"Inaction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The inaction of the Asiatic commanders during this interval appears strange at first sight; but Hippias was with them, and they and he were aware of their chance of a bloodless conquest through the machinations of his partisans among the Athenians. The nature ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... that I had been twice at Avignon without under- taking it. This why I was vexed at the Rhone - if vexed I was - for representing as impracticable an ex- cursion which I cared nothing about. How little I cared was manifest from my inaction on former oc- casions. I had a prejudice against Vancluse, against Petrarch, even against the incomparable Laura. I was sure that the place was cockneyfied and threadbare, and I had never been able to take ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... narrator found instant answer in that of Billy Gray. Determined to see service at the front and not return to punishment in his regiment, never dreaming that, in quitting a corps doomed apparently to inaction at home, and joining one going straight to the enemy's country, he was committing the grave crime of desertion, "Gov." Prime had spoken to some men in Stewart's regiment and was bidden to come along and fetch his friend; ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... distorted beyond recognition. The words his lips had framed to speak died upon his tongue, as with a furious heave Gard shook him off, entered the cab and slammed the door. Denning stood for a moment surprised into inaction, then, with an order to follow, he leaped into his own car and started ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... said Lesbia. 'I am very tired of inaction, though I dearly love learning Spanish,' she added, with a lovely smile, and a look that was half submissive, half mutinous. 'But I have really been beginning to wonder whether ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... a state of inaction in the midst of all these great events. I saw the discomfiture of our ministers and the King when the success of the Imperialists reached them. But the time had passed when my affections and those of my master were akin. Free from henceforth to follow ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... Carlyon's order, he joined the party that had been detailed to watch over the club-house, the most precious and the safest position in the whole station. He chafed sorely at the inaction, but ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... kingdom, advanced at the head of a powerful body into Scotland, fought and won the battle of Dunbar, stormed and captured Leith, and took his triumphal way towards Edinburgh town. Charles was at this time in Perth, and being impatient at his enforced inaction whilst battles were fought in his name, and lives lost in his cause, made his escape from the Covenanters, with the determination of arousing the Royalists who lay in the north. But the Scots soon overtook and recaptured ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... crowned the cliffs near the mills, showed no impatience to advance. It was evidently busy in reconnoitring, and in receiving accessions to its numbers. The latter soon increased to some seventy or eighty warriors. After waiting several minutes in inaction, a musket, or rifle, was fired towards the Hut, as if to try the effect of a summons and the range of a bullet. At this hint the men on the lawn retired within the stockade, stacked their arms, and joined the party that was endeavouring to get the gates in their places. From the circumstance ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... character was quite in harmony with his person: that he was gay, brave, courteous and polite: that his courage knew no bounds: that he would storm a citadel, traverse a morass, or lead on to a charge, with equal coolness, courage, and intrepidity: that repose and inaction were painful to him—but that humanity to the unfortunate, and the most inflexible attachment to relations and friends, formed, equally, distinctive marks of his character. This intelligence quite won my heart in favour of the stranger, then ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... constrained to keep; for, to tell the truth, sitting astride upon the hard branch of a tree, though easy enough for a short spell, becomes in time so painful as to be almost unendurable. Caspar especially had grown impatient of this irksome inaction; and highly exasperated at the rogue who was forcing it upon them. Several times had he been on the point of forsaking his perch, and stealing down for his gun; but Karl, each time perceiving his design, very prudently persuaded ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... the army as surgeon, and solicited a place at the front. He wanted active service. In this he was disappointed. Charleston, blockaded and beseiged, was in a state of military inaction. Save the occasional exchange of shot and shell at long range between the works on shore and those which the Unionists had erected and held upon the neighboring islands and marshes, nothing was done, and for nearly a year Fournier experienced the irksomeness of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... removed his hat, so that the sunshine burned brightly on his red hair. Indeed, there was always a flamelike quality about him. In inaction he seemed femininely frail and pale; but when his spirit was roused his eyes blazed as his hair ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... deaf ear to that. He answered that pacific overtures which he could not well ignore were being made him on the frontier side, but that things could not go on as they were, that his troops were suffering from the heat, that they were fretting under their enforced inaction. The long and the short of it was that he would not take the responsibility of the international complications that might arise out of overt hostilities in Morocco, and yet he was burning with the desire to throw himself upon the army lying in front of him ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... me send for Bryan!" she pleaded, as they met—blaming herself sharply the while for her own absorption and inaction during the morning hours. "You don't look a ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... doubt often mocked at the dome-like forehead of the philosopher, and laughed over the strange perspective of the landscape that lies beneath him. If they really knew who he was, they would tremble. For Chuang Tzu spent his life in preaching the great creed of Inaction, and in pointing out the uselessness of all useful things. 'Do nothing, and everything will be done,' was the doctrine which he inherited from his great master Lao Tzu. To resolve action into thought, and thought into ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... violence, they broke open the prisons, and thus obtained a re-enforcement of hundreds of desperadoes, ripe for any wickedness. The troops were paralyzed by Louis's imbecile order to avoid bloodshed, and in the same proportion the rioters were encouraged by their inaction and evident helplessness. They attacked the great armory, and equipped themselves with its contents, applying to the basest uses time-honored weapons, monuments of ancient valor and patriotism. The spear with which Dunois had cleared his country of the British invaders; the sword with which the ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... Smith's departure I sat there, companioned only by wretched reflections; then, further inaction seemed impossible; to move, to be up and doing, to be seeking, questing, became an imperative necessity. Muffled in a heavy traveling coat I went out into the wet and dismal night, having no other plan in mind than that of walking on through the ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... suggested by a courteous hospitality to make my stay here comfortable," said Major Hester. "But, as any form of detention against one's will must be regarded as a captivity, I cannot echo your wish, Edith, that Donald were here. He is so young, so fearless, and so impatient of inaction, that, were he taken prisoner, he would do and dare anything to effect an escape, with possible results that I cannot bear to contemplate. Therefore I am glad that he is far away, and is happily free from a knowledge of ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... proposed to send these troops to South America to quell the revolutionary movements there. The return of a number of soldiers stricken with yellow fever in the colonies filled the troops at Cadiz with consternation. The common soldiers, lying in squalor and inaction at their barracks, came to regard their expected order of embarkation as a sentence of death. Their officers plotted with the secret societies in Cadiz and neighboring towns. Abisbas, the commandant at Cadiz, to safeguard his own interests ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... Edward, and retreated to Saratoga. All kinds of provisions and stores had already reached Fort George; but the means of transport were lamentably deficient, and the impossibility of bringing up supplies compelled the army to a fatal inaction. On the 15th of August, after a fortnight's incessant exertion, there were only ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... surprised him, however, was the absolute silence and inaction of the British. True, two shots had been fired, but whether from fort or warship, and with what intent, he hadn't the remotest notion. The hour arranged upon for the general assault was fast approaching. The British ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... secured one he used to visit such Mongols as he found in the neighbourhood, trying to acquire a vocabulary from them, asking the names of the articles they were using, their actions, and all such other matters as he could make them understand. But his loneliness, his ignorance of the language, the inaction to which he was condemned, partly by his difficulty in getting a suitable teacher, and partly by the uncertainty as to whether the authorities would allow him to remain, told upon his eager spirit as week after week passed by, and he became subject to fits of severe ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... and, known places reviving old ideas, it almost seems as if we had never moved from the spot where we are at present. I fall into the same trains of thinking; except that I am more restless, more inclined to melancholy, to inaction, to a kind of inanity, which no trifling efforts can ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... another Martie—a sensitive, ambitious Martie—who despised idleness, dependence, and inaction; who longed to live a thousand lives—to conquer all the world; a Martie who was one day a great singer, one day a wartime nurse, one day a millionaire's beautiful bride, the mother of five lovely children, all carefully ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... my willingness to do all that was required and applauded my friend's self-control and good sense; indeed, I could not help contrasting the conduct of this busy, indefatigable man, cheerfully resigning himself to most distasteful inaction, with the fussy behaviour of the ordinary patient who, with nothing of importance to do, can hardly be prevailed upon to rest, no matter how urgent the necessity. Accordingly, I breakfasted alone, and spent the morning in writing and despatching letters to the various ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... himself to rust. Three years ago the Rector had said a daily Mass. Now he was content with one on Thursdays except on festivals. Mark began to take walks far afield, which was a sign of irritation with the inaction of the life round him rather than the expression of an interest in the life beyond. On one of these walks he found himself at Wield in the diocese of Kidderminster thirty miles or more away from home. He had spent the ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... he got back to the house for supper, and saw the doleful faces of the three waiting there, he couldn't stand inaction. ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... calmness was, and enchanted for the moment into voicelessness and utter inaction, she was not that kind of women who sit and bear the stripes without an effort to ward them off. If Jeannie was as quick as lightning, she was sure as that which follows the flash. She thought for a moment, "God ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... persons to superintend the exercises and amusements of children under seven years of age, in the fields, orchards, and meadows, and point out to them the richer beauties of nature, than to have them immured in crowded school-rooms, in a state of inaction, poring over torn books and primers, conning words of whose meaning they are ignorant, ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... spent the night he reported that the horses stood quietly in their tracks all night long, while he slept comfortably in the wagon. In the morning the horses started without undue urging as if tired of inaction and glad to go in the direction of provender. They were completely broken by their fast and after that gave ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... fortune was suddenly left me. An old admirer dying abroad bequeathed me two million dollars, and I found myself rich, admired and independent, with no one on earth to care for or to share the happiness of what seemed to me, after the brilliant life I had hitherto led, a dreary inaction. Love had no interest for me. I had had a husband, and that part of my nature had been satisfied. What I wanted now—and the wish presently grew into a passion—was my child. From passion it grew to mania. Knowing the name ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... rumoured that the government could not withstand it. Those who had originally murmured at the course which he had adopted of moving for a committee of inquiry, instead of proposing a specific measure of relief, and had treated an investigation as a mere means of securing inaction, now recanted their rash criticism, and did justice to his prescience and superior judgment, as well as to his vast information and indefatigable exertions. The week during which the committee sat on their report was a very anxious one; the divisions were known every day in the House ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... the night wore on. Midnight came. This inaction was killing. Anything would be better ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... disappeared at a moment when the public is disposed to think she has retained me as her legal adviser, probably she will be set at liberty when she agrees to drop the matter of Norton's murder. As for the boy, they'll use him to compel my silence and inaction." The judge took a long breath. "Yet there remains one point where the boy is concerned that completely baffles me. If we knew just a little more of his antecedents it might cause me to make a startling and ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... they went to other matters. Kendric merely decided that while they spent a long tomorrow of inaction he would look into the matter. There was no great temptation to tarry for treasure and the incentive to be on the way, traveling light, was sufficiently emphasized. But there was a quiet day to be put in tomorrow, if all went right, and he was not the ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... Laurence that he had better not let this thing get too much upon his nerves. It was the result of inaction, he told himself. Several months of rest and tranquillity had begun to turn him soft. That would not do. He had got to look matters in the face fairly and squarely. The ceremony which was to bring him to what would almost certainly be a fearful fate was ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... sufficiently from the shock, ay, and genuine grief, occasioned by her father's death, so as to investigate her affairs; the hardness and the tyranny she had borne for so many years had become habitual, and her own will was absolutely paralysed by inaction. Jacob Bond had always treated his daughter as if she were a baby, and it was some time before she could collect herself sufficiently to calculate upon her future plans. She had no friends; and the sister to whom, despite her ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... independence in the execution of the tasks to which they are assigned and are expected to show initiative in meeting the different situations as they arise. Every individual, from the highest commander to the lowest private, must always remember that inaction and neglect of opportunities will warrant more severe censure than an error in the choice ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... will be taken out of them, and a virile strength substituted, when they come to see God as law and love,—perfect law and perfect love,—and to see that communion with him comes, not from absorption, contemplation, and inaction, but from active obedience, moral growth, and personal development. For Christianity certainly teaches that we unite ourselves with God, not by sinking into and losing our personality, in him, but by developing it, so that we may be able to ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... human being Do I allow—and to the vehement And striving spirit readily I pardon The excess of action; but to thee, my General! 115 Above all others make I large concession. For thou must move a world, and be the master— He kills thee, who condemns thee to inaction. So be it then! maintain thee in thy post By violence. Resist the Emperor, 120 And if it must be, force with force repel: I will not praise it, yet I can forgive it. But not—not to the traitor—yes!—the word Is spoken out—— Not to the traitor can I yield a pardon. 125 That is no mere excess! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... warriors of their legion would stand round delighted; and it was, "Musha, Master Dan, but that's a good throw!" "Good luck to you, Misther Pat, and throw thirteen this time!" and so forth. But this sort of inaction could not last long. They had heard of the treasures amassed in the palace of the Tuileries: they sighed when they thought of the lack of bullion in their green and beautiful country. They panted for war! They formed ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... which in normal times used to swing shakily on its hinges and keep on chattering against its post (in the vain effort to shut) whenever the wind was in its teeth, now leaned against an adjacent bush in listless inaction. One of its hinges had been broken. I learned the details of the tragedy from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... then he announced his intention of accompanying Felix on his voyage. But after a visit to the town, and a glance at the Princess Lucia, his resolution changed. Yet he wavered, one time openly reproaching himself for enduring such a life of inaction and ignominy, and at another deriding Felix and his visionary schemes. The canoe was now completed; it was tried on the pool and found to float exactly as it should. It had now to be conveyed to ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... unable to estimate the minimum of time required for the changes in physical geography above alluded to, we cannot fail to perceive that the duration of the period must have been very protracted, and that other ages of comparative inaction may have followed, separating the Pleistocene from the historical periods, and constituting an interval no less ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... had now passed away, and still no enemy had come to offer him battle. His men were becoming restless from inaction; and the example of the troublesome Independents had already begun to stir up discontent among them, which threatened, if not checked in season, to end in downright insubordination. As the surest remedy for these evils, Washington resolved to push forward ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... Fray Antonio, who saw in warfare only the wickedness and the cruelty of it, we all were most eager for our inaction to end, and for the battling to begin that would give us opportunity to let the life out of some of those by whom Pablo had been slain. It was with delight, therefore, that we noted the rapidity with which the preparations for the impending campaign ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... that the English Government had known much about the Afrikaner Bond menace, it is singular that precautionary measures had halted with that bare effort of making military observations. The only way to account for this apparent lethargic inaction is the assumption that a persevering patience and friendly attitude was expected in time to effectually dissipate all trouble in South Africa, and that a display of anxiety or of force would have frustrated such peaceable tactics. In refutation of the aspersion against England, it may be sufficient ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... of the expedition. Heavy floods kept Gessi confined in his camp during three months, and the lukewarm supporters of the Government regarded this inaction as proof of inferiority. They consequently rallied to Suleiman, who soon found himself at the head of a force of 6000 men, while Gessi had only 300 regulars, two cannon, and 700 almost useless irregulars. It was as difficult for him to let the Governor-General know that he ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... now, life seemed a shadow, day a white shadow; night, and death, and stillness, and inaction, this seemed like BEING. To be alive, to be urgent and insistent—that was NOT-TO-BE. The highest of all was to melt out into the darkness and sway there, ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... seems to be fast approaching. Our friend tells us all as yet looks well. Bonaparte is surrounded and hemmed in to the space of two leagues by troops marching from all sides. These, however, how strong soever they may be, appear to maintain a suspicious kind of inaction, and he continues his progress towards Grenoble. Every thing depends on the conduct of the troops there, under General Marchand. Their force is such, that if they continue firm, his project is ruined. On the contrary, if their ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... Several weeks of inaction had passed, the holidays were over, Winter had set in with all earnestness, and now we find Joe hurrying along, intent on the rescue of Reggie and his sister from ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... politics, and when of late the King, wishing to check so dangerous a tendency, had sought to know the reason why, she had answered with perfect frankness: "Max says" (for to her, also, Max, the man born to inaction, had been talking), "Max says he is not sure if he means to come to the throne. If he doesn't, it is just as well I should know something ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... contrary, had decided not to lose her advantage by inaction. Now that she had practically cowed him, she would follow up her work with demands, the acknowledgment of which would make her word LAW in the future. He would have to pay her the money which she would now regularly demand or there would be trouble. It did not matter what he did. ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... never hint at it when they were alone together except by the expression in his eyes? She asked herself why she was afraid of him, and the answer she seemed to get was that his reticence frightened her. There was something in his continued inaction which alarmed her. It was a silence of conduct which lay like a weight upon her. She felt it now as he ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... under the most despotic of infidel governments, did I behold such squalid wretchedness as I have seen since my return, in the very heart of a Christian country. And what are your remedies? After months of inaction, and months of action worse than inactivity, at length comes forth the grand specific, the never-failing nostrum of all state physicians from the days of Draco to the present time. After feeling the pulse, and shaking the head over the patient, prescribing the usual course of warm water ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... forward spring. The first was to lean and send a downward sweep of the dagger across the rope by which Shorty was leading the horse, and the second was a backward lunge that drove the knife deep into the bared throat of the Captain, stunned into momentary inaction by the suddenness ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... From its very inaction, idleness ultimately becomes the most active cause of evil; as a palsy is more to be dreaded than a fever. The Turks have a proverb, which says, that the devil tempts all other men, but that ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... mean to us all, and what an awful thing it was for Englishmen to be enrolled against each other. Nottingham Castle had just been burnt, and things looked only too like revolution, especially considering the inaction of the dragoons. After Griff had left Bristol, there had been some terrible scenes at the Custom House, where the ringleaders—unhappy men!—were caught in a trap of their ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life," He simply expressed a fact that cannot be negatived nor ignored. It is an actual, a positive law, as impossible to evade as the law of gravitation. One may refuse "the way, the truth, and the life," and wander in bewilderment and inaction; but he will never be able to achieve worthy work, or personal peace, until he accepts and lives by this law. As Professor Hilty so well says, this, alone, gives life an intelligent meaning. "As one ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... something," she answered. "If I wasn't looking well when you came in just now, it was because this inaction is bad for me. I want to do something!—something to help. If I could only ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... that the country after its great uprising should be content to give supplies and men without end while nothing apparently happened; and the spirit of the troops themselves might suffer more from inaction than from defeat. A further thought, while it made defeat seem more dangerous, made battle more tempting. There was fear that European Powers might recognise the Southern Confederacy and enter into relations with it. Whether they did so depended on whether they were confirmed ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... your hopes decrease, Dick," he said. "Remember that at least twenty per cent of the decline is due to the darkness and inaction. In the morning, when the light comes once more, and we're up and doing again, you'll get back all the twenty ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the incoming Congress. It is matter of regret that this work must be delayed for at least three months, for the threat of great tariff changes introduces so much uncertainty that an amount, not easily estimated, of business inaction and of diminished production will necessarily result. It is possible also that this uncertainty may result in decreased revenues from customs duties, for our merchants will make cautious orders for foreign goods in view of the prospect of tariff reductions and the uncertainty as to when ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... wore on, and no diminution of the firing, at the point where A.P. Hill and his adversary had so long kept up, Jackson and D.H. Hill undertook to relieve him. Longstreet, too, near nightfall, who had been held in reserve all day, now broke from his place of inaction and rushed into the fray like an uncaged lion, and placed himself between A.P. Hill and the river. For a few moments the earth trembled with the tread of struggling thousands, and the dreadful recoil of the heavy batteries that lined the crest of the hill from right to left. ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... commands a larger atmosphere, gives the impression of a grosser mass of character than most men. It has been said of him that his presence could be felt in a room you entered blindfold; and the same, I think, has been said of other powerful constitutions condemned to much physical inaction. There is something boisterous and piratic in Burly's manner of talk which suits well enough with this impression. He will roar you down, he will bury his face in his hands, he will undergo passions of revolt and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... other causes of suffering, Christophe bore his lot patiently. He had never been so patient. He was surprised at himself. Illness is often a blessing. By ravaging the body it frees the soul and purifies it: during the nights and days of forced inaction thoughts arise which are fearful of the raw light of day, and are scorched by the sun of health. No man who has never been ill can have a thorough ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... according to which the universal movement of all natural things is but one particular stage, or measure, of that ceaseless activity wherein the divine reason consists. The one true being—that constant subject of all early thought—it was his merit to have conceived, not as sterile and stagnant inaction, but as a perpetual energy, from the restless stream of which, [130] at certain points, some elements detach themselves, and harden into non-entity and death, corresponding, as outward objects, to man's ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... projects; he is at present in my neighbourhood, and I am obliged to keep myself still more on the alert, because the stations which I occupy extend from Seconnet Point, which you may see on the map, to Bristol. I hope all this will soon end, for we are now in a very tiresome state of inaction. ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... how dull every thing appeared to you yesterday; the ground was parched up for want of rain; the flowers had lost their colour, and hung their heads in languor; and, in short, all nature seemed to be in a state of inaction. What can be the reason, that nature has so suddenly put on such a different aspect?"—"That is easily accounted for, Sir," said Anthony, "it undoubtedly is occasioned by the rain that has ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... made many mistakes at Washington, and they are still making many. If it has been decided to conquer the Filipinos, then conquer them at once. Let the struggle not be drawn out and the drops of blood multiplied. The Republican party is being weakened by inaction at the Capital. If the war is not ended shortly, the party in power will feel the evil effects ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the campaign; how we felt that at last we had found in him a leader, bold and fearless, and that now, when the first real test of leadership came, it appeared that we were to be disappointed and that by his silence and inaction he would permit Senator Smith to win and allow Martine, the popular choice, to be defeated, thus setting aside the verdict of the election. He listened intently but without comment to all I had to say. Proceeding with my argument, I said: "The people of New Jersey accepted your word and, to ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... with frantic vehemence) Wild with adoration! Mad with fascination! To indulge my lamentation No occasion do I miss! Goaded to distraction By maddening inaction, I find some satisfaction In apostophe like this: "Sangazure immortal, "Sangazure divine, "Welcome to my ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... forced inaction, he could contemplate at leisure the features and form of his charmer. She was not one of the slender beauties of romance; she was as plump as a partridge; her cheeks were two roses, not absolutely damask, yet verging thereupon; her lips twin-cherries, of equal size; her nose regular, and almost ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... finish the work begun in the cells. It followed up the weakening of our bodies and minds, caused by the fourteen days' solitude and starvation, and was intended to complete the job with its deadly monotony and inaction. ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... full of relief, and I started round to obey him, glad to have an end to the terrible inaction, when, to my utter astonishment, I found Jack Penny, who was behind me, sitting with his legs dangling over the edge of the rocky shelf, and apparently within an inch or two of the water, while his shoulders were propped ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... windwheel. It was with a dark foreboding that she returned to the kitchen and turned on one of the taps. For perhaps three seconds a stream of the dimension of a darning-needle emerged, then with a sad gurgle the tap relapsed into a stolid inaction. There is no stolidity so utter as that ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... would venture to alter the destination of a force upon the despatch of which a Parliament has been dissolved, and a Government might have been superseded. It is not every man who would consign himself for many months to political inaction in order simply to serve the interests of his country. You have set a bright example at a moment of darkness and calamity; and, if India can be saved, it is to you that we shall owe its redemption, for nothing short of the Chinese expedition ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... without apprenticeship, without the example of others, they have within themselves, in the potential state, the industrial aptitude of their ancestors. If aroused by the stimulus of necessity, this aptitude will pass suddenly from inaction to action. When, therefore, the Sparrow still from time to time indulges in spherical building, this is not progress on his part, as is sometimes contended; it is, on the contrary, a retrogression, a return to the ancient customs, so prodigal of labour. He is behaving like the Osmia who, in default ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... the gravest importance that this question be solved before conflicting claims to the Presidency shall again distract the country, and I am persuaded that by the people at large any of the measures of relief thus far proposed would be preferred to continued inaction. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... forth To manifest his glory by its beams, Inhabiting his own eternity, Beyond time's limit or what bound soe'er To circumscribe his being, as he will'd, Into new natures, like unto himself, Eternal Love unfolded. Nor before, As if in dull inaction torpid lay. For not in process of before or aft Upon these waters mov'd the Spirit of God. Simple and mix'd, both form and substance, forth To perfect being started, like three darts Shot from a bow three-corded. ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... and struggled and sat up, and we both gazed. Out there the Sioux, in that world of their own, had aroused to energy. I fancied that they had palled of the inaction. At any rate they were upon their feet, several were upon their horses, others mounted hastily, squad joined squad as though by summons, and here came their outpost scout, galloping in, his blanket streaming from one hand like a banner of ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... productions for its existence must either starve or sleep. The sleep is in itself a first stage of the process of starvation. The creature that can sleep through an existence of four months without food, and lose the whole of its fat during that interval of inaction, has already lost all that supported life during the period of total abstinence—the fat, or carbon. If it were to begin another turn of sleep in its exhausted state, it would be unable to support ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... sortie and effect a capture if possible. Captain H——, the second captain of the British detachment, was selected to command the sortie, and with a small force of British marines who have been pining at their enforced inaction and dull sentry-go, and are jealous of the greater glory the others have already earned by their successful butchery of the enemy, a wall was breached and our men rushed out. Being off duty, I witnessed most of the affair. Of course, the sortie ended in failure, as every such movement ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... the elevated position which he occupied, the desperate battle being fought by the gallant Davout some two leagues away. Meanwhile he ordered his men to set up their bivouacs and to start preparing a meal. His generals complained to him in vain at this culpable inaction; Bernadotte would not budge, so that Marshal Davout, with no more than twenty-five thousand men, comprising the divisions of Friant, Morland and Gudin, faced almost eighty thousand Prussians animated by ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... second, that Russia shall be excluded from the loan; only by these means could they overcome the opposition of the German-Americans and the Jews. Our Jewish friends here are in no easy position. Their action, or rather inaction, takes the form of what is commonly known as 'egg-dancing,' or 'pussyfooting'; they wish to stand well with all sides, but have not the courage of their convictions, and are very anxious to make money. All this is very easily understood, when one remembers ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... shipboard to relieve the monotony of a voyage), but these were better unwritten since they added nothing to the poet's song and took nothing from the slave's burden. Longfellow has been criticized for his inaction in the midst of tumult, but possibly he had his reasons. When everybody's shouting is an excellent time to hold your tongue. He had his own work to do, a work for which he was admirably fitted; that he did not turn aside from it is to his credit ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... would suffice to beat back an army. In the face of these preparations, it seemed an act of madness to attempt the reduction of Quebec. But within defences so secure the ardent spirits of the Canadian troops were chafing at enforced inaction; for although diligently exercised by their commanders, they still had leisure to think of the homes they loved, where the corn would never ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... of the 20th a dense fog obscured everything; consequently both armies were passive so far as fighting was concerned. Rosecrans took advantage of the inaction to rearrange his right, and I was pulled back closer to the widow Glenn's house to a strong position, where I threw together some rails and logs as barricades, but I was disconnected from the troops on my left by ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... They did not agree with his philosophy of life, or even with many of his ideals. Often they did not understand him. But the action that he proposed was something tangible which could be understood and appreciated intellectually. Any action would be welcome after the long tradition of inaction which our spineless politics had nurtured; brave and effective action with an ethical halo about it had an irresistible appeal, both to the intellect and the emotions. Step by step he convinced us of the rightness of the action, and we went with him, although we did not ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... dulled from having been so long without exercise, and that the optic power was wholly retired into the other eye: for we evidently perceive that the eye we keep shut sends some part of its virtue to its fellow, so that it will swell and grow bigger; and so inaction, with the heat of ligatures and, plasters, might very well have brought some gouty humour upon ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... to the origin of the world. Moses, the confidant, the interpreter, the historian of the Deity, makes us (if we may use such an expression) witnesses of the formation of the universe. He tells us that the Eternal, tired of his inaction, one fine day took it into his head to create a world that was necessary to his glory. To effect this, he forms matter out of nothing; a pure spirit produces a substance which has no affinity to himself; although ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... inaction of the other Sioux at the base of the ridge was suggestive, and increased the suspicion of the young rancher. They were in a direct line with the one on the ground, so that Warren readily saw them without withdrawing his attention from ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... on the top of the cupola of the Life-Saving Station had had a busy night of it. With the going down of the sun the wind had continued to blow east-southeast—its old course for weeks—and the little sentinel, lulled into inaction, had fallen into a doze, its feather end fixed on the glow ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... what we can take in. The whole natural instinct here would be a cleansing, instant and radical, a correcting of the evil. Yet He waits. The purity would act through the authority; the authority restrains the purity. Love quietly, strongly holds both in check. This restraint, this inaction is tremendous. ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... complaints, Don John sent Escovedo to Spain. Redress was not granted, and his messenger never returned to him. The deadly correspondence between Perez and himself—the outpourings of an ardent and daring temper, swelling with lofty designs, and pining beneath an apparently irremediable inaction, into the ears of a frigid and false winnower of unguarded words and earnest feelings—was continued unremittingly. M. Mignet, it seems to us, shows very satisfactorily, that Perez, in his abominable office of an unjust interpreter of the wishes ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... servants of the people who has betrayed his fellow countrymen, is ex-Attorney General Lax. It was his masterful policy of inaction that permitted the trusts and monopolies to intrench themselves during the four years that he stood as their buffer, against all efforts of the several ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... revealed how hungry the people are for truth. The hope of the world lies in the middle class—the rich are as ignorant as the poverty-stricken. A way must be devised to reach the rich—I can do it. Inaction, idleness, that is the curse. Life is fluid, and only running water is pure. Stagnation is death. Turbulent Rome was healthy, but quiescent Rome was soft, feverish, morbid, pathological. Now, take Hamlet—what man ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... wished to render Claudet a service, he was still more desirous of respecting the feelings of his client; so, between the hostility of one party and the backwardness of the other, he chose the wise part of inaction. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... been otherwise; every event of life hath conspired to feed my early prepossessions; and, in this awful crisis of my fate, I have placed myself and my throne rather under the guardianship of spirits than of men. This alone has reconciled me to inaction—to the torpor of the Alhambra—to the mutinies of my people. I have smiled, when foes surround and friends deserted me, secure of the aid at last—if I bided but the fortunate hour—of the charms of protecting spirits, and the swords of the invisible creation. Thou wonderest ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tired of confinement and inaction. But now his trial came on, to his great gratification, and he thought he could welcome any sentence provided a further imprisonment should not be a part of it. But he was mistaken about that. He was in a fine fury when he found himself described as ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the Labour Party, represent, not the conflicting interests of certain economic classes, but the "conflicting views and temperaments" of individuals.[116] And the chief divisions of temperament and opinion, he says, will be between the world-old tendencies of action and inaction—a view which does not differ one iota ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling |
