"Slothful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... age in Germany, from the Christian era to the present time. During the period of their dominion in England, the Anglo-Saxons, so far from showing themselves an enterprising people were notoriously weak, slothful, and degenerate, overrun by the Danes, and soon permanently subjected by the Normans. It is evident, from the trifling resistance they made, that they had neither energy to fight, nor property, laws, nor institutions to defend, and that they were ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... years did bring us Conquests; And as thou grew'st to Man, thou grew'st in Glory, And hast arriv'd to such a pitch of it, As all the slothful Youth that shall succeed thee, Shall meet reproaches of thy early Actions: When Men shall say, thus did the brave Alcippus; And that great Name shall every Soul inspire With Emulation to arrive at something, That's worthy ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... throwing water from the little stream broadcast with a shovel on either side), I did no more than Dawson, but joined him in yawning the day away, for which my sole excuse is the great heat of this region, which doth beget most slothful humours in those matured in ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... his hat. With his hand on the swinging door he paused and looked back. Not a head was raised. In the air there hovered a droning, a rustling. It was like a vast, drowsy, slothful thing, ignorant, dull, hateful. He pulled open the door. And ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... sure," she answered, gravely. "Of course, I know nothing about Germany. But I do know something about our own people. I know how selfish and individualistic and sordid and money-grabbing we have been; how slothful and incompetent and self-satisfied we have been, and I fear it will take a long war and sacrifices and tragedies altogether beyond our present imagination to make us unselfish and public-spirited and clean and generous; it will take ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... 21 O my brethren, if ye could be healed by merely casting about your eyes that ye might be healed, would ye not behold quickly, or would ye rather harden your hearts in unbelief, and be slothful, that ye would not cast about your eyes, that ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... brain always smoking with new ideas, which unfortunately never came to anything, Ferdinand Chebe was one of those slothful, project-devising bourgeois of when there are so many in Paris. His wife, whom he had dazzled at first, had soon detected his utter insignificance, and had ended by enduring patiently and with unchanged demeanor his continual dreams of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... loving affection for me by thy keeping of God's commandments, and by thy continuance in this place even to the end, living as thou hast learned and been instructed, and alway remembering my poor and slothful soul. Rejoice, therefore, with great joy, and make merry with the gladness that is in Christ, because thou hast exchanged the earthly and corruptible for the eternal and incorruptible; and because there draweth nigh the reward ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... those who now seem to be his closest friends. All the feelings that exist in any other body of men must be supposed to exist in Philip's supporters. Now, however, all such feelings are cowed before him: your slothful apathy has taken away their only rallying point; and it is this apathy that I bid you put off to-day. {9} Mark the situation, men of Athens: mark the pitch which the man's outrageous insolence has reached, ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... merry-makings, not the less acceptable to Donald that they were void of expense. And there was the consciousness of superior skill; for the Highlander, a child amongst flocks, is a prince amongst herds, and his natural habits induce him to disdain the shepherd's slothful life, so that he feels himself nowhere more at home than when following a gallant drove of his country cattle in ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... eyes of Braddock or his officers. To Ensign Allen of Halket's regiment was assigned the duty of "making them as much like soldiers as possible."[207]—that is, of drilling them like regulars. The General had little hope of them, and informed Sir Thomas Robinson that "their slothful and languid disposition renders them very unfit for military service,"—a point on which he lived to change his mind. Thirty sailors, whom Commodore Keppel had lent him, were more to his liking, and were in fact of value in many ways. He had ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... time, wishing not to be disturbed by the maid's beauty; as it usually stirred her to frenzy and she wanted perfect quiet for calm reasoning. It took some time to plan her campaign that was already full started, and she now came forth from her chamber refreshed, the course of her slothful blood hastened; her eyes gleamed with impatience for action; her whole being changed, rejuvenated, filled with a new life. She came also with a full knowledge of all that had taken place in the interim of her absence ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... the minute particulars of military order cannot be observed, even though the good of the service greatly depends upon a due observance of these forms. The soldiers grow negligent, and inattentive to cleanness and the exterior ornaments of dress: they become slovenly, slothful, and altogether unfit for a return of duty: they are tumbled about occasionally in ships and boats, landed and re-embarked in a tumultuous manner, under a divided and disorderly command: they are accustomed to retire at the first report of an approaching enemy, and to take ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... there was a girl who was lazy and slothful, hated working but would gossip and chatter away like anything. Well, she took it into her head to invite the other girls to a spinning party. For in the villages, as every one knows, it is the lazybones who gives the spinning-feast, ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... said the voice of that cold-hearted and slothful spirit which keeps us in our groove, "and you couldn't do anything, anyhow. Besides, he's abjectly in love with her: would there be any danger if it were ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... archbishop to them. "Now it is certain that we shall die. But it is better to die sword in hand than in slothful ease. Now is the day when ye shall receive great honor. Now is the day that ye shall win your crown of flowers. The gates of paradise are glorious, but therein no ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... let us learn this lesson, that the largest reward that God can give to him that has been faithful in a few things, is to give him many things to be faithful over. Beware, all of you professing Christians, lest to you should come the fate of the slothful servant with his one burled talent, to whom the punishment of burying it unused was to lose it altogether; according to that solemn word which was fulfilled in the temporal sphere in this story on which I am commenting: 'To him that hath shall be given, and from him that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... smouldering, as though whoever made it feared its red light would be seen by the distant pickets. Coming up to it, she stood in the door-way. Douglas Palmer lay on a heap of blankets on the ground: she could not see his face, for a lank, slothful figure was stooping over him, chafing his head. It was Gaunt. Dode went in, and knelt down beside the wounded man,—quietly: it seemed to her natural and right she should be there. Palmer's eyes were shut, his breathing heavy, uncertain; but his clothes were dried, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... will describe another species of seal, which we found on some islands on which we landed. We went on shore, as we had before done, armed with clubs and lances, to capture some of them. It required a knowledge of their inert and slothful character to give us courage to attack them with the weapons which we possessed, for in size and appearance they were most formidable-looking monsters. They were from twenty-five to thirty feet long, and some eighteen feet ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... indifference, as if for the time one had got into the country of the Lotos-Eaters, and it made no matter what became of anything and all things. In good truth, it is a wearied man, at least a dreadfully slothful and slumberous man, eager for sleep in any quantity, that now addresses you! Be thankful for a few half-dreaming words, till we ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed: and I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine. His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed: thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury. ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... discipline is replaced by British liberty, with its advantages to the individual and corresponding disadvantages for the State. Liberty implies the right to rise by honest endeavour, but does not exclude the possibility of a wilful surrender to slothful inactivity, e.g., the human flotsam and jetsam of British cities, the casual ward and similar institutions. These and other phenomena of life in our islands have aroused bitter contempt among Germans. Contempt has been succeeded by envy and ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... the race is love. All over the world, wherever we find the pipe in its softer, earlier form, we find it connected with love songs. In time it degenerated into a synonym for something contemptibly slothful and worthless, so much so that Plato wished to banish it from his "Republic," saying that the Lydian pipe should not have a place in a ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... Heaven has intrusted me is small, very small, yet I feel responsible for the use of it, and am not willing to pervert it to purposes reproachful and unjust; nor to hide it, like the slothful ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... going to my house in the country, I shall want my papers, which I beg you therefore to return. You are slothful, and you help me nothing, so that I am half in conceit you affect not the argument; for myself I know well you love and affect. I can say no more, but non canimus surdis, respondent omnia sylvae. If you be not of the lodgings chalked up, whereof I speak in my preface, I am but ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... man only a little lower than the angels. 'Not every one that saith unto me, Lord! Lord; * * * * * * but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven.' 'By their fruits ye shall know them;' 'I will have mercy, and not sacrifice;' 'Be not a slothful hearer only, but a doer of the work;' 'Woe unto ye, Scribes and Pharisees, for ye pay tithes of mint, and anise and cummin, and neglect the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, and temperance, ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various
... as was her excellent custom, rose up on the morrow very much earlier than the others, and meditating upon her book of Holy Scripture, awaited the company which, little by little, assembled together again. And the more slothful of them excused themselves in the words of the Bible, saying, "I have a wife, and therefore could not come so quickly." (1) In this wise it came to pass that Hircan and his wife Parlamente found the reading of ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... however, loud complaints were heard on all hands of the want of enterprise of the Hudson's Bay Company in not seizing the opportunities afforded by the charter. Its trade was lethargic, its traders were timid or slothful, its people possessed none of that audacity and adventure which had sent Frenchmen like Du Lhut and La Verendrye into the wilds intent on territory or trade. They yawned and were content with the trade which came their way. ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... enough to coddle their visitors too. It is unnecessary to describe them, for our readers may rest assured of the accuracy of these general principles:—that all couples who coddle themselves are selfish and slothful,—that they charge upon every wind that blows, every rain that falls, and every vapour that hangs in the air, the evils which arise from their own imprudence or the gloom which is engendered in their own tempers,—and that all men and women, in couples or otherwise, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... boulevards planted with trees, and those deserted quays, the fog hovered without a stain, like so many sheets, with waverings and cotton wool-like flakes. The effect was of a place inclosed, secret, almost sumptuous, as the sun after his slothful rising began to diffuse softly crimsoned tints, which gave to the mist enshrouding the rows of houses to their summits the appearance of white muslin thrown over some scarlet material. One might have fancied it a great curtain beneath which nothing ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... dying from rich living; and with all of them, whether fat or lean, the soul is more spoiled than the body. A superstitious respect keeps them cowed under their burden, or makes them cringe before their master. Servile, slothful, gluttonous, feeble, incapable of resisting adversity, if they have acquired the miserable skills of slavery, they have also contracted its needs, weaknesses and vices. A crust of absurd habits and perverse inclinations, a sort of artificial and supplementary being, has covered over their ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... was full of happy dreams: the queen had received him kindly. He would place himself at the head of her party, and make it a popular one; he would protect her, and for her sake would abandon his slothful life, ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... some day, in a form which the present war foreshadows; and it suggests the possibility that the longer the war is averted, the more tremendous it will be, the greater the relative unpreparedness of a slothful nation, and the sharper her punishment when war ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... is cannot grow old. But a nation may grow old, may decay, and die. And the youth of a nation—its young people—carry with them its destinies. If there is in these more of wilfulness, of selfishness, of slothful and luxurious bias—less of energy, of gentleness, of kindness, of manliness, of purity—than there was in those who were young twenty—thirty years ago, then decrepitude is growing upon the nation. It is sinking. The sap of ...
— Is The Young Man Absalom Safe? • David Wright
... benignant sameness what glorious fruits are produced! Fruit enough metaphorical: for the scientific man or artist who cannot make hay while such a sun shines from April to November must be a slothful laborer indeed. But fruit also literal: for what joy of vegetation is lacking to the man who every month in the year can look through his study-window on a green lawn, and have strawberries and cream for his breakfast,—who can sit down to this royal fruit, and at the same time to apricots, peaches, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... of a great work is often the beginning of a great reaction. When the tension is slackened, the whole nature of the worker is relaxed, and the temptation to slothful self-indulgence is strong. God knows our frame, and mercifully times His manifestations to the moments of special need. So, when Solomon had finished his great task, 'the Lord appeared the second time, as He had appeared at Gibeon.' There had been no manifest token of approval ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... (here below), can be comprehended.' The snake replied, 'By his own acts, man is seen to attain to one of the three conditions of human existence, of heavenly life, or of birth in the lower animal kingdom. Among these, the man who is not slothful, who injures no one and who is endowed with charity and other virtues, goes to heaven, after leaving this world of men. By doing the very contrary, O king, people are again born as men or as lower animals. O my son, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... barbarians who have been transferred from a chilly land to a kind of hot-house existence. We are too secure; no predatory creature can harm us, and we cultivate the lordlier and lazier vices. Our middle class, as Bismarck says, has 'gone to fat,' and is too slothful to look for the miseries of others. The middle-class man, and even the aristocrat, are both too content to think of looking beyond their own horizon. And yet we are good in essentials, and no tale of pity is unheeded—if only it be called forth loudly enough. Let us wake our languid rich folk. ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... been speaking of took place when Power had been staying out of school with a severe cold, and being in the sickroom had not seen Daubeny at all. He had come out again on the morning when, after Daubeny's failure, Mr Robertson had called him incorrigibly slothful and incapable, and after muttering some more invectives had said something about his being hopeless. As he listened to the master's remarks, although he knew that they only arose from misconception, Power's cheeks flushed up with ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... we had Lenten dishes. I was greatly depressed by my idleness and the uncertainty of my position, and, slothful, hungry, dissatisfied with myself, I wandered over the estate and only waited for an energetic mood to ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... him, and he came upon a stout staff, thrown into one corner, and by the aid of this he held those two monsters at bay for a whole night and day. By this time the dragons, who had been weakened by a slothful life and the flesh of many prisoners, were too weak to resist any longer, and fell an easy prey to the ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... life the utmost span, The only end and aim of man, Better the toil of fields like these Than waking dream and slothful ease. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... who were not slothful laborers, kindled with zeal for the Catholic faith, and desirous for the salvation of souls, crossed the seas in the year 1605, to remote regions of this world, although at the eleventh hour." (Folio 181, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... your contemporaries seems, in fact, to have been based upon the crude and childish theory that the main factor in diligence or execution of any kind is external, whereas it is wholly internal. A person is congenitally slothful or energetic. In the one case no opportunity and no incentive can make him work beyond a certain minimum of efficiency, while in the other case he will make his opportunity and find his incentives, and nothing but superior force can prevent ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... state of his affairs candidly before the Senate, and they immediately voted him 350,000 men to repair his losses. Having accomplished this point, he was not disposed, like some of his Royal enemies, to waste his time in the lap of luxury and slothful, inglorious idleness; he therefore set off and joined his army again at Mentz, on the 20th of April. He opened the campaign by the battle of Leitzen, in which the French arms were once more victorious. This was followed up by two successful battles ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... beautifully expressed it, "the servant of posterity," he thus, in 1591, solicited the patronage of his uncle lord Burleigh: "Again, the meanness of my estate doth somewhat move me; for though I cannot accuse myself that I am either prodigal or slothful; yet my health is not to spend, nor my course to get: Lastly, I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends; for I have taken all knowledge to be my province; and if I could purge it of two sorts of rovers, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... afford to sink into slothful satisfaction and enjoy a tasteless leisure or with inane self-deception hide his head under the shadows of his wings, like the foolish bird, which thereby hopes to escape the wrath to come. The white race, through philanthropy, ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... fond observance of each obliging office, to those of love and inclination. His domestics and dependants have in him a sure resource; and no longer dread the power of fortune, but so far as she exercises it over him. From him the hungry receive food, the naked clothing, the ignorant and slothful skill and industry. Like the sun, an inferior minister of providence he cheers, invigorates, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... luxury of Antioch even to the point of keeping his chin wholly bare, he gave utterance to laments, as if he were in the midst of great toils and dangers. And he reproved the senate, saying for one thing that they were slothful, did not understand readily, and did not give their votes separately. Finally he wrote: "I know that my behavior doesn't please you. But the reason for my having arms and soldiers alike is to enable me to disregard anything that is ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... into the greedy maw of the English adventurers? Was it not already threatened? And how could it be saved if nothing could rouse the King from his slothful indifference? O for the days of Chivalry!—the ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... faults may be mine, indirectness of speech nor a slothful gait when something has to be done were never accredited to me, and I determined to let the duke know exactly what I had heard, as well as my opinion of him in the business which he had stirred up. Turning toward him, with no introduction to the ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... sabred, they lounged in slothful consultation and obscured the air with bad tobacco-smoke. On the Admiral opening the door, they rose in a disorderly way and made him ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... Graham Bell might have had a million bright ideas for all the good they would have done him. But at that golden period of our history, if an ambitious fellow like Watson wished to put in extra hours of work, the more slothful ones had no authority to stand over him with a club and say he shouldn't. Therefore the young apprentice toiled on with Mr. Bell, unmolested; and Charles Williams, the proprietor of the shop, was perfectly willing he should. One evening, when the two were alone, Mr. Bell remarked, 'If I could make ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... the unwearied diligence of the Moravian missionaries, who unite so much active exertion in temporal affairs, with such devotedness to spiritual exercises, and, in a pre-eminently apostolic conduct, exhibit the import of the injunctions, "not slothful in business,"—"fervent in spirit,"—"serving the Lord." "In consequence of this vacancy," they continue, "and the age of two others of us, who are fast approaching their seventieth year, we are not able to do any great things by manual labour; however, we contrive to perform what is absolutely ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... Between wide banks, it stepped out into the broad meadowland, and circled about the war hospital, making almost an island of the ground it stood on. Thick-stemmed sycamores cast their shadow on the hospital, and from three sides came the murmur of the slothful stream mingled with the rustling of the leaves, as if the garden, when twilight fell, was moved by compassion and sang a slumber song for the lacerated men, who had to suffer in rank and file, regimented up to their very death, up to the grave, into which ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... had surprised indolent Anna Leopoldina in her bed-chamber which caused her to be so uncertain in her own movements, in view of the fact that there were persons so ill-advised as to wish the restoration of the slothful German regent and her infant son, disastrous as that would have been ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... of an unpromising land and an inferior population effectually prevents the rise of a high civilization. And just as the choicest of men can do relatively little in an unfriendly land, so the most promising of countries may be despoiled or temporarily ruined by a slothful or lawless population. ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... souls before God, with earnestness, and with abundance of tears, (in Ps. 41, apud Marten. t. 9, p. 71.) Amidst the dangers and evils of this life, our only comfort ought to be in God, in the assured hope of his promises, and in prayer. (Ib.) That prayer is despised by God, which is slothful and lukewarm, accompanied with distrust, distracted with unprofitable thoughts, weakened by worldly anxiety and desires of earthly goods, or fruitless, for want of the support of good works, (in Ps. liv. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... the road which had been the key of the advance, and then to march, horse and foot in column, into Louisburg, the place of honour at the head being given to those who had made the final charge to the last trench and through the abattis. Gorged with what it had eaten, the dusty serpent was now slothful and full of sleep. There was no longer need for hurry. Before the middle of the morning the lines would start on the march of ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... a bride, unwisely wedded, shuns the cold caress of eld, So, from coward souls and slothful, Lakshmi's favors ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... say that fame Is nothing but an empty name? Whilst in that sound there is a charm The nerves to brace, the heart to warm, As, thinking of the mighty dead, The young from slothful couch will start, And vow, with lifted hands outspread, Like them to ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... the slothful down Have chased each virtue from this world away; Hence is our nature nearly led astray From its due course, by habitude o'erthrown; Those kindly lights of heaven so dim are grown, Which shed o'er human life ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... now come to a curious episode—the most curious, I think, that had yet accented my slothful, valueless, heedless career. Out of a hillside toward the upper end of the town, projected a wall of reddish looking quartz-croppings, the exposed comb of a silver-bearing ledge that extended deep down into the earth, of course. It was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Chinese inscription which he translates, the one which first arrested his curiosity, he is taught the duty of hospitality; yes, by means of an inscription in the language of a people, who have scarcely an idea of hospitality themselves, God causes the slothful man to play a useful and beneficent part in the world, relieving distressed wanderers, and, amongst others, Lavengro himself. But a striking indication of the man's surprising sloth is still apparent in what he omits to do; he has learnt Chinese, the most difficult of languages, and he ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... will of the Lord, not mine, be done." When I look within myself, and see not a place worthy to cherish gratitude to God for his great mercy and grace, which he hath wrought for us, sinful and unworthy, I liken myself to the slothful servant, who did not the will of his Lord. Yet, O, my sisters, though I have not done the will of my Saviour, I have hope in him that I shall do it, and serve him henceforth so long as I am in this world—fleeting as ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... substance, and a lasting benefit to the whole body of the kingdom, for it would not only nourish but increase the numbers of the people, of which many thousands perish every year by those diseases contracted under a slothful poverty. ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... sumptuous food to those who perform eminent uses; moderate, but of an exquisite relish, to those who perform less eminent uses; and ordinary to such as live in the performance of ordinary uses; but none at all to the slothful." ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... The chariots, some of them still hooded in canvas, were very small and tarnished. There were but three elephants, two camels, and a most meagre display of those alluring cages made to afford even the careless eye a sudden, quickening glimpse of restless, tawny form, or slothful hulk within. Yet why depreciate the raw material whereof Fancy has power divine to build her altogether perfect heights? Here was the plain, homely setting of our plainer lives, and right into the midst of it had come the East. The elephants affected us most; we ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... with as much ease as we can understand and order any one thing; so that this objection is grounded upon a low and false apprehension of the Divine nature, and is only fit for Epicurus and his herd, who fancied to themselves a sort of slothful and unthinking deities, whose happiness consisted in their laziness, and a privilege ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... resolution, which has been somewhat shaken by this fellow, whom I believe to be no better than he should be, for all he calls himself my father's son, and hath assumed my likeness, doubtless for some mischievous purpose. 'If the magistrate,' saith the King, 'be slothful towards witches, God is very able to make them instruments to waken and punish his sloth.' No one can accuse me of slothfulness and want of zeal. My best exertions have been used against the accursed creatures. And now for the rest. 'But if, on the contrary, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... coffin and buried with the dead. They become part of the pestilential atmosphere of cowardice and hypocrisy which saps the intellectual manhood of society, so that bright-eyed inquiry sinks into blear-eyed faith, and the rich vitality of active honest thought falls into the decrepitude of timid and slothful acquiescence. ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... quarrelsome, rowdy fellow, loving nothing on earth so much as a round with his fists on the slightest provocation. From this unpromising teacher, Edward took his first lessons in the useful art of shoemaking; and though he learned fast—for he was not slothful in business—he would have learned faster, no doubt, but for his employer's very drunken and careless ways. When Begg came home from the public-house, much the worse for whisky, he would first beat Tam, and then ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... He was by nature slothful, and much of a vagabond, and yet he kept by the house, and not only waited upon my wants, but laboured every day in the garden or small farm to the south of the residencia. Here he would be joined by the peasant whom I had seen on the night of my ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and reticent hours; Dragging to light her blinking, slothful moods; Publishing fretful seasons when her powers Worked wild and sullen in her solitudes, Or when her mordant ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... might, lest the witch might espy our disarray and question us thereover. Then we went to the wonder-coffer, and gat thereout raiment for that which we had given away, which was easy for us to do, whereas the witch-mistress was so slothful that she had given to us the words of might wherewith to compel the coffer to yield, so that we might do all the service thereof, and she not to move hand or foot in the matter. So when we were clad, and the time was come, ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... virtue kept its proper bound, Nor trespassed on the other's ground. Nor fame nor censure they regarded; They neither punished nor rewarded. He cared not what the footman did; Her maids she neither praised nor chid; So every servant took his course, And, bad at first, they all grew worse; Slothful disorder filled his stable, And sluttish plenty decked her table. Their beer was strong, their wine was port; Their meal was large, their grace was short. They gave the poor the remnant meat, Just when it grew not fit to eat. They paid the church and parish rate, And ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Paris, noble Agathon, Pammon, Antiphonus, and bold in fight Polites, Dios of illustrious fame, 320 Hippothoues and Deiphobus—all nine He call'd, thus issuing, angry, his commands. Quick! quick! ye slothful in your father's cause, Ye worthless brood! would that in Hector's stead Ye all had perish'd in the fleet of Greece! 325 Oh altogether wretched! in all Troy No man had sons to boast valiant as mine, And I have lost them all. ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... ants, red ants, brown ants, grey ants, green ants; ants large, ants small; ants slothful, ants brisk; meat-eating ants, grain-eating ants, fruit-eating ants, nectar-imbibing ants; ants that fight, ants that run away; ants that live under coldest stone, ants that dwell among the treetops; silent ants, ants that literally "kick up" a row; good ants, bad ants, ants ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... the Mission wall. He could not deny that it was simple—that it was even refreshing and consistent with the climate and his surroundings. On the other hand, it was the frugal diet of the commonest peasant—and were not those peons slothful idolaters? ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... affiance and espousal of the soul wherein they may be released into a larger air, undelayed by the earthward longings and gradual initiations of seemingly happier men. Thus its servants do not decline into slothful service, but are strenuous always; raised above the acquiescence of use, they never know the cloying of fruition or suffer the barbarian conquest of indifference. Their soul is unaffected by material circumstance or misfortune, and illuminates ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... made of the misery of life; and indeed it must be confessed that we are subject to calamities by which the good and bad, the diligent and slothful, the vigilant and heedless, are equally afflicted. But surely, though some indulgence may be allowed to groans extorted by inevitable misery, no man has a right to repine at evils which, against warning, against experience, he deliberately and leisurely brings upon his own head; or to consider ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... door was slothful, sleepy and ill disposed to listen when he heard that certain callers would be admitted ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... my most precious friend Anthony?" replied Lambourne; "for I swear by the pillow of the Seven Sleepers I will not be slothful in amending it." ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... faithful servants with high honours, hoping thereby to quicken the slothful into emulation, when they ask themselves why, under such an impartial rule, they too ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... costumbristas, furnishes a background for his plays, but only a background. A picture of Spanish society does emerge from the dramas, indeed. It is a society in which there are great extremes of wealth and poverty, in which the old titled families are generally degenerate and slothful, and the middle classes display admirable spiritual qualities, but are too often unthrifty and inefficient. Of the laboring classes, Galds has little to say. Bitter religious and political intolerance creates an atmosphere of hatred which a few exceptional ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... by the hand That smote vile Spartacus the robber foe. But if among my triumphs fate has said Thy conquest shall be written, know this heart Still sends the life blood coursing: and this arm (28) Still vigorously flings the dart afield. He deems me slothful. Caesar, thou shalt learn We brook not peace because we lag in war. Old, does he call me? Fear not ye mine age. Let me be elder, if his soldiers are. The highest point a citizen can reach And leave his people free, is mine: a throne Alone ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... to an idle, sensuous life when their energies were no longer maintained by the need of continuous fighting for the protection of their country. The following account by Forbes of a Rajput's daily life well illustrates the slothful effeminacy caused by the drug: [477] "In times of peace and ease the Rajput leads an indolent and monotonous life. It is usually some time after sunrise before he bestirs himself and begins to call for his hookah; after smoking he enjoys the luxury of tea or coffee, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... and its contrary virtue are illustrated by a pair of examples from Scripture history on the one hand, and Greek or Roman history or legend (for both seem alike to him) on the other. Sloth, for instance, is exemplified by the Israelites who "thought scorn" of the promised land, and the slothful followers of Aeneas, who hung back from the conquest of Italy; while Mary going into the hill country with haste, and Caesar dashing into Spain are the chosen models of prompt response to the call of ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... future, shall not abandon the occupations which they had before they became Christians, as they have been accustomed to do, but shall continue to exercise and practice them in the same manner as before—for, by thus abandoning their occupations, that people are unoccupied and slothful, and spend their time in games and vicious amusements, whence result the harm and trouble which may be considered: they declared that, in order to remedy that state of affairs, they ought to order, and they did so order, that, now and henceforth, the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... in the flower of their youth, so that they may be deemed worthy to live through an old age of honor, and that by its means they may be able to attain to everlasting happiness. I, myself, according to my disposition, shall not be slothful in sowing the seeds of wisdom among your servants in this land, being mindful of the injunction, "Sow thy seed in the morning, and at eventide let not thy hand cease; since thou knowest not what will spring up, whether these or those, and if both together, still better is it" ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... renunciations that life, properly speaking, can be said to begin. . . . In a valiant suffering for others, not in a slothful making others suffer for ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... nations for commanders: and the Switzers, if they have any defect in this kind, rather lend their people to the colors of other princes, than make that noble use of them at home which should assert the liberty of mankind. For where there is not a nobility to hearten the people, they are slothful, regardless of the world, and of the public interest of liberty, as even those of Rome had been without their gentry: wherefore let the people embrace the gentry in peace, as the light of their eyes; and in ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... the least slothful and exacting. After the quarrels between Langara and Hood at Toulon, the despatches from Madrid to London were full of complaints. Now it was the detention of Danish vessels carrying naval stores, ostensibly ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... 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 but play cricket till he got too heavy to run, and then would sink into a slothful, fat, and useless middle and old age; that his life would be a failure. And he knew that they were right; that if he stayed where he could live an easy life, a fat and easy life he would lead; that in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Mexico are ready and waiting our pleasure, like hounds straining at the leash. The work of organization on this side of the line has of necessity been slow, because of various adverse influences and a slothful desire for present ease and safety, which we have been constrained to combat. Also the accumulation of arms and ammunition in a sufficient quantity for our purpose without exciting suspicion ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... the DAVIS resolutions; but upon no other condition can it exist. Then, sir, disunion is inevitable. It is not going to stop with the seven States that are out. No, sir; my word for it, unless you do something more than is proposed in this proposition, old Virginia will go out too—slothful as she has been, and tardy as she seems in appreciating her own interests and her rights, and kind and generous as she has been in inviting a Peace Congress to agree upon measures of safety for the Union. The time will come, however, when old Virginia ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... and gave a strange touch of colour to the common grayness. They seemed out of place in the busy farmyard. Everything else was there for use. Everybody hurried but the poppies; idlers of precious time, suggestive of slothful sleep, they held up their brazen ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... monks' neglect of books. "Now slothful Thersites," he cries, "handles the arms of Achilles and the choice trappings of war-horses are spread upon lazy asses, winking owls lord it in the eagle's nest, and the cowardly kite sits upon the perch ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... of lake, had no aid to give us with current. Paddling all a hot August mid-day over slothful water would be tame, day-laborer's work. But there was a breeze. Good! Come, kind Zephyr, fill our red blanket-sail! Cancut's blanket in the bow became a substitute for Cancut's paddle in the stern. We swept along before the wind, unsteadily, over Lake Chesuncook, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... courtesies would be an indorsement or encouragement of the evil.[180] Meanwhile, he held confidential talks with Friends on the subject of slavery. On one occasion, when a colonel of the militia berated the Negroes' slothful disposition, Woolman replied that free men, whose minds are properly on their business, find a satisfaction in improving, cultivating, and providing for their families; whereas Negroes, laboring to support others, and expecting nothing but slavery during life, have not the same inducement to be ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... so loved, yet so mistaken! What had I on earth to do With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly? Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... her as she reads, and point out every word and every letter. And she loves me better than him—I am sure she does—for she comes of noble blood, and scorns sloth and cowardice.—And do I myself not stand here slothful and cowardly as any priest of them all?—Why should I fear to call upon this form—this shape?—Already have I endured the vision, and why not again? What can it do to me, who am a man of lith and limb, and have by my side my father's sword? ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... which is served at six in the evening, the time drags endlessly long and with intolerable monotony. And, in general, this daily interval is the heaviest and emptiest in the life of the house. It remotely resembles in its moods those slothful, empty hours which are lived through during the great holidays in scholastic institutes and other private institutions for females, when all the friends have dispersed, when there is much leisure and much indolence, and a radiant, agreeable tedium ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... because the Andalusians are slothful, truthless, but moderately honest, vain, concludes that they are an unattractive people he will grossly err. His reasoning, that moral qualities make pleasant companions, is quite false; on the contrary it is rigid principles and unbending character, strength of will and a decided sense ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... means, native industries and the development of the rich resources of the country. If it be only in the superior education required of the workmen, and the drawing out of their natural talents, the movement is an immense gain to the people, so long purposely kept in a condition of slothful ignorance. ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... Spirit; his influences have been ever ready: not by angels; their wings have never tired when sent on errands of mercy. All that Heaven could do has been done, consistently with the all-wise arrangement of committing an important agency to the church. The church has been slothful and negligent. Each generation of Christians has in turn received the vast responsibility, neglected it in a great measure, and transmitted it to the next. The guilt of this ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... let the slothful days glide by, stormed about in the vicinity, and lay in the high grass beside the pools or opened his window at night, cursing the silence and envying the clouds ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... nations, when they betray to the whole world an aristocracy bankrupt of honour, emasculated, and slothful. Spoliators so reckless as Napoleon, are not always at hand for taking advantage of this domestic ruin; but it is impossible that a nation, absolutely rich as Spain was in the midst of her relative poverty, can advertise itself for centuries ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... him. He declined it, thinking himself unworthy of so high a trust. The Bishopric continued vacant. Perhaps the candidates for it were few; certainly the emoluments were small; perhaps the patron was slothful—certainly he gave little attention to the Church. At length complaint was made to the King that the spiritual needs of the island were being neglected. The Earl was commanded to fill the Bishopric, and once again he offered it to his chaplain. Then Wilson yielded. He took possession ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... the mountains and settles in the valleys. The snow mountains no longer look cold, hard, and austere. Their purity remains as true as ever. And they still possess their uplifting power. But they now speak of serenity and calm—not, indeed, of the unsatisfying ease of the slothful, but of the earned repose of high attainment. Great peace is about them—deep, ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... the foolish and wise virgins, and of the talents, which follows it. We see their application to this description of Christ's coming. If the coming of Christ be thus unexpected, he will not be recognized by the sleeping servant, nor by those who beat their fellow-servants. Slothful Christians who make no effort to improve, persecuting Christians who spend their time in denouncing heretics, and saying, "My Lord delayeth his coming," never understand the signs of the times, nor recognize any new influx of divine light in the world. At each ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... leave the Cossack to despoil us At once of glory and of booty both? We've made a truce with Tartar and with Turk, And from the Swedish power have naught to fear. Our martial spirit has been wasting long In slothful peace; our swords are red with rust. Up! and invade the kingdom of the Czar, And win a grateful and true-hearted friend, Whilst we augment our country's might ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... whom life contained no beautiful illusions. He gets up from his couch in the night to question the right of God to create man for suffering. He is answered by Lucifer, who proclaims himself the benefactor of the family in having rescued them from the slothful existence of Eden and given them a Redeemer. The devil discourses on the delightful ministrations of that Redeemer, whose name is Death. In the morning Abel arises and as he offers his sacrifice he hymns the sacred mystery of life and turns a deaf ear ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... and approve of your schemes. What angers and distresses me is, that you think me unworthy to partake of your cares and labours; that you regard my company as an obstacle and encumbrance; that assistance and counsel must all proceed from you; and that no scene is fit for me, but what you regard as slothful and inglorious. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... is no order in the spirit of the place, no respect for order, no respect for a regular occupation. "I cannot work at home"—one hears the cry often enough. It is not always because of this atmosphere of helter-skelter activity. It is often because of something worse,—an atmosphere of slothful, pleasure-loving indifference to activities of all kinds, or one of tacit or expressed discontent with the burdens and the limitations which are an inescapable part of the ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... full, and, moreover, have not the Word of God, do not learn it, and have no regard for it. Such conditions bring on all manner of inchastity. Such people can observe neither Levitical nor perpetual chastity.] And the lines are well known: The boy accustomed to pursue a slothful life ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... born, I found therein several chapters recording certain events and achievements which had taken place in his time; and my grandmother his widow, who was very old, hearing me read them, said to me, 'And thou, my son, since thou art not slothful in writing, why dost thou not write, in this manner, the good things which are happening at present in thy own day, that those who come hereafter may know them, and marvelling at what they read, may render thanks ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... sorts of fancies. He thought of his wickedness and his wasted time, and compared himself with the great men in the books who had been in similar evil straits,—with Marc Antony, with King Arthur in Gwendolen's enchanted castle, and with Geraint the strong but slothful,—rather far-fetched this last comparison,—and of all the rest. It was a grotesque variety, but amid it all he really suffered. And he would make good resolves and, for the moment, firm ones, and return to town when the dew was falling and the moonlight coming, and the tale was but retold. ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... the sight that met my eyes. For there seated upon a tuffet, her beautiful blue eyes fixed in horror and despair, her jug of curds and whey scarce tasted, was my MARIAN, while beside her, lolling at ease with the slothful stretch of his great limbs, and the flames as of Tophet in his fierce eyes sat SPIDER, the great black-haired giant SPIDER that would make ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... eyes betokened the pleasure he felt as he thought of the possibility of his raising the people of this land to something better than the slothful, betel-chewing, ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... communities of "Praying Indians," estimated in 1675 at about four thousand individuals. In contact with the white man the Indian tended to deteriorate. He frequented the settlements often to the annoyance of the men and the dread of the women and children; he got into debt, was incurably slothful and idle, and developed an uncontrollable desire to drink and steal. Where the Indians were not a menace, they were a nuisance, and the colonies passed many laws concerning the Indians which were designed to meet the one condition as well as ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... experience of every day still bears witness to their accuracy, force, and soundness. The proverbs of Solomon are full of wisdom as to the force of industry, and the use and abuse of money:- "He that is slothful in work is brother to him that is a great waster." "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise." Poverty, says the preacher, shall come upon the idler, "as one that travelleth, and want as an armed man;" but of the industrious and upright, ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... like, but a more human way, the savage is drawn by the object held up to him, as if he could not help following it; an excitement rushes on him, and he yields to it without a struggle; he acts according to the moment, without regard to consequences; he is energetic or slothful, tempestuous or calm, as the winds blow or the sun shines. He is one being to-day, another to-morrow, as if he were simply the sport of influences or circumstances. If he is raised somewhat above this extreme state of barbarism, just one idea or feeling occupies ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... providential government, which it is necessary for us to know. Thus the functions and the fates of animals are distributed to them, with a variety which exhibits to us the dignity and results of almost every passion and kind of conduct, some filthy and slothful, pining and unhappy; some rapacious, restless, and cruel; some ever earnest and laborious, and, I think, unhappy in their endless labor, creatures, like the bee, that heap up riches and cannot tell who shall gather them, and others employed like angels in endless offices of love and praise. Of ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... the pleasant and sweet refreshment and soul delights you might have in God, by a serious and diligent minding of religion. The pleasure and sweetness of God tasted and found, will make diligence and pains more easy than slothfulness can be to the slothful. This oils the wheels, and makes them run swiftly, formality makes them drive heavily. Thus you live always in a complaining humour,—sighing, and going backward,—because you have some stirring principle of conscience within which bears witness against you, and your formal sluggish ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... the soft Mother of a slothful and pusillanimous people, is a neighbor Iland, antiently subjected by the Arms of Oceana; since almost depopulated for shaking the Yoke, and at length replanted with a new Race. But (through what virtues of the Soil, or vice of the Air, soever it be), they com still to degenerat. Wherfore ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 42, Saturday, August 17, 1850 • Various
... throne, served by the other domestics, with her employers at her feet. The finest dishes were for her; she had her special wine, her special bread, she had everything most delicate and most nourishing that could be found. Gluttonous, slothful, and proud, she strutted about, bending one and all to her fancies. The others gave way to her in everything to avoid sending her into a temper which might have spoilt her milk. At her slightest ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... the temple of Seti to self-control, order, exactitude, and decent customs, deeply penetrated with a sense of the dignity of his position, and accustomed to struggle with special zeal against indolence of body and spirit—was disgusted with the slothful life and fraudulent dealings of his subordinates; and the deeper insight which yesterday's experience had given him into the poverty and sorrow of human existence, made him resolve with increased warmth that he would awake them ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a little wood. As yet she has neither the hard work nor the ugly looks of the countrywoman as afterwards fashioned by the prevalent culture of grain crops. Nor is she like the fat townswife, heavy and slothful, about whom our fathers made such a number of fat stories. She has no sense of safety; she is meek and timid, and feels herself, as it were, in God's hand. On yonder hill she can see the dark frowning castle, whence a thousand harms may come upon ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... lest he should be obliged to attend the Privy Councils, and have no more time to hunt. Some persons thought he did this from motives of policy and to make the King believe he had no ambition; but I am persuaded it was from nothing but indolence and laziness; he loved to live a slothful life, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... champion of right. Those who incur the last and most terrible curse in this book, do so in the name of that truth for which they profess to be seeking. Art, profanely veiling its voluptuous nakedness with the attributes of religion, disguises folly so subtly that it seems like virtue in the slothful eyes of those who neglect continually to watch and pray. The vain woman puts on her ornaments to do honor to her Creator's handiwork: the lustful man casts away his soul that society may be kept clean: there ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... virtue be painted girded? A. To show that virtuous men should not be slothful, but diligent ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... to every home in the city. We shall need a special class of students of GOD, men and women whose primary and absorbing interest it is to work out the spiritual life in all its purity and integrity."[2] It is indeed the idlest of criticism that condemns such people as slothful or selfish. ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... it was in the beginning, O slothful son of Shiv! The flame shall die upon the altars and the prayer upon the tongue till ye become little Gods again—Gods of the jungle—names that the hunters of rats and noosers of dogs whisper in the thicket and among the caves—rag-Gods, pot Godlings of the tree, and the ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... Piso were urging to take some bold and sudden step, which, if it did not succeed in retrieving his fortunes, would at least shed lustre on his death. But his somewhat slothful nature, weakened still further by a luxurious life, was not to be aroused, and he calmly awaited the end. It was customary among the Roman Emperors at this period to avoid the disgrace and danger of public executions by sending a ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar |
