Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Apathy   Listen
noun
Apathy  n.  (pl. apathies)  Want of feeling; privation of passion, emotion, or excitement; dispassion; applied either to the body or the mind. As applied to the mind, it is a calmness, indolence, or state of indifference, incapable of being ruffled or roused to active interest or exertion by pleasure, pain, or passion. "The apathy of despair." "A certain apathy or sluggishness in his nature which led him... to leave events to take their own course." "According to the Stoics, apathy meant the extinction of the passions by the ascendency of reason." Note: In the first ages of the church, the Christians adopted the term to express a contempt of earthly concerns.
Synonyms: Insensibility; unfeelingness; indifference; unconcern; stoicism; supineness; sluggishness.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Apathy" Quotes from Famous Books



... races, because the House of Vipont kept a racing stud. He bet on his own horses, but if they lost showed no vexation. Admirers (no Marquess of Montfort could be wholly without them) said, "What fine temper! what good breeding!" it was nothing but constitutional apathy. No one could call him a bad man: he was not a profligate, an oppressor, a miser, a spendthrift; he would not have taken the trouble to be a bad man on any account. Those who beheld his character at a distance would have called him an exemplary man. The more conspicuous duties ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... recorded that the Laird of Dunipace behaved with much apathy towards his daughter, whom he would not so much as see previous to her execution; nor yet would he intercede for her, through whose delinquency he reckoned his blood ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure

... came other equally strange thoughts; but beyond all she could not for the very life of her comprehend that most inexcusable apathy of her father, who, though he had heard with his own ears, from good authority, that her beloved Mary was lying in the next bedroom dying, never seemed to think of hurrying away to town—even to that very Pelican who had so generously undertaken to insure Mary's life. It was an apathy unbecoming ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various

... harangues aroused the populace. The favorite theme of the orators was the "martyrdom" of John Brown; the piratical and murderous raid of that fanatic into the State of Virginia being exalted into a praiseworthy act of heroism. When I returned to Virginia and contrasted the apparent apathy and want of preparation there with the state of affairs at the North, I trembled for the result. But when the State severed her relations with the Union, the Governor acted with great vigor and ability, and the most was made of the limited resources at his command. ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson

... new life and the lives of those about her, took the place of the apathy and indifference with which she regarded the sated pleasures of that jaded world from which she had departed so recently. She had come to be bored—fully resigned for Blanch's sake to endure the ennui of mere vegetation until the prodigal Jack had been safely gathered within ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... Fanny quietly sat down upon the step, leaned her chin upon one hand, and looked up and down the street, which, it seemed to Hope, offered a prospect that would hardly enliven her mind. There was something more touching to Hope in this dull apathy than in the ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... helpless in illness a moment before, sprang out of their berths and hastily huddled on their clothes; mothers caught hold of their infants with a convulsive grasp; some screamed, others sat down in apathy, while not a few addressed agonised supplications to that God, too often neglected in times of health and safety, to save ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... "This is strange apathy, Mr. Van Staats, in one who is as good as engaged to my niece, if he be not actually married, Alida Barberie has great influence with that gentleman! And pray, with whom, that knows her, ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... in the United Kingdom. He was spoiled, but he knew it. Had he been an ordinary being, he would have merely subsided into selfishness and caprice; but, having good abilities and a good disposition, he was eccentric, adventurous, and sentimental. Notwithstanding the apathy which had been engendered by premature experience, St. Aldegonde held extreme opinions, especially on political affairs, being a republican of the reddest dye. He was opposed to all privilege, and indeed to all orders of men, except dukes, who were a necessity. ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli

... pockets that prevailed, he never dared bring it into the schoolroom. There were ways, however, of evading inexorable law and circumventing base injustice. He hid the precious thing under a thistle just outside the window. The teacher had sometimes a brief season of apathy on hot afternoons, when she was hearing the primer class read, "I see a pig. The pig is big. The big pig can dig;" which stirring in phrases were always punctuated by the snores of the Hanks baby, who kept sinking down on his fat little legs in the line and giving way to slumber during the ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin

... examining the model, a sudden stir among the vultures made us raise our heads. At least a hundred birds collected round one of the towers began to show symptoms of excitement, while others swooped down from neighboring trees. The cause of this sudden abandonment of their previous apathy soon revealed itself. A funeral was seen to be approaching. However distant the house of a deceased person, and whether he be rich or poor, high or low in rank, his body is always carried to the towers by the official corpse-bearers, called Nasasalar, who form a distinct class, the mourners ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow

... lightning, forked and red, Flashed through the broken casement, blent With the loud thunder's awful roar, Prolonged and echoing o'er and o'er. The warring of the world without Offended not the struggling heart; Roused from the apathy of thought He sought the casement with a start, And watched the raging storm sweep by With kindling cheek and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... confessed the existence of much that was not only theoretically indefensible, but practically mischievous. The period, little short of a century, which elapsed between the death of William III. and Pitt's accession to office had been one of almost complete stagnation and apathy. The Scotch Union, the Septennial Bill, the establishment of a militia, and the Place Bill of 1743 were the only instances of any legislation deserving the name of constitutional which made the reigns of Anne and the first two Georges memorable. And in the very nature of things it was ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... everywhere treated worse than the Chinaman One always buys back the past at a tremendous price One doesn't choose to worry Saying uncomfortable things in a deferential way Slow-footed hours wandered by, leaving apathy in their train That anxious civility which beauty can inspire The ravings of a sick man are not always counted ravings The sea is a great breeder of friendship The tender care of a woman—than many ...
— Quotations From Gilbert Parker • David Widger

... an establishment for distributing food, and a crowd of poor half-fed wretches were there to meet them. Not that at that time things were so bad as they became afterwards. Men were not dying on the road-side, nor as yet had the apathy of want produced its terrible cure for the agony of hunger. The time had not yet come when the famished living skeletons might be seen to reject the food which could no longer serve ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... place here to go into a statement of the causes which co-operated with the substitution of iron for wood in shipbuilding to make it hard at first for America to regain her lost position, or into a discussion of the incomprehensible apathy (incomprehensible if one did not know the ways of American legislation) which successive Congresses have shown in ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... the few remaining inhabitants of Hilarity were aroused from their habitual apathy one early fall evening by the shrill shrieks of an engine whistle as Moncrossen's ten-car train, carrying crew and supplies for the new camp, came to a stop at the rusty switch. There was something reminiscent in this whistle-sound. It came as a ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... M'Bongwele and his wondrous prize came not. Hour after hour lagged slowly away; and at length the expectant villagers, who had poured into the open air to witness the triumphant arrival of the king, returned to their huts—their transient enthusiasm overcome by their habitual apathy and indolence—and surrendered themselves willingly enough to the blandishments of sleep. All, with the exception, that is to say, of the guard detailed to watch over the prisoners, the anxious Lualamba, and Seketulo. These were all wakeful enough, the latter perhaps even more so than any of the ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... you, Wemple," I said, turning on the tavern porch to address the people, "there is no safety here for you if Walter Butler or Sir John arrive here in force. It will be hatchet and torch again—the same story, due to the same strange Dutch obstinacy, or German apathy, or Yankee foolhardiness. In the grain belt it is different; there the farmers are obliged to expose themselves because our army needs bread. But your corn and buckwheat and pumpkins and apples can be left for a week or two until we see how this thing is going ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... "I leave it to your majesty to consider, if after having lost the princess Nouronnihar, who was the only object of my desires, I could bear to be a witness of Ali's happiness. If I had been capable of such unworthy apathy, what would the court and city have thought of my love, or what your majesty? Love is a passion we cannot suppress at our will; while it lasts, it rules and governs us in spite of our boasted reason. Your majesty knows, that when I ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... its end; and while the lackeys refilled for the last time the champagne-glasses, the table grew silent—the guests felt the apathy of digestion. The Dreamer looked at them, one after the other, and all the faces had satiated, blase expressions which disturbed and disquieted him. A sentiment, obscure, inexplicable, but so bitter! protested even from the depth of his soul against that ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee

... extensively both in Europe and this country. It was of great service not only to the cause of the particular field of which it was the history, but to the cause of missions generally, in awaking the public mind from that strange apathy in regard to our Saviour's parting command in which for seventeen centuries it had for the most part quietly slumbered. We say for the most part, for we do not forget the self-denying labors of the Roman Catholics ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart

... free from this excessive diffidence, this apathy of calmness, if she had complained when it was necessary, with becoming warmth and spirit, she need never have been a wanderer, and I would never have abused her confidence. But, as I said before, a woman who has no strength of emotion, no passionate ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various

... The apathy which seemed to take possession of some of the men at the frustration of their hopes was soon dispelled. Parties were sent out daily in different directions to look for seals and penguins. We had left, other than reserve sledging rations, about 110 lbs. of pemmican, including ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... perhaps the noblest of our nature. In the instance of Taste, the process has been reversed; and from the prevalence of dispositions at once injurious and discreditable, being no other than that selfishness which is the child of apathy,—which, as Nations decline in productive and creative power, makes them value themselves upon a presumed refinement of judging. Poverty of language is the primary cause of the use which we make of the word, Imagination; ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... for commanders, leaders, pilots and helmsmen of every kind; and nevertheless twenty times a day I hear repeated the question: "Whom shall we put? we have no men."—It is wonderful that such men cannot cut their way through the apathy of public opinion, which seems to prefer old hacks for dragging a steam engine instead of putting to it good, energetic engineers, and let the steam work. Young men! young men, it is likewise your fault; you ought to assert yourselves; you ought to act, ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski

... able to distribute myself and in a manner doze, shivering in my overcoat. Not the rising of the sun upon this blight of sand, nor the appearance of a cattle herd, and both black curly and yellow driving it among its dust clouds, warmed my frozen attention as I lay in a sort of spell. I saw with apathy the mountains, extraordinary in the crystal prism of the air, and soon after the strangest scene I have ever looked on by the light of day. For as we went along the driver would give a cry, and when an answering cry ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... seemed to spring up from the pavement. "Arise, Oh Russia!" says one unknown writer, "Devoured (p. 216) by enemies, ruined by slavery, shamefully oppressed by the stupidity of tchinovnik and spies, awaken from thy long sleep of ignorance and apathy! We have been kept in bondage long enough by the successors of the Tartar khans. Arise! and stand erect and calm before the throne of the despot; demand of him a reckoning for the national misfortunes. Tell him boldly that his throne is not the altar of God, and that God has not condemned us ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen

... staring, in a sort of dull apathy. She couldn't realize that Marjorie was lost, she couldn't believe an accident had befallen her, ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells

... this apathy, a meeting of the "Big Three," as they had begun to designate themselves jocularly, was held at the office of the "Morning Chronicle," on the next day but one after little Dodie's ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... the coming moment when the displeasure would grow contagious. It was the breath that stirred the impending avalanche. At that critical moment Viola, the Siren queen, emerged for the first time from her ocean cave. As she came forward to the lamps, the novelty of her situation, the chilling apathy of the audience,—which even the sight of so singular a beauty did not at the first arouse,—the whispers of the malignant singers on the stage, the glare of the lights, and more—far more than the rest—that recent hiss, which had reached her in her concealment, all froze ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... resignation; to defy fate, even if one cannot rule it. Many of us northerners would be the better for a little mektoub. But this doctrine of referring everything to the will of Allah takes away all stimulus to independent thought; it makes for apathy, improvidence, and mental fossilification. A creed of everyday use which hampers a man's reasoning in the most ordinary matters of life—is it not like a garment that ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... there, The fixed yet tender traits that streak The languor of the placid cheek, And—but for that sad shrouded eye, That fires not, wins not, weeps not now, And but for that chill, changeless brow, Where cold Obstruction's apathy Appalls the gazing mourner's heart, As if to him it could impart The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon— Yes, but for these and these alone, Some moments, ay, one treacherous hour, He still might doubt the tyrant's power; So fair, so calm, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... Revolution is neither seen in Germany in that dangerous light which might naturally be expected from the sufferings in which it has involved both Princes and subjects, nor are its future effects dreaded from its past enormities. The cause of this impolitic and anti-patriotic apathy is to be looked for in the palaces of Sovereigns, and not in the dwellings of their people. There exists hardly a single German Prince whose Ministers, courtiers and counsellors are not numbered, and have long been notorious among the anti-social conspirators, the Illuminati: most of them are knaves ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... of their arrival, when Stella had gone to her room, Tommy spoke very seriously of his sister's state and begged Mrs. Ralston to do her utmost to combat the apathy which he had found ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... and failing then either through his want of will or want of power, she had collapsed and yielded up the endeavour. She ceased to listen to petitions from those who had hoped for her assistance, as if to save both them and herself useless pain, and seemed to lapse into a sort of apathy to all public interests. She hardly spoke, mechanically fulfilled her few offices in the court, and seemed to have turned her entire hope and trust into prayer for her husband. Her German confessor had been sent home, and a Jesuit given her ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... bending, being crushed down as by an intolerable weight. And then his feet were jerked from beneath him, he crashed to the floor, and, in another moment, bound hand and foot, he was tied into a chair beside that other chair whose grim occupant sat in such ghastly apathy ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... cause of the South. Now, as always, he was the principal confidant and friend of Mason in England, but he was on ordinary political questions not in sympathy with Tory principles or measures. He was soon disgusted with the apathy of the London Independence Association and threatened to resign membership if this organization, started with much trumpeting of intended activity, did not come out boldly in a public demand for the recognition of the South[1174]. ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... should two men be smiled into apathy by the Infinite? Here we are, with our knobby little heads, our eyes and hands and feet and stout hearts, and if not us or ours, still the endless multitudes about us and in our loins are to come at last to the World State and a greater fellowship and the universal ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... of the dying man. Then a gleaming of childhood shot into the recollection of Spike, and, clasping his hands, he tried to pray. But, like others who have lived without any communication with their Creator through long lives of apathy to his existence and laws, thinking only of the present time, and daily, hourly sacrificing principles and duty to the narrow interests of the moment, he now found how hard it is to renew communications with a being who has been so long neglected. The fault lay in himself, ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... wondered in a dull, vague sort of sort of way if he ever would come back. Perhaps he had deserted them, she thought. But, even this reflection brought no poignant sensation of despair. The girl had sunk into a sort of apathy in which nothing' seemed to matter much. Only she fairly ached with thirst. But Roy would awake presently and want water. The little they had must be saved ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham

... The mind's total apathy was the sign of recovering health. Kind nature put that district to sleep while she operated on the disquieted lower functions. I looked on my later self as one observes the mossy bearded substances travelling blind along the undercurrent of the stream, clinging to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... realisation rewarded our past labours, it engrossed and fixed the attention of the labourer, and cherished in his mind the hope of future riches. In order to supply this great deficiency of industrious motives, and to hold out to them a real object to prevent the fatal consequences of this sort of apathy; I will keep an exact account of all that shall be gathered, and give each of them a regular credit for the amount of it to be paid them in real property at the return of peace. Thus, though seemingly toiling for bare subsistence on a foreign land, they shall entertain the pleasing prospect of seeing ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... upon—I will not say what consideration. Here also of course we saw numbers of both ancient and modern native huts, and this is no doubt an old-established and favourite camping ground. And how could it be otherwise? No creatures of the human race could view these scenes with apathy or dislike, nor would any sentient beings part with such a patrimony at any price but that of their blood. But the great Designer of the universe, in the long past periods of creation, permitted a fiat to ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... at the apparition; then, rousing myself from the apathy into which I had sunk, I stood up very quickly and stepped across the room. As I did so the figure vanished, and when I threw open the door and looked out upon the deck ... the ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... damp of agony on my bursting brow. Some instinct made me snatch at a shawl or cloak that lay on a chair within reach, and wrap it round me. The moan was renewed, and the chain just stirred. Then I sank into apathy, like an Indian at the stake, in the intervals of torture. Hours fled by, and I remained like a statue of ice, rigid and mute. I even slept, for I remember that I started to find the cold gray light of an early winter's day was on my face, and stealing ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... Commander of the National Guard has been leading us into error—with a laudable intention doubtless—or else has himself been deceived likewise. The united efforts of the Deputies of the Seine and the Mayors of Paris have been unequal to rouse the apathy of the Assembly.[21] In vain did Louis Blanc entreat the representatives of France to approve the conciliatory conduct of the representatives of Paris. "May the responsibility of what may happen be on your own heads!" cried M. Clemenceau. He was right; a little condescension might have saved ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... good to have seen with what an affected indifference the dear sentimentalist [turned over a thousand pretty things, just as if her heart did not palpitate with her approaching happiness, and at last made her choice and][4] arranged her dress with such apathy as if she did not know that plain white satin and a simple blond lace would shew her clear skin and dark ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler

... his individual opinions and doubts expressed in a manner forceful enough to diversify him from a porcine apathy? The pig, secure against the inequalities of fate and weather, wallowed through life with a dull fullness of food as regular as the solar course. Christopher was his wife. Now that, Lee told himself, with a vision of the gardener's moustache, sadly drooping and stained with ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... further exertion. I rolled up the sleeve of my frock, and squeezed the moisture it contained into my parched mouth. But the few drops I managed to obtain gave me little relief, and I sank down for a moment with a sort of dogged apathy, from which I was aroused by Toby, who had devised a plan to free us from the net in which we ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... itself was the same seeming apathy. There was nothing to show in that yard, black with soddened cinders and ash muck, where the new red-brick engine-houses stood, that somewhere half a mile beneath our feet were thirty men, their only exit to the ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson

... more comment. At his side, Rudolph moved as a soldier, carried onward by pressure and automatic rhythm, moves in the apathy of a forced march. The day had been so real, so wholesome, full of careless talk and of sunlight. And now this senseless picture blotted all else, and remained,—each outline sharper in memory, the smoky lamp brighter, the blow of the hilt louder, the smell of peanut oil more pungent. ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... found herself, one Sunday morning, feeling singularly feeble and lifeless. She was bewildered at the sensation, for in her apparent health she had never felt it before. She could hardly walk, could hardly stand. She felt also a strange apathy which prevented ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson

... for the lovers of liberty that the movement was so easily crushed, since otherwise the principle would have been established that a standing army was necessary to enforce the Federal laws. "I am extremely sorry to remark," he wrote to Monroe during the ensuing session of Congress, "a growing apathy to the evil and danger of standing armies." This remark was brought out by the failure of the minority, with which Madison had now fully allied himself, to restrict the use hereafter of any militia to its own State. A ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... private capacity, and in nearly all governmental action where mere public interests are at stake, remedy is rarely sought until suffering is not only felt, but signalized in a conspicuous incident. It is needless to say that the military professions in peace times are peculiarly liable to this apathy; like some sleepers, they can be awakened only by shaking. For them, war alone can subject accepted ideas to the extreme test of practice. It is doubtless perfectly true that acquaintance with military and naval history, mastery of their teachings, will go far to anticipate the penalty attaching ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... hospitals, its cultivated and intellectual society outside, supplied just what was wanted to foster the genius of a young man on the threshold of his career. In London, centres of culture were too widely diffused, indifference and apathy too prevalent, conservatism in principles and methods too strongly entrenched. In his new home in the north Lister could watch the boldest operator in his own profession, and could daily meet men scarcely less distinguished in other sciences, and as a visitor to Syme's house he ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... aiding the wife's flight. She must, must, must keep on good terms with him till she and Isabel could somehow get the child. So passed the awful hours, mother and husband each marvelling in agony over the ghastly puzzle of the other's apathy. ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable

... not, however, be imagined that the apparent apathy of American farmers is due to contentment. Like others of their calling, they keep a full stock of grievances in their mental stores. They have very definite opinions as to what is wrong, but to these opinions no formal expression is given. ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett

... imagination in regard to his fellow man—at least, his Russian fellow man. In On the Eve, when he wished to create a central character that would act as an appeal to his countrymen to "conquer their sluggishness, their weakness and apathy" (as Mr. Garnett puts it), he had to choose a Bulgarian, not a Russian, for his hero. Mr. Garnett holds that the characterization of Insarov, the Bulgarian, in On the Eve, is a failure, and puts this down to ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... of the Burgesses. Virginian Society. Refractory Legislators. The Quaker Assembly It refuses to resist the French. Apathy of New York. Shirley and the General Court of Massachusetts. Short-sighted Policy. Attitude of Royal Governors. Indian Allies waver. Convention at Albany. Scheme of Union. It fails. Dinwiddie and Glen. Dinwiddie calls on England for Help. ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... consummate pieces of dramatic characterisation. It is a study of spiritual paralysis, achieved without the least resort to the rhetorical conventions which permit poetry to express men's silence with speech and their apathy with song. Tennyson's Lotos-eaters chant their world-weariness in choral strains of almost too magnificent afflatus to be dramatically proper on the lips of spirits so resigned. Andrea's spiritual lotus-eating has paralysed the nerve of passion in him, ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... her situation to her that Jane Clayton but stood in lethargic apathy awaiting the impact of the huge body that would hurl her to the ground—awaiting the momentary agony that cruel talons and grisly fangs may inflict before the coming of the merciful oblivion which would end her ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... was only very, very ill. He had, withal, the invalid's apathy and did not greatly concern himself about the uncommon fate that had been allotted to him. No philosopher was he— just a plain, commonplace person gifted, for the time being, with a pathological indifference: the organ that he feared consequences with was torpid. So, with no particular ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... exalted her voice, and exclaimed twice or thrice, "Gudemither! gudemither!" but, lost in the apathy of age and deafness, the aged sibyl she addressed continued plying her spindle without understanding the appeal made ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... for fear on this train; it is crowded out by pain, by apathy, by hope. The man next you cannot live a week, but he seems content; at all events, it is not fear that one sees in his face. There is no fear—there ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett

... walls-to be out there in the sun, where life would be easier to give up, if it had to be given up! An hour ago he had been drifting on a sea of apathy, and had had his fill of life. An hour ago he had had but one desire, and that was to die fighting, and he had even pictured to himself a struggle in this narrow cell where he would compel them to kill him, and so in any case let him ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... terrible; and for some time Rose feared for her reason. At last her agonies subsided into a listlessness and apathy little less alarming. She seemed a creature descending inch by inch into the tomb. Indeed, I fully believe she would have died of despair: but one of nature's greatest forces stepped into the arena and fought ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... certainly suggest a great ascent, it has not been an automatic levitation. It has been a fight, tragic and ceaseless, against destructive forces. This world needs something more than a soft gospel of inevitable progress. It needs salvation from its ignorance, its sin, its inefficiency, its apathy, its silly optimisms and ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick

... hardly produced any painter worthy of note. An Imperial and Royal Academy of Science and Letters had been inaugurated in 1772, but the only members were scholars and antiquaries without any originality. Maria Theresa tried to react against this intellectual apathy. She substituted civil for ecclesiastical censorship, she commissioned Count de Neny, the famous jurist, to reform the University of Louvain. When the order of the Jesuits was suppressed by the pope in 1773, she founded ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts

... excited blood still roaring wildly in my ears, my heart throbbing with a force that seemed to be rapidly wearing away my life, my throat dry as a pot-sherd, and my stiffened tongue cleaving to the roof of my mouth—resisting no longer, but awaiting my fate with the apathy of despair. ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... it was only in perfunctory kindness that the Club gave him shelter. The Fogey Club heard of the Baby and bethought itself of making campaign material of him. The Fogies instructed their "organs" to dilate upon the disgraceful apathy of the Radicals toward the foundling. The Fogies kidnapped the Baby; the Radicals stole him back. The Baby was again a great "question." However, other questions supervened, although it was understood that Sir Charles Sterling ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... council which could make itself respected. He alluded briefly and bitterly to the perpetual quarrels of the states among themselves; to their mutual jealousy; to their obstinate parsimony; to their jealousy of the general government; to their apathy and inertness before impending ruin. He would not calumniate those, he said, who counselled trust in God. That was his sentiment also: To attempt great affairs, however, and, through avarice, to-withhold sufficient means, was not trusting, but tempting God.—On the contrary, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... some of the Sabbath schools in Scotland, and the astonishment of the teachers at its instantaneous effects upon the mind and conduct of their children. The whole aspect of the school was changed; and the children, who had but a few minutes before been conspicuous only for their apathy, restlessness, or inattention, were instantly aroused to life, and energy, and delight. Similar effects in some children are still witnessed; but, happily for education, the first exhibition of it to a whole school is not so common. One striking proof of the novelty and extent of its ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall

... Apathy held him, drinking cherry brandy under the moon, and he could not care. Woman question? Man question? What was ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay

... of the first half of the seventeenth century, which had been crushed by the Restoration, were exchanged for a state of apathy that led to self-seeking in politics and to scepticism in religion. There was a strong profession of morality in words, but in conduct the most open immorality prevailed. Virtue was commended in the bulk of the churches, while Christianity, which gives a new life ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... teacher was different. Ray had solemnly sworn, renewing the oath every day, that when he came to manhood he would beat his teacher to death for whipping him so often and severely because of his dulness, his apathy, or his rebellion; the whippings from his mother had only increased his tenderness for her, and, in some way that he could not understand, his pity also. Perhaps it was because he vaguely felt that she was impairing something in herself that was precious to him. Never had ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... curiosity overpowered all other feelings, and I spent two or three hours in gratifying it. I did not cut myself, and none of the ordinary symptoms of dissection-poison supervened, but poisoned I was somehow, and I remember sinking into a strange state of apathy. By way of a last chance, I was sent to the care of some good, kind people, friends of my father's, who lived in a farmhouse in the heart of Warwickshire. I remember staggering from my bed to the window on the bright spring ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... direction of the deer by long graceful sweeps of her oar; in front of her was a squaw of maturer age, performing a like labour. In the centre of the canoe were two children, queer guinea-pig-looking little devils, and near these lay a man in all the lazy apathy of a redskin on his return from on the hunting ground; but towards the stern stood a splendid Antinous-like young savage, leaning in an attitude of graceful negligence on his rifle, and evidently waiting an opportunity to get a blow or a shot at the stag. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... lead in all the arrangements of the journey, determined where and how long they should halt, and decided on the route next to be taken; the other showing a real or affected indifference on all these matters, and making of his town-bred apathy a very serviceable quality in the midst of Irish barbarism and desolation. On politics, too—if that be the name for such light convictions as they entertained—they differed: the soldier's ideas being formed on what he fancied would be the late Duke of Wellington's opinion, ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... poorly armed, and did not long follow up the pursuit after Carson; for, observing the squad of mounted Mexicans, they retreated to the top of a rocky prominence, from which point they could watch every movement of the whites. Carson was raging at the apathy, not to say cowardice, of the men who had sent for him to join them, but he kept his counsel to himself; for he was anxious to save the captured women and children. He talked to the men very earnestly, however, exhorting them not to ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... like the servants? Or should she bear up and trust in the consoler Time? Was the death of a man so terrible after all? As she invited herself to apathy there were steps on the gravel, and Rickie Elliot burst in. He was splashed with mud, his breath was gone, and his hair fell wildly over his meagre face. She thought, "These are the people who are left alive!" From the bottom of ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... none of the tinsel of big names nor the tawdriness of aristocratic apathy. Sir Edward meant to find the truth, and so did his colleagues—all practical men. What they did was to strike against the hard rock of party government which was too adamant to receive the evidence sown by these gardeners. Dr. Anthony Traill, who was one of the Commissioners, has in this ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

... their summits until they melted and mouldered away in a dust of blue rain? Who saw the dance of the dead clouds when the sunlight left them last night, and the west wind blew them before it like withered leaves? All has passed, unregretted as unseen; or if the apathy be ever shaken off, even for an instant, it is only by what is gross, or what is extraordinary; and yet it is not in the broad and fierce manifestations of the elemental energies, not in the clash of the hail, nor the drift of the whirlwind, that the highest characters ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock

... until Gravesend was passed, and the side-lights of the shipping were trying to show in the gathering dusk, that he awoke from his tender apathy. It is probable that it would have lasted longer than that but for a sudden wail of anguish and terror which proceeded from the cabin and rang out on ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs

... that English ships would be "frustrated of watering but by license.'' Their action was not approved in London and the proclamation they issued remained without effect. The Netherlands profited by the apathy of the English. On the advice of sailors who had been shipwrecked in Table Bay the Netherlands East India Company, in 1651, sent out a fleet of three small vessels under Jan van Riebeek which reached Table Bay on the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... beneath his feet. He had a constant buzzing in his ears, flashes of light dazzled his eyes. He took a loathing for wine, he had no longer any appetite, and his digestion was seriously impaired. Then, in the midst of the apathy of his constantly increasing idleness he would have sudden fits of aimless activity. The equilibrium was destroyed, he had at times outbreaks of nervous irritability, without any cause. The slightest emotion brought tears to his eyes. Finally, he would shut himself ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... made up his mind to follow Mr. Glover to Australia. There are no doubt many difficulties for Englishmen living in Sarawak jungles. Some become acclimatized to them, others cannot bear the low diet, the loneliness, the apathy and indifference of the Dyaks. The Bishop was once accused, by a person who ought to have known better, that he was too apt to gather his clergy at Sarawak and keep them from their Dyak parishes: but it was a necessary part of the Bishop's work to keep a home ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... shelter a ghastly load of dead. Every hour at least one new body is uncovered and borne on a rough stretcher to some one of the many morgues. The sight loses none of its sadness and pathos by its commonness; only the horror is gone, giving place to apathy and stupor. Stalwart men, in mud-stained, working clothes, bring up the body, the face covered with a cloth. The crowds part and gaze at the burned corpse as it passes. At the morgue it is examined for identification, washed and prepared for burial. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... truth a grand and various picture-gallery, which presented to the eye a long series of men and women, each marked by some strong peculiar feature. There were avarice and prodigality, the pride of blood and the pride of money, morbid restlessness and morbid apathy, frivolous garrulity, supercilious silence, a Democritus to laugh at every thing, and a Heraclitus to lament over every thing. The work proceeded fast, and in twelve months was completed. It wanted something of the simplicity which had been among the most attractive charms of Evelina; ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... preparation of pieces full of terror and crime, at our lower theatres, and which is fed with greater art and elegance in the darker scenery of the popular French novelists, however morally unhealthy, is not unnatural; it is not the result of an apathy to such horror, but of a strong desire for excitement in minds coarse and dull, but not necessarily feeble. The scene of the murder of the jeweller in the "Count of Monte Cristo," or those with the Squelette in the "Mysteres de Paris," appeal ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... was far from satisfied, the fool resumed his narrative. But he no longer told it with his former irresistible humour. His mind was occupied with that sound of marching, which came steadily nearer. At length he could endure it no longer, and the apathy of his companions fired him openly ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini

... eunuchs brings down the ladies of the harem. I saw Hassan, the fisherman, getting his nets; and Ali Baba going off with his donkey to the great forest for wood. Smith looked at these wonders quite unmoved; and I was surprised at his apathy; but he had been at Smyrna before. A man only sees the miracle once; though you yearn over it ever so, it won't come again. I saw nothing of Ali Baba and Hassan the next time we came to Smyrna, and had some doubts (recollecting the badness of the inn) about landing at all. A person who wishes ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... ascertained; yet persons living have been heard to say, that in the houses of their grandfathers or ancestors, the Duke of Perth took refuge, until the vigilance of pursuit had abated. The obscurity into which this and other subjects connected with 1745 have fallen, may be accounted for by the apathy which, at the beginning of the present century existed concerning all subjects connected with the ill-starred enterprise of the Stuarts; and the loss of much interesting information, which the curiosity of modern times would endeavour ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson

... style and with a learning all his own, of the corruption and 'vampire oppression of Oxford'; its sacrifice of the public interests to private advantage; its unhallowed disregard of every moral and religious bond; the systematic perjury so naturalised in a great seminary of religious education; the apathy with which the injustice was tolerated by the state and the impiety tolerated by the church. Copleston made a wretched reply, but more than twenty years passed before the spirit of reform overthrew the entrenchments of academic abuse. In that ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... for her to say there was no difference. There was a difference. She was not exactly lying on a bed of roses; but in the nature of things her lot was easier than his. There was no comparison between the man's case and the woman's. He had not sunk into that serene apathy which is nine-tenths of a woman's virtue. He was not an invalid—neither was he a saint. It is not necessary to be a saint in order to be a martyr; poor devils have their martyrdom. Why could not women realize these simple ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair

... late. As a boy at home, as an undergraduate at Oxford, as an adventurer in France, as a seaman in the Atlantic, as a military leader in Munster, as a commencing courtier, he might have been expected to flash forth from the mass of his comrades. No apathy of contemporary opinion is to blame for the long delay. Rather it was the hurry and the glitter of contemporary life. A nation, like the English under Elizabeth, facing the dawn of a new age, does not pause to mark degrees of individual brightness. ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... wish to avoid her? If she amuses me, diverts my mind, beguiles my pain, or more dreary apathy, why not let her exert her power to the utmost and make herself useful? Yes, but she will try to do more than amuse. Well, suppose she does; one can coolly foil such efforts. Not so sure of that. If I were dealing with a man I could, but one must be worse than a clod to hear her sing and not ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... apathy of grief and horror, trembling and speechless doing nothing except move the controls to keep the floating girl ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various

... discharge it have been exhausted can only serve to dispirit the debtor; or, where his resources are but partial, the want of power in the Government to compromise and release the demand instigates to fraud as the only resource for securing a support to his family. He thus sinks into a state of apathy, and becomes a useless drone in society or a vicious member of it, if not a feeling witness of the rigor and inhumanity of his country. All experience proves that oppressive debt is the bane of enterprise, and it should be the care of a republic not to exert a ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... duties neglect altogether; for I still have a considerable, share of health, and might do some good, had I will equal to my opportunities; as to the power, it is not in me, but I know I have it in my blessed Head, and for the asking. I cannot but long to be delivered from sin, and sinful apathy in particular; for really my heart must be wickedly fertile, to find out opportunities of moral transgression. Food and raiment are mine without care; my children, under God, care for me. I have my dear little room, my Bible, and books founded on it. I have a dear pastor and Christian friends, ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham

... sometimes harder? However, it is not a question of housework being harder or easier than other work, but of the desirability of having it limited to eight hours a day and six days a week. Why should the housewife be allowed to remain in such a state of apathy in regard to the physical welfare of ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker

... few minutes she was past remembering anything, though she never really lost consciousness. She only knew that everything was all right now Micky was here—and the sheer relief the knowledge brought with it for the time threw her into a sort of apathy. ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres

... his heart was not in the matter, and that the jury acquitted a ruffian clearly guilty of murder, is it not as clear as day that smuggling would flourish and no customs be collected? In the same way the Irish Ministry might by mere apathy, by the very easy process of doing nothing, nullify the effect of judgments delivered by the Exchequer judges, and the Irish Ministry would show very little ingenuity if they could not without any open breach of the law impede the ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey

... affected a contempt for the anathemas of Gregory and an unconcern he was far from feeling; but this formidable coalition burst the shell of his apathy and laid bare his uneasiness. He supplicates his nobles in the disaffected provinces to meet him at Mayence; but his earnest prayers are disregarded. Finding his advances indignantly rejected by the princes of Upper Germany, and seeing that his prelates were rapidly deserting him, he addresses ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles

... that he would rise to be an ornament to the age in which he lived." At a comparatively early age he had outlived all his family, and thus became the owner of large landed property. He suddenly became a prey to strange, overmastering habits of indolence, apathy, and shyness, which gradually estranged him from all society. He neglected his property, allowed his rents to remain for years and years in the hands of his steward, without troubling himself about them, and allowed his dividends to grow up in the hands of his bankers without concerning himself ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... "every bystander must rue the apathy that let you be so cruelly deceived, for want of exertion on ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Thomas Fowell Buxton, whose Quaker mother had instilled into him a hatred of African Slavery, became a member of Parliament. Having soon after joined himself to the African Institution, he became somewhat mortified at the apathy of the friends of the slave, as here embodied. He was frank and outspoken, and gave expression to his indignant feeling without reserve. The next day the young member for Weymouth found himself addressed by Wilberforce, for whom he entertained a high veneration, and warmly thanked ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... thus been enabled and encouraged to spend their holidays amidst the health-giving breezes of the mountains and the sea. And above all they, and their successors in the conduct of the undertaking, with its developing lines, have shown us how, despite the early apathy and even jealousy of neighbouring "giant leviathans," a small independent railway company can faithfully serve its day and generation, until, by one of those unforeseen strokes of irony to which corporate as well as individual life is ever ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine

... course our glasses were never off the chase for more than five minutes at a time, but up to the moment when it became impossible to any longer distinguish the movements of those on board, no attempt to increase her spread of canvas had been observed. Whether by this apparent apathy her people hoped to lull us into a condition of equal carelessness, it is of course impossible for me to say; but, if so, they signally failed, for immediately that the barque's outline faded into an indistinct blur in the growing darkness, we went to work ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... the field of fame until it had gained a distance of nearly a quarter of a mile. There it stopped and stood with its rear to the foe, chewing its cud and apparently half asleep. I observed, however, an occasional slight turn of its head, as if its apathy ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... insensibility, insensibleness[obs3]; moral insensibility; inertness, inertia; vis inertiae[Lat]; impassibility, impassibleness; inappetency[obs3], apathy, phlegm, dullness, hebetude[obs3], supineness, lukewarmness[obs3]. cold fit, cold blood, cold heart; coldness, coolness; frigidity, sang froid[Fr]; stoicism, imperturbation &c. (inexcitability) 826[obs3]; nonchalance, unconcern, dry eyes; insouciance &c. (indifference) 866; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... upon county Clare Nothing in connection with the Kylemore and Fergus Reclamation works, which have brought to and distributed a large sum of money in their respective districts, is more remarkable than the apathy of the surrounding proprietors in one case and their hostility in the other. Mr. Mitchell Henry could afford to wait, and his patience has been attended with success; but Mr. Drinkwater was compelled to encounter, not mere passive indifference, but active acquisitiveness. ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker

... one of several reasons which explain the apathy of the public on A.'s first appearance. There was large promise, but the public require performance; and in poetry a single failure overweighs a hundred successes. It was possible that his mistakes were the mistakes of a man whose face was in the ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... wearing the ship's uniform slowly approached Frederick. Frederick had noticed him the day before and been interested by his air of cool impassibility. He was smoking a cigarette and inhaling, as when Frederick had first seen him. Wearing an expression of profound apathy, he seemed to be completely absorbed in this occupation of smoking and inhaling. As if casually, he drew near Frederick's bench, touched his cap, ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... Queen knew how to win over the nobles. Her cardinal was recalled, and the apathy of the Parisians put an end to these dissensions, from which, one must admit, the people and the bourgeoisie got all the ills and ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... to me to be at all solicitous; his manner exhibited decided apathy, and he remarked with indifference that "Bobby Lee was always getting people into trouble." With unconcern such as this, it is no wonder that fully three hours' time was consumed in marching his corps from J.[G] Boisseau's to Gravelly Run Church, though the distance was but two miles. However, ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan

... stout and bashful gentleman, who never wasted words, merely bowed over his plate, and went on with his supper. There was a theory in the family—a theory romantic old Miss Lydia still hung hard by—that Mr. Bill's peculiar apathy was of a sentimental origin. Nearly thirty years before he had made a series of mild advances to his second cousin, Virginia Ambler—and her early death before their polite vows were plighted had, in the ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... This apathy was suddenly interrupted. My eyes, by pure accident, fell upon two figures whose movements at once excited my attention. They stood upon the deck of the wharf-boat—not near the stage-plank, where the torch cast its ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... money with which Ali provided them, to raise Toxis and the Tapygetae in the latter's favour. Thus the Seraskier's scheme turned against himself, and he perceived he had been deceived by Ali's seeming apathy, which certainly did not mean dread of defection. In fact, no man worth anything could have abandoned him, supported as he seemed to be by almost supernatural courage. Suffering from a violent attack of gout, a malady he had never before experienced, the pacha, at the age of eighty-one, was ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... them! The man accustomed to live with a wife who without doing any other harm, simply kills his genius by the mere fact of her daily contact, moods, and methods, makes no effort to shake himself free from the apathy her influence causes, but simply sinks passively into inaction. The woman, bound to a man who insists on considering her lower than himself, and often pulled this way and that by the selfish desires or aims of her children ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... and worked all day and until late in the night. He did well in his business, however, and late in March he received a substantial raise in salary. He took it without enthusiasm, and told Belle that night at dinner with apathy. ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... heavy feet lumbering with their burden past her door, a singular calm had settled upon her. It was not apathy so much as a repose born of the knowledge that there was nothing more to bear—no future ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... some infuriated whites were loudly demanding their immolation. He met death in that position, with the utmost composure and calmness. The trepidation which first seized upon him, was of but momentary duration, and was succeeded by a most dignified sedateness and stoical apathy. It was not so with the young Red Hawk. He endeavored to conceal himself up the chimney of the cabin, in which they were; but without success. He was soon discovered and killed. The remaining Indian was murdered by piece-meal; and with almost all those circumstances ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... this illness, if it could be called a recovery, to a state of only tolerable physical health, and a condition of pitiable mental apathy and languor. She turned with a half-weary, half-petulant distaste from her former pursuits and pleasures, and abandoned her profession with a sort of terror,—feeling that its mockery of sorrows, such as had fallen so crushingly on her unchastened heart, would madden her utterly. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... those of incipient insanity. At that time I had the courage to achieve anything. Let the cold-hearted and the old say what they will, youth is the time for moral bravery. The withered and the aged mistake their failing forces for calmness and resignation, and an apathy, the drear anticipator of death, for presence ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... mistake in the judgment of things the mind is freed from those cares which would otherwise gratingly afflict it, and smoothed over with a content and satisfaction it could not under other circumstances so happily enjoy. And this is that comfortable apathy or insensibleness which Cicero, in an epistle to his friend Atticus, wishes himself master of, that he might the less take to heart those insufferable outrages committed by the tyrannizing triumvirate, Lepidus, Antonius, and Augustus. That Grecian likewise ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus

... Kathlyn, with continued apathy, stared down at her enemy. He was not dead. He would kill them both now. Why, she asked with sudden passion, why this misery? What had she done in her young life to merit it? Under-fed, dressed in grass, harassed by ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath

... mother and child, and of the heroic sufferings of those who ran away from the fearful doom of those "sold down South." These things crowded upon her mind and awoke her deepest compassion. But what could she do against all the laws, the political and commercial interests, the great public apathy? Relieve a case here and there, yes. But to dwell upon the gigantic evil, with no means of making head against it, ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... met a straggling train of refugees—old men and women and children, bent double under their enormous bundles, making for Bruges and Ostend. They stared, not at us, but at the road in front of them, with a dreadful apathy, as we passed. ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair

... the revengeful temper attributed to the bloody African, is not surpassed by the coolness and apathy ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... hoofs and crunching of wheels suddenly swept all apathy away. Every eye lit; every head turned. And in a moment Suffering Creek was on its feet, agog with the intensest interest. For one brief moment the rattle and clatter continued. Then, from round the corner, with bits champing and satin coats ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... them for a brief moment from their apathy, for they were not cruel, only satiated with every sight, every excitement and luxury which their voluptuous city and the insane caprice of the imperator perpetually offered them; and they thirsted for horrors as a sane man ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... hero—who can say that in early life he had been the same harsh, unlicked, and rugged boor that, in his maturer age, he proved—or how far the neglected rudeness which afterwards marked his air, and garb, and manners, may not have been the growth of that reckless apathy not unfrequently produced by bitter misfortunes ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... philosophic reasoners, persons of business-habits, stern moralists—all these may ridicule the poet or the novelist who makes Love his everlasting theme; they may hug themselves, in the apathy of their own cold hearts, with the belief that all the attributes of the passion have been immensely exaggerated; but they are in error, deeply, profoundly, indisputably in error. For Love, in its various phases, among which are Jealousy, Suspicion, Infidelity, Rivalry, and ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... wife, who had listened in a dull apathy to the conversation, raised her head in sudden and intelligent interest when the picture was replaced upon the wall. It seemed that her every hope was bound up in that. As she saw Dennis and her ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe



Words linked to "Apathy" :   passivity, impassivity, indifference, listlessness, numbness, feeling, languor, phlegm, spiritlessness, passiveness, lassitude, emotionlessness, unemotionality, stolidity, impassiveness



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org