"Slothful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is that, my most precious friend Anthony?" replied Lambourne; "for I swear by the pillow of the Seven Sleepers I will not be slothful ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... he receives little, does not despise what he has received, even the gods will praise him, if his life is pure, and if he is not slothful. ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... they are crossing a stream, the analog, though subtle, was felt to be real. Popular adages and proverbs are common modes of expressing such deep-lying analogies: for example, "Where there is smoke there is fire"; "The slothful man saith, There is a lion in the way." Poetry too is full of these subtle, pregnant similarities which link things in some one aspect, ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... was framed in imitation of the Eastern authors. Through this work I obtained a cursory knowledge of history and a view of the several empires at present existing in the world; it gave me an insight into the manners, governments, and religions of the different nations of the earth. I heard of the slothful Asiatics, of the stupendous genius and mental activity of the Grecians, of the wars and wonderful virtue of the early Romans—of their subsequent degenerating—of the decline of that mighty empire, of chivalry, Christianity, and kings. I heard of the discovery of ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... of happy dreams: the queen had received him kindly. He would place himself at the head of her party, and make it a popular one; he would protect her, and for her sake would abandon his slothful life, ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... father, and that out of them all the Lord had delivered him." This dedication ends thus: "My dear children, the milk and honey is beyond this wilderness. God be merciful to you, and grant you be not slothful to go in ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... no lions in the street; No lions in the way. Go seek the goal, thou slothful soul, ...
— New Thought Pastels • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... going to my house in the country, I shall want my papers, which I beg you therefore to return. You are slothful, and you help me nothing, so that I am half in conceit you affect not the argument; for myself I know well you love and affect. I can say no more, but non canimus surdis, respondent omnia sylvae. If you be not of the lodgings chalked ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... tied by all duties, both of a good patriot and of an unworthy kinsman, and of an obliged servant, to employ whatsoever I am to do you service. Again, the meanness of my estate does somewhat move me; for though I cannot excuse myself that I am either prodigal or slothful, yet my health is not to spend, nor my course to get. Lastly, I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends: for I have taken all knowledge to be my province; and if I could purge it of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with frivolous disputations, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... and minds the flock, she visits the forest to gather a little wood. As yet she has neither the hard work nor the ugly looks of the countrywoman as afterwards fashioned by the prevalent culture of grain crops. Nor is she like the fat townswife, heavy and slothful, about whom our fathers made such a number of fat stories. She has no sense of safety; she is meek and timid, and feels herself, as it were, in God's hand. On yonder hill she can see the dark frowning ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigor in the middle ages, which Reactionists so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man's activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... uncontrollable forces have ever created and will ever create. It has been reserved to railroad managers to demonstrate to the public that a power has been allowed to grow up which has assumed the right to counteract the dispensations of Providence, to enrich the slothful, to impoverish the industrious, to curtail the profits of remunerative industries and revive by bounties those languishing for want of vitality, to humble proud and self-reliant marts of trade and to build up cities in the desert. ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... always smoking with new ideas, which unfortunately never came to anything, Ferdinand Chebe was one of those slothful, project-devising bourgeois of when there are so many in Paris. His wife, whom he had dazzled at first, had soon detected his utter insignificance, and had ended by enduring patiently and with unchanged demeanor his continual dreams of wealth and the ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... of this sad deed, and absent far, Fierce Meleager, with the self-same fire Burn'd inward; all his vitals felt the flame Scorching conceal'd: th' excruciating pangs Magnanimous he bore. Yet deep he mourn'd By such a slothful bloodless fate to fall; And happy call'd Ancaeus in his wounds. With deep-drawn groans he calls his aged sire, His brother, sisters, and the nymph belov'd, Who shar'd his nuptial couch; with final breath, His mother too perchance. Now glows the fire, And now the pains increase; now both ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... are safe with us," I cried, and I left my meal unfinished, and went to the hidden cargo. Then and there I would find proper clothing for the Englishman. I had been slothful ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... ministering in sacred things, the apostle comes at once to the common, social and secular affairs into which we are to bring our consecration principles. We read: "Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honor preferring one another; not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... reveille echo through the stillness of the yet dark night. On an ordinary morning the reveille is practically negatived, and nobody thinks of stirring from between the blankets till the "warning" sounds quarter of an hour before the morning stable-time. But on this morning there is no slothful skulking in the arms of Morpheus. Every one jumps up, as if galvanised, at the first note of the reveille. For the fulfilment of a time-honoured custom is looked forward to—a remnant of the old days when the "women" lived in the corner of the barrack-room. ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... water is carried to every home in the city. We shall need a special class of students of GOD, men and women whose primary and absorbing interest it is to work out the spiritual life in all its purity and integrity."[2] It is indeed the idlest of criticism that condemns such people as slothful or selfish. ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... and night advanced; She sped as shod with wings; Each time and every time she danced - Reels, jigs, poussettes, and flings: They cheered her as she soared and swooped, (She'd learnt ere art in dancing drooped From hops to slothful swings). ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... yielded to the blandishments of the new life and drifted pleasantly before the breezes of luxury. The man who had been a bearded and Calvinistic countryman for almost a half-century became in less than a decade an ease-loving and slothful old gentleman, dapper of appearance, rosy of face ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... exploit. But all was false and hollow; though his tongue Dropped manna, and could make the worse appear The better reason, to perplex and dash Maturest counsels: for his thoughts were low— To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds Timorous and slothful. Yet he pleased the ear, And with persuasive accent thus began:— "I should be much for open war, O Peers, As not behind in hate, if what was urged Main reason to persuade immediate war Did not dissuade ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... mine, indirectness of speech nor a slothful gait when something has to be done were never accredited to me, and I determined to let the duke know exactly what I had heard, as well as my opinion of him in the business which he had stirred up. Turning toward him, with no introduction to the matter whatever, ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... in the way of His commandments, and to walk unfainting in the paths of duty. The fever of hot, passionate, foolish desires burns in the veins of us all with its poison. The paralysis of a will that is slothful to good infests and hinders us all. But there comes to us that great hope and promise that Christ has the Spirit of the Lord upon Him to bring liberty to the captive, sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, healing to the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... for this that Warren died, And Arnold sold himself to t' other side, Stark piled at Bennington his British dead, And Gates at Camden, Lee at Monmouth, fled?— For this that Perry did the foeman fleece, And Hull surrender to preserve the peace? Degenerate countrymen, renounce, I pray, The slothful ease, the luxury, the gay And gallant trappings of this idle life, And be more fit for one ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... notable exception, however, Japan. Never relaxing her grip on a complicated problem, watchful and active, where others were indifferent and slothful, Japan bided her time. Knowing that the hour had almost arrived when it would be possible to strike, Japan was vastly active behind the scenes in China long before the outbreak of the European war ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... extremely proper, it appears from experience, for the management of a mercantile project of this kind. But whether such a government us that of England, which, whatever may be its virtues, has never been famous for good economy; which, in time of peace, has generally conducted itself with the slothful and negligent profusion that is, perhaps, natural to monarchies; and, in time of war, has constantly acted with all the thoughtless extravagance that democracies are apt to fall into, could be safely trusted with the management of such a project, must at least ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... rewards of honour are taken away: that Virtuous Emulation is turned into direct Malice; yet so slothful, that it contents itself to condemn and cry down others, without attempting to do better. 'Tis a reputation too unprofitable, to take the necessary pains for it; yet wishing they had it, is incitement enough to hinder ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... they called. They were pulling the slothful creatures off each other, but as soon as they freed themselves from the pests, more fell from above or crept up from the mud. Piang had foreseen this difficulty and had supplied himself with a small gourd filled with cocoanut oil, strongly saturated with cinchona (quinine). ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... earth so much as a round with his fists on the slightest provocation. From this unpromising teacher, Edward took his first lessons in the useful art of shoemaking; and though he learned fast—for he was not slothful in business—he would have learned faster, no doubt, but for his employer's very drunken and careless ways. When Begg came home from the public-house, much the worse for whisky, he would first beat Tam, and then proceed upstairs to beat his wife. For three years young Edward lived under ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... came to a bench, Slothful's Friend by name, which had shrubs and plants round it, to screen those who sat there from the sun. But Christiana and the rest gave such good heed to what their guide told them, that though they were worn out with toil, yet there was not one of them that had so much as a wish to stop ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... our Lord calls the servant wicked and slothful who through pusillanimity refused to make use of the money. Moreover the Philosopher says (Ethic. iv, 3) that the fainthearted seem to be slothful. Now sloth is opposed to solicitude, which is an act of prudence, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... enough about transgression. They will certainly overpower him unless he resolutely opposes them and, as here stated, "puts to death the deeds of the body." To do this means a severe struggle, a battle, which never abates nor ceases so long as we live. The Christian dare never become slothful or negligent in this matter. He must arouse himself through the Spirit so as not to give place to the flesh. He must constantly put to death the flesh lest he himself be put to death by it. The apostle declares, "If ye live after ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... which is served at six in the evening, the time drags endlessly long and with intolerable monotony. And, in general, this daily interval is the heaviest and emptiest in the life of the house. It remotely resembles in its moods those slothful, empty hours which are lived through during the great holidays in scholastic institutes and other private institutions for females, when all the friends have dispersed, when there is much leisure and much indolence, and a radiant, agreeable tedium reigns ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... and said unto him, 'Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I did not scatter; thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the bankers, and at my coming I should have received back ...
— His Last Week - The Story of the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus • William E. Barton
... in this way. He was by nature slothful, and much of a vagabond, and yet he kept by the house, and not only waited upon my wants, but laboured every day in the garden or small farm to the south of the residencia. Here he would be joined by the peasant whom ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a complexion somewhat darker than a quince. The hair is smooth, and many anoint it with fragrant oils. They have large eyes and long eyelashes, which, with their eyebrows, they wear blackened. Their bodies are robust, and they are much given to war, but to all other employment they are slothful. They live long, grow gray early, and are always active, on sea no less than on land. Hospitable and kind to guests, they are importunate and insistent in their demands when they become familiar. They are full of self-interest in their dealings, and make use of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... were this life the utmost span, The only end and aim of man, Better the toil of fields like these Than waking dream and slothful ease. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... forces, like the ideas of Country and Humanity, War and Peace.... We are not sure which side to take; we lean first one way and then the other, like a see-saw; afraid of the effort needed to come to a decision and choose. What slothful cowardice is here! All whitewashed over with a comfortable faith in the goodness of things, which will, we think, settle themselves. And we continue to look on, and glorify the impeccable course of Destiny, paying court ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... exploit, But all was false and hollow, tho' his tongue Dropt manna, and could make the worse appear The better reason, to perplex and dash Maturest counsels, for his thoughts were low, To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds Tim'rous and slothful; ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... Capitol who did not advise the senate to ransom the state from the Gauls with gold; and these he would not concur in, because they had not been enclosed with a trench and rampart by the enemy, (who were remarkably slothful with respect to works and raising fortifications,) and because they might sally forth, if not without great danger, yet without certain destruction. Now if, in like manner as they had it in their power to run down from the Capitol in arms against their foe, as men besieged have often sallied ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... (rules), which it was your duty to agree to, and have you agreed to them? what teacher then do you still expect that you defer to him the correction of yourself? You are no longer a youth, but already a full-grown man. If, then, you are negligent and slothful, and are continually making procrastination after procrastination, and proposal (intention) after proposal, and fixing day after day, after which you will attend to yourself, you will not know that you are not making improvement, ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... air then passes with difficulty. His upper teeth overlapped each other, and this defect (which Lavater calls terrible) was all the more apparent because they were as white as those of a dog. But for a certain lawless and slothful good humor, and the free-and-easy ways of a rustic tippler, the man would have alarmed the least ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... suppose, and Alexander Graham Bell might have had a million bright ideas for all the good they would have done him. But at that golden period of our history, if an ambitious fellow like Watson wished to put in extra hours of work, the more slothful ones had no authority to stand over him with a club and say he shouldn't. Therefore the young apprentice toiled on with Mr. Bell, unmolested; and Charles Williams, the proprietor of the shop, was perfectly willing he should. One evening, when the two were alone, Mr. Bell remarked, ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... weary ordeal of waiting with him while the clock's slothful hands creep around the dial. We may skip the interval—as he would do ever so gladly if he only could—and see him that night as he climbs from his bedroom window, crawls down the woodshed roof, and drops from the low eaves to make his ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... duties imposed upon you; but be inspired to proclaim the principles of the heavenly kingdom with earnestness and courage, in the face of all perils, by fearing God, him who is able to plunge both your souls and your bodies in abomination and agony, him who, if you prove unfaithful and become slothful servants or wicked traitors, will leave your bodies to a violent death and after that your souls to bitter shame and anguish. Fear not the temporal, physical power of your enemies, to be turned from your work by it; but rather fear the eternal, spiritual power of your ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... effect upon the British army was to keep it quiet for several months. General Howe, who presently superseded Gage, was a brave and well-trained soldier, but slothful in temperament. His way was to strike a blow, and then wait to see what would come of it, hoping no doubt that political affairs might soon take such a turn as to make it unnecessary to go on with this fratricidal war. This was fortunate for the Americans, for when ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... acquired by every country workman who is obliged to change his work and his tools every half hour, and to apply his hand in twenty different ways almost every day of his life, renders him almost always slothful and lazy, and incapable of any vigorous application, even on the most pressing occasions. Independent, therefore, of his deficiency in point of dexterity, this cause alone must always reduce considerably the quantity of work which he is ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... ourangs, as far as I have been able to observe them, I may remark, that they are as dull and as slothful as can well be conceived, and on no occasion when pursuing them did they move so fast as to preclude my keeping pace with them easily through a moderately clear forest; and even when obstructions below ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... spread largely, there was very little evidence of real progress: everywhere were filth, fetishism, beggary, and reaction. The monument to Alexander II, the great emancipator, stood in the Kremlin, half finished; it has since, I am glad to learn, been completed; but this has only been after long and slothful delays, and the statue in St. Petersburg has not even been begun. It is well understood that one cause of this delay has been the reluctance of the reactionary leaders in the empire to glorify so radical a movement as the emancipation ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... "That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises. For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself, saying, Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee. And so after he had ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers
... this, which at the same time flatters a man's indolence and his vanity. For once, however, I repeat that I am not sorry to hear such a phrase in your mouth, Phdrus: I have heard it from you before; and I will frankly tell you that you ought to be ashamed of such a plea, which is becoming to a slothful intellect, but very unbecoming to yours. On this account, it gives me pleasure that you have at length urged it in a case where you will be obliged to abandon it. If that should happen, remember what I have said; and resolve never more to shrink effeminately from the toil of an intellectual ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... near the Cimmerians[49] a cave with a long recess, a hollowed mountain, the home and the habitation of slothful Sleep, into which the Sun, {whether} rising, or in his mid course, or setting, can never come. Fogs mingled with darkness are exhaled from the ground, and {it is} a twilight with a dubious light. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... living; and with all of them, whether fat or lean, the soul is more spoiled than the body. A superstitious respect keeps them cowed under their burden, or makes them cringe before their master. Servile, slothful, gluttonous, feeble, incapable of resisting adversity, if they have acquired the miserable skills of slavery, they have also contracted its needs, weaknesses and vices. A crust of absurd habits and perverse ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... down, with a militant despondency, "It'd be no use trying to do anything, even if you weren't so slothful and sedentary as you are! It moves in a vicious circle. Because material success is what the majority want, the majority'll go on wanting it. Hardy says somewhere that it's innate in human nature not to ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... never can deceive him, Is full of thousand sweets and rich content; The smooth-leaved beeches in the field receive him With coolest shades till noon-tide's rage is spent; His life is neither tost on boisterous seas Of troublous worlds, nor lost in slothful ease. Pleased and full blest he lives, when he ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... transmutation always being between things of the same kind of different degrees. Take the case of a Fearful man. By raising his mental vibrations along the line of Fear- Courage, he can be filled with the highest degree of Courage and Fearlessness. And, likewise, the Slothful man may change himself into an Active, Energetic individual simply by polarizing along the lines of the ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates
... discipline is replaced by British liberty, with its advantages to the individual and corresponding disadvantages for the State. Liberty implies the right to rise by honest endeavour, but does not exclude the possibility of a wilful surrender to slothful inactivity, e.g., the human flotsam and jetsam of British cities, the casual ward and similar institutions. These and other phenomena of life in our islands have aroused bitter contempt among Germans. ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... necessary for us to know. Thus the functions and the fates of animals are distributed to them, with a variety which exhibits to us the dignity and results of almost every passion and kind of conduct, some filthy and slothful, pining and unhappy; some rapacious, restless, and cruel; some ever earnest and laborious, and, I think, unhappy in their endless labor, creatures, like the bee, that heap up riches and cannot tell who shall ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... inactivity. They must mistake who give a material sense to the images of Heaven as a state of rest. If Christ's life represented Heaven, its peace is not slothful ease, but intense exertion. How He laboured in word and deed of virtue! He walked in coarse raiment from town to town, from city to city, from the dessert to the waves of the sea. His ministry was toil from the day of His baptism to the scene upon Calvary. And yet His life was peace. He expressed ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... estimated in 1675 at about four thousand individuals. In contact with the white man the Indian tended to deteriorate. He frequented the settlements often to the annoyance of the men and the dread of the women and children; he got into debt, was incurably slothful and idle, and developed an uncontrollable desire to drink and steal. Where the Indians were not a menace, they were a nuisance, and the colonies passed many laws concerning the Indians which were designed to meet the one condition as well as ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... Murcia, had given birth to more than three hundred writers, and above seventy public libraries were opened in the cities of the Andalusian kingdom. The age of Arabian learning continued about five hundred years, till the great eruption of the Moguls, and was coeval with the darkest and most slothful period of European annals; but since the sun of science has arisen in the West, it should seem that the Oriental studies have ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... her to frenzy and she wanted perfect quiet for calm reasoning. It took some time to plan her campaign that was already full started, and she now came forth from her chamber refreshed, the course of her slothful blood hastened; her eyes gleamed with impatience for action; her whole being changed, rejuvenated, filled with a new life. She came also with a full knowledge of all that had taken place in the interim of her absence from Katherine. She came ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... "Work while it is day, for the night cometh when no man can work." And Saadi, in one of his sermons (which is found in another of his books), recounts this beautiful fable, in illustration of the fortunes of the slothful and ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... of a great work is often the beginning of a great reaction. When the tension is slackened, the whole nature of the worker is relaxed, and the temptation to slothful self-indulgence is strong. God knows our frame, and mercifully times His manifestations to the moments of special need. So, when Solomon had finished his great task, 'the Lord appeared the second time, as He had appeared ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... merry-makings, not the less acceptable to Donald that they were void of expense. And there was the consciousness of superior skill; for the Highlander, a child amongst flocks, is a prince amongst herds, and his natural habits induce him to disdain the shepherd's slothful life, so that he feels himself nowhere more at home than when following a gallant drove of his country cattle in the ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... like slaves than wives; but my meaning is, they were not alike capable, ingenious, or industrious, or alike cleanly and neat. Another observation I must make, to the honour of a diligent application on one hand, and to the disgrace of a slothful, negligent, idle temper on the other, that when I came to the place, and viewed the several improvements, plantings, and management of the several little colonies, the two men had so far out-gone the three, that there was no comparison. They had, indeed, both of them as much ground laid out for ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... the city then mounted a barrel and made a ringing speech condemning the slothful foreigners, who have proven themselves a menace to the valley and its inhabitants. The feelings of the crowd were aroused to such an alarming extent that it was feared it would culminate in an attack on the ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... the interrogative pronouns often stand in construction as the antecedents to other pronouns: as, "He also that is slothful in his work, is brother to him that is a great waster."—Prov., xviii. 9. Here he and him are each equivalent to the man, and each is taken as the antecedent to the relative which follows it. "For both he that sanctifieth, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... ye are; and who but you for purity of religion! But I tell you, ye are but like Jehu the son of Nimshi, who broke down the house of Baal, yet departed not from the sins of Jeroboam. Even so ye eat not fish on Friday with the blinded Papists, nor minced-pies on the 25th day of December, like the slothful Prelatists; but ye will gorge on sack-posset each night in the year with your blind Presbyterian guide, and ye will speak evil of dignities, and revile the Commonwealth; and ye will glorify yourselves in your park of Woodstock, and say, 'Was it not walled in first of any other in England, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... the people of Orham had been slothful in the Lord's vineyard. They had allowed weeds to spring up and wax strong. They had been tried and ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... complaints were heard on all hands of the want of enterprise of the Hudson's Bay Company in not seizing the opportunities afforded by the charter. Its trade was lethargic, its traders were timid or slothful, its people possessed none of that audacity and adventure which had sent Frenchmen like Du Lhut and La Verendrye into the wilds intent on territory or trade. They yawned and were content with the trade which came their way. It seemed as though they smugly counted on their business ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... have not sowed, and gathering where you have not scattered, [25:25]and being afraid I went away and hid your talent in the earth; behold, you have what is yours. [25:26]And his Lord answered and said to him, Evil and slothful servant, you knew that I reap where I have not sowed, and gather whence I have not scattered? [25:27]And you ought then to have given my money to the brokers, and at my coming, I should have received my own with interest. [25:28]Take ...
— The New Testament • Various
... calls not for the life of ease, but for the life of strenuous endeavor. The twentieth century looms before us big with the fate of many nations. If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by and will win for themselves the domination of the world. Let us therefore boldly face ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... creature—prone to mirth, and not easily discontented if his indolence be not taxed too hardly, susceptible, too, of strong affection and fidelity to his master, as many recent events have shown—into a sullen, slothful, insolent savage, never remembering the past, except as a sort of vague excuse for the present indulgence of his brutal instincts, conscious that every man's hand is against him, without the meek patience of a pariah; but only venturing to retaliate ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... lightly say that fame Is nothing but an empty name? Whilst in that sound there is a charm The nerves to brace, the heart to warm, As, thinking of the mighty dead, The young from slothful couch will start, And vow, with lifted hands outspread, Like them to act a ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... Majesty's pressing duties at the present moment is not to look at the empire alone and judge carelessly by appearances, but to consider carefully the actual state of the whole world; to reform the inveterate and slothful habits induced during several hundred years, and to give ...
— The Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga
... the days be different: for if the folk be enthralled, what remedy save that they be set free? and if they have tried many roads towards freedom, and found that they led no-whither, then shall they try yet another. Yet in the days to come they shall be slothful to try it, because their masters shall be so much mightier than thine, that they shall not need to show the high hand, and until the days get to their evilest, men shall be cozened into thinking that it is of their own free will that they ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... tournaments and jousts; but most of their vassals were destitute of weapons, and cased in cuirasses of leather, or suits of armor almost consumed by rust. They were without discipline or animation; and their horses, like themselves pampered by slothful peace, were little fitted to bear the heat, the dust, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... that you've been here and this has happened," she said. "Harder! But better! Neither of us, for each other's sake, can have any more cheap thrills, slothful moments, ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... the trammels of the protective tariff. Ever since the Civil War they have waited for this emancipation and for the free opportunities it will bring with it. It has been reserved for us to give it to them. Some fell in love, indeed, with the slothful security of their dependence upon the Government; some took advantage of the shelter of the nursery to set up a mimic mastery of their own within its walls. Now both the tonic and the discipline of liberty and maturity are to ensue. There will be some readjustments of purpose and point of view. ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... righteousness," which means (as it was spoken to disciples, to those who have a Father in heaven, and not to those who were without), to seek to be more and more like God, to seek to be inwardly conformed to the mind of God. If these two things are attended to (and they imply also that we are not slothful in business), then do we come under that precious promise: "And all these things (that is, food, raiment, or anything else that is needful for this present life) shall be added unto you." It is not for attending to these two things ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... Paul warns, "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." 1 Cor 10, 12. We should heed such examples to teach us humility, that we may not exalt ourselves with our gifts nor become slothful in our use of blessings received, but may reach forth to the things which are before, as Paul says in Philippians 3, 13. They teach us not to believe that ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... slothful flies On the rotting fruit Have been seen to wear While crawling there Crape scarves, by eyes That were quick and acute; As did those that had pitched On the cows by the pails, And with flaps of their tails Were far ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... be obliged to attend the Privy Councils, and have no more time to hunt. Some persons thought he did this from motives of policy and to make the King believe he had no ambition; but I am persuaded it was from nothing but indolence and laziness; he loved to live a slothful life, and to interfere ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and on the table poured the glorious wave of wine, Then touched the topmost of the bowl with dainty lip and fine, And, egging on, to Bitias gave: nought slothful to be told The draught he drained, who bathed himself within the foaming gold; Then drank the other lords of them: long-haired Iopas then 740 Maketh the golden harp to sing, whom Atlas most of men Erst taught: he sings ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... to him. He declined it, thinking himself unworthy of so high a trust. The Bishopric continued vacant. Perhaps the candidates for it were few; certainly the emoluments were small; perhaps the patron was slothful—certainly he gave little attention to the Church. At length complaint was made to the King that the spiritual needs of the island were being neglected. The Earl was commanded to fill the Bishopric, and once again he offered it to his chaplain. Then Wilson yielded. He took possession ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... is rare in him. He has enthusiasm; and believe me, who am a phlegmatic person enough, that is the most precious quality in our times. We have all become insufferably reasonable, indifferent, and slothful; we are asleep and cold, and thanks to any one who will wake us up and warm us! It is high time! Do you remember, Sasha, once when I was talking to you about him, I blamed him for coldness? I was right, and wrong too, ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... that ruleth, with diligence; he that showeth mercy, with cheerfulness. 9 Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good. 10 In love of the brethren be tenderly affectioned one to another; in honor preferring one another; 11 in diligence not slothful; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord; 12 rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing stedfastly in prayer; 13 communicating to the necessities of the saints; given to hospitality. 14 Bless them that persecute you; bless, and curse not. 15 Rejoice ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... I to do with men, that they should hear my confessions- as if they could heal all my infirmities- a race, curious to know the lives of others, slothful to amend their own? Why seek they to hear from me what I am; who will not hear from Thee what themselves are? And how know they, when from myself they hear of myself, whether I say true; seeing no man knows what is in man, but the spirit of man ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... wore on; her face broadened, her florid complexion degenerated into a mottled red and purple. She was no prettier than her mother had been when she ridiculed her lover's eulogy of her mother's spiritual beauty. She had a hard life with her drunken, idle, slothful husband, who habitually imputed to her agency every evil that had ever befallen him, holding it to excuse him from all exertion to better their very poor estate, and whose affection had been easily kindled by her beauty ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... affiance and espousal of the soul wherein they may be released into a larger air, undelayed by the earthward longings and gradual initiations of seemingly happier men. Thus its servants do not decline into slothful service, but are strenuous always; raised above the acquiescence of use, they never know the cloying of fruition or suffer the barbarian conquest of indifference. Their soul is unaffected by material circumstance or misfortune, and illuminates their lives as often ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... vitality, that is true. The world as it now is cannot grow old. But a nation may grow old, may decay, and die. And the youth of a nation—its young people—carry with them its destinies. If there is in these more of wilfulness, of selfishness, of slothful and luxurious bias—less of energy, of gentleness, of kindness, of manliness, of purity—than there was in those who were young twenty—thirty years ago, then decrepitude is growing upon the nation. It is sinking. The sap of ...
— Is The Young Man Absalom Safe? • David Wright
... Scripture history on the one hand, and Greek or Roman history or legend (for both seem alike to him) on the other. Sloth, for instance, is exemplified by the Israelites who "thought scorn" of the promised land, and the slothful followers of Aeneas, who hung back from the conquest of Italy; while Mary going into the hill country with haste, and Caesar dashing into Spain are the chosen models of prompt response to the call of duty. So, again, at the very outset of the poem, we find St. Paul ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... ends. The doctrine, to say the best of it, can only serve to favour the indolence of man, while professing to furnish him with a compendious method of becoming wise and good, it supersedes the necessity of his own personal labours. Quitting therefore all these slothful and chimerical speculations, it is true wisdom to attach ourselves to what is more solid and practical; to the work which you will not yourself deny to be sufficiently difficult to find us of itself ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... peace of justice. There are kinds of peace which are highly undesirable, which are in the long run as destructive as any war. Tyrants and oppressors have many times made a wilderness and called it peace. Many times peoples who were slothful or timid or shortsighted, who had been enervated by ease or by luxury, or misled by false teachings, have shrunk in unmanly fashion from doing duty that was stern and that needed self-sacrifice, and have sought to hide from their own minds ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... the minute particulars of military order cannot be observed, even though the good of the service greatly depends upon a due observance of these forms. The soldiers grow negligent, and inattentive to cleanness and the exterior ornaments of dress: they become slovenly, slothful, and altogether unfit for a return of duty: they are tumbled about occasionally in ships and boats, landed and re-embarked in a tumultuous manner, under a divided and disorderly command: they are accustomed to retire at the first report of an ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... what may be reasonably exacted or demanded,... and then upon those charges and taxations to distinguish and present as it were in several columns what is extant and already found, and what is DEFECTIVE AND FURTHER TO BE PROVIDED. Of which provisions because in many of them, after the manner of slothful and faulty accomptants, it will be returned by way of excuse that no such are to be had, it will be fit to give some light OF THE NATURE OF THE SUPPLIES; whereby it will evidently appear that they ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... good things of life, leaving the issues of both to God, in the full assurance that what is good the Lord will give. 'Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.' In spirituals and in temporals, 'the hand of the diligent maketh rich.' Be 'not slothful in business, fervent ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... passion strong! heart weak with its own fire; O eyes of mine! not eyes, but living streams; O laurel boughs! whose lovely garland seems The sole reward that glory's deeds require; O haunted life! delusion sweet and dire, That all my days from slothful rest redeems; O beauteous face! where Love has treasured well His whip and spur, the sluggish heart to move At his least will; nor can it find relief. O souls of love and passion! if ye dwell Yet on ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... on thee, and thy advice!" said the pious hermit; "I tell thee, Sir Slothful Knight, that when I doff my friar's frock, my priesthood, my sanctity, my very Latin, are put off along with it; and when in my green jerkin, I can better kill twenty deer ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... the soft Mother of a slothful and pusillanimous people, is a neighbor Iland, antiently subjected by the Arms of Oceana; since almost depopulated for shaking the Yoke, and at length replanted with a new Race. But (through what virtues of the Soil, or vice of the Air, soever it be), they com still ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 42, Saturday, August 17, 1850 • Various
... of its actions (here below), can be comprehended.' The snake replied, 'By his own acts, man is seen to attain to one of the three conditions of human existence, of heavenly life, or of birth in the lower animal kingdom. Among these, the man who is not slothful, who injures no one and who is endowed with charity and other virtues, goes to heaven, after leaving this world of men. By doing the very contrary, O king, people are again born as men or as lower animals. O my son, it is particularly said in this connection, that the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... with cheerfulness. Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil, cleave to that which is good. Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love, in honour preferring one another: not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer; distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality. Bless them which ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... thought of his wickedness and his wasted time, and compared himself with the great men in the books who had been in similar evil straits,—with Marc Antony, with King Arthur in Gwendolen's enchanted castle, and with Geraint the strong but slothful,—rather far-fetched this last comparison,—and of all the rest. It was a grotesque variety, but amid it all he really suffered. And he would make good resolves and, for the moment, firm ones, and return to town when the dew was falling and the moonlight coming, and the tale was but retold. ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... your business," said the voice of that cold-hearted and slothful spirit which keeps us in our groove, "and you couldn't do anything, anyhow. Besides, he's abjectly in love with her: would there be any danger if it were ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... strained with any spot of defilement, went forth to His Father; and with what toil and pain and anguish He departed from the light of day, and what He had to suffer before He reached his Father's Kingdom. He also cried with a loud voice, that He might inflame the lukewarm and slothful to ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... consulship, priesthoods, and a name and position among Rome's greatest men, all of which he owed to no efforts of his own, but solely to his father's eminence.[226] Those who offered him the throne had not yet learnt to know him; and yet his slothful cowardice won from his soldiers an enthusiasm which the best of generals have rarely evoked. Still he had the qualities of candour and generosity, which without moderation are liable to prove disastrous. ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... but which, however, on this occasion, very much embarrassed them, as the delay produced by it repressed that ardour which, sometimes, is only to be kept up by continued action, and gave time to the timorous and slothful to spread their insinuations and propagate their cowardice. Some, whose fear was their predominant passion, were continually magnifying the numbers and courage of their enemies, and represented whole nations ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... milk and honey is beyond this wilderness. God be merciful to you, and grant 'that' you be not slothful to go in ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... a most cruel and unnatural neglect of your sister—your only living relative—in a deliberate relapse into slothful and vicious habits; in neglect of a most promising career which was already yours; in a contemptible willingness to live on your sister's income after gambling away your ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... King's plans. The States would move in exact harmony with him, neither before him nor after him, which was precisely what he wished. He complained bitterly to Aerssens, when he communicated the Advocate's despatches, of the slothful and timid course of the princes. He ascribed it to the arts of Leopold, who had written and inspired many letters against him insinuating that he was secretly in league and correspondence with the Emperor; that he was going to the duchies simply in the interest of the Catholics; that he was like ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... has been attracted to him from the very first; and with her he hopes to realize all that has been unknown to him of noble life in his own country. But the book does not end with its hero and heroine lapped in slothful content. For the heart of the maiden burns with sorrow for the toiling poor of the great European cities of which he has told her: to her this region has also the charm of "The Unexplored," and the book ends with a hint that she and her husband are about to wend their way, with a new gospel ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... be as it was in the beginning, O slothful son of Shiv! The flame shall die upon the altars and the prayer upon the tongue till ye become little Gods again—Gods of the jungle—names that the hunters of rats and noosers of dogs whisper in the thicket and among the caves—rag-Gods, ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... speaking, his own, but those of worthless friends who abuse his confidence, for we are told that it is the pernicious counsels of Titus Vinius and Cornelius Laco, the former depraved and profligate, the other slothful and incapable, which first lose him the popular favour and ultimately prove his ruin: "Invalidum senem Titus Vinnius et Cornelius Laeo, alter deterrimus mortalium, alter ignavissimus, odio flagitorum oneratum, contemptu inertiae destruebant." (Hist. I. 6 in.) Vitellius, ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... insuperable bar to his ambition of becoming, as he once beautifully expressed it, "the servant of posterity," he thus, in 1591, solicited the patronage of his uncle lord Burleigh: "Again, the meanness of my estate doth somewhat move me; for though I cannot accuse myself that I am either prodigal or slothful; yet my health is not to spend, nor my course to get: Lastly, I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends; for I have taken all knowledge to be my province; and if I could purge it of two sorts of rovers, whereof the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... the son of Milo[vs], had after a few years followed his father into exile, as he also could not grow accustomed to ruling with a Constitution. After him came Alexander, son of the assassinated Kara George. He was a cold, indifferent, slothful prince, and constantly the banished house of Obrenovi['c] was plotting to turn out this scion of the house of Kara George. But after sixteen years his people turned him out.... In the Banat the Serbs were going backward. ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... bred to war, He knew the battle's din afar, And joyed to hear it swell. His peaceful day was slothful ease; Nor harp, nor pipe, his ear could please Like the loud slogan yell. On active steed, with lance and blade, The light-armed pricker plied his trade - Let nobles fight for fame; Let vassals follow ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... they seem to be beasts sensitive to the cold, and this is a clear, bright, crystal morning, with a cool, northwest wind. So there lie these four black swine, as deep among the straw as they can burrow, the very symbols of slothful ease and sensuous comfort. They seem to be actually oppressed and overburdened with comfort. They are quick to notice any one's approach, and utter a low grunt thereupon,—not drawing a breath for that particular purpose, but grunting with their ordinary breath,—at the same time turning an observant, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... spot, and blameless.' If we are to be 'found in peace,' we must be 'found spotless,' and if we are to be 'found spotless' we must be 'diligent.' 'If that servant begin to say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; and to be slothful, and to eat and drink with the drunken, the lord of that servant will come in an hour when he is not aware.' On the other hand, 'who is that faithful servant whom his lord hath set ruler over his household? ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... not believe in this sort of thing—few do. Duplicity I despise. You are not a man of genius yourself, but you have led others to think you pretty smart, and you have succeeded in getting through the world thus far pretty easy. You are naturally slothful; in fact, I may say ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... knowledge and power can know and manage all things with as much ease as we can understand and order any one thing; so that this objection is grounded upon a low and false apprehension of the Divine nature, and is only fit for Epicurus and his herd, who fancied to themselves a sort of slothful and unthinking deities, whose happiness consisted in their laziness, and a ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... is past; a cheerless melancholy gloom hangs heavily over nature. Fast sink the spirits; for painful is the change to those who have witnessed the joyous animation of the morning. The more active animals roam wildly about, seeking to allay the cravings of hunger and thirst; only the quiet and slothful, who have taken refuge in the forest, seem to have no apprehension of the dreadful crisis. But it comes! it rushes on with rapid strides, and we shall certainly have it here. The temperature is already lowered; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... laugh. It is a great deal too true of—I will not venture to say what percentage of—the professing Christians of this day. Work at your religion. That is the great lesson of my text. Endeavour with confidence of success. The Book of Proverbs says: 'He that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster,' and that is true. A man that does 'the work of the Lord negligently' is scarcely to be credited with doing it at all. Dear friends, young or old, if you name the name ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... times have adulterated her form, restore her to her primitive habit, feature, and majesty, and render her worthy to be embraced and kist of all the great and master-spirits of our world. As for the vile and slothful, who never affected an act worthy of celebration, or are so inward with their own vicious natures, as they worthily fear her, and think it an high point of policy to keep her in contempt, with their declamatory and windy ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... which to defend himself instead of the short sword which had been taken from him, and he came upon a stout staff, thrown into one corner, and by the aid of this he held those two monsters at bay for a whole night and day. By this time the dragons, who had been weakened by a slothful life and the flesh of many prisoners, were too weak to resist any longer, and fell an easy prey to the strong arm ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... pessimist, a morose brooder, for whom life contained no beautiful illusions. He gets up from his couch in the night to question the right of God to create man for suffering. He is answered by Lucifer, who proclaims himself the benefactor of the family in having rescued them from the slothful existence of Eden and given them a Redeemer. The devil discourses on the delightful ministrations of that Redeemer, whose name is Death. In the morning Abel arises and as he offers his sacrifice he hymns the sacred mystery of life and turns a deaf ear to ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... also has those who hate him and fear him, men of Athens, and envy him too, even among those who now seem to be his closest friends. All the feelings that exist in any other body of men must be supposed to exist in Philip's supporters. Now, however, all such feelings are cowed before him: your slothful apathy has taken away their only rallying point; and it is this apathy that I bid you put off to-day. {9} Mark the situation, men of Athens: mark the pitch which the man's outrageous insolence has reached, when he does not even ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... a dreamer, and acquired an indisposition to all bodily activity; and I was fretful, and inordinately passionate; and as I could not play at anything, and was slothful, I was despised and hated by the boys: and because I could read and spell, and had, I may truly say, a memory and understanding forced into almost unnatural ripeness, I was flattered and wondered at by all the old women. And so I became very vain, and despised ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... and after Christ, and England from the eighth to the tenth centuries. Such a life made the Norsemen adventurous, hardy, warlike, independent, and quick of action, while the Celts were by nature more slothful and fond of peaceful social gatherings, though of quicker ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... condition can it exist. Then, sir, disunion is inevitable. It is not going to stop with the seven States that are out. No, sir; my word for it, unless you do something more than is proposed in this proposition, old Virginia will go out too—slothful as she has been, and tardy as she seems in appreciating her own interests and her rights, and kind and generous as she has been in inviting a Peace Congress to agree upon measures of safety for the Union. The time will come, however, ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... Ps. 41, apud Marten. t. 9, p. 71.) Amidst the dangers and evils of this life, our only comfort ought to be in God, in the assured hope of his promises, and in prayer. (Ib.) That prayer is despised by God, which is slothful and lukewarm, accompanied with distrust, distracted with unprofitable thoughts, weakened by worldly anxiety and desires of earthly goods, or fruitless, for want of the support of good works, (in Ps. liv. p. 104.) All our actions and discourses ought ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you," Phil. iv. 9. "Be not slothful, but imitators of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises," Heb. vi. 12. "Whose faith imitate, considering the end of their conversation," Heb. xiii. 7. "Take, my brethren, the ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... believe that the immortal Gods had made them all expressly and solely for the benefit and advantage of men. Against these opinions Carneades has advanced so much that what he has said should excite a desire in men who are not naturally slothful to search after truth; for there is no subject on which the learned as well as the unlearned differ so strenuously as in this; and since their opinions are so various, and so repugnant one to another, it is possible that none of them ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... back was turned, the men he had set to watch fell asleep and let the Swedish admiral steal out into the open. There he found and joined the Dutch ships that had slipped around the Skaw during the rumpus. Together they overwhelmed the Danish fleet, being now three to one, and crushed it. The slothful admiral paid for it with his life, but the harm was done. It was the last and heaviest blow. The old King sheathed his sword and set his name to a peace that took from Denmark some of her ancient provinces, with the bitter sigh: "God ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... the vain Deity, and to shut the gates of Argos against his approach; and shall this stranger affright Pentheus with all Thebes? Go quickly, (this order he gives to his servants), go, and bring hither in chains the ringleader. Let there be no slothful delay ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... am I grown helpless of my hands? Or else what folk, with words enwrought with guile Thine ears have poisoned; that when far-off lands My fame might fill, by thy most strange commands I needs must stay within this slothful home, Whereto would God ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... pets. I value them, for they teach me self-denial and self-restraint; they rouse me at an hour when I might otherwise be lost in slothful sleep; and they assure me that there is a sphere in which taxes and politics really do not matter in the slightest. Some day, I suppose, they will grow up. What will become of their talents in the world of men it is beyond me to imagine. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... would be induced to devote their energies, and some of their means, to the improvement of the condition of the peasantry. This expectation was not realized: the younger Zemindars especially, subject to no restraint (except from aggressions on their neighbours), fell into slothful habits, and the collecting of the revenue became a trading speculation, entrusted to "middle men." The Zemindar selects a number, who again are at liberty to collect through the medium of several sub-renting classes. Hence the peasant suffers, and except a generally futile ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... slothful, the many foolish, the many timid, and the not few treacherous rulers, statesmen, and generals of different nations with whom he had to deal, there were two men, eminent both in ability and integrity, who entered fully into Marlborough's ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... which he translates, the one which first arrested his curiosity, he is taught the duties of hospitality; yes, by means of an inscription in the language of a people who have scarcely an idea of hospitality themselves, God causes the slothful man to play a useful and beneficent part in the world, relieving distressed wanderers, and, amongst others, Lavengro himself. But a striking indication of the man's surprising sloth is still apparent in what he omits to do; he has learnt Chinese, the most difficult ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... practice was promulgated, is it not written that in no department of the human want, 'can those noble effects, which God hath set forth to be bought as the price of labour, be obtained as the price of a few easy and slothful observances?' ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... youngsters displayed traits almost absolutely opposite; the elder, Manuel, was of a frivolous, slothful, indolent disposition, and would neither study nor go to school. He was fond of romping about the fields and engaging in bold, dangerous escapades. The characteristic trait of Juan, the younger brother, was a morbid sentimentalism that would ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... so, be so loved, yet so mistaken! 5 What had I on earth to do With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly? Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... when such a belief existed, was the good to be rewarded a moral good, or the evil to be punished a moral evil. Skilful hunters, brave warriors, men of influence and consideration, went, after death, to the happy hunting-ground; while the slothful, the cowardly, and the weak were doomed to eat serpents and ashes in dreary regions of mist and darkness. In the general belief, however, there was but one land of shades for all alike. The spirits, in form and feature as they had been in life, wended their way through dark forests to the ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman |
