"Idleness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thousand years to live; and as you would if you knew you must die to-morrow." "You can never enter the kingdom of God with hardness against any one, for God is love, and if you love God you will love one another." "Be diligent with your hands, for godliness does not lead to idleness." "You ought not to cross your children unnecessarily, for it makes them ill-natured." To a woman: "You ought to dress yourself in modest apparel, such as becomes the people of God, and teach your family to ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... is, and one that leaves little of profit behind it. I am sick to death of my office,—brutal captains and brutal sailors; continual complaints of mutual wrong, which I have no power to set right, and which, indeed, seem to have no right on either side; calls of idleness or ceremony from my travelling countrymen, who seldom know what they are in search of at the commencement of their tour, and never have attained any desirable end at the close of it; beggars, cheats, simpletons, unfortunates, so mixed up that it is impossible to distinguish one from another, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... But, surrounded by the vapid jealousies of the most useless people who had ever tried to rule a country, he, no more than his father, had the faintest chance to show the Conde quality in war. Adrift as a comparatively young man, his world about his ears, with no occupation, small wonder that in idleness he fell into the pursuit of satisfactions for his baser appetites. He would have been, there is good reason to believe, a happy man and a busy one in a camp. There is this to be said for him: that alone among the spineless crowd of ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... sums of money necessary to finance our allies as well as ourselves were promptly oversubscribed in a series of loans, the first and least of which ran into three billion dollars, the fourth into six billions, a sum larger than any single loan ever floated by any other nation. Idleness was abolished. The order to "work or fight" was strictly enforced upon all the people, rich and poor alike, for any attempt to except any one or any class would have been blown away in a gale of laughter. In a space ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... are the work of the philosopher, nor is the testimony of antiquity really ambiguous on the point. [82] When he wrote them is uncertain; but they bear every mark of being an early exercise of his pen. Perhaps they were begun during his exile in Corsica, when enforced idleness must have tasked the resources of his busy mind, and continued after his return to Rome, when he found that Nero was addicted to the same pursuit. There are eight complete tragedies and one praetexta, the Octavia, which is generally supposed to be by a later hand, as well as considerable fragments ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... it. The spell of the syren was over me. I went out, hypocritically persuading myself, that I was only animated by a capricious curiosity to know the girl's name, which once satisfied, would leave me at rest on the matter, and free to laugh at my own idleness and folly as soon ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... the youth confer with Francois Ribaut. The priest is dependent on his patron. The Church fabric is swept away, for Church and state went down together. With only one friend in the State, Valois must now quit his place of enforced idleness. ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... and letters, and am alone, which Locke says, is bad company. 'Be not solitary, be not idle.'—Um!—the idleness is troublesome; but I can't see so much to regret in the solitude. The more I see of men, the less I like them. If I could but say so of women too, all would be well. Why can't I? I am now six-and-twenty; ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... become sufficiently familiar with the process, and then directed me by gestures to take his place, and I soon found myself busily engaged reducing the bark to powder. At first the change from my hitherto enforced idleness was a pleasant relief, but I soon found that it was hard and exhausting labor; the perspiration rolled down my face in streams, and I felt a strong inclination to cease operations. My new master, however, plainly looked with disfavor upon such an intention, for the ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... east of the Park. Beautiful dwellings may also be found on Lake avenue and Franklin street. The streets are thronged with a gay and brilliant multitude, engaged in riding, driving, walking, each enjoying to the utmost a facinating kind of busy idleness. But by the time the tourist has glanced at all this he will be thinking of clean napkins, and will be interested to know what may be afforded in ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... think what would happen to her when she left the convent. There would not be money enough left her to sit down in a small flat and do nothing; she would have to work. Well, she would have to do that in any case, for idleness was not natural to her, and she would have to work for somebody besides herself—for her poor people—and this she could do by giving singing lessons. Where? In Dulwich? But to go back to the house in which she lived her life, to the room which used to be hung with ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... content. For that day at least, there was a pleasant idleness ahead of him, nothing but his own wants to attend to. The morrow would see him armed with spade and rake, probably wrestling with weeds, digging deep in the good brown earth, possibly mowing the grass, and such like jobs as fall to the lot of an under-gardener. Antony smiled to ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... among the artisans. These artisans, however, unreasonably ascribed this reduction, not to the necessities of trade, but to the avarice of their employers; and they still more unreasonably proceeded to their usual correctives—voluntary idleness, and the destruction of property. The example was set by the silk-weavers of Spitalfields and Bethnal-Green, who refused to work except at an increased rate of wages, and made their way by night into the shops of workmen possessed of materials belonging to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... not be thought that the outcast spent his time in sheer idleness. St. George would often find him tucked away in one of his big chairs devouring some book he had culled from the old general's library in the basement—a room adjoining the one occupied by a firm of young lawyers—Pawson & Pawson (only one brother was ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... progress whatever was made toward a permanent establishment. During the intense cold, the scurvy caused fearful mischief among the French; no fewer than fifty perished from that dreadful malady during the winter. Demoralized by misery and idleness, the little colony became turbulent and lawless, and Roberval was obliged to resort to extreme severity of punishment before ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... race-courses at the North. True, there are a few, and they are thronged chiefly by Southerners, and 'Northern men with Southern principles,' and supported mainly by the patronage of slaveholders who summer at the North. Cock-fighting and horse-racing are "Southern institutions." The idleness, contempt of labor, dissipation, sensuality, brutality, cruelty, and meanness, engendered by the habit of making men and women work without pay, and flogging them if they demur at it, constitutes a congenial soil out ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... will be more prosperous if hunger joins battle first. Let hunger captain us, and so let us take the first chance of conflict. Let it decide the day in our stead, and let our camp remain free from the stir of war; if hunger retreat beaten, we must break off idleness. He who is fresh easily overpowers him who is shaken with languor. The hand that is flaccid and withered will come fainter to the battle. He whom any hardship has first wearied, will bring slacker hands to the steel. When he that is wasted with sickness engages with the sturdy, the ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... we are beginning to do it, too. Now you will find me just as practical as anybody. Nine months in the year I teach,—moral and mental philosophy are my special branches,—and during vacation I am not going to wear out my brain in a summer school, nor empty my purse by lounging about in idleness. Now what could be better than for me to come to a perfectly lovely place like this, which I fancy more and more every minute, and take care of a nice little child, which, I am sure, will be a pleasure in itself, and give me a lot of time to read besides? However, I wish you to ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... business is so slack in Baltimore just at present, almost every male resident, not engaged in law or physic, has, or supposes himself to have, something to do. Instances of absolute idleness are very rare. So, by ten, A. M., all the men betake themselves to their offices, and there busy themselves about their affairs, after a fashion, energetic or desultory, till after two o'clock. The dinner hour varies from three to half-past five. Post-prandial ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... passed by Chuntche all the descendants of that prince's father were declared entitled to wear a yellow girdle and to receive a pension from the state; while, with a view to prevent their becoming a danger to the dynasty, they were excluded from civil or military employment, and assigned to a life of idleness. This imperial colony was, and is still, one of the most peculiar and least understood of the departments of the Tartar government; and although it has served its purpose in preventing dynastic squabbles, there must always remain the doubt as to how far the dynasty has been injured by the ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, and had seen Provence to their entire edification while he was merely peering about Notre-Dame-des-Doms and the Fort Saint-Andre. Of a more indolent and leisurely turn of mind, he suffers—and perhaps justly—the penalty of his joyous idleness, for even lawyers and good ladies with hidden papers are rare. Revolutionary sieges, fires, and a wise discretion have led to the destroying of many a fine old page, and it is often in vain one goes to these decaying cities of Provence. "We see," he said, gesticulating dejectedly, ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... the crouching team of dogs. There were five of them; great huskies, shaggy of coat and fiercely wolfish. They were fat and soft from idleness. But they would serve, for the sled was light, and a few days' run would ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... may be true; but it would be an injustice to human nature to suppose that man, in any country, would prefer dirt, poverty, and idleness, to comfort, activity, and employment, where he could be sure of possessing the fruits of his labours. But where the unfortunate peasant is liable to see his whole crop carried off the land at the pleasure of one of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... sober and hardworking. He was quite clear in his mind that all nobility should be put down, and that all property in land should be taken away from men who were enabled by such property to live in idleness. What should be done with the land when so taken away was a question which he had not yet learnt to answer. At the present moment he was accustomed to say very hard words of Mr. Slide behind his back, because of the change which had been effected in the ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... peasantry of Russia is not simply material. It is also moral. In the language of a recent traveller, "they are the drunkenest people in Europe." The principal intoxicant is a sort of whisky called "vodka." With drunkenness exist also dirtiness, idleness, dishonesty, and untruthfulness. And as yet little has been done to ameliorate this degradation. Ignorance prevails everywhere. Even of the young people of the peasant class more than eighty per cent. can neither read nor write. There ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... that it is very possible for people to like the country, and be happy in it. But as to the fine young ladies you talk of, the truth is, that they neither love, nor would be long contented in any place; their whole happiness consists in idleness and finery; they have neither learned to employ themselves in anything useful, nor to improve their minds. As to every kind of natural exercise, they are brought up with too much delicacy to be able to bear it, and from the improper indulgences they meet with, they learn to tremble ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... as he opened it, for Dr. Livesey had kindly motioned me to come round from the side-table, where I had been eating, to enjoy the sport of the search. On the first page there were only some scraps of writing, such as a man with a pen in his hand might make for idleness or practice. One was the same as the tattoo mark, "Billy Bones his fancy"; then there was "Mr. W. Bones, mate," "No more rum," "Off Palm Key he got itt," and some other snatches, mostly single words and unintelligible. I could not help ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... him through the doorway with affectionately mocking eyes, while the summer sun, forcing its way through the sturdy leafage of the chestnuts that grew in front of the windows, filled the whole room with the greenish-gold of the midday light and shade, and the heart grew soft in the sweet languor of idleness, carelessness, ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... to breathe the scented air of Sennaar saloons, and to lounge in listless idleness with young Sennaar, I am weary of the simple purity of manners that distinguishes this people, and long for the pleasing, if pointless frivolities ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... a thrill of indignation at that accusation of idleness. Had she not made two whole beds, and even stooped to pick stray pins off the carpet? She pushed the door open and walked ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... what I am in her eyes? What does she feel towards me? Love? That is inadmissible. Pity, perhaps? This then, is the end of my grand dreams—to be an object of pity? I have just answered her letter to say that I am settled here with the fixed intention of ending my useless existence in quiet and idleness. Do you remember a scene in Henry Heine's 'Reisebilder,' when a young student kisses a pretty girl, who lets him have his own way and makes no great resistance, because he has told her, 'I will be gone to-morrow at dawn, and I will never see you ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... green and warm that presently she lay down upon it, her head pillowed upon her arm, her eyes gazing through the fountain mist and down the emerald slopes to where ran the elmwood avenue. She gazed in idleness, through half-shut eyelids, wrapped in lullabies and drowsy warmth. Hoof-beats between the elms troubled her not. When through the mist of falling water and the veil of drooping leaves she saw riding towards the house a youth clad in blue, the horse and rider seemed but figures in ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... offered prayers and supplications for the averting of this plague. This order consisted chiefly of persons of the lower class, who were either actuated by sincere contrition or who joyfully availed themselves of this pretext for idleness and were hurried along with the tide of distracting frenzy. But as these brotherhoods gained in repute, and were welcomed by the people with veneration and enthusiasm, many nobles and ecclesiastics ranged ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... husband much anxiety, and probably affected his health. She did not long survive him, but died on February 4, 1887, at Mentone in her fifty-fifth year. Count du Moncel was an indefatigable worker, who, instead of abandoning himself to idleness and pleasure like many of his order, believed it his duty to be active and useful in his own day, as his ancestors had been in ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... in idleness—a delay due to England's scruples. But at last all was ready; and on the morning of 1 September the Allied Fleet stood out to sea: seventy-three units of every description, the big ships in single file, flanked by torpedo-boats, steaming ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... opportunity as possible for any attempt at rescue; knowing that it must lead to bloodshed and loss of life, and that if the civil authorities by whom he was accompanied, empowered him to order his men to fire, many innocent persons would probably fall, whom curiosity or idleness had attracted to the spot. He therefore led the party briskly on, avoiding with a merciful prudence the more public and crowded thoroughfares, and pursuing those which he deemed least likely to be infested by disorderly persons. This wise proceeding ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... particular value—a value which, rightly or wrongly, I can't help feeling inestimable—in a modern play of reflecting absolutely and truthfully the life and environment about us; every class, every kind, every emotion, every motive, every occupation, every business, every idleness! Never was life so varied, so complex; what a choice, then! Take what strikes you most, in the hope it will interest others. Take what suits you most to do—what perhaps you can do best—and then do it better. Be truthful, and then nothing ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The Moth and the Flame • Clyde Fitch
... you are right, and I am wrong. Certainly, there is no disguising the fact that my life has become a real burden to me, and that business would be far preferable to a state of idleness." ...
— The Last Penny and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... I have never eaten the bread of idleness. I cannot reconcile to my mind a state of inactivity which might even now impose upon the Chilian Republic an annual pension for past services; especially as an Admiral of Peru is actually in command of a portion of the Chilian squadron, whilst other vessels are sent ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... in the streets, women tripping along consciously, men—flaneurs—strolling with their well-known look of watchful idleness, and she felt herself to be one of life's prisoners. And she knew she would never again take hands with the Paris she had once known so well. Why was that? Because of something in herself, something irrevocable which had ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... small lives filled with idleness, though some useful objects could oft be reached. Yours is largely among these. Yet I am pleased to state you could yet become a fine mind and life trainer by the age of forty, if wise enough to select your true helpers—good books. No one can work effectively alone. My mind has traveled ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... idleness, pleasure and wealth, and some are more weary of cold and starvation, and toil, the student is weary of study, and the artist is weary of art, the vicious grow weary of vice, and great men grow weary of fame; old men grow tired on their journey, and children get tired at ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... Schiller's occupations while at Dresden; their extent and variety are proof enough that idleness was not among his vices. It was, in truth, the opposite extreme in which he erred. He wrote and thought with an impetuosity beyond what nature always could endure. His intolerance of interruptions first put him on the plan of studying by night; an alluring but pernicious ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... that the natural good sense of the true American woman will finally triumph over the extravagant and unnatural living of the present day and that the handicap of false standards, superficiality, display idleness, and wild pursuit of exotic pleasures shall be lifted from the girls now held prisoners by the tyranny of money and ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... say that. But I think it might lead me into wild extravagance, or into complete idleness. And I think, I know, that I might be tempted irresistibly to give an audience what it wanted. There's something in me which is ready to rush out to satisfy expectation. I hate it, but ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... labour—positive, that which produces life; negative, that which produces death; the most directly negative labour being murder, and the most directly positive the bearing and rearing of children; so that in the precise degree in which murder is hateful on the negative side of idleness, in that exact degree child-rearing is admirable, on ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... noticeable that the depth of recess which I have observed to be essential to nobility of external effect has also a certain dignity of expression, as appearing to be intended rather to admit light to persons quietly occupied in their homes, than to stimulate or favor the curiosity of idleness. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... to break an additional hundred acres for wheat. A little opposition is shown to dividing the land, but only a few Indians oppose. It is a great step, and one that many are prepared for; but it must be executed by a wise and good man. It is the death-blow to heathenism, barbarism, and idleness, and therefore a medicine absolutely necessary to restore health and quicken life; but yet it must be administered by a brave and judicious physician. It is a revolution of habit and of manner of life to the Indian. ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... even then I don't believe you will tell my plans. It will be too late. We are going to tame these nice little girls, and make beggars of them. Something useful, you see, instead of letting them grow up in idleness as they would if they stayed with you. We will go to Prague from here and I will give the little one to my sister. Then we will get out of this accursed country soon as we can, and get away where money comes easy to the poor war refugees. ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... over to his tobacco jar, which stood upon his desk, and leisurely proceeded to fill his pipe. It was rarely he indulged himself in an idle evening, but to-night he somehow felt that idleness would be good. He was beginning to feel the weight ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... "Trois Folies," and by waiting till mid-evening for dinner, we could find the cafe well-nigh empty. The truth was I went there often alone when a fit of depression was on me, and it was no wonder these fits came. A week of idleness, taken by a person who comes from my class, and should be working eight and ten hours a day, is a misfortune often longed for and seldom ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... The vessel was at anchor; she lay, a thing of idleness, quiet and peaceful enough, in a sheltered cove, wherein, I saw at a glance, she was lost to sight from the open sea outside the bar at its entrance, and hid from all but the actual coastline of the land. And all was quiet on her ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... approbation of the men, who soon disposed themselves in careless groups about the ship. They knew it would be a day of idleness; because there were no forays to be made upon the land, for the reason that there wore no human habitations in those parts. To the buccaneers the locality was well known as furnishing a safe retreat when retirement from ...
— Money Island • Andrew Jackson Howell, Jr.
... In England we had cherished the illusion that life abroad would be an easy business, merely consisting of firing practices in the trenches, followed by intervals of idleness in rest-camps, where cigarettes could be obtained for the asking, and tots of rum would be served out ad infinitum. This rum would have a certain charm of its own, make everybody merry, and banish all discomforts due to frost and cold for ever. ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... restless temperament, fed with the infinite varieties of Europe, had seldom given way to the pleasures of indolence. Even satiety had not meant rest. But California—as distinct from San Francisco—with her traditions of luxurious idleness, the low languid murmur of her woods, her soft voluptuous air, her remoteness from the shrieking nerve centres of the United States, the sublime indifference of her people to the racing hours, drew ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... of wonder, idleness, and folly!" said Mr. Gradgrind, leading each away by a hand; ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Cortlandt, "that no paradise or heaven described in anything but the Bible compares with this. According to Virgil's description, the joys on the banks of his river Lethe must have been most sad and dreary, the general idleness and monotony apparently being broken only by wrestling matches between the children, while the rest strolled about with laurel wreaths or rested in the shade. The pilot Palinurus, who had been drowned by falling ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... indicating the young women. He was an epigrammatic and terse speaker. When I reflected aloud upon the order and discipline of service which was necessary to maintain more than a thousand roughish persons in idleness, cleanliness, health, peace, and content, in the inelastic forward spaces of the ship, he said with a certain grimness: "Everything has to be screwed up as tight as you can screw it. And you must keep to the round. What you do to-day you must do to-morrow. But what you don't ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... Court,— In that most pompous room called Paradise,— Whoever pleases thither to resort, May see some works of hers of wondrous price. Her greatness held it no disreputation To hold the needle in her royal hand, Which was a good example to our nation To banish idleness throughout the land. And thus this queen in wisdom thought it fit; The needle's work pleased her, and she ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... rocking in the cradle of the wind, And it's bye, my little wee one, bye; The harvest all is gathered and the pippins all are binned; Bye, my little wee one, bye; The little rabbit's hiding in the golden shock of corn, The thrifty squirrel's laughing bunny's idleness to scorn; You are smiling with the angels in your slumber, smile till morn; So it's bye, my ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Thou didst love me then, but evil men accused me to thee and I was banished. For seven years I have lived in a strange land; but now that I have returned, I have won thy fair daughter as my bride. But I cannot dwell here in idleness while the heathen hold my father's land. I vow by the Holy Rood that I will not rest, and will not claim my wife, until I have purified Suddene from the infidel invaders, and can lay its crown at Rymenhild's feet. Do thou, O King, guard well ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... as they took in the religious teachings of the early missionaries. If they could be made to realize that foul air, insufficient dress, putrid food, alternations of feast and famine, and long bouts of sedulous idleness are destroying them as a people and need not do so, then their decay might be arrested and the fair hopes of the missionary pioneers yet be justified. So long as they soak maize in the streams until it is rotten and eat it together with dried shark—food the merest whiff of which will make a white ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... term of reproach for idleness, and is here quoted only as bearing upon the nautical lubber. In the "Burnynge of Paule's Church, 1563," it is thus explained—"An Abbey-lubber, that was idle, well-fed, a long lewd lither loiterer, that might worke, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... of his life was given to idleness and horses and battles of beasts and of men. Aside from his performances at home he despatched many beasts in public and many men on many occasions. With his own hands and without assistance he gave the finishing stroke to five hippopotami ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... to be spent in idleness," remarked George the next morning, after the four campers had ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... desperation of the rebels, and of the idleness of expecting from them any peaceable compromise. Those who, in the South, will take the oath of allegiance, and who have probably acted only under compulsion, should be spared. But there is a vast number who are as yet ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... thirst for discovery, could not remain long in repose, far removed from idleness though it was. In April, 1809, he finally left the capital of Egypt, and directed his course towards Suez and the peninsula of Sinai, which he resolved to explore before proceeding to Arabia. At this time Arabia was a little-known country, frequented only ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the prisoners' life must tend to produce the maximum degree of mutual friction. There is absolutely no privacy for the prisoner of war. To be forced to remain, day and night, for months and years in idleness, with a crowd of others, not of one's own choice is, I believe, one of the psychological factors which make internment (especially to many civilians) decidedly worse than imprisonment in a ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... prospect of one day becoming a beadle, to make his debut among the supernumeraries of the Cirque-Olympique; he was leading a wild life, breaking his mother's heart and draining her purse by frequent forced loans. Cantinet senior, much addicted to spirituous liquors and idleness, had, in fact, been driven to retire from business by those two failings. So far from reforming, the incorrigible offender had found scope in his new occupation for the indulgence of both cravings; ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... things. I think I can assess him rightly, for I know something of the soul of the East, but it would be too long a story to tell now. The West knows nothing of the true Oriental. It pictures him as lapped in colour and idleness and luxury and gorgeous dreams. But it is all wrong. The Kaf he yearns for is an austere thing. It is the austerity of the East that is its beauty and its terror ... It always wants the same things at the back ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... with an airy appeal to Madame Idleness—in order to forget. Then, the war seemed a sacred duty, an heroic endeavor, an inevitable trial, according as Southerners chose to take it; but the prevailing opinion was that the solution would come in victory ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... circumstances in which he places them, was mere reminiscence and association. For although the sullen tone of his mind was not fully brought out until he wrote Childe Harold, it is yet evident from his Hours of Idleness that he was tuned to that key before he went abroad. The dark colouring of his mind was plainly imbibed in a mountainous region, from sombre heaths, and in the midst of rudeness and grandeur. He had no taste for more cheerful images, and ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... as keeping a look-out, taking a trick at the wheel, and so on, but, excepting myself, were scarcely fit to go aloft just yet. But I did not think it right or desirable that those of us who were in a fit state to work should eat the bread of idleness. I had therefore seized the opportunity afforded by my talk with the skipper that morning to suggest that my four unwounded and two slightly-wounded men should assist in the working of the ship; as for myself, I said that I should be very pleased ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... all matters of peace and war that the ablest philosophers and generals of the age could bestow. Peter was brought up among barbarians, and in barbaric ignorance. He strove to remedy this when a grown man, by leaving all the temptations to idleness and sensuality, which his court offered, and by seeking instruction abroad. He laboured with his own hands as a common artisan in Holland and in England, that he might return and teach his subjects how ships, ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... either did not think of or did not care to advocate such a radical remedy as Mr. George proposed. They saw clearly enough that, apart from the unequal distribution of wealth, which may perhaps have been the prime cause of the trouble, idleness and thriftlessness are acquired habits, just as industry and thrift are acquired habits, and it seemed to them better to cure the ill habit rather than to upset society and then to rebuild it again for the sake ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... despair and rebellion. Driven from their native villages, the Donatist peasants assembled in formidable gangs on the edge of the Getulian desert; and readily exchanged the habits of labor for a life of idleness and rapine, which was consecrated by the name of religion, and faintly condemned by the doctors of the sect. The leaders of the Circumcellions assumed the title of captains of the saints; their principal weapon, as they were indifferently provided with swords ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... blessed relief to them at the end of their troubled week. Finding her father so much better, Mrs. Burton betook herself to bed at noon for the first real untroubled rest she had enjoyed for many days. The boys were stretched in luxurious idleness before the glowing fire in the kitchen, and Katherine was in charge of the sickroom. She was half-asleep herself; the place was so warm and her father lay in such a restful quiet. It had been so terrible all the week because no rest had seemed possible to him. ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... James Digweed; but our tete-a-tete was cruelly reduced by the non-attendance of the two latter. We had a very quiet evening. I believe Mary found it dull, but I thought it very pleasant. To sit in idleness over a good fire in a well-proportioned room is a luxurious sensation. Sometimes we talked, and sometimes we were quite silent; I said two or three amusing things, and Mr. Holder made ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... to the kind of winter he has to fight against. That winter cuts his earnings more than half, for, during the months the land is frozen he is unable to do any kind of profitable farm work, indeed has spells of enforced idleness. The Old Country farmer can keep hired help the year round, for he has employment for them; the Canadian farmer needs extra hands only during summer. The result is that his margin of profits is so narrow that he can never pay such taxes as are collected from the agricultural class ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... time are much more severe than had been found necessary in the Plantagenet period. They not only carried criminals in shameful procession through the City, but they flogged girls for idleness, apprentices for immorality, and rogues for selling goods falsely described. A 'pillar of reformation' was set up at the Standard in Cheap; here on Sunday morning the mayor superintended the flogging of young servants. When Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed Queen a young fellow, for speaking ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... corporal's guard of willing and well managed men. The mere economic waste of such material was criminal, without regard to the evil effect of inadequate or misapplied labor upon the men's moral and mental state. Can it be, I asked myself, that this extravagant idleness is forced upon the prisoners as part, and not the least evil part of their punishment? Or is it the result of ignorance, incompetence, or indifference on the part of those appointed and paid to take care of men sentenced ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... state that obeyed them the most famous in Greece. He then went home, where he had been much missed, for his young nephew Charilaus, though grown to man's estate, was too weak and good-natured to be much obeyed, and there was a great deal of idleness, and gluttony, and evil ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... And it came to pass that I beheld, after they had dwindled in unbelief they became a dark, and loathsome, and a filthy people, full of idleness ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... "Friends of all degrees, says the book of extracts, are advised to take due care to breed up their children in some useful and necessary employment, that they may not spend their precious time in idleness, which is of evil example, and ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... that uses shall even so much as keep. Unemployed strength steadily diminishes. The sluggard's arm grows soft and flabby. So, even in this lowest sphere, the law is inexorable. Having is using. Not using is losing. Idleness is paralysis. New triumphs must only dictate new struggles. If it be Alexander of Macedon, the Orontes must suggest the Euphrates, and the Euphrates the Indus. Always it must be on and on. One night of rioting in Babylon may arrest the conquering march. Genius is essentially athletic, resolute, ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... by since the assault: a fortnight of idleness for the troops, embittered almost intolerably by a sense that the Fifth Division had disgraced itself. One regiment blamed another, and all conspired to curse the artillery—whose practice, by the way, had been brilliant throughout the siege. Nor did the gunners fail to retort; but they were in ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... them believed that freedom meant idleness, such as they had seen white folks indulge in. The country negroes flocked to the towns and cities in great numbers, and the freedmen's bureau, active as its agents were, had a great deal more than it could attend to. Such peace and order as existed was not maintained by ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... to Africa and quietly sitting down in utter idleness, in anticipation waiting in anxious expectation for the fever to come—in which cases the person becomes much more susceptible—did they go directly about some active employment, to keep both mind and body properly exercised, ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... of the session came nigh. Ericson passed his examinations with honour. Robert gained the first Greek and third Latin prize. The evening of the last day arrived, and on the morrow the students would be gone—some to their homes of comfort and idleness, others to hard labour in the fields; some to steady reading, perhaps to school again to prepare for the next session, and others to be tutors all the summer months, and return to the wintry city as to freedom and life. Shargar was to ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... secularism, like other religions, needs an eschatology, and has produced one. A more energetic generation than ours looked forward to a gradual extension of busy industrialism over the whole planet; the present ideal of the masses seems to be the greatest idleness of the greatest number, or a Fabian farm-yard of tame fowls, or (in America) an ice-water-drinking gynaecocracy. But the superstition cannot flourish much longer. The period of expansion is over, and we must adjust our view of earthly providence ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... about making my escape as soon as I felt sufficiently strong, when the heat and my weakness combined to send me off into a heavy sleep, one of the many that I indulged in during those days, not from idleness, for I suppose it was natural while my nerves and muscles were slowly building themselves up ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... supposeth that great idleness is natural to professors; they think to get to heaven by lying, as it were, on their elbows. It also suggesteth that many will be the difficulties that professors will meet with, before they get to heaven. It also concludeth that only the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... saw old 'Rastus setting out with his fishing tackle for a day on the river, and she deemed it a fitting time to rebuke him for his notorious idleness, since she and everybody else knew that the entire family was supported by the industry of 'Rastus' old ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... right to live upon their earnings, or enjoy his pleasure or power at the expense of their labor and their freedom. The same condition of things, with some variation, of course, arising from differences of climate and races, exists in Russia, and the results are not altogether dissimilar. We find idleness, lack of principle, overbearing manners, ignorance, and sensualism a very common characteristic of the superior classes, mingled though it may be with a show of fine manners, and such trivial and superficial ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... conduct of Omai to that which was expected! Abandoning his European dress, he quickly sank into idleness, barbarously employing his firearms either to assist the chief in his wars or to shoot those of his countrymen who had offended him. In three years he died, despised even by the savages it was supposed ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... before the hour at which the city gates would be opened. Sir Ralph and his dame rode first, Aline took her place between her brother and Edgar, the latter keeping a watchful eye over her horse, which was fresh after six or seven days' idleness. The two retainers rode behind, having the ladies' valises strapped behind them. The city churches rang out the hour when they were within a hundred yards of the gate, and as this opened, Van Voorden, with his daughter behind him on a pillion, rode out to meet ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... best sense. The reason is not far to seek. Under the old American system the whole body of students at a university were confined to a single course, for which the majority cared little and very many cared nothing, and, as a result, widespread idleness and dissipation were inevitable. Under the new system, presenting various courses, and especially courses in various sciences, appealing to different tastes and aims, the great majority of students are interested, and consequently indolence and dissipation have steadily ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... for it, knee-deep, as she said. She was not excessively astonished: it was the inevitable end! Not that she disliked to work: her idleness, on the contrary, was beginning to pall upon her; but it was the humiliation of going back to it after putting on so much side and posing as the lady. She had worked for Pa; now she would work for Trampy; it was natural and proper. There were exceptions—the wife at ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... depends primarily upon the amount and condition of the blood supplied to the coronary cushion. Thus, fluctuations in temperature during a long-continued fever, or the effects of alternate heat and cold, or of healthy exercise alternated with comparative idleness, will each rib the foot in much ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... more gold and silver plastered on their doublets than would have kept an honest family in butchers' meat and flannel from year's end to year's end! I am informed, (now mind, I do not vouch for the fact), but I am informed that all such extravagant idleness is to be done away with here. Lady Macbeth is to have a plain quilted petticoat, a cotton gown, and a MOB CAP (as the court parasites call it;—it will be well for them if, one of these days, they don't wear a mob cap—I mean a WHITE CAP, with a MOB to look at them); and Macbeth ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... yourselves. The same shirking, idle, rebellious spirit which distinguished them is conspicuous in every one of you. It is little more than a couple of hours ago that your officers waited upon me in a body to make formal complaint of your idleness and insubordinate conduct. There was no necessity for them to do any such thing, for I am not altogether lacking in powers of observation, and I have not failed to notice that for some time past there has been a general disposition on ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... from Berlin all unemployed workmen, quite regardless of the cause of their temporary or continuous idleness. He sends them back to their native parishes, without caring in the least whether they will find there the work which they are unable to secure at the capital. The "Workmen's Emperor" compels an emigration into the interior ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... of this volume of the series needs some explanation. Portions of the book have been written at intervals; but it is only the enforced idleness of a long convalescence after illness which has given me the requisite ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... great demi-god of Hawaii, was restless. Time hung heavy on his hands. Uneventful days of quiet had fallen upon the land. Adventure seemed to be in hiding, and no exploit invited to service this active youngster's shining spear or magic club. Idleness grew ...
— Legends of Wailuku • Charlotte Hapai
... books, and in my idleness I set work to read, so that a taste for literature awoke within me. I read every morning, and essayed some translations, even metrical compositions. Almost every day I dined at the Commandant's, where, as a general thing, I spent the rest of the day. In the evening, ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... Love and idleness induced in him such a violent desire to see the Princess de Montpensier that without considering the risks to her and to himself he made some excuse to travel and leaving his suite in a small town he ...
— The Princess of Montpensier • Madame de La Fayette
... 'The tools to the hands that can use them' is the ideal for both. God's dealings follow the same law, both in withdrawing opportunities of service and in giving more of such. The reward for work is more work, and the punishment for sloth is compulsory idleness. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... indolent the vast armada tilts, A leafless resurrection of dead trees. The sailors in a dream do go about Or at the fo'c's'le ominously meet. Should any foe upon the sea-line loom They'll light with ease upon an idle prey. And yet I felt the grandeur of stagnation And the magnificence of idleness. ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips |
