"Sluggard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in small common things as in great ones, and among the sublimities of character set forth in Him as our example, let us not forget that the homely virtue of hard work is also included. Jonah slept in a storm the sleep of a skulking sluggard, Jesus slept the sleep of a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... on New Year's night every one rises from table with a brimful glass, and drinks to the New Year. To commence the year with a glass in one's hand is a good beginning for a drunkard. To begin the year by going to bed is a good beginning for a sluggard. Sleep will, in the course of his year, play a prominent part; so will ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... which compose the best society in New South Wales; though, I must admit, that the bustling, thriving settler of New South Wales is a companion, rather ignorant though he be—far away preferable to the not more enlightened, but melancholy English sluggard of Boulogne. To form a due conception of the "upper classes" here, suppose all the natives of France annihilated, and the whole country belonging to the English residents of Boulogne. In that case, there would be an almost ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... Ebony as thou wert, how couldst thou so far lose sight of the besetting weakness of thy race, as thus, in a moment like this, on the critical edge of hazard and hope, to trust thy limbs and senses to the deceitful embraces of sleep? Black sluggard, avaunt! The Fighting Nigger be ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... craftsman, handicraftsman, journeyman, mechanic, workman, laborer, operative, industrial. Antonyms: idler, drone, dabbler, sluggard, truant, dilettante, loafer, shirker. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... loitered the time away, practically a prisoner until the only friend he had with courage to speak out (Agrippa d'Aubigny) gave him a lecture. Agrippa lashed his master with the words "coward" and "sluggard," letting his faithful servants work for his interests while he remained the slave of a "wicked old witch." The Bearnais had been biding his time—"crouching to spring": but that slap in the face set him on fire. He could no longer wait ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... all tried men—they had been sailors from infancy; none of your French craft, that serve an apprenticeship and then become land lubbers again. Oh, no, they were stanch and true, and loved the ocean as the sluggard loves his bed, or the ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... happiness; whereas he ought really to be moderate in these, and, if not, to appear to others to avoid them-for it is not the sober man who is exposed either to plots or contempt, but the drunkard; not the early riser, but the sluggard. His conduct in general should also be contrary to what is reported of former tyrants; for he ought to improve and adorn his city, so as to seem a guardian and not a tyrant; and, moreover., always to [1315a] seem particularly attentive ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... of the survival of the love of letters amongst a people too busy to give to letters any more. As such it is precious as the sign of an indestructible instinct. Perhaps the time is already come when it ought to be, and will be, something else; when the sluggard intellect of this continent will look from under its iron lids and fill the postponed expectations of the world with something better than the exertions of mechanical skill. Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... to do so by the Chinese inscription, but he cannot tell the hour of the day by the clock within his house; he can get on, he thinks, very well without being able to do so; therefore, from this one omission, it is easy to come to a conclusion as to what a sluggard's part the man would have played in life, but for the dispensation of Providence; nothing but extreme agony could have induced such a man to do anything useful. He still continues, with all he ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... man run faster than another? Mr. Redfield thinks it is because the sprinter has, by previous work, stored up energy in his body, which carries him over the course more rapidly than the sluggard who has not been subjected to systematic training. But the differences in men's ability are not due to the amount of energy they have stored up. It is due rather to differences in their structure (using this word in a very ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... Reciprocally, the sluggard, or the rake, who, without performing any social task, enjoys like others—and often more than others—the products of society, should be proceeded against as a thief and a parasite. We owe it to ourselves to give him nothing; but, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... sent him to neighbouring farmers to work, hoping that a stranger's whip might improve the sloven, but whoever had the fellow for one week on trial sent him back again on the next. His parents rated him for a sluggard, and his brothers dubbed him "Sleepy Tony." This soon became his nickname with everybody, though he had been christened Jueri.[30] Sleepy Tony brought no one any good, but was only a nuisance to his parents and relatives, so that they would gladly have given a sum of money if ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... ordained by the Creator as a stimulus to endeavour, because "where least man suffers, longest he remains." Some of you may remember that he argues in that appendix that the old man who had learnt Chinese to distract his mind would have played but a sluggard's part in life if no affliction had befallen him, since he had never taken the pains to learn how to tell the time from a clock. "Nothing but extreme agony," says Borrow, "could have induced such a man to do anything useful." And every one will recall the passage in "Lavengro" ...
— George Borrow - A Sermon Preached in Norwich Cathedral on July 6, 1913 • Henry Charles Beeching
... names is difficult. Rackstraw, rake-straw, corresponds to Fr. Grattepaille. Golightly means much the same as Lightfoot (Chapter XIII), nor need we hesitate to regard the John Gotobed who lived in Cambridgeshire in 1273 as a notorious sluggard compared with whom his neighbour Serl Gotokirke was a shining example. [Footnote: The name is still found in the same county. Undergraduates contemporary with the author occasionally slaked their thirst at a riverside ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... were reduced to three loads, and I had four "pull-a-boys," one a Mpongwe, Mwaka alias Captain Merrick, a model sluggard; and Messrs. Smoke, Joe Williams, and Tom Whistle- -Kru-men, called Kru-boys. This is not upon the principle, as some suppose, of the grey-headed post-boy and drummer-boy: all the Kraoh tribes end their names in bo, e.g. Worebo, from "wore," to capsize a canoe; ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... natural laws, you would not only rise to the ceiling and float there in quasi-angelic posture, but perhaps, as one of your feminine adepts is said to have done, flit swifter than train or telegram to "still-vexed Bermoothes," and twit Ariel, if he happens to be there, for a sluggard? We have not the presumption to deny the possibility of anything you affirm; only, as our brethren are particular about evidence, do give us as much to go upon as may save us from being roared ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... is the voice of the sluggard; I heard him complain, "You have wak'd me too soon, I ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... 683; drawl; creeping &c. v., lentor[obs3]. retardation; slackening &c. v.; delay &c. (lateness) 133; claudication|. jog trot, dog trot; mincing steps; slow march, slow time. slow goer[obs3], slow coach, slow back; lingerer, loiterer, sluggard, tortoise, snail; poke* [U.S.]; dawdle &c. (inactive) 683. V. move slowly &c. adv.; creep, crawl, lag, slug, drawl, linger, loiter, saunter; plod, trudge, stump along, lumber; trail, drag; dawdle &c. (be inactive) 683; grovel, worm one's way, steal along; job on, rub on, bundle on; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the Lost, we must accept no Limitations to human brotherhood. If the Scheme which I set forth in these and the following pages is not applicable to the Thief, the Harlot, the Drunkard, and the Sluggard, it may as well be dismissed without ceremony. As Christ came to call not the saints but sinners to repentance, so the New Message of Temporal Salvation, of salvation from pinching poverty, from rags and misery, must be offered to all. ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... it is Serpice at last!" cried out Margot in joyous excitement as she and the others crowded round him. "Soul of a sluggard, don't waste time in laughing and capering like this! Speak up, speak up, you hear? Are we to fly at once to the mill and join him? Has he succeeded? ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... you, Carson," the young lieutenant was saying in an oratorical manner, "that they magnify the dangers of the wilderness. The ford at which we were to meet Colden is just ahead, and we've come straight to it without the slightest mishap. Colden is no sluggard, and he should be here in the morning at the latest. Do you find anything ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... himself in terms of ridiculous disparagement of writers so eminent as George Sand and George Eliot; but he strenuously advocated the claim of women to a recognised medical education. He reviled "Model Prisons" as pampering institutes of "a universal sluggard and scoundrel amalgamation society," and yet seldom passed on the streets one of the "Devil's elect" without giving him a penny. He set himself against every law or custom that tended to make harder the hard life of the poor: there was no more consistent ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... things—and there were myriads of them—added to the enjoyment of my ease. With my ear so close to the ground the grass seemed fairly to buzz with them. Everywhere there were crazily busy ants, and I, patently a sluggard and therefore one of those for whom the ancient warning was intended, considered them lazily. How they plunged about, weaving in and out, rushing here and there, helter-skelter, like bargain-hunting women darting wildly from ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... thoughts reverted to the fire artillery of the ancients; with that at his disposal he would hold the balance of power. The possession of a single score of rifles should enable him to demonstrate the feasibility of the attempt to his sluggard kinsmen, the Stockaders, and to the even more reluctant townsmen. He determined to take the first opportunity to make a careful search of the city armories and ammunition depots; in the mean time, it was his ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... advantages nor himself assailing any one. In short, he had hitherto acted the part rather of a spectator than of a party in the tournament, a circumstance which procured him among the spectators the name of Le Noir Faineant, or the Black Sluggard. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... in the form of a beautiful lady, stood beside his bed. She called to him, "Sluggard, awake anon for shame, and in mine honor go ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... best of mothers say," cried the little sluggard, "if she saw me in bed at this hour? She sent me down here with a grinder. She wants me to cultivate my neglected genus—He, be! I say, Pen, this isn't quite like seven o'clock school,—is it, old boy?"—and the young fellow burst out into a boyish laugh of enjoyment. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... eyes travelled back to the men's side and settled on Isaac Thomas, a man too lazy to plow and sow land his father had left him. They were not so mild, and the voice was touched with command: "Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... shrill voice, smothered to a hissing whisper, answer something. Two distinct words, "the hop," carried to her ears. There was a long-drawnout baritone, "Oh-h!" then, in the same key, "I knew Lauzanne was a sluggard, and couldn't make out why he was so ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... bright." But Gaspar, and such other landscapists, painting all Nature's flowery ground as one barrenness, and all her fair foliage as one blackness, and all her exquisite forms as one bluntness; when, in this sluggard gloom and sullen treachery of heart, they mutter their miserable attestation to what others had long ago discerned for them,—the sky's brightness,—we do not thank them; or thank them only in so far as, even in uttering this last remnant of truth, they are more commendable ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... introduced in two novels by Sir W. Scott (The Talisman and Ivanhoe). In the latter he first appears as "The Black Knight," at the tournament, and is called Le Noir Fain['e]ant, or "The Black Sluggard;" also ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... the prudent Ant thy heedless eyes, Observe her labours, Sluggard, and be wise; No stern command, no monitory voice, Prescribes her duties, or directs her choice; Yet, timely provident, she hastes away To snatch the blessings of a plenteous day; When fruitful Summer loads the ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... He worked there," she admitted, which was true enough, for nobody could honestly have called Prince Morrell a sluggard. ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... and played with swords and spears and turned over all the Capitula of combat till men of choicest wits were confounded. Then he cried out, saying, "Who is for fighting? Who is for jousting? Let no sluggard come out nor weakling!" Whereupon there rushed at him a horseman of the Kafirs, as he were a flame of fire; but Sahim let him not stand long before him ere he overthrew him with a thrust. Then a second came forth and he slew ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... where clay confined thee, The hands of the flame unbind thee! O Soul! thou art free—all free! As the winds in their ceaseless chase, When they rush o'er their airy sea, Thou mayst speed through the realms of space, No fetter is forged for thee! Rejoice! o'er the sluggard tide Of the Styx thy bark can glide, And thy steps evermore shall rove Through the glades of the happy grove; Where, far from the loath'd Cocytus, The loved and the lost invite us. Thou art slave to the earth no more! O soul, ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... the Sluggard, I hear him complain, You have waked me too soon—an unpleasant surprise! In an hour or so later pray call me again, When, if feeling refreshed, I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various
... country houses. In all these things people who can afford it try to imitate them. We say, with a full consciousness of the responsibility which the avowal entails on us, that they do right. It is well in any art to watch and imitate the man who has best succeeded in it. The sluggard has been exhorted even to imitate the ant, and anyone who wishes to ride or drive well, or dress appropriately, or entertain in a country house, ought to study the way the English do these things, and follow their example, for anything worth doing ought ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... the fireside. His throat rumbled thunderously; the words came with stormy bitterness. "You think this is a time for young men to be lyin' on beds of ease? I tell you there never was such a time before; there never was such opportunity. The sluggard is despoiled while he sleeps—yes, by George! if a man lays down they'll eat him before he wakes!—but the live man can build straight up till he touches the sky! This is the business man's day; it used to be the soldier's day and the statesman's day, but this is OURS! And it ain't a ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... yours. Still let the maiden's beauty swell the father's breast with pride; Still let the bridegroom's arms infold an unpolluted bride. Spare us the inexpiable wrong, the unutterable shame, That turns the coward's heart to steel, the sluggard's blood to flame, Lest, when our latest hope is fled, ye taste of our despair, And learn by proof, in some wild hour, how much ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... slaved there day and night, and lights were moving to and fro amongst them as the guards watched them at their toil. They were singing a weird refrain—a chorus—ever and again interrupted by yells and curses as the lash of the task-master fell on some victim of his hatred or sluggard at work. ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... from sleeping during the long sermons a special officer was appointed, in order to banish slumber when the parson was long in preaching. This official was called a sluggard-waker, and was usually our old friend the parish clerk with a new title. Several persons, perhaps reflecting in their last moments on all the good advice which they had missed through slumbering during sermon time, have bequeathed money for the support of an officer who should ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... slowly than usual, as though that haze clogged its wheels and congealed its oils. The very tugs and barges, on the river beyond, partook of the season's languor. They crept over the oily waves at a sluggard pace, their smoke-streamers dropping ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... are intemperate with regard to sleep, seeing that the sluggard with his eyes shut cannot do himself or see that others do ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... how fast the Frenchmen can walk along after us," answered Mr Brine. "I hope the Ruby won't prove a sluggard on this occasion; she has shown that she can go along when ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... shame on the man who fails his country in this its hour of need! I would not force him to serve. I could not think that the service of such a man was of any avail. Let the country be served by free men, and let them deal with the coward or the sluggard ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... lips, in fraud and imposture, will ever claim to accomplish any thing of the kind. The bee-moth infects our Apiaries, just as weeds take possession of a fertile soil; and the negligent bee-keeper will find a "moth-proof" hive, when the sluggard finds a weed-proof soil, and I suspect not until a consummation so devoutly wished for by the slothful has arrived. Before explaining the means upon which I rely, to circumvent the moth, I will first give a ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... moon's a sluggard, I think, to-night. How now, the Moor that dodged My steps at vespers. Hem! I like not this. Friends beneath cloaks; ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... what another tells him, he is an unprofitable man. But do you at any rate, always remembering my charge, work, high-born Perses, that Hunger may hate you, and venerable Demeter richly crowned may love you and fill your barn with food; for Hunger is altogether a meet comrade for the sluggard. Both gods and men are angry with a man who lives idle, for in nature he is like the stingless drones who waste the labour of the bees, eating without working; but let it be your care to order your work properly, that in the right season your barns ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... not about the morrow, for sufficient to the day Is the evil (rather more so). Put your trust in God and pray! Study well the ant, thou sluggard. Blessed are the meek and low. Ponder calmly on the lilies — how they idle, how they grow. A man's a man! Obey your masters! Do not blame the proud and fat, For the poor are always with them, and they cannot alter that. Lay your treasures up in Heaven — cling to life and see it through! ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... but quiet half-sleep. "Hallo! why are you sleeping there, you idle fellow?" bawls some beadle, or some overseer, or some magistrate, or perhaps merely one of those private persons who, out of season and in season, are constantly sending the sluggard to the ant to learn wisdom—though the ant, Heaven bless her! at proper times sleeps as ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... intoxicated the vision! There was the Athlete of the Dairy, commonly called Fresh Butter, in his gay yellow jacket, looking wore to the knife. There was turgid old Brown Sugar, who had evidently heard the advice, go to the ant, thou sluggard! and, and mistaking the last word for Sugared, was going as deliberately as possible. There was the vivacious Cheese, in the hour of its mite, clad in deep, creamy, golden hue, with delicate traceries of mould, like fairy cobwebs. The Smoked Beef, and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... in thy Harlot's Lap, When thou wouldst take a lazy Morning's Nap; Up, up, says AVARICE; thou snor'st again, Stretchest thy Limbs, and yawn'st, but all in vain. The rugged Tyrant no Denial takes; At his Command th' unwilling Sluggard wakes. What must I do? he cries; What? says his Lord: Why rise, make ready, and go streight Aboard: With Fish, from Euxine Seas, thy Vessel freight; Flax, Castor, Coan Wines, the precious Weight Of Pepper and Sabean Incense, take With thy own ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... weary; so he gave the oars to the alien and lay down in the stern and slept. And in his sleep he dreamed that he was lying in the House of the Raven, and his sisters came to him and said, "Rise up now, Hallblithe! wilt thou be a sluggard on the day of thy wedding? Come thou with us to the House of the Rose that we may bear away the Hostage." Then he dreamed that they departed, and he arose and clad himself: but when he would have gone out of the hall, then was it no longer daylight, ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... existence as contemptible parasites of their former slaves.' One may observe in passing that these wretched do-nothings cannot have been the ants which Solomon commended to the favourable consideration of the sluggard; though it is curious that the text was never pressed into the service of defence for the peculiar institution by the advocates of slavery in the South, who were always most anxious to prove the righteousness of their cause by most sure and ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... adding night unto her toil, driveth her maids to win Long task before its kindled light, that she may keep from sin Her bride-bed; that her little ones well waxen-up may be. Not otherwise that Might of Fire, no sluggard more than she, To win his art and handicraft from that soft bed arose. Upon the flank of Sicily there hangs an island close To Lipari of AEolus, with shear-hewn smoky steep; Beneath it thunder caves and dens AEtnaean, eaten deep With forges of the Cyclops: thence ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... as to ravish the soul with delight. As the first beams of sunlight come streaming over the hills, ten thousand birds join in a mighty chorus of welcome to the newborn day and the world is flooded with song; and the whilom sluggard thrills under the spell of the scene and feels himself a part of the world that is vibrant with music. Can it be denied that this man is all the better citizen for his ability to appreciate ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... 'S death! He dares Belie me, and deny the testimony Of his own handiwork, whose every line Betrays a sluggard soul, an indolent will, A brain that's bred to idleness. So be it! Master Lorenzo tells the Spagnoletto His own defects and qualities! 'T were best He find another teacher competent To guide so apt, so ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... you want me to get all hot?" drawled one fat sluggard of a friend. "I'll keep alive when the time comes." And he and his kind set the standard for all. Sometimes a chap who could warm up, who had the real stuff in him, would "loosen up" about his life on ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... because I should at least have been capable of being lazy; there would at least have been one quality, as it were, positive in me, in which I could have believed myself. Question: What is he? Answer: A sluggard; how very pleasant it would have been to hear that of oneself! It would mean that I was positively defined, it would mean that there was something to say about me. "Sluggard"—why, it is a calling and vocation, it is a career. Do not jest, it is so. I should then be a member of the best ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... Than the fair lily on the flowery green, More flesh than May herself in blossoms new, For with the rosy colour strove her hue, Waked, as her custom was, before the day, To do the observance due to sprightly May; For sprightly May commands our youth to keep The vigils of her night, and breaks their sluggard sleep; Each gentle breast with kindly warmth she moves; Inspires new flames, revives extinguished loves. In this remembrance, Emily, ere day, Arose, and dressed herself in rich array; Fresh as the month, and as the morning fair, Adown her shoulders fell her ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... the voice of the sluggard, I've heard him complain, "You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again;" As the door on its hinges, so he on his bed, Turns his side, and his shoulders, and his ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... things and find all empty than to try nothing and leave your life a blank. To do this is to commit the sin of him who buried his talent in a napkin—despicable sluggard!" ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... Father in heaven. First comes winter, to make us hardy and daring, and industrious, and strips the trees, and bares the fields, and takes away all food from the earth, and cries to us with the voice of its storms, "He that will not work, neither shall he eat." "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: who layeth up her meat in the summer, and provideth her food against the time of frosts." And then comes summer, with her flowers and her fruits, and brings us her message from God, ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... after quite a different model from those of his wife. He would repeat, for example, not in an austere fashion, but in a way which interested and even amused them, the dramatic description of the sluggard, from the hook ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... "Defender of the Constitution" was no sluggard. It was his habit to "Rise with the lark and greet the purpling east," to use one of his favorite quotations, and the carriage had hardly stopped when he appeared, and, exchanging kindly greetings with the Colonel, took his place ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... gaily, "for a great while the thought has disturbed me, that peace and soft living are rotting away the British bone. Idleness is the stepdame of virtue, as our preachers have often told us. Soft living makes a sluggard of the hardiest knight, and steals away his strength. She cradles him with dreams of woman, and is the mother of chambering and wantonness. Folded hands and idleness cause our young damoiseaux to waste their ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... cultivated as this. Interest being the greatest spring which animates the hand of industry, few would toil in cultivating and planting the land, if they did not expect to reap the fruit of their labour: Were it otherwise, the industrious man would be in a worse state than the idle sluggard. I frequently saw parties of six, eight, or ten people, bring down to the landing place fruit and other things to dispose of, where one person, a man or woman, superintended the sale of the whole; no exchanges were made but with his or her consent; and whatever we gave ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... it perhaps next week, for that is Christmas. It is to be finished and ready on the holy festival, great sluggard. Hearest thou?" and he ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... did, too. Charley himself was no sluggard, but the forester's capacity for work simply amazed him. He knew the forester was on the job late every night, for he reported to him each night the last thing before he went to bed. Yet whenever the forester spent the night with Charley, Mr. Marlin was up at an early hour; and the ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... But surely a man may find a sphere small enough, as well as large enough, for him to act in. In all other pursuits, we are obliged to limit the number and extent of our objects, in order to give full effect to our endeavours: and so it should be with benevolence. The foolish sluggard stares hopelessly into the intricacies of the forest, and thinks that it can never be reclaimed. The wiser man, the labourer, begins at his corner of the wood, and makes out a task for himself for each day. Let not our imaginations be employed on one side only. Think, that ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... forgets even such a yoke as yours. Still let the maiden's beauty swell the father's breast with pride; Still let the bridegroom's arms enfold an unpolluted bride. Spare us the inexpiable wrong, the unutterable shame, That turns the coward's heart to steel, the sluggard's blood to flame; Lest when our latest hope is fled ye taste of our despair, And learn by proof in some wild hour, how much ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... not a nerve, limb, or muscle doing less than the hardest task-master could flog out of a slave. Occasionally you see a shearer, after finishing his sheep, walk quickly out and not appear for a couple of hours, or perhaps not again during the day. Do not put him down as a sluggard; be assured that he has tasked nature dangerously hard, and has only given in just before she does. Look at that silent slight youngster, with a bandage round his swollen wrist. Every "blow" of the shears is agony to ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... our village lady says, "I ought to be the great lady herself. And what does she up yonder, the shameless sluggard, amidst all those men, in the absence of her lord?" And now the rivalry is set on foot. The village, while it loathes her, is proud thereat. "If the lady of the castle is a baroness, our woman is a ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... him hurry up his toilette operations. Often the mid-day meal would be smoking on the table while Peters would smoke in the bed, and Roxdal, with his head thrust through the folding doors that separated the bedroom from the sitting-room, would be adjuring the sluggard to arise and shake off his slumbers, and threatening to sit down without him, lest the dinner be spoilt. In revenge, Tom was usually up first on week-days, sometimes at such unearthly hours that Polly had not yet removed the boots from outside the bedroom door, and would bawl down to the kitchen ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... If we lack the ability to bend words to our use, it is from laziness, not from scruple. We desire to speak competently, but without affectation. We know that if our diction rises to this dual standard, it silently distinguishes us from the sluggard, the weakling, and the upstart. For such diction is not to be had on sudden notice, like a tailor-made suit. Nor can it, like such a suit, deceive anybody as to our true status. A man's utterance reveals what he is. It is the measure of his inward attainment. The assertion ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... fifteen months before. Lord Poynter explained for the tenth time that he never allowed coffee to be brought in until the port wine had circulated for twenty minutes. Not for the first time he apologized for his brandy, retailed the tragedy of the last bottle of Waterloo and, like a sluggard dragging himself from bed, reluctantly ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... flying through the air, they do not take the donkey for a taunt, but for a heavenly portent. A tournament is held and very brave in their attire are all the combatants. But according to its rules the greatest sluggard wins the crown of honor. Even in the similes, which formed so important an element of epic decoration, the same principle of contrast is maintained. Fine vignettes from nature in the style consecrated ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... said, 'no barriers be, For you no sluggard rest; Each street leads downward to the sea, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... sacrifices often cost more than great ones. A good dose of ordinary, everyday mortification and penance goes a long way toward producing the necessary effect. An ounce of self-denial will work miracles in a sluggard, cowardly soul. ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... Loving, true, and faithful Valentines are ye, and the rest as Heaven and opportunity shall permit. Come, prithee, have done: wring not thy tiny hands, nor fear farther persecution now. Thou hast done bravely, excellently. And now, away to Dorothy, and call up the old sluggard; we must have a substantial breakfast, after a night of confusion and a morning of joy, and thy hand will be needed to prepare for us some of these delicate cakes which no one can make but thyself; and well hast thou a right to the secret, seeing who taught it thee. Ah! health to the soul of thy ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... she was no sluggard, the old man, who had begun to outlive the earthly habit of slumber, would usually have been up long before, the fire would be burning brightly, and she would see him wandering among the ruins, lantern in hand, and talking assiduously to himself. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... disobey the will or act unreasonably and without direction. But too much sleep, like over-indulgence in any anaesthetic, is only shirking that duty and avoiding that effort to which the higher life calls us, and the sluggard who sleeps more than the tired nerves need is allowing himself to sink deeper and deeper into a slough of despond. He forgets his toil in sleep, but it is only by active, conscious effort when awake that his work may be lifted ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... for all he was angry, answered jestingly, 'Thou hast given thyself thine own penance therefor, seeing that, whereas thou thoughtest yesternight to have a lusty young fellow who would shake thy skincoats well for thee, thou hadst a sluggard; wherefore go and endeavour for the deliverance of thy lover; but henceforth look thou bring him not into the house again, or I will pay thee for this time ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the necessary means of livelihood is by nature instilled into man, and this solicitude even other animals share with man: wherefore it is written (Prov. 6:6, 8): "Go to the ant, O sluggard, and consider her ways . . . she provideth her meat for herself in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest." But every command issued against the inclination of nature is an unjust command, forasmuch as it is contrary to the law ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... calls on you with praises, free from guile. These Maruts stop the swift, they bend strength by strength, they ward off the curse of the plotter, and turn their heavy hatred on the enemy. These Maruts stir up even the sluggard, even the vagrant, as the gods pleased. O strong ones, drive away the darkness, and grant us all our kith and kin. May we not fall away from your bounty, O Maruts, may we not stay behind, O charioteers, in the distribution of your ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... to wait until the rain made the ground soft enough for their ploughs to enter it, consequently many had to toil in cold, stormy, winter weather. To this the proverb alludes which says: "The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing." ...
— Mother Stories from the Old Testament • Anonymous
... lands we have robbed them of, whom we have reduced to mere pensioners upon our caprice—not bounty—and so satisfy them and their claims that the business of human life may be carried on safely in their vicinity and actual presence. 'Who art thou that saith 'there is a lion in the way'? Rise, sluggard, and slay the lion! The road has to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... "Now, you young sluggard! do you mean to say that the atmosphere of this mansion, this temple of Chancery, is not enlivening, sprightly, and anti-slumbrous? Ho, there! do you presume to fall asleep over that beautiful and entertaining conveyance, ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... waked and watched like you, Joan, they wouldn't have got me. I started to watch, but I didn't keep it up like you. When I should have been awake, I was sleeping like a sluggard." ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... is young, but I'm no sluggard, you know," said the lawyer. "I thought we might want a word or two before the meeting ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... aid a comfortable house. I was her idol and she wrought at night To keep me at my books, and used to boast That I should rise above our humble lot. How oft I listened to her hopeful words— Poured from the fountain of a mother's heart Until I longed to wing the sluggard years That bore me on to ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... said Jonah, "is the sodden mountebank who dares to cast a stone into the limpid pool of my character. That is the overfed sluggard——" ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... of the preceding verses, seems to have been a cant term among the early Shakers for a sluggard and selfish fellow, a kind of creature they have pretty thoroughly extirpated; and presumably by such free speech as is used in ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... was no beauty-sleep in that household, not even forty winks; and did any member prove recreant and require a douse of cold water, not only did he get the douse but he also heard quoted for a year and a day that remark concerning the sluggard, "A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: so shall thy poverty come as one that traveleth, and thy want as an ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... ebbing blood, while fully as large an assemblage of women, girls, and small children hung over the wall in a species of ecstatic glee at the oft-repeated drama. Death, especially a bloody one, appeared to awaken a keen enjoyment, to quicken the sluggard pulse of even this rather peaceful Tarascan tribe. One could easily fancy them watching with the same ebullient joy the dying struggles of helpless human beings butchered in the same way. The killing of the trussed and fallen animal over the rivulet recalled the cutting out of the heart of human ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... breast, with coal-black collar and neck and head of cinnamon. His golden tail droops far below his perch, and, running downward along the tree-trunk, it flashes in the air like a sceptre over the wood-lice he devours with his pickaxe bill. "Go to the ant, thou sluggard!" was an instigation to murder in the flicker, who loves young ants as much as wild-cherries or Indian corn, and is capable of taking any such satire seriously upon things to eat. Not so elfin and devilish as the small black woodpecker, he is ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... delights for eye, ear, and understanding? Whence that abundance that even furnishes our luxury? Think of all the trees in their rich variety, the many wholesome herbs, and such diversity of foods apportioned among the seasons that even the sluggard might find sustenance from the casual bounty of earth. Whence come living creatures of every kind, some bred on solid dry land, some in water, others speeding through the air, to the end that every part of nature may yield us some tribute? Those rivers, ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... off from these to so apparently unimportant a circumstance. The act that had principally alarmed the cousins, and terminated, as we have seen, in the sudden attack of the sailor, had evidently been misconceived. The hand supposed to be feeling for the heart of the sluggard, had, in all probability, been placed on his chest with a view to arouse him from his slumber; while that which was believed to have been dropped to the handle of his knife, was, in reality, merely seeking the paper that contained the announcement, which, if then delivered, ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... of frozen winter-rains, Of hard, white snows, of dull, loud-dripping thaw, Of showers and shine of spring, of March blasts raw, Of glaring August heats,—these dainty grains, This fruitage delicate. O sluggard soul! What harvest reapest thou as seasons roll? Mayhap to thee the slow results of time Bring also profit, though thy fruit, hung high, Escape the glance of careless passers-by, A seeming ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... tempers, then will our lives have been well spent. For meekness and calmness of temper need not interfere with a man's courage or justice, or honest indignation against wrong, or power of helping his fellow-men. Moses' meekness did not make him a coward or a sluggard. It helped him to do his work rightly instead of wrongly; it helped him to conquer the pride of Pharaoh, and the faithlessness, cowardice, and rebellion of his brethren, those miserable slavish Jews. And so meekness, ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... sea and the glorious sunrise. What a delicious picture of this large, healthy Son of Earth Mr. Lanman gives us, where he describes him coming into his bedroom, at sunrise, and startling him out of a deep sleep by shouting, "Awake, sluggard! and look upon this glorious scene, for the sky and the ocean are enveloped in flames!" He was akin to all large, slow things in nature. A herd of fine cattle gave him a keen, an inexhaustible enjoyment; but he never "tasted" a horse: he had no horse enthusiasm. ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... is condemned even by the feeblest of all the creatures. 'Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise (Prov 6:6). The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold' (20:4); that is, he will not break up the fallow ground of his heart, because there must be some pains taken by him that will do it; 'therefore shall he beg in harvest,' ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... sheer force, and is prone to resort to physical coercion. Even just men, who have the deepest theoretical respect for human rights, are apt to be carried away by the consciousness of superior strength, and to become despotic, if not harsh. To escape this fault, a man must be either a saint or a sluggard. And the tendency to race enmity lies very deep in human nature. Perhaps it is a survival from the times when each race could maintain itself only by slaughtering ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... others at Caerleon on the Usk. In them he appears with an individual character, hunting and taking a personal part in warfare, while in the more modern tales he is only an emperor all- powerful and impassive, a truly sluggard hero, around whom a pleiad of active heroes groups itself. The Mabinogi of Kilhwch and Olwen, by its entirely primitive aspect, by the part played in it by the wild-boar in conformity to the spirit ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... asleep, I warrant you; He took his rouse [148] with stoops of Rhenish wine So kindly yesternight to Bruno's health, That all this day the sluggard keeps his bed. ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... the marksman seized his gun, took aim, and fired in the direction of the world's end, in order to awaken the sluggard. And a moment later the swift runner reappeared, and, stepping on board the ship, handed the healing water to the Simpleton. So while the King was still sitting at table finishing his dinner news was brought to him that his orders had been obeyed ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... times a blacksmith's anvil sounds With slow and sluggard beat, Or stage-coach on its dusty rounds Wakes up ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... not a man with many friends be your steward, Nor a woman with sons and foster-sons your housekeeper, Nor a greedy man your butler, Nor a man of much delay your miller, Nor a violent, foul-mouthed man your messenger, Nor a grumbling sluggard your servant, Nor a talkative man your counsellor, Nor a tippler your cup-bearer, Nor a short-sighted man your watchman, Nor a bitter, haughty man your doorkeeper, Nor a tender-hearted man your judge, Nor an ignorant man your leader, Nor an unlucky ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... the God who made him, will never shrink from either of these courses of examination. Whoso does shrink from these inquiries is either a moral coward, afraid of the results of an honest search after that truth of things which expresses the will of the Creator, or a spiritual sluggard, frightened by a call to mental effort and torpidly clinging to ease of mind. And whoso, accepting the personal challenge of criticism, carries on the investigation with prejudice and passion, holding errors because he thinks ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... (lib. vi. Ep. 15), at the end of the present volume, was executed prior to the composition of these lines; and that the latter were suggested by the former. Compare the beautiful description of the ant in the PROVERBS OF SOLOMON:—"Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways and be wise: which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... bird it is great fun to show Mother what a sluggard she is. He calls to her to let her know it is getting-up time, and then she is so amazed! She cannot understand how it is possible for her little boy to get awake almost as soon as the robins do. Sometimes she asks if he is ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott |
