footnote: The Kankakee was called at this time the Theakiki, ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... three sides, and building up the wall by the road, and levelling, and planting, and draining, and goodness knows what else! And now the man says that all the common people and tramps in the neighborhood have a right to walk across it because they are too lazy to go round by the road. Sir Charles has gone to see the man about it. Of course he wouldn't ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... they have any; which makes sport among our merchants there to talk of an English factor that, being newly come thither, writ into England that glasse would be a good commodity to send thither, &c. That the King has his meat sent up by a dozen of lazy guards and in pipkins, sometimes, to his own table; and sometimes nothing but fruits, and, now-and-then, half a hen. And that now the Infanta is become our Queen, she is come to have a whole hen or goose to ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... Sir Percy after a slight pause, and meeting with a swift glance of lazy irony his opponent's fixed gaze. "Are you satisfied with the weapons? Which of the two shall be ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... slender young lady who knows what deportment and reverence mean; who dips quietly, and makes a partial descent gracefully; the servant girl who goes through the preliminary somewhat roughly but very earnestly; the smart young fellow, who dips with his gloves on—a "rather lazy kind of thing," as the cobbler remarked when he said his prayers in bed—and gives a sort of half and half nod, as if the whole bend were below his dignity; the business man, who goes into the water and the bowing in a ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... take the letter, not me. A fig for your headache! It's only that you're too lazy to stir!" ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... my dear, my proposal is this: there are our two plow-horses, the colt that has been in our family these nine years, and his companion Blackberry that has scarcely done an earthly thing this month past. They are both grown fat and lazy. Why should not they do something as well as we? And let me tell you, when Moses has trimmed them a little they will cut ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... over the article as there is neither truth nor ruth in it, and Carlton is intensely amused, so I suppose I will not try to fight the battles of the colony so long as I am lazy and comfortable in the arms of ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... you can go, if the rest do," said her grandmother, "though it's an awful lazy way of spendin' an afternoon. When I was a girl there was no such dawdlin' goin' on, I can tell you. Nobody thought o' lookin' at the river in them ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... well as the rest, to occupy till his master came. But what does he? Why, he takes his talent, the gift that he was to lay out for his master's profit, and puts it in a napkin, digs a hole in the earth, and hides his lord's money, and lies in a lazy manner at to-elbow all his days, not out of, but in his lord's vineyard;[9] for he came among the servants also at last. By which it is manifest that he had not cast off his profession, but was slothful and negligent while he was in it. But what was it that made ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Cowbird," he went on. "She's too lazy to bring up her own children. So she sneaks through the woods and lays her eggs in other folk's nests.... I must tell of this," Mr. Crow added. "People will think very kindly of you when they hear what you ...
— The Tale of Major Monkey • Arthur Scott Bailey
... the state of his country:—'There are but a few places in the Bible but there are threatenings against one sinner or another; against drunkards, swearers, liars, proud persons, strumpets, whoremongers, covetous, railers, extortioners, thieves, lazy persons. In a word, all manner of sins are reproved, and there is a sore punishment to be executed on the committers of them; and all this made mention of in the Scriptures. But for all this, how thick, and by heaps, do these wretches walk up and down ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... unfeigned contempt. "Huh!" he said, "you hear dat, brederen an' sisters? You hear dat fool question I am axed? Cain, he went to de land o' Nod just as de Good Book tells us, an' in de land o' Nod Cain gits so lazy an' so shif'less dat he up an' marries a gal o' one o' dem no' count pore white trash families dat de inspired apostle didn't consider fittin' to mention ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... it was in him a sort of universal joint—it never seemed to know what weariness was. His fiddle stood always on the board in a corner by him, and no sooner had he ceased to brandish his needle, than he began to brandish his fiddlestick. If ever he could be said to be lazy, it was when his father was gone out to measure, or try on; and his fiddle being too strong a temptation for him, he would seize upon it, and labor at it with all his might, till he spied his father turning his next corner homeward. Nevertheless, with ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... vainly swell with an imagin'd shout. Far in these shades and melancholy coasts A myrtle grows, well known to all the ghosts, Whose stretch'd top—like a great man rais'd by Fate— Looks big, and scorns his neighbour's low estate; His leafy arms into a green cloud twist, And on each branch doth sit a lazy mist, A fatal tree, and luckless to the gods, Where for disdain in life—Love's worst of odds— The queen of shades, fair Proserpine, did rack The sad Adonis: hither now they pack This little god, where, first disarm'd, they bind ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... a lazy fellow!" said six-year-old Annie. "If mamma would only trust us to go to the station, we would not wait, or play sleepy." But the train passed on, ...
— The Nursery, No. 103, July, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... Lazy Lou, Lazy Susan's big twin brother, a giant roulette wheel of cheese, every number a winner. A second Lazy Lou will bear the savories and go-withs. For these tidbits the English have a divine genius; think of the deviled shrimps, smoked oysters, herring ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... secular evolution. Quickly getting out of breath, flagging again and again, progress slackens, jibs at obstacles, or lies down in the road like a lazy mule. To bring about a fresh start, to ensure movement from stage to stage, there must be renewed awakenings of energy, vigorous revolutionary outbursts, which stimulate the will, brace the muscles, and blow the obstacle to smithereens. Our revolution ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... hunting instincts aroused, loitered idly after Grey in the rain, one of the scores of lazy, unnoticeable negroes. He was gone all the afternoon, and at eight o'clock found Penhallow in his room. "Did you find where ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... perfect day as it was! I felt half inclined to beg off the first day on the ice, and to spend my morning wandering along the rata-fringed shores of Lake Coleridge, with its glorious enclosing of hills which might fairly be called mountains; but I feared to seem capricious or lazy, when really my only difficulty was in selecting a pleasure. The sun had climbed well over the high barriers which lay eastwards, and was shining brightly down through the quivering blue ether overhead; the frost sparkled on every broad flax-blade or ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... for the afternoon, and declined the proposed discipline; so Austin strolled off by himself, and lay down under the trees with a large book on Italian gardens to console him. His improvised exertions in the water had produced a certain fatigue, and he felt lazy and inert. Gradually he dropped off into a doze, which lasted more than an hour. And he had a curious dream. He thought he was in some strange land—a land like a garden seen through yellow glass—where ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... climate of Britain drives men to strong drink; the rosy Orient lures to the dream splendors of the lotus. The big-bodied, white-skinned northern dweller, rude and ferocious, bellows his anger uncouthly and drives a gross fist into the face of his foe. The supple south-sojourner, silken of smile and lazy of gesture, waits, and does his work from behind, when no man looketh, gracefully and without offence. Their ends are one; the difference lies in their ways, and therein the climate, and the cumulative effect thereof, is the determining factor. Both are sinners, ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... little drowsy seaport; the old tales of the Symplegades were stale and tedious; the Argonauts had become spiritless and corpulent and lazy. One night a great gale swept in from the sea: the earth fairly trembled under the repeated shocks of the breakers. Old people looked troubled and young people looked scared, and on the worst night of all the convent bell was heard to toll, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... contented himself with engaging another girl, Francoise Huriaux, strong neither in intelligence nor will, but nevertheless a sweet little creature. Not many days passed before Helene began to make the girl unhappy. "It's a lazy-bones,'' Helene told the witness. "She does not earn her keep.'' ("Le pain qu'elle mange, elle le vole.'') M. Bidard shut her up. That was his affair, ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin. After all, I reflected, I was like my neighbours; and then I smiled, comparing myself with other men, comparing my active goodwill with the lazy cruelty of their neglect. And at the very moment of that vainglorious thought a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and the most deadly shuddering. These passed away, and left me faint; and then, as in its turn the faintness subsided, I began to be aware of a change in the temper of my ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... low. To-day there are only a few million Mongols in a country half as large as the United States (exclusive of Alaska), a great proportion of the male population being lamas. With no education, except in the books of their sect, they lead a lazy, worthless existence, supported by the lay population and by the money they extract by preying upon the superstitions of their childlike brothers. Were Lamaism abolished there still would be hope for Mongolia under a proper government, for ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... afford to be less keen or less in earnest, and you want both hands free—ay! more than this—your whole body free: you must not be lazy and sit glued to your stool; you must get up and walk backwards and forwards to look at your work. Do you think art is so easy that you can afford to saunter ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... you do not know, by Jupiter! that these feed very many sophists, Thurian soothsayers, practisers of medicine, lazy-long-haired-onyx-ring-wearers, song-twisters for the cyclic dances, and meteorological quacks. They feed idle people who do nothing, because such ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes
... declaration of the Franco-German war of 1870-71, and the "military promenade," at which the poor Prince Imperial received his "baptism of fire," was a pleasant, lazy time at Saarbruecken; to which pretty frontier town I had early betaken myself, in the anticipation, which proved well founded, that the tide of war would flow that way first. What a pity it is that all war cannot be like this early phase ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... due to you, the father of the present greenback, that the people should know it, and I take great pleasure in making it known. How many times have I laughed at you telling me plainly that I was too lazy to ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... apparently, so heedless a manner, were in a low black schooner, whose hull seemed utterly disproportioned to the raking masts it upheld, which, in their turn, supported a lighter set of spars, that tapered away until their upper extremities appeared no larger than the lazy pennant, that in vain endeavored to display its length ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... themselves, and bad gin for the natives, have held their own. Except for the trade goods it never would be held. It is a country where the pay is cruelly inadequate, where but few horses, sheep, or cattle can exist, where the natives are unbelievably lazy and insolent, and where, while there is no society of congenial spirits, there is a superabundance of animal and insect pests. Still, so great are gold, ivory, and rubber, and so many are the men who will take big chances for little ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... less fatigue is experienced from a brisk walk, than from standing listlessly around for double the length of time; and it is just so with mental effort. We want neither feverish, excited work, nor lazy work; but earnest, hard, vigorous effort, ceasing when the brain is weary or the object ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... couple of hours it already looked livable and cosy there. Mr. Trius smiled quite pleasantly when he entered, as he was just on the point of brewing himself and his master a cup of coffee. The only thing he usually added was a piece of dry bread, as he was too lazy to get milk and butter from the neighboring farmers, and his master had never asked for either. The steaming coffee and hot milk and the fresh white bread Apollonie had prepared looked very appetizing to him. The wooden benches were clean scrubbed, and he didn't ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... 1872. MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,—I have been so everlasting busy that I couldn't write—and moreover I have been so unceasingly lazy that I couldn't have written anyhow. I came here to take notes for a book, but I haven't done much but attend dinners and make speeches. But have had a jolly good time and I do hate to go away from these English folks; they make a stranger feel entirely at home—and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... thing is Jesus' conception of God. Here, as elsewhere, we sacrifice far more than we dream by our lazy way of using his words without making the effort to give them his connotation. To turn again to passages already quoted, will a father give his son a serpent instead of the fish for which he asks, a stone for bread? It is unthinkable; God—will God ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... is a little boy of three who reads surprisingly well for one so young and selects his own books from the children's room. The other day, however, his mother complained that lately he has become "lazy" and refuses to read. As we stood talking the little chap ran joyfully toward her waving a picture book that had been made at the branch and said, "No words Mother, ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... once more more slowly went over his brow and hair. Then he put on his hat again, relieved: and read again: choice blend, made of the finest Ceylon brands. The far east. Lovely spot it must be: the garden of the world, big lazy leaves to float about on, cactuses, flowery meads, snaky lianas they call them. Wonder is it like that. Those Cinghalese lobbing about in the sun in dolce far niente, not doing a hand's turn all day. Sleep six months out of twelve. Too hot ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... ease and idleness elsewhere, as well as in this letter,[40] and it would certainly seem natural, from what we know of the man, to accept his own statement. However, all men fond of idleness are not necessarily idle, nor do all lazy men lack industry. There are various motives that force them to labor, often mere pride, and more often still, necessity. Marivaux was a great worker, as his works in ten large volumes (as edited by Duviquet) prove, but they do not in the ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... axe amid the deep backwoods, to lay open for the first time what he deems a new country, the great trees that fall before him,—the brushwood that he lops away with a sweep of his tool,—the unfamiliar herbs which he tramples under foot,—the lazy fish-like reptile that scarce stirs out of his path as he descends to the neighboring creek to drink,—the fierce alligator-like tortoise, with the large limbs and small carpace, that he sees watching among the reeds for fish and frogs, just as he reaches the water,—and the little hare-like ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... there lived in Langaffer a light-hearted, light-haired, lazy little lad called Randal. He enjoyed a happy home, health and high spirits, and a gay, merry life ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... ringlets over her forehead; the same clear, sensitive complexion; the same rather large, full-lipped mouth, tip-tilted nose, soft chin, and merry mischievous eyes. She moved in the same way, with the same leisurely, almost lazy grace, that could, however, on occasions, quicken to an alert, elastic vivacity; she had the same voice, a trifle deeper than most women's, and of a quality never so delicately nasal, which made it racy and characteristic; the same fresh ready ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... Lazy as William Rufus Holly had been at school and college, he had still thought a good deal, even when he seemed only sleeping; perhaps he thought more because he slept so much, because he studied little and read a great deal. He always knew what everybody thought—that he would never do anything ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... meditations were suddenly disturbed. The ranch dogs started their inharmonious chorus, and experience taught him that there are only two things which will stir the lazy ranch dog to vocal protest; the advent of the disreputable sun-downer, and ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... a crucible with which lazy, bigoted and incapable merchants can turn incompetency into success—but one into which brains and tenacity and courage can be poured and changed into dollars. It is only a short cut across the fields—not a moving platform. You can't ...
— The Clock that Had no Hands - And Nineteen Other Essays About Advertising • Herbert Kaufman
... paradise, was away upon his and her travels. Only parsons, doctors, schoolmistresses, and poverty stayed at home. Yet now and then a youth in boating costume glided by, his shoulders bending slowly to the lazy dip of his oars, his keel now and then making a rushing sound among ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... control over this scuffle of truths which are not admissible, each nation realizes its own by all possible means, by all the fidelity and anger and brute force she can get out of herself. By the help of this state of world-wide anarchy, the lazy and slight distinction between patriotism, imperialism and militarism is violated, trampled, and broken through all along the line, and it cannot be otherwise. The living universe cannot help becoming an organization ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... 'em now,' says he. And sure enough, shipmates, when we went aft and had a look for ourselves, there was two sharks just playin' about under the starn, scullin' here and there, lazy-like, but never goin' ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... the Balkan peoples it is a fact that the essential Serb, the Serb from [vS]umadia, is a pacific person, rather lazy perhaps, but certainly more devoted to dancing than to battle. And some of the wiser Serbs were dubious in 1919 and 1920 as to whether the most sagacious methods were being employed in Croatia. Radi['c] was in prison, but they were ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... the matter, sir, was seeing the lugger gliding along under the rocks so close in that you might have jumped aboard her; and it was too late to stop her. Before those lazy far nientes could have pricked and primed, she was ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... him as her future husband; but she would rather have been wooed to be won. The agonies of doubt and suspense, the pangs of jealousy and apprehension, would have been bliss compared to the dull monotony of the "betrothed." The lazy current would have sparkled if a few pebbles had been cast into the stream. Her sensitive spirit, likewise, shrank from contact with this fiery and impetuous youth; her heart yearned for some deep and hallowed affection. Strongly imbued with the witcheries of romance, she would rather have ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... calculate this boasted friendship, and discover its real worth. He got over his grief for Elinor, and the country became dull to him, so he was glad to find even me for amusement; and when he does not know what else to do he passes his lazy hours here, and calls this friendship—It is true that his presence is a consolation to me, and that his words are sweet, and, when he will he can pour forth thoughts that win me from despair. His words are sweet,—and so, truly, is the honey of the bee, but the bee has a sting, and unkindness ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... who would not take orders and hold the family living. They argued the matter till it was too late for Alfred to go into the army, the only career for which he had expressed any desire; and then Mr. Thorne found himself face to face with a gentle and lazy resistance which threatened to be a match for his own hard obstinacy. Alfred didn't mind being a farmer. But his father was troubled about the necessary capital, and doubted his son's success: "You will go on after a fashion for a few years, and then all the money ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... Cherbourg. Then Paris at two in the morning: the lower quarters still stirring with somnambulistic life, the lines of lights twinkling placidly on the empty boulevards. Then a whirl through the Bois in a motor-car, a breakfast at Versailles with a merry little party of friends, a lazy walk through miles of picture-galleries without a guide-book or a care. Then the night express for Italy, a glimpse of the Alps at sunrise, snow all around us, the thick darkness of the Mount Cenis tunnel, the bright sunshine ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... made room for Lopez beside him. Luis sat by Isabel, upon a pile of splendid military saddle-cloths. As she sipped her chocolate, he smoked his cigarito in a lazy fashion, and gave himself up with delight to that foolishness of love-making which is often far wiser than the ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... show what our relations were. He was a young fellow of good family, to whom I had taken a liking. He was a lazy dog, and as out of place in business as a cat in a choir. I had been keeping him going for four years at that time, by giving him tips on stocks and protecting him against loss. This purely out of good nature and liking; for I hadn't the remotest ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... brain is naturally lazy and tends to take the line of least resistance. The mental world of the ordinary man consists of beliefs which he has accepted without questioning and to which he is firmly attached; he is instinctively ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... entomological work, but, finding little encouragement and resting a while in the shade, he had dozed away on a sandy couch, his head on his arms, his broad-brimmed hat over his face, his shapely legs outstretched in lazy, luxurious enjoyment, his tall and slender form, arrayed in cool white blouse and trousers, really a goodly thing to behold. This day, too, he must have come afoot, but his net and box lay there beside him, and his hunt had been without profit, for ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... scour all the knives too. I did it by drawing them back and forth into a sand-bank back of the house. This Isaac I speak of was a lazy boy, and very unkind to me; but his mother wouldn't hear a word against him. One day I brushed a traveller's coat, and got a silver quarter for my trouble. I thought everything of that quarter. I had never had so much money before in my life. I had half ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May
... constituted their lullaby. During the night the most of the travellers were awakened once or twice by a strange and very peculiar sensation, which led them to fancy the earth on which they reposed was possessed of life. The lazy members of the party lay still, and dreamily wondered until they fell asleep; those who were more active leaped up, and, lifting their blankets, gazed intently at the sward, which darkness prevented them from seeing, and felt it over with their hands, but no cause ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... for which we can find no suitable term. Cows lowing, sheep bleating, pigs grunting, horses neighing, men shouting, women screaming, fiddlers playing, pipes squeeling, youngsters, dancing, hammering up of standings and tents, thumping of restive or lazy animals, the show-man's drum, the lottery-man's speech, the ballad-singer's squall, all come upon us; and lastly, the unheeded sweep of the death-bell, as it tells with sullen tongues that some poor mortal has for ever departed from the cares and amusements, ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... take up the priest's side of the matter; they would criticise me, they would call me vain, proud, arrogant, a poor Christian, poorly educated, and when not this, they would call me an anti-Spaniard and an agitator. The school teacher should have no authority. He should only be lazy, humble, and resigned to his low position. May God pardon me if I do not speak conscientiously and truthfully, but I was born in this country, I have to live, I have a mother to support and I have to be ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... with thousands of dull lives like its own, was vainly lived and lost: thousands of them, massed, vile, slimy lives, like those of the torpid lizards in yonder stagnant water-butt.—Lost? There is a curious point for you to settle, my friend, who study psychology in a lazy, dilettante way. Stop a moment. I am going to be honest. This is what I want you to do. I want you to hide your disgust, take no heed to your clean clothes, and come right down with me,—here, into the thickest of the fog and ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... challenge-overture, "Croyez-vous, madame, qu'il soit possible d'etre amoureux de deux personnes a la fois?" is in parts interesting. But one reader at least cannot help being haunted as he reads by the notion how much better Merimee would have told it. Le Fils du Titien—the story of the great master's lazy son, on whom even love and entire self-sacrifice—lifelong too—on the part of a great lady, cannot prevail to do more in his father's craft than one exquisite picture of herself, inscribed with a sonnet renouncing the pencil ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... the delights of these choicest gems from Flora's evidently overflowing storehouse. The men average tall and handsome; they look like veritable warrior-priests in their flowing white costumes, and they make a strange picture of mingled barbarism and aestheticism as they loaf in lazy magnificence about the tumble-down ruins of the konak, toying with their roses in silence. They seem contented and happy in their isolation from the great busy outer world, and, impressed by their universal ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... ab the ship!" said Mesty, "but must manage plenty yet. I tink der some d—-n lazy rascal sleep 'tween the guns. A lilly while it no rain, and den we see better. Now ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... breakfast he went to Sing Luey's Canton Restaurant. Because while Bill Lainey offered no objections to feeding the horse, Mrs. Lainey utterly refused to provide snacks at odd hours for good-for-nothing, stick-a-bed punchers who were too lazy to eat at the regular ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... "Zeke, you lazy loon," cried Nat Atkinson, "how many pipes have you smoked to-day? If you'd smoke less and forage and dun the commissary more, we'd have a little fresh meat once in ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... he repeated, with fierce contempt. "That's the keynote of your lives, you lazy, self-satisfied swine, who call yourselves people's men! What do you know or care about the people? how many of you have walked by day and night in the wilderness and felt your heart die away within you? How many of you have watched the people hour by hour—the ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... however had been very hot, and at the time I speak of, the Fairies felt a little lazy and were reclining on some rocks covered with sea-weed and amusing themselves by talking. In general the conversation of these little creatures is rather light and frivolous and gay; but it is really a fact that they were just then all serious ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... could all be put to some steady work it would be the best thing for them," said Judith. "Idleness is the mother of mischief. Blasi is not an ill-meaning fellow, but he is lazy, greatly to his own injury. Long Jost is the worst of the two; a sly-boots, and a rare one too. It is to be hoped that he will break his own leg, when he's trying to trip some one else up ...
— Veronica And Other Friends - Two Stories For Children • Johanna (Heusser) Spyri
... sauntered down to the sea, cigarette in mouth. Mavis settled herself luxuriously to watch the adored one through lazy, half-closed eyelids. He had previously thrown away his straw hat; she saw how the wind wantoned in his light curls. All her love seemed to well up into her throat. She would have called to him, but her tongue refused speech; she was sick with love; she wondered if she would ever ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... That man Calvert, he's a bad one, sure! He don' stay no more—too lazy, I think, to watch his sheeps from the coyotes, and says they're stole. He comes here telling me I got his sheeps—yes. We quarrel a little bit, maybe. I don' like to be called thief, you bet. He's big mouth, that feller—no brains, aitre. Then he goes somewhere, ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... left in the Kano home. The little cottage of Ume's birth, of her short, happy life and dawning fame, drew itself together in the unusual silence. Sunshine fell thick upon the garden, and warmed even the lazy gold-fish in their pigmy lake. In the plum-tree branch that touched Ume-ko's abandoned chamber, the cricket chirped softly to ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... Denny. King Wallace was doing his turn and holding the audience spellbound. He was in a particularly vicious mood, and he kept the lions stirred up till they were all snarling, that is, all of them except old Augustus, and he was just too fat and lazy and old to get ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... her mind, for her father dreamed that she 'had gone off with soldiers,' and this dream struck him so much, that he told his sons that he, or they, must drown Joan if she so disgraced herself. For many girls of bad character, lazy and rude, followed the soldiers, as they always have done, and always will. Joan's father thought that his dream meant that Joan would be like these women. It would be interesting to know whether he was in the habit of dreaming true dreams. For Joan, his child, ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... like to use Mr. Rogers, & he is plenty good-natured enough, but it wouldn't be fair to keep him rescuing me from my leather-headed business snarls & make him read interminable bile-irruptions besides; I can't use Howells, he is busy & old & lazy, & won't stand it; I dasn't use Clara, there's things I have to say which she wouldn't put up with—a very dear little ashcat, but has ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... chance in the surges; and Polly shaking the wet from her feathers, and shouting: 'Polly tho dram dry!'—which struck on the nob of Jack's memory, to revive all the liquorly tricks of the cabin under Salvationism, and he began heaving, and at last he shook in a lazy way, and then from sputter to sputter got his laugh loose; and he sat up, and cried; 'That did it! Now to business!' for he was hungry. 'And when I catch the ring of this world's laugh from you, my friend . . . !' Simeon's application ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... lazy response, and in a moment more the ting-ting, ting-ting, of the ship's bell rang out on the silent air, and proclaimed that the middle watch was half over, or, in landsmen's lingo, that it was two o'clock, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... cool resumption by Nature of her ordinary conditions. The sky above their heads was as rigidly blue as ever, and as smilingly monotonous; the distant prospect, with its clear, well-known silhouettes, had not changed; the crows swung on lazy, deliberate wings over the grain as before; and the trade-wind was again blowing in its quiet persistency. And yet she knew that something had happened that would never again make her enjoyment of the prospect the same—that nothing would ever be as it was yesterday. ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... Alamayou is the only legitimate one. The eldest, a lad of about twenty-two, called Prince Meshisha, is a big, idle, lazy fellow. Though at Zage, Theodore introduced him to us, and desired us to make him a friend with the English, he did not love him: the young man was, indeed, so unlike the Emperor that I can well understand Theodore ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... their belongings, Peter thought it probable they would be on some deck or other watching for the New York skyscrapers. And he was right concerning four of his model acquaintances. The fifth was not visible, and Miss Devereux explained her absence by saying that she was "lazy." ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... lazy, but he was not so spry as he was ten years ago when he was fresh from playing full-back on our scrub team. For a number of years he had been tramping around outdoors all day and had been inclined to play full front on the gastronomic ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... his scout looked after him, seen that he did what it behoved him to do, and kept him not seldom from some faux pas? A senior scout had often an almost fatherly regard for the men upon his staircase. One, who comes at once to mind, would stand and urge and argue long enough by the bedside of some lazy youth, for whom an interview with the Dean was imminent, persuading him to get up for Chapel, and the same man would take it seriously to heart if any of his particular gentlemen behaved in a manner which he considered unseemly. ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How |
