"Sloth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of trust in treason knaves have lived and lied: By the force of fear and folly fools have fed their pride: By the strength of sloth ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... speech: "Yea verily for this hour, dread Achilles, we will still bear thee safe, yet is thy death day nigh at hand, neither shall we be cause thereof, but a mighty god, and forceful Fate. For not through sloth or heedlessness of ours did the men of Troy from Patrokios' shoulders strip his arms, but the best of the gods, whom bright-haired Leto bore, slew him in the forefront of the battle, and to Hector gave renown. We even with the wind of Zephyr, swiftest, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... he said, in confusion. "I acknowledge the sloth, but not the implied laxness anent ranching. Believe me, I have learned an ample lesson to-day. I now have a fuller appreciation of our worthy foreman; a fair knowledge of the horse, most accurately termed 'outlaw', as the bruised condition of my body can testify; and, as for barbed-wire fencing, ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... assumed their green legs and strode over Wimbledon with pompous, majestic tread. The Woman's Rights Reform shook off its sluggish torpor, and rose a mighty shape of masculine vigor, strength and power. As in atonement for past sloth and inertness, the reformists became more active in their several departments than ever before. Lectures were delivered, clubs formed, and committees appointed to visit the people from house to house, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... sluggish, scaly armadillo, which loves the detestable termites—those white ants which, with their sharp mandibles, gnaw to pieces paper, clothes, wood, the whole house in fact. Then there is the climbing sloth, with its round monkey head and large curved claws. All day long it remains sleepily hanging under a bough, and only wakes up when night falls. It lives only on trees and eats leaves. In far-back ages there were sloths as large ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... art laughing and scorning; Thou hast a nest for thy love and thy rest, And, though little troubled with sloth, Drunken Lark! thou wouldst be loth To be such a traveler as I. Happy, happy Liver! With a soul as strong as a mountain river, Pouring out praise to the Almighty Giver, Joy and ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... Sanitary Inspector had been about. Or, again, if a fire were to devastate our little town, we should not smite our breasts in the manner of those same forefathers, and attribute it to what there is amongst us of sloth and self-indulgence, to God's wrath upon our drinking habits or our neglect of Sunday observance: we should trace it to a foul chimney and translate our discovery into a Bye-law, maybe into a local Fire Brigade. That is how men improve their knowledge, and, through ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... Arriv'd, from the north, to be merry and gay. The Panther ferocious—the Lynx of quick sight, The Preacher[1] and Glutton[1] came hither that night. The Camel, so often with burthens opprest, Was glad for a while from his labour to rest. The Sloth, when invited, got up with much pain, Just groan'd out, "Ah, No!" and then laid down again. The Fox, near the hen-roost, no longer kept watch, But hied to the feast, better viands to catch. The Monkey, so cunning, and full ...
— The Elephant's Ball, and Grand Fete Champetre • W. B.
... beloved brethren, are: Pride, Covetousness, Lust, Anger, Gluttony, Envy, Sloth. To these our wise Mother, the Church, opposes the contrary virtues: Humility, Chastity, Meekness, Temperance, Brotherly Love, Diligence." The voice of the preacher was clear and well modulated. It penetrated to the remotest corner of the church. Baldur, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... itself. When one of the inferior order of natives could show such contempt for a venerable and decrepit God of the Groves, what the state of religion must be among the people in general is easy to be imagined. In truth, I regard the Typees as a back-slidden generation. They are sunk in religious sloth, and require a spiritual revival. A long prosperity of bread-fruit and cocoanuts has rendered them remiss in the performance of their higher obligations. The wood-rot malady is spreading among the idols—the ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... and, in fact, up to the present moment, there was, and is, a most fierce and bitter outcry, and detraction loud and low, against General McClellan, accusing him of sloth, imbecility, cowardice, treasonable purposes, and, in short, utterly denying his ability as a soldier, and questioning his integrity as a man. Nor was this to be wondered at; for when before, in all history, do we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... cause: first, a sterile and improper soil; for, though I was of a strong and healthful constitution, and of a disposition tolerably sweet and tractable, yet I was, withal, so heavy, idle, and indisposed, that they could not rouse me from my sloth, not even to get me out to play. What I saw, I saw clearly enough, and under this heavy complexion nourished a bold imagination and opinions above my age. I had a slow wit that would go no faster than it was led; a tardy understanding, a languishing invention, and above all, incredible defect ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the wood Since Adam Bell and Robin Hood— Kept every where asunder From other tribes—King, Church, and State Spurning, and only dedicate To freedom, sloth, and plunder. Your forest-camp—the forms one sees Banditti like amid the trees, The ragged donkies grazing, The Sibyl's eye prophetic, bright With flashes of the fitful light, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... open for joy at her. It was not a stately progress for twenty-eight thousand dollars in gold and a paymaster to be making. Major Pidcock unbuttoned his duster and reclined to sleep, and presently I also felt the after-dinner sloth shutting my eyes pleasantly ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... I see—it is the same thing. It is wonderful. In the one case a man lies dead-alive four generations—mummified in ignorance and sloth—and that qualifies him to command live people, and take their weal and woe into his impotent hands; and in the other case, a man lies bedded with death and worms four generations, and that qualifies him for office in the celestial camp. Does the king's ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... knew, would have no cause to grumble at the interloper and the substitution of new brains and push in the place of decadence, craziness and sloth. The day when he had changed places with Rochester was the best day that had ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... that will never be broken in, will always refuse to submit to any guidance but their own lawless will. They will remain either the Ishmaels or the Sloths of Society. But man is naturally neither an Ishmael nor a Sloth. ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... use of the word in the sense of stubbornness or self-will Roger Ascham gives a good instance in his 'Scholemaster,' (1570), where he recommends that such a vice in children as 'will,' which he places in the category of lying, sloth, and disobedience, should be 'with sharp chastisement daily cut away.' {418a} 'A woman will have her will' was, among Elizabethan wags, an exceptionally popular proverbial phrase, the point of which revolved about the equivocal meaning of the ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... All experience of management by public bodies through officials shows that public enterprise is far more wasteful and far less efficient than private enterprise; that in official management routine, sloth, waste, irresponsibility, nepotism, favouritism, and often peculation too, become supreme. Besides, far more money than is wasted now by capitalists on themselves will be wasted by politicians hankering after popularity, and after jobs for themselves and their followers ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... syrenis istius cantibus surdam posthac aurem obversurus.—I bid farewell to Sloth, being resolved henceforth not to listen to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... September 18, 1709. In the child the physical, intellectual, and moral peculiarities which afterward distinguished the man were plainly discernible: great muscular strength accompanied by much awkwardness and many infirmities; great quickness of parts, with a morbid propensity to sloth and procrastination; a kind and generous heart, with a gloomy and irritable temper.[6] He had inherited from his ancestors a scrofulous taint, which it was beyond the power of medicine to remove. His parents ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... the streets, feeling that all the implements of labor, all the ensigns of hope, have been snatched from them. Their hands fall slack, their eyes rove aimless, the beggars begin to swarm again, and the black ravens who delight in the night of ignorance, the slumber of sloth, as the only sureties for their rule, emerge daily more and more frequent ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... at Missolonghi was not only hailed as a new era in the history of Greece, but as the beginning of a new cycle in his own extraordinary life. His natural indolence disappeared; the Sardanapalian sloth was thrown off, and he took a station in the van of her efforts ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... power for service. 'Tarry ye in Jerusalem till ye be endued with power from on high.' There is no such force for the spreading of Christ's Kingdom, and the witness-bearing work of His Church, as the possession of this Divine Spirit. Plunged into that fiery baptism, the selfishness and the sloth, which stand in the way of so many of us, are all consumed and annihilated, and we are set free for service because the bonds that bound us are burnt up in the merciful furnace ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... be Fancy's revelers by night! Stealthy companions of the downy moth— Diana's motes, that flit in her pale light, Shunners of sunbeams in diurnal sloth;— These be the feasters on night's silver cloth;— The gnat with shrilly trump is their convener, Forth from their flowery chambers, nothing loth, With lulling tunes to charm the air serener, Or dance upon the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... be asked in ridicule whether I suppose that the megatherium and other allied huge monsters, which formerly lived in South America, have left behind them the sloth, armadillo, and anteater, as their degenerate descendants. This cannot for an instant be admitted. These huge animals have become wholly extinct, and have left no progeny. But in the caves of Brazil there ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... are the highest nobility, if not the richest. I love birth, and ancestry, when they are incentives to exertion not the title deeds to sloth. Who would not prefer being the descendant of a Stephenson, an Arkwright, or a Crompton, or any other of those great architects of their own fortunes, and to feel some of their noble energies, firing their blood to efforts of industry, than to be for ever falling back on some legend or fiction ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... volume the complete art of youthful boredom and ornamental and expensive sloth is exploited. Where to get clothes; how much to owe for them; how soon to discard them and get others; what adjectives to use; and where, the best nut food may ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... and immortal creature; but, that perfect equality can exist in a world where the labour of man is required to procure the common necessaries of life—where the industry of one will create wealth, and the sloth of another induce ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... imported, but democracies do not recognise it, of downright bad folk—grown, healthy men and women who honestly rejoice in doing evil. These four classes acting together might conceivably produce a rather pernicious democracy; alien hysteria, blood-craze, and the like, reinforcing local ignorance, sloth, and arrogance. For example, I read a letter in a paper sympathising with these same Doukhobors. The writer knew a community of excellent people in England (you see where the rot starts!) who lived barefoot, paid no taxes, ate nuts, and were above marriage. ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... do[u]shin seated at either hand, he gave his orders and rebuke to the assembled constables. He scowled at them. Then with voice harsh from the contents of the big wine cup beside him he commanded—"Diligence is to be expected of all. He who fails to make many arrests shows sloth or ill will to his lord. Anyone against whom there is the slightest suspicion, even if he or she be abroad late at night, is to be brought to the jail. No explanation is to be allowed. There must be many arrests. Examination in the court is to follow; and many crimes, discovered ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... what nature demands of us, it seems no less doubtful what obligations are laid upon us when we make perfection our goal. That goal cannot mean for each man simply the developing to the utmost of all the capacities which he possesses. There are men rich in the possibilities of sloth, of indifference to future good, of egoism, even of malignant feeling. Nor does the average man furnish the pattern of perfection. The perfectionist does not regard the average man as the embodiment of his ideal. ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... of Ireland appear in Spenser's account in all their well-known forms; some of them, as if they were what we were reading of yesterday. Throughout the work there is an honest zeal for order, an honest hatred of falsehood, sloth, treachery, and disorder. But there does not appear a trace of consideration for what the Irish might feel or desire or resent. He is sensible indeed of English mismanagement and vacillation, of the ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... this very morning of the Temple dedication, because the Temple keys lay under Solomon's pillow, and none dared awaken him. Word was sent to Bath-sheba, who forthwith aroused her son, and rebuked him for his sloth. "Thy father," she said, "was known to all as a God-fearing man, and now people will say, 'Solomon is the son of Bath-sheba, it is his mother's fault if he goes wrong.' Whenever thy father's wives were pregnant, ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... a sign of sloth on the part of the gardener. In a grapery devoted exclusively to grape-growing, it should never be seen, but, since gardeners must often grow other plants in the grapery, mealy-bug sooner or later appears and is often hard to dislodge. It is best repelled by removing ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... slightly cheering and invigorating effect from the tight grasp of the child's warm little hand. Feeble as he was, she seemed to adopt him willingly for her protector. And the Doctor never afterwards shrank from his duty nor quailed beneath it, but bore himself like a man, striving, amid the sloth of age and the breaking-up of intellect, to earn the competency which he had failed to accumulate even in his ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... So free from sauce, and sloth, and sin, The best of pages Whatever their ages, Since first that singular fashion came in— Not he like those modern and idle young gluttons With little jackets, so smart and spruce, Of Lincoln green, sky-blue, or puce— A little gold lace you may introduce— Very ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... any further end of life. It may be hard to indicate the precise hour in which this man's pleasure-seeking passes into sin: still this is clear, his life is not innocent. Clear him of gluttony and lust, there remains upon him the sin of sloth and of ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... quite ready to meet the Athabasca blacksmith, Albrecht Dumont, dying faster now, signed his last report to the Government at Berlin, which his daughter Ilse had written for him—something about Canadian canals and stupid Yankees and their greed, indifference, cowardice, and sloth. ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... subsists between a cloudy winter, and a radiant spring.—Besides, our lands would not be then cut down for the support of a numerous train of useless inhabitants—useless, I mean, to themselves, and effectually to us, by encouraging sloth and voluptuousness among our young farmers and planters, who might otherwise know how to take care of their money, as well as how to dissipate it.—In all other respects, I conceive them to be as valuable as we are—as capable of worthy purposes, and to possess the same dignity that we ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... that he would have to settle down to the ordinary gray limbo of jobs and offices—as soon as he could get control of his chaotic desires. Literally, he hated himself at times; hated his own egotism, his treacherous appetite for drink and women and sloth, his imitative attempts at literature. But no one knew how bitterly he despised himself, in lonely walks in the rain, in savage pacing about his furnished room. To others he seemed vigorously conceited, cock-sure, noisily ready to blame the world ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... this sloth and awake: I will sing till I've stiffened your lip against every knave that would take A share ...
— The Green Helmet and Other Poems • William Butler Yeats
... till he came to a vale where he saw three men who were in a sound sleep, with chains on their feet. The name of one was Simple, one Sloth, and the third Presumption. As Christian saw them lie in this case, he went to wake them, and said: You are like those that sleep on the top of a mast, for the Dead Sea is at your feet. Wake, rise, and come with me. Trust me, and I will help you off with your chains. With ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... have to live and struggle, certain forces shall be operative,—that there shall be the beauty of health, as in the "Discobolus;" material love which is divine, as in the "Sistine Madonna;" that war shall be horrible; that sloth unstriven against shall triumph over love, as in "The Statue and the Bust;" that defiance of the social organism shall involve self-destruction, as in "Anna Karenina." The person or the combination of events ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... evening both, You merry were and glad, So little care of sleep and sloth Those pretty ladies had. When Tom came home from labour. Or Cis to milking rose, Then merrily, merrily went their tabor, And merrily went ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... yielding enough and to spare for all, the endless succession of wise men, from the Contributing Editor of Proverbs unto this day, who have hymned the praise of diligence and docility, the scorn of sloth. Yet not one sage of the bountiful bunch has ever ventured to denounce the twin vices of industry and obedience. True, there is the story of blind Samson at the mill; perhaps ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... that flower of Heaven grew not, Conquered that heart by love, which gold, or pain, Or age, or sloth, or slavery ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... booksellers. From various sources we get some highly-coloured and unflattering pictures of the typical booksellers of the period. Tom Nash has limned for us a vivid little portrait in 'Pierce Penilesse' (1592), in which he declares that if he were to paint Sloth, 'I swear that I would draw it like a stationer that I know, with his thumb under his girdle, who, if ever a man come to his stall to ask him for a book, never stirs his head, or looks upon him, but stands stone still, and speaks not a word, only with his ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... with the conquerors, by which he agreed to pay a heavy and disgraceful tribute for the corn which was absolutely necessary for the support of his capital. But a sudden and most extraordinary change took place in the character of Heraclius: he roused himself from his sloth, indolence and despair; he fitted out a large fleet; exerted his skill, and displayed his courage and coolness in a storm which it encountered; carried his armies into Persia itself, and succeeded in recovering Egypt and the other provinces which the ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... patient in extreame adversitie, (Mans chiefest credit growes by dooing well). Be not high-minded in prosperitie; Falshood abhorre, no lying fable tell. Give not thyselfe to sloth, (the sinke of shame, The moath of ...
— The Affectionate Shepherd • Richard Barnfield
... holy custom of family prayers is, I fear, dropping into disuse. Our lives are so full of business that a season of God's service in the morning and in the evening is almost thought to be an excuse of sloth. But what a sad effect do we see on our youth! They have quick eyes for cant and hypocrisy. They follow us to church on Sunday less and less willingly, until finally there is rebellion in their hearts and ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... Wesley, his senior by six years, was a fellow of Lincoln whilst Johnson was an undergraduate, and was learning at Oxford the necessity of rousing his countrymen from the religious lethargy into which they had sunk. "Have not pride and haughtiness of spirit, impatience, and peevishness, sloth and indolence, gluttony and sensuality, and even a proverbial uselessness been objected to us, perhaps not always by our enemies nor wholly without ground?" So said Wesley, preaching before the University of Oxford in 1744, and the words in his mouth imply more than the preacher's formality. Adam ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... livelihood; and only the few who have taken the same time to learn the trade, and are as little afraid of hard work as himself, can compete with him. This temptation to seek a "soft berth," where the only work required is sitting in an office, or talking, or writing, or riding around, is the form of sloth which is taking the strength and independence and manliness out of young men to-day faster than anything else. It is only one degree above the loafer and the tramp. The young man who starts in life by seeking an easy place ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... Mrs. Barker, and upon the head she tapped into sloth her rising resentment. "Nobody dead," she said, with a smack of the mouth, "but Liza Pruitt ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... som Plume, that thy success may show Destruction to the rest: this pause between (Unanswerd least thou boast) to let thee know; At first I thought that Libertie and Heav'n To heav'nly Soules had bin all one; but now I see that most through sloth had rather serve, Ministring Spirits, traind up in Feast and Song; Such hast thou arm'd, the Minstrelsie of Heav'n, Servilitie with freedom to contend, As both thir deeds compar'd this day shall prove. 170 To whom in brief ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... to look back upon the green slope and the hollows and narrow ridges, with sheep and stubble and some low hedges, and oxen, and that old, old sloth—the plough—creeping in his path. The sun is bright on the stubble and the corners of furze; there are bees humming yonder, no doubt, and flowers, and hares crouching—the dew dried from around them long since, and waiting for it to fall again; partridges, too, corn-ricks, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... in a wretched state, and the working-classes have neither the knowledge nor the ambition to apply themselves to its development. Unable to discover the real cause of their misery (which is simply their own sloth), they have heard just enough political talk to make them fancy that the form of government is responsible for their unhappy condition. With them the causes which drive men into dying for an abstract idea do exist; and it is easy for a demagogue to convince them that the alien occupation is the root ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... to the age in which they lived. Such monks as I have met[285] maintained that extreme forms of tapas were good for the nerves of ancient saints but not for the weaker natures of to-day. But in avoiding rigorous severity, they have not fallen into sloth or luxury. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... directly below the cave in which Pan-at-lee slept—it dropped to the ground among the dense shadows. Now it moved, cautiously. It moved toward the foot of the cliff, taking form and shape in the moonlight. It moved like the creature of a bad dream—slowly, sluggishly. It might have been a huge sloth—it might have been a man, with so grotesque a brush does the ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the aspect of the place and the evident sloth of its master, it was characterized by a scrupulous cleanliness strangely at variance with its forlorn deficiencies. The rough floor was not only swept but scoured; the dark rafters, whence depended the flaming banners of the red pepper, harbored no cobwebs; the grave faces of the white-haired ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... has a long time perceived that, in the direction of affairs relative to this war with England, there have been manifested an inconceivable lukewarmness and sloth; but they discover themselves still more, at this moment, by the little inclination which, in general, the Regencies of the Belgic Provinces testify to commence a treaty of commerce and friendship with the new Republic of the Thirteen United States of North America; ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... in a slough Of sloth, and ease, and selfish greed; God surely sent this scourge to mould ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... subject seems free and accessible, and to this aspect I propose to direct your attention. The separate incidents of the war, and the actions of individuals, statesmen, soldiers, politicians, journalists, and officials, civil or military, the wisdom or the rashness, the energy or the sloth, the wavering or the resolution, ancient experience grown half prophetic with the years, alert vigour, quick to perceive, unremitting in pursuit, or ingenuous surprise tardily awaking from the dream of a world which is not this—all ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... my soul! and with the sun Thy daily stage of duty run; Shake off dull sloth, and joyful rise To ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... kind, on the barbarity and misery of our island, one cannot help reflecting on the surprising fate and revolutions of kingdoms; how Rome, once the mistress of the world, the seat of arts, empire, and glory, now lies sunk in sloth, ignorance, and poverty; enslaved to the most cruel as well as to the most contemptible of tyrants, superstition and religious imposture; while this remote country, anciently the jest and contempt of the polite Romans, is become the happy seat of liberty, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... Sloth, a singular animal of the Opossum species, having a false belly, was found by the natives, and brought into the town alive, on the 10th of August, 1803. This is a very singular animal; for when it ascends a tree, at which it is astonishingly ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... too late. All ideas of peace on a basis of compromise had disappeared on either side. The end, it was seen clearly, must be either absolute slavery for all but the privileged, or a system of life founded on equality and Communism. The sloth, the hopelessness, and if I may say so, the cowardice of the last century, had given place to the eager, restless heroism of a declared revolutionary period. I will not say that the people of that time foresaw the life we are leading now, but there was a ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... covetousness, slandering the dead, anger, envy, the evil eye, shamelessness, looking at with evil intent, looking at with evil concupiscence, stiff-neckedness, discontent with the godly arrangements, self-willedness, sloth, despising others, mixing in strange matters, unbelief, opposing the Divine powers, false witness, false judgment, idol-worship, running naked, running with one shoe, the breaking of the low (midday) prayer, the omission of the (midday) prayer, theft, robbery, whoredom, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... coach was heathen Greek. Who ever saw, but upon extraordinary occasions, Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Francis Drake ride in a coach? They made small use of coaches; there were but few in those times, and they were deadly foes to sloth and effeminacy. It is in the memory of many when in the whole kingdom there was not one! It is a doubtful question whether the devil brought tobacco into England in a coach, for both appeared at the same time." It appears that families, for the sake of their exterior show, miserably contracted ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... that Land misused, Not long the silence of amazement hung, Nor brooked they long their friendly faith abused; For, with a common shriek, the general tongue Exclaimed, "To arms!"—and fast to arms they sprung. And VALOUR woke, that Genius of the Land! Pleasure, and ease, and sloth aside he flung, As burst the awakening Nazarite his band, When 'gainst his treacherous foes he clenched his ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... Robin Hood the outlaw was first pointed out by Bishop Percy, the editor of the Reliques, in Piers Plowman, the poem written by Langland about 1377, where Sloth says (B. text, passus ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... sooner or later incline to think that with a little determination, a little manipulation, the so-called fact would politely cease to be a fact at all? It is difficult to say, and until an answer is definitely received it does not perhaps argue any specially sloth-like clinging to the known in preference to the unknown to admit that there is for ordinary minds some slight craning at the fence, some not altogether unnatural alarm as to the ground that is to be found on the other side of it. "Well, how ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... Then languor of mind: you must be alert, energetic, in your thought. Then doubt: you must have decision of will, must be able to make up your mind. Then carelessness: this is one of the greatest difficulties with beginners; they read a thing carelessly, they are inaccurate. Sloth: a lazy man cannot be a Yogi; one who is inert, who lacks the power and the will to exert himself; how shall he make the desperate exertions wanted along this line? The next, worldly-mindedness, is obviously an obstacle. Mistaken ideas is another great obstacle, thinking ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... thought a hard government that should tax its people one-tenth part of their time, to be employed in its service; but idleness taxes many of us much more; sloth, by bringing on diseases, absolutely shortens life. 'Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears; while the used key is always bright,' as Poor Richard says. 'But dost thou love life, then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of,' ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... wrong," said Mr. Lenox. "The life-blood of a caravan is sloth; the life-blood of a motor is speed. You can't mix them. And how could Robert here survey England creditably if he rushed through it in a motor? You're going to survey England, aren't you, Bobbie? No, it must be a horse, ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... this man it is ever 'forward!' Is there neither rest nor fear? Has she bewitched him? Hai! Ye lazy ones! Ho! Sons of sloth! Urge the mules ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... after, O bull of Bharata's race, Pandu who had achieved a victory over sloth and lethargy, accompanied by his two wives, Kunti and Madri, retired into the woods. Leaving his excellent palace with its luxurious beds, he became a permanent inhabitant of the woods, devoting the whole of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... whom I love, hearken unto me. The Nine-bow barbarians overrun the ancient land of Khem; nine nations march up against Khem and lay it waste. Hearken unto me, my son, and I will give thee victory. Awake, awake from sloth, and I will give thee victory. Thou shalt hew down the Nine-bow barbarians as a countryman hews a rotting palm; they shall fall, and thou shalt spoil them. But hearken unto me, my son, thou shalt not thyself go up against them. Low in thy dungeon there lies a mighty chief, ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... reward of all his constancy he had endured what had been wellnigh unendurable—loneliness, homesickness, isolation, discomfort. For this he had kept his body clean and his soul clean where all about him was sloth and slackness. He thought backward upon that which he had undergone; he thought forward upon the dreary purposeless prospect that stretched unendingly before him. Never now could he bring himself to go back to the spot of his shattered ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... of arms and powder. The drafts were made with difficulty, and the new levies came in slowly. Supplies failed altogether, and on every hand there was nothing but delay, and ever fresh delay, and in the midst of it all Washington, wrestling with sloth and incoherence and inefficiency, trampled down one failure and disappointment only to encounter another, equally important, equally ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... will not work," it is the highest gentility in him not to work either, and sighs for a few acres whereon he may live in sluggish content. And his quondam master, left to his own resources, will not any more than before put his shoulder to the work; and, though sunk himself in sloth, ceases not to complain of another's indolence. The spirit of caste is still relentless. The white man despises the black man, and, if he can, cheats him and tramples upon him. The black man, in return, suspects and fears his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... His hands lie buried fathom-deep in his pockets, as if part of his brain lay there to be rummaged; and he sucks at his old pipe as if his head, like other venerable hulks, must be smoked out at intervals. His walk is that of a sloth, one foot dragging heavily behind the other. I meet him as I go to the post-office, and on returning, twenty minutes later, I pass him again, a little farther advanced. All the children accost him, and I have seen him stop—no great ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... erasing the masterpieces of classical literature to make way for their own litanies and lurries, or selling pieces of the parchment for charms; a laity devoted by superstition to saints and by sorcery to the devil; a clergy sunk in sensual sloth or fevered with demoniac zeal—these still ruled the intellectual destinies of Europe. Therefore the first anticipations of the Renaissance were fragmentary ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... things, which he pronounces good; all the rest he pushes off in a mass as weeds and nettles. Thus the great bulk of the universe is to him useless or hurtful, because he will not, or cannot, learn its secrets. These unknown things are standing reproaches to his ignorance and sloth." ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... of justice. The great idle drones, asleep in unconscious groups on the melliferous walls, are rudely torn from their slumbers by an army of wrathful virgins. They wake, in pious wonder; they cannot believe their eyes; and their astonishment struggles through their sloth as a moonbeam through marshy water. They stare amazedly round them, convinced that they must be victims of some mistake; and the mother-idea of their life being first to assert itself in their dull brain, they take a step towards the vats of honey to seek ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... philosophic insight in life and literature. Man is a morally indolent animal, and he was never more so than when he was working "with something approaching frenzy according to the natural law." Faced with the spectacle of a romantic spiritual sloth accompanied by a materialistic, physical, and even intellectual energy, the author warns us that "the discipline that helps a man to self-mastery is found to have a more important bearing on his happiness than the discipline that helps him to a mastery of physical ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... possesseth acres, But the landscape, I; Half the charms to me it yieldeth Money cannot buy; Cleon harbors sloth and dullness, Freshening vigor, I; He in velvet, I in fustian— Richer ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... will often argue, that if this part of our trade were well cultivated, we should gain from one nation; and if another, from another. I have heard him prove, that diligence makes more lasting acquisitions than valour, and that sloth has ruined more nations than the sword. He abounds in several frugal maxims, amongst which the greatest favourite is, 'A penny saved is a penny got.' A general trader of good sense is pleasanter company than a general scholar; and Sir ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... spiritual wing to rear us, a charm for our miseries, a protecting amulet to expel sin's venom, an attractive loadstone to draw God's mercy and graces unto us. [6771]Peccatum vulnus, poenitentia medicinam: sin made the breach, repentance must help it; howsoever thine offence came, by error, sloth, obstinacy, ignorance, exitur per poenitentiam, this is the sole means to be relieved. [6772]Hence comes our hope of safety, by this alone sinners are saved, God is provoked to mercy. "This unlooseth ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... beauteous victim slow Ascend the pile where her dead husband lies: She kisses his cold cheeks, inclines her breast On his, and lights herself the fatal pile That shall consume them both! On Egypt's shore, Where Science rose, now Sloth and Ignorance Sleep like the huge Behemoth in the sun! 300 The turbaned Moor still stains with strangers' blood The inmost sands of Afric. But all these The light shall visit, and that vaster tract From Fuego to the furthest Labrador, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... the survey of India, he opened his batteries on the sloth and selfishness of too many of Christ's professed followers; he poured contempt upon the men who said: "They are not so green as to waste their money on the farce of Foreign Missions." "No, no, indeed," he continued, "they are not green, for greenness implies verdure, and beauty, ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... Friendship may match with that monarch of fluids; 840 Each supples a dry brain, fills you its ins-and-outs, Gives your life's hour-glass a shake when the thin sand doubts Whether to run on or stop short, and guarantees Age is not all made of stark sloth and arrant ease. I have seen my little lady once more, Jacynth, the Gipsy, Berold, and the rest of it, For to me spoke the Duke, as I told you before; I always wanted to make a clean breast of it: And now it is made-why, my heart's blood, that went trickle, Trickle, ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... equilibrium, not by huge hundred-weights, but by infinitesimal grains, needing the most wary caution, the most considerate patience, the most delicate touch, to arrange or readjust. Few of our errors, national or individual, come from the design to be unjust; most of them from sloth, or incapacity to grapple with the difficulties of being just. Sins of commission may not, perhaps, shock the retrospect of conscience. Large and obtrusive to view we have confessed, mourned, repented, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ruling elders disappeared. Hence Hilary says—"The synagogue, and afterwards the Church, had elders, without whose counsel nothing was done in the Church, which, by what negligence it grew into disuse I know not; unless, perhaps, by the sloth, or rather by the pride of the teachers, while they alone wished to appear something."—Comment on 1 Tim. v. 1. Some late writers have contended that these elders (seniores) were not ecclesiastical officers at all, but civil magistrates of municipal corporations peculiar ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... sat down; Until from this man's gibe and that keen word, Another's chilly smile or peevish frown, I caught their talk—but added none of mine. They said how she still fumbled with her fate, How she had banished visitants divine, How long her sleep had been, her sloth how great, How others had drawn near and passed her by, While she luxuriously had dreamed, dreamed on, She, she her own eternal enemy, And wanting brain, brain, brain would be undone. The glasses tinkled as they talked and laughed, And if the door a moment hung ajar The noises ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... forward to the coast, where I found my boat and raft safe at anchor. I took up a moderate load and came home to breakfast; but found all still as I left them. I called my family, and they sprung up ashamed of their sloth; my wife declared it must have been the good mattress ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... answer them? When you know the truth tell him the truth, being sure that it is told in language that really conveys truth to his mind. The danger is that parents will attempt to tell more than they know, to answer questions that cannot be answered, or that they will, in sloth or cowardice or ignorance, tell children untrue things. If a child asks, "Did God make the world?" the answer that will be true to the child may be a simple affirmative. If the child asks or his query implies, "Did God make the leaves, or the birds, with his ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... in the character of events, we should long since have seen that the series of disasters which have befallen the empire since the Gallilean atheism has taken root here, have pointed but to that—that they have been a chastisement of our supineness and sloth. When did Rome, almighty Rome, ever before tremble at the name of barbarian, or fly before their arms? While now, is it not much that we are able to keep them from the very walls of the Capital? They now ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... mother, who rejoiced in this and said to me, 'O my son, Allah hath blessed thee with all these riches; so put off thy laziness and go down to the bazar and sell and buy.' At once I shook off my dull sloth, and opened a shop in the bazar, where the ape used to sit on the same divan with me eating with me when I ate and drinking when I drank. But, every day, he was absent from dawn till noon, when he came back bringing with ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... to the wires, the bat opens both wings owl-like, in a most threatening manner; but if we make still more hostile motions the creature retreats as hastily as it can, changing its method of progress to an all-fours, sloth-like gait, the long free thumb of each hand grasping wire after wire and doing most of the leverage, the hind legs ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... limits of a just allowance? Prom the general style of your late publications of all sorts, one would be led to believe that your clergy in France were a sort of monsters: an horrible composition of superstition, ignorance, sloth, fraud, avarice, and tyranny. But is this true? Is it true that the lapse of time, the cessation of conflicting interests, the woful experience of the evils resulting from party rage, have had no sort of influence gradually to meliorate their minds? Is it true that they were ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... one thing, gluttonish sloth another. And even if you have once again overestimated the capacity of your stomach, why advertise your intemperance in a public place?" He lifted his hand from my shoulder to look at his watch. "It's now ten minutes to three. Do you ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... immensity of the territory, the more distant provinces gradually pillaged and exhausted; there was the fisc consuming everything, digging the pit of fatal bankruptcy; and there was the degeneration of the people, poisoned by the scenes of the circus and the arena, fallen to the sloth and debauchery of their masters, the Caesars, while mercenaries fought the foe and tilled the soil. Already at the time of Constantine, Rome had a rival, Byzantium; disruption followed with Honorius; ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... covetousness of other divers named priests), lousengers, and lounderers are wrongfully made and called Hermits; and have leave to defraud poor and needy creatures of their livelihood, and to live by their false winning and begging in sloth and other divers vices. And also of these Prelates, these cokir noses [?] are suffered to live in pride and hypocrisy, and to defoul ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... which they know not; and after [that] themselves know that which they know not. But indeed facility to believe, impatience to doubt, temerity to answer, glory to know, doubt to contradict, end to gain, sloth to search, seeking things in words, resting in part of nature; these, and the like, have been the things which have forbidden the happy match between the mind of man and the nature of things, and in place thereof have married it to vain notions and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... sometimes, after years of practice, finds it difficult to begin the composition of some simple reception or commemorative address; but the reading of a meagre outline, not one word or idea of which may be directly used, serves to break the spell of intellectual sloth or inertia, and starts him upon his ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... they love, 60 That none may eat but they. Do thou but bring Light to the banquet Fortune sets before thee And thou wilt loath leane darknesse like thy death. Who would beleeve thy mettall could let sloth Rust and consume it? If Themistocles 65 Had liv'd obscur'd thus in th'Athenian State, Xerxes had made both him and it his slaves. If brave Camillus had lurckt so in Rome, He had not five times beene Dictator there, Nor foure times triumpht. If Epaminondas 70 (Who liv'd twice twenty yeeres ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... virgins had no oil in their lamps: their way was material; thus they were in doubt and dark- ness. They heeded not their sloth, their fading warmth [5] of action; hence the steady decline of spiritual light, until, the midnight gloom upon them, they must borrow the better-tended lamps of the faithful. By entering the guest-chamber ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... in kindness and to found an empire upon the everlasting basis of justice and affection! But what do men call vigour? To let loose hussars and to bring up artillery, to govern with lighted matches, and to cut, and push, and prime; I call this not vigour, but the SLOTH OF CRUELTY AND IGNORANCE. The vigour I love consists in finding out wherein subjects are aggrieved, in relieving them, in studying the temper and genius of a people, in consulting their prejudices, in selecting proper persons to lead ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... SLOTH. I am Sloth. I was begotten on a sunny bank, where I have lain ever since; and you have done me great injury to bring me from thence: let me be carried thither again by Gluttony and Lechery. I'll not speak another word for ...
— The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... bold, why wilt thou never cease The fathers from their tombs to summon forth? Why bring them, with this dead age to converse, That stifled is by enemies and by sloth? And why dost thou, voice of our ancestors, That hast so long been mute, Resound so loud and frequent in our ears? Why all these grand discoveries? As in a flash the fruitful pages come, What hath this wretched age deserved, That dusty cloisters have for it reserved These ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... who is envied—emulation, detraction, pity, vexation, mourning, sadness, tribulation, sorrow, lamentation, solicitude, disquiet of mind, pain, despair, and many other similar feelings are so too. Under fear are comprehended sloth, shame, terror, cowardice, fainting, confusion, astonishment. In pleasure they comprehend malevolence—that is, pleased at another's misfortune—delight, boastfulness, and the like. To lust they associate anger, fury, hatred, enmity, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... declared comfortably, "to-day is Friday. I'll spend Saturday and Sunday in sinful sloth and the renewal of old acquaintance, and on Monday I'll sit in at your desk and give you a long-deferred vacation. ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... that I rightly think or do, Or make or spoil or bless or blast, Is curse or blessing justly due For sloth or effort in the past. My life's a statement of the sum Of vice indulged or overcome. And as I journey on the roads I shall be helped and healed and blessed. Dear words shall cheer, and be as goads To urge to heights as yet unguessed. My road shall be the road I made. ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... so walk that you may abound more and more:[1001] for the glory of a father is the wisdom of his sons.[1002] For even for us the example of so great perfection in our midst has begun in no slight degree both to expel our sloth and impel us to reverence. And would that he may in such wise draw us after him that he may draw us to the goal, running more eagerly and more quickly in the fragrance which his virtues have left so fresh behind them.[1003] ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... before us oracularly. "After next September," she said, "you will both scorn the sloth of civilization. You will move about for the joy of moving about. You will have cast off the shackles of the flesh and be born anew. That is, if a plan of mine goes through. Lizzie, you ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... always bitter," and it is this alone that makes it possible to strengthen the will while instructing the mind. The well-schooled will comes, like Herder, to scorn the luxury of knowing without the labor of learning. We must anticipate the future penalties of sloth as well as of badness. The will especially is a trust we are to administer for the child, not as he may now wish, but as he will wish when more mature. We must now compel what he will later wish to compel ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... place was Elvidner (misery), the hall of the goddess Hel, whose dish was Hunger. Her knife was Greed. "Idleness was the name of her man, Sloth of her maid, Ruin of her threshold, Sorrow of her bed, and ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... should discover that they were working these mines, they would come hither to take them captive; but even now, when no one can molest them, they do not work the mines, and hence we may infer that their poverty is mainly due to sloth. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... our youth into perpetual slavery, what could young men do? To whom would the trump of battle be sounded so effectually? Who else would feel upon themselves the chief responsibility for their country's rescue? What excuse could they find for supineness and sloth? Such indeed is the enemy by which the country is already desolated. And now it is to the warm hearts, and the strong hands, and the active energies, and the powerful example of young men, that the dearest interests of the nation look ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... know his clumsy typewriters and bungling locomotives and tedious bicycles: they are toys compared to the Maxim gun, the submarine torpedo boat. There is nothing in Man's industrial machinery but his greed and sloth: his heart is in his weapons. This marvellous force of Life of which you boast is a force of Death: Man measures his strength by his destructiveness. What is his religion? An excuse for hating ME. What is his law? An excuse for hanging YOU. What is his morality? Gentility! an excuse for ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... hours; sloppy pavements, and kennels down which the muddy torrents hastened to precipitate themselves in the sewers below; armies of umbrellas, as far as the eye could reach, now rising, now lowering, to avoid collision; hackney-coaches in active sloth, their miserable cattle plodding along with their backs arched and heads and tails drooping like barn-door fowls crouching under the cataract of a gutter; clacking of pattens and pestering of sweepers; not a smile upon the countenance of one ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... whole house and furniture have a thorough cleaning from top to bottom, for the honour of Wales; and let Roger search into, and make a general clearance of the slit holes, which the maids have in secret; for I know they are much given to sloth and uncleanness. I hope you have worked a reformation among them, as I exhorted you in my last, and set their hearts upon better things than they can find in junkitting and caterwauling with ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... unoccupied in order that the expected celestial visitor may not be crowded for room. Chance is to make them king, and chance to crown them, without their stir! There are others still, who, while sloth is sapping the primitive energy of their natures, expect to scale the fortresses of knowledge by leaps and not by ladders, and who count on success in such perilous gymnastics, not by the discipline of the athlete, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... fellow-travellers; and the seriousness of the story is relieved by adventures and humorous conversations. At the bottom of a hill he finds three gentlemen asleep, 'a little out of the way.' These were Simple, Sloth, and Presumption. He tries to rouse them, but does not succeed. Presently two others are seen tumbling over the wall into the Narrow Way. They are come from the land of Vain Glory, and are called Formalist and Hypocrisy. ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... are sent with a message to any place, one must very patiently await some notable failure caused ordinarily by their natural sloth and laziness. [297] Sicut acetum dentibus, et fumus oculis, sic piger his qui miserunt ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... terrible," exclaimed Gootes frantically. "Tragic. Howll I live it down? Howm I going to face W R? Godlike wrath. 'What poolhall were you dozing in, Gootes? Asleep on your bloody feet, ay, somnambulistic offspring of a threetoed sloth?' Wait all night for a story and then not get it, like the star legman on the Jackson Junior Highschool Jive-Jitterbug. I'll never be able to hold my head up again. Say something, say something, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Scottish lightkeeper was frail. During the unbroken solitude of the winter months, when inspection is scarce possible, it must seem a vain toil to polish the brass hand-rail of the stair, or to keep an unrewarded vigil in the lightroom; and the keepers are habitually tempted to the beginnings of sloth, and must unremittingly resist. He who temporises with his conscience is already lost. I must tell here an anecdote that illustrates the difficulties of inspection. In the days of my uncle David and my father there was a station ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dream; you sleep away your hours In desperate sloth, miscalled philosophy. Up, up, for honour's sake; twelve legions wait you, And long to call you chief: By painful journeys, I led them, patient both of heat and hunger, Down from the Parthian marches to the Nile. 'Twill do you good to see their sun-burnt faces, Their scarred cheeks, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... (Superintendent of His Majesty's Manufactures) who has so successfully reviv'd it, that 'tis prodigious to consider what an happy progress they have made in it; to our shame be it spoken, who have no other discouragements from any insuperable difficulty whatever, but our sloth, and want of industry; since wherever these trees will grow and prosper, the silk-worms will do so also; and they were alike averse, and from the very same suggestions, where now that manufacture ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... the spirit of production,—the most sorely needed thing in the world today—is that of persistent advance. I dwell on this because it is in such sharp contrast with what is going on throughout the rest of a universe that staggers under sloth, and where the will-to-work has almost become a lost art. That older and more complacent order which is represented for example by France, Italy and England may well seek inspiration ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... and draw them from their passion for vodka, or Russian brandy, and their harmful dissipations. Ivan the Fool was one of the first of these. The Power of Darkness had an enormous popularity. The ABC books and simple versions of the Scriptures did much to dispel sloth of mind in the {224} peasant, but the Government did not look kindly on these efforts. To them the progressive Count was dangerous, though he held apart from those fanatics of the upper classes who had begun to move ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... others have not touched? What is there for me to feel, to learn, to hear, to know, that shall thrill me before it pass to others? What can I discover?—Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. One charm of travel dies here. But if I were only a Roman! —If, added to my own I could be gifted with modern Roman sloth, modern Roman superstition, and modern Roman boundlessness of ignorance, what bewildering worlds of unsuspected wonders I would discover! Ah, if I were only a habitant of the Campagna five and twenty miles from Rome! Then ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... declaration of what He does, 'I am the Lord that make holy.' Holiness is a burning fire that extends itself, that seeks to consume what is unholy, and to communicate its own blessedness to all that will receive it. Holiness and selfishness, holiness and inactivity, holiness and sloth, holiness and helplessness, are utterly irreconcilable. Whatever we read of as holy, was taken into the service of ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray
... governing class; in closing the way to public business, not only to the old noblesse, but to the aristocracy of the future; in continuing and exaggerating the work of absolute monarchy; in preparing for a community of officials and administrators; in lowering the level of humanity; in reducing to sloth and brutalizing or blighting the elite of the families which maintain or raise themselves; and in withering the most precious of nurseries, that in which the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... grown. The national character has deepened and intensified in these. We have strengthened anew these rocky foundations of a nation's greatness. Men lapped in luxury have patiently bowed to toil and weariness. Men living in self-indulgence have shaken off their sloth, and roused the old slumbering fearlessness of their race. Men, living for selfish ends, have been penetrated by the light of a great purpose, and have risen to the loftiness of human duty. Men, who shrank from pain as the sorest evil, have voluntarily accepted pain, and borne it with a ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... parks. To his negro slaves he was the kindest of masters; ever mindful of their comfort, and extremely careful of them in sickness. Being of industrious habits himself, he would not make the least grain of allowance for sloth or idleness in them, or indeed in any one about him, but was strict in exacting of them the speedy and full performance of their allotted tasks; which, however, he always took care should come under rather ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady |
