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Apathy   /ˈæpəθi/   Listen
Apathy

noun
(pl. apathies)
1.
An absence of emotion or enthusiasm.
2.
The trait of lacking enthusiasm for or interest in things generally.  Synonyms: indifference, numbness, spiritlessness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Apathy" Quotes from Famous Books



... in the clearer and lighter atmosphere of the contemporary social novel. We have left behind the theoretic enthusiast, perplexed by the contrast between the semi-barbarism of the country and the old-fashioned apathy of its rulers; we have no more descriptions, serious or sarcastic, of rakish subalterns and disorderly regiments under ancient, incapable colonels; we are introduced to a reformed Anglo-India, full of hard-working, efficient officers, civil ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

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

... in full measure—indifference for indifference, ice for ice, gallantly matching her woman's pride against his deliberate apathy, but inwardly she writhed at the remembrance of that day on the island, when, in the stress of her terror for his safety, she had let him see into ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... funeral pyre. Without a scruple do thou avoid those men that are sceptics, that are destitute of compassion, and that are devoted to wicked ways, and do thou endeavour to seek, without listlessness or apathy, that which is for thy highest good. When, therefore, the world is thus afflicted by Death, do thou, with thy whole heart, achieve righteousness, aided all the while by unswerving patience. That ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... of worldlings, where Souls rust in apathy, and ne'er A great emotion shakes the air, And life flags tame, And rare is noble ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... balance, to the muscles as well as the spirits of their proprietors. The society of monsters was also generally shunned, and a cow with five legs gave milk from the top of her back to an audience of not more than six persons. The public apathy had visibly wrought upon the temper of the gentleman who lectured upon this gifted animal, and he took inquiries in an ironical manner that contrasted disadvantageously with the philosophical serenity of the person who had a weighing-machine outside, and whom I saw sitting in ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... habits, to their physical organisation, or the influence of those around them. They were mere human butchers, with the only adjunct that, now that the trade was to be exercised upon themselves, they could bear it with sullen apathy—a feeling how far removed from true fortitude! Even Hawkhurst, though more commanding than the rest, with all his daring mien and scowl of defiance, looked nothing more than a distinguished ruffian. With the exception of Francisco, the prisoners had wholly neglected ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat

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

... Vehmgericht—was none other than the Palace Hotel, the world's greatest caravanserai, served by lifts and lit with electricity; where, in the great glazed court, a band nightly discourses music from a grove of palms. So do extremes meet in this city of contrasts: extremes of wealth and poverty, apathy and excitement, the conveniences of civilisation and the red justice of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... death, by stretching the powers of human sufferance until the mind cracks under them, it is said sometimes to return these pitiable creatures maniacs—exulting in the laugh of madness, or sunk for ever in the incurable apathy of religious melancholy. I mention this now, to exhibit the purpose for which these calamities are turned to account, and the dishonesty which is exercised over these poor, unsuspecting people, in consequence of their occurrence. The pilgrims, being thus aroused at midnight are sent ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... towards Jerusalem. It was an epoch in His ministry. The hostility of the priestly party in the capital had become more pronounced, and simultaneously the fickle enthusiasm of the Galilean crowds, which had been cooled by His discouragement, had died down into apathy. He and His followers are about to leave familiar scenes and faces, and to plunge into perilous and intrude paths. He is resolved that, if they will 'come after Him,' as He bids them in a subsequent verse, it shall be with their eyes open, and as ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... no delight from these things. He walked onward in silent apathy, and looked at Miriam with strangely half-awakened and bewildered eyes, when she sought to bring his mind into sympathy with hers, and so relieve his heart of the burden that lay ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... some individuals who find the oath to be a confession of defeat and a declaration of submission too humiliating and too repugnant to their feelings. It is to be expected that the former will gradually overcome their apathy, and the latter their sensitiveness, and that, at a not remote day, all will have qualified themselves, in point of form, to resume the right of citizenship. On the whole, it may be said that the value of the oaths taken in the ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz

... widespread subterfuge at the recruiting level. Far more likely is the explanation offered by Under Secretary Kimball, that the black community distrusted the Navy.[16-74] First apparent in the 1940's, this distrust lasted throughout the next decade as young Negroes continued to show a general apathy toward the Navy, which at times turned into open hostility. In September 1961 the Chief of Naval Personnel reported that recruiters were not infrequently being treated to "booing, hissing and other disorderly conduct" when they tried ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... canto of Childe Harold was published on the 28th of April 1818. Nearly three months went by before Murray wrote to him, and he began to think that his new poem was a failure. Meanwhile he completed an "Ode on Venice," in which he laments her apathy and decay, and contrasts the tyranny of the Old World with the new birth of freedom in America. In September he began Don Juan. His own account of the inception of his last and greatest work is characteristic but misleading. He says (September 9) that his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... World, whether in England, Scotland, or Ireland, in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Russia, or farther East and farther South over the earth, you will find the great masses, on the land or in the workshops, still sunk in vast ignorance, apathy, and irresponsibility. Only here and there among those I have mentioned, and notably among the smaller peoples of Western Europe, like Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, and Sweden, are the masses beginning to stir, as it were, towards the daylight. It can only be ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter

... Society, in his speech at its formation, recommended them to be kept "in the lowest state of ignorance and degradation, for (says he) the nearer you bring them to the condition of brutes, the better chance do you give them of possessing their apathy." ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... which prevented my walking, my children had been suffering from ophthalmia brought by the Egyptians, and Laura was in a state of extreme mental depression from her sympathy with the Cretans, while the absolute apathy prevailing in the island made me useless to either side. It was most gratifying to me that A'ali Pasha recognized my good faith and comprehension of the position, for not only did he, before he left the island, give me ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman

... forming the new service, which was to do much to assist the Army in saving England, was begun. The time was very short. A great energy had to be brought to the work. As with all things new, it had to contend with apathy and opposition on all sides. There was no precedent to help. The organization of the Corps to its smallest detail of technical stores, supply and transport had to be thought out. The type of machine required; the method of obtaining ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes

... and, it almost seemed, deliberate treachery of Kutusow that, for the most part, he accompanied General Benningsen, who was a prompt and dashing soldier, and who, with the whole of the Russian generals, was as furious with the apathy and delays of the worn-out old man who was in command, as they had been with those of Barclay. The English general still acted as the Emperor's special representative, and kept him fully acquainted with all that was going on. Alexander was as ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty

... word. He had no shred of authority, but not the slightest attempt had been made to call his bluff. It had been, in fact, a painful walk-over. The seven labourers seemed to expect a death-blow. When it fell, they met it with the apathy of despair. Every felt as though he were sentencing a bunch of forest ponies to the pits, and the dumb hopelessness of their demeanour ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... debt and yearly charge, an extravagant system of expenditure and an unjust tariff, with restricted markets whether to buy or to sell.... It has left us with lowered standards of public virtue and a death-like apathy in public opinion, with racial, religious, and provincial animosities rather inflamed than soothed.... It has left us with our hands tied, our future compromised.' A preference in the English market ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton

... and tastes of different nations act and re-act upon each other. Western peoples have carried eastward their civilisation and their fashions, influencing Arts and industries, with their restless energy, and breaking up the crust of Oriental apathy and indolence; and have brought back in return the ideas gained from an observation of the associations and accessories of Eastern life, to adapt them to the requirements and ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield

... wetting. But as Carlia fell, he sprang forward. The water at this point was quite deep and running swiftly. He saw that Carlia fell on her side and went completely under. The children screamed. Dorian, startled out of his apathy, suddenly ran to the canal and jumped in. It was done so impulsively that he still held on to his package of books. With one hand he lifted the girl out of the water, but in her struggles, she knocked ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson

... self-government. But most Southerners preferred the rule of the army to the alternative reign of the carpetbagger, scalawag, and Negro. The extreme radicals at the North, on the other hand, were disgusted at the conservative policy of the generals. The apathy of the whites at the beginning of the military reconstruction excited surprise on all sides. Not only was there no violent opposition, but for a few weeks there was no opposition at all. The civil officials were openly unsympathetic, and ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming

... careering over their heads during its testing trials, and as a matter of course they had heard more than scraps in regard to its wealthy owner. But nowadays keen desire to know and to investigate has given place to a sort of civil apathy which passes for good form—that absolute indifferentism which is too much bored to care about other people's affairs, and which would not disturb itself if it heard of a neighbour deciding to cross the Atlantic in a ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli

... gymnoti, which are animated electrical apparatuses. I was impatient, from the time of my arrival at Cumana, to procure electrical eels. We had been promised them often, but our hopes had always been disappointed. Money loses its value as you withdraw from the coast; and how is the imperturbable apathy of the ignorant people to be vanquished, when they are not excited by ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... when she had recovered her breath, "but you must make the best time you can through these woods to-night, keeping the wind to your back, until you come to the Wingdam road. There! do you hear?" said M'liss, a little vexed at her companion's apathy. ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... a charter, but, my good sir, as they possessed no powers under the constitution to confer taste or talent, and possessed none of those feelings which prompt to patronage, they gave none to the infant academy.... The institution was allowed from apathy and opposition to die; but Mr. Poinsett and myself with a few others have purchased, with a hope of reviving, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... a score more of other similar abominations, have usurped the place of the king of games. What is to be done to arrest the progress of this indifferentism?—how are we to awaken men out of the stupor of this apathy? Have they never heard of the terrible warning of Talleyrand to his friend who could not play, as he said, "Have you reflected on the miserable old age that awaits you?" How much of human nature that would otherwise be unprofitable can be made available ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever

... main thought is the amount of the wage to be received. Consequently there is but one obvious result. The hours are excessive, the work is beyond the boy's strength or is hazardous, and finally the lad withdraws without notice. It is this general apathy on the part of the parents of a boy, combined with over-zealousness on the part of an ordinary employer to secure boy labor for a mere trifle, that accounts for the ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... he went on. "That is hard work, if you like. I have gone a four months' tour without missing a night. It takes it out of one terribly. But it is very paying work. In the South of England I have made as much as L300 a week. My friends tried to frighten me as to the apathy of my Scotch audiences; as a matter of fact, I have no better audiences anywhere. I like performing to country audiences. I am never nervous as I am apt to be at St. James's, where there are a number of my friends. And it is on my country tours that I have many curious experiences. Amateurs ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various

... ten years ago, his cousin anticipated great things from him. She saw his strong points as well as his weaknesses, and, being by some years his senior, hoped to mould him to her will. Alas! it was like beating against a stone wall—a wall of indifference and apathy. ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy

... draught," muttered the old soldier irascibly, while he picked up his alpaca coat from the balustrade, and slipped into it before going out upon the front porch into the possible presence of ladies. His usually cheerful face was clouded, for his habitual apathy had deserted him, and he had reached the painful decision that when you looked things squarely in the face there was precious little that was worth living for—a conclusion to which he had been brought ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... country, while the Clericals were even more enthusiastic. But there was hardly a trace of anti-Turkish feeling; it was simply that the people, rejoiced at having awakened from the long nightmare of political apathy and international servility, had thrown off the grinding and degrading yoke of Socialist tyranny, and risen to a dawn of higher ideals of national dignity. Italy had at last asserted herself. The extraordinary efficiency, speed, and secrecy with which the expedition ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... it! our gratitude, our faith, our piety. In one way only can we discharge our duty to the rest of mankind—by the purity and elevation of character that shall distinguish us as a people. If we sink into luxury, vice, or moral apathy, our brightness will be lost, our prosperity deprived of its vital element, and we shall appear disgraced before man, ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... accomplished nothing. Before a day or two he had wiped off the ill results of his discomfiture, and, to all appearance, stood as high as ever. As for my Lord Durrisdeer, he was sunk in parental partiality; it was not so much love, which should be an active quality, as an apathy and torpor of his other powers; and forgiveness (so to misapply a noble word) flowed from him in sheer weakness, like the tears of senility. Mrs. Henry's was a different case; and Heaven alone knows what he found to say ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... already chosen your life's path, and it lies apart from mine. Let me go quietly away." His voice was toneless, passionless. His fight of two days and two nights had left him exhausted. His apparent apathy chilled her to the heart. It was a supreme moment in their lives, and yet she could not fan her soul's fires into flame. He was tearing up the roots of his love out of her life, but there was no acute sense of laceration. The inevitable ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor

... an improvement in the condition of the people generally. They are eager for education. Instead of the apathy and incredulous laugh which the mention of the Word formerly brought, the cry from all parts is for teachers; and there is a disposition to be friendly to any one who will help them towards a higher plane of living. But it brings vividly ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... towards those branches of the great subject which were, so to speak, just outside the field of recognised scientific inquiry—such, for instance, as Thought-Transference and Hypnotism. In this course there was doubtless a certain amount of wisdom, but to it was due the apathy and the ultimate secession of a few members who took great interest in the formation of the Society. Chief among these was W. Stainton Moses himself. In November 1886 he withdrew from the Society, considering that the evidence of phenomena ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett

... of Crowe would once more restore faith to the people in constitutional resources, and would save them from the cynicism and apathy which might require a revolutionary movement to rouse them once more to hope and action. And thus in fighting against Crowe, Mat now felt as if he were fighting not merely for his country, but ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various

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

... a time! You are a study to me, Miss Harz; yours is not apathy, like mine, but true courage, even in this death-struggle, and I will save you if I can, for ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... to those burning lenses which Lenhenhoeck and others composed from ice; by their chilling apathy they freeze the suppliant; by their fiery ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

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

... deliberately advocated in print[3]; and which it was now hinted were formidably maintained, and would be found hard to answer. Astonished, (not by any means for the first time in my life,) at the apathy which seemed to prevail on questions of such vital moment, I determined at all events not to be a party to a craven silence; and denounced from the University pulpit with hearty indignation that whole system of ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... Intellectual apathy, one would naturally suppose, must be the consequence of such sedulous oversight, and intellectual progress impossible. Progress in scientific knowledge was, indeed, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair

... has been rather small. Seeing that deformed feet add fifty or a hundred per cent, to the social and matrimonial value of a Chinese female, one cannot help applauding the enterprise of the people in this district as compared to the apathy existing on the same subject in some others. The comparative poverty of their clayey undulations has doubtless awakened them to the opportunities of increasing values in other directions. Hence they ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... belief expressed in many standard works. "The helpless apathy of Asiatics" is a favorite phrase of Macaulay. "Man is but a weed in those vast regions," says DeQuincey. "In Asia there are no questions, only affirmations," says another philosopher. And no amount of experience seems to shake the ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter

... special festivity on the island, and the other inhabitants took very little notice of what was happening. They were perhaps, as Michael Kane said, too sleepy to be stirred with excitement. But in spite of the general apathy, Miss Clarence was fairly well satisfied with her experience. She felt that she had a really novel subject for the first of her articles on the life and customs of ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham

... of the Porch advise, As modes of being great and wise, That we should cease to own or know The luxuries that from feeling flow; "Reason alone must claim direction, "And Apathy's the soul's perfection. "Like a dull lake the heart must lie; "Nor passion's gale nor pleasure's sigh, "Though Heaven the breeze, the breath, supplied, "Must curl the wave or ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... approach with a degree of calmness, almost of apathy, which was only explicable on the ground that after a certain point Nature applies her own anaesthetic, and a merciful condition of numbness supervenes. On they came, step by step, nearer and nearer, with the shuffling sound of the burden behind ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... overlook the fact that the influence of circumstance on a community is a powerful factor in raising its tone. A cause that catches the popular feeling will often rouse a potentially capable nation from apathy into action. A good officer, backed by adequate supplies of food and with funds for the regular payment of his troops, will change a regiment even of ill-developed louts and hooligans into a fairly smart and well-disciplined corps. But with better material as ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... any one hear such shocking apathy? In answer to my reproaches for not telling me, he only said, "Why, what could you have done with it if you had known? Taken it off and put it in your ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... but to place every truly historical monument under national protection. Individual efforts may answer here and there, and a right spirit may be awakened from time to time by local societies; but during intervals of apathy mischief is done that can never be mended; and unless the damaging of national monuments, even though they should stand on private ground, is made a misdemeanor, we doubt whether, two hundred years hence, any enterprising explorer would be as fortunate as Mr. Layard ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... himself. On the eighth day after Edward's death, the fourth after the proclamation of Lady Jane, he rode gloomily from London at the head of a force which he mistrusted, without a plaudit from the populace which, for all its Protestantism, listened with apathy two days later to the declamations of Ridley at St. Paul's Cross. Northumberland was hardly on his way before news came that the crews of the fleet had compelled their captains to declare for Mary. He had not advanced far before his own followers in effect followed ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... my companions. In any case, when I saw my familiar companion, Carib, nearly carried off, I remained indifferent, and it was only after two others of my followers, Manuel and Michel, had had very narrow escapes, that I succeeded in shaking off my apathy, ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... prone to blunder in affairs of war The art of ruling the world by doing nothing The slightest theft was punished with the gallows The pigmy, as the late queen had been fond of nicknaming him Their existence depended on war There are few inventions in morals There was apathy where there should have been enthusiasm There is no man fitter for that purpose than myself They were always to deceive every one, upon every occasion They had come to disbelieve in the mystery of kingcraft They liked not such divine right nor such gentle-mindedness ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... that very moment, Charles the Bold, throwing off his apathy, was marching upon Lorraine, with a small army which he had hastily collected. On the 22d of October, 1476, he reached Nancy, which was once more besieged. At his approach, Duke Rene left the town, but left it well ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris

... impressed me at the time. Nothing seemed real to me. Startled, now and then, into admiration or wonder, my apathy fell from me like a garment, and my heart throbbed again as of old. But this was seldom—so seldom that I could almost count the times ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... in any mood of tender pathos. What strikes its chronicler most is the general demoralization of the town. Except for a few saints and poets, whom he acclaims with a lyric ardor, the population is sunk in greed and hypocrisy and—as if this were actually the worst of all—complacent apathy. Spiritually it dwindles and rots; externally it clings to a pitiless decorum which veils its faults and almost makes it overlook them, so great has the breach come to be between its practices and its professions. Again and again its poet goes back to the heroic founders ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren

... slave-trade was frightful," says he; "but its prey were savages, accustomed to suffering and misery, and to endure them with patience almost amounting to apathy. The victims of the American slave-trade have been bred in a highly-cultivated community. Their dispositions have been softened, their intellects sharpened, and their sensibilities excited, by society, by Christianity, and by all the ameliorating but enervating influences of ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... merry, and hers the laugh. She saw my look on her and laughed again, raising her finger to her lips in a swift stealthy motion. She glanced round apprehensively, but her action had passed unnoticed; the Duke of York seemed sunk in a dull apathy, Clifford and Arlington were busy in conversation. What did she mean? Did she confess that I held their secret and impose silence on me by a more than royal command, by the behest of bright eyes and red lips which dared me to betray their confidence? On the moment's impulse I bowed assent; Madame ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope

... conspirator with his boar-spear. But he held back at first, waiting a fresh command, until seeing that none came, and that the unknown opponent was pressing his lord hard; while the gladiators, apparently encouraged by his apathy, were beginning to handle their weapons, he shifted his spear in his hands, and stepping back a pace, so as to give full scope to a sweeping blow, he flourished the butt, which was garnished with a heavy ball of metal, round his head in a figure of eight, and ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... fortune" nor to hunt buffaloes or bears in the neighborhood of that classic city. Nevertheless, just to show my readers that there is a measure of truth in the prevalent impressions here of John Bull's general ignorance and apathy as to what is going on in America, I willingly admit that not till I had been a few days resident in Cambridge did the unpalatable fact fully dawn upon me that the country was undergoing the ordeal of "hard times"—a phrase, by the way, which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... rising out of the Southern sea, and hoping always for a passage to the East, had named it the Cape of Good Hope. Spain soon followed her rival into these unknown regions, a policy due mainly to the enthusiasm of Isabella of Castile, who, in spite of the conservative apathy of the Council of Salamanca, was eager to become the ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... to Their Senses Gradually.—New-measurism was resorted to by the General Synod in order to revive the dying Church. The true cause of her apathy, atrophy, and decay, however, was not diagnosed correctly. It was the prevailing confessional indifference, religious ignorance, and the neglect of Lutheran indoctrination by catechization, especially ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente

... would become a morphomaniac in a given time, and the apathy into which he fell prevented him from resisting the desire to absorb new doses of poison, a desire as imperious, as irresistible in morphinism as that of alcohol for the alcoholic, and more terrible in its effects—the perversion of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... sale of intoxicants were restricted and sometimes prohibited. We see how firm a hold this evil had on all classes when we read that very often public sentiment would not permit these beneficent laws to be enforced. In all great reforms the apathy of a large part of the people has ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan

... resistance.—'The flesh will follow where the pincers tear.' Mine was a presumptuous—it had nearly been a fatal struggle. That London season at last over, we got into the country; I expected rest, but found none. The pressing necessity for exertion over, the stimulus ceasing, I sunk—sunk into a state of apathy. Time enough had elapsed between the breaking off of my marriage and the appearance of this illness, to prevent any ideas on my mother's part of cause and effect, ideas indeed which were never much looked for, or well joined in her ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... him, and Mary Louise, supporting her new friend, urged her to extend her stay with her at the hotel. Strangely enough, the more he was opposed the more quiet and composed the artist became. He even ceased to tremble and an odd apathy settled ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum

... then, Love! . . . - Man's race shall end, dost threaten thou? The age to come the man of now Know nothing of? - We fear not such a threat from thee; We are too old in apathy! Mankind shall cease.—So let it ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy

... the end of the room. Large pictures of men in the blackness, out of the moon's rays, frowned at Rodriguez mysteriously. He could not see their faces in the darkness, but he somehow knew they frowned. Two portraits that were clear in the moonlight eyed him with absolute apathy. So cold a welcome from that house's past generations boded no good to him from those that dwelt there today. Rodriguez knew that in carrying the hurt man there he helped at a Christian deed; and yet there was no putting the merits of the case against the omens that crowded the chamber, lurking ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany

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

... in the midst of what is called "the season," and it seemed to him at first that he might here put himself in the way of being diverted from his heavy-heartedness. He knew no one in all England, but the spectacle of the mighty metropolis roused him somewhat from his apathy. Anything that was enormous usually found favor with Newman, and the multitudinous energies and industries of England stirred within him a dull vivacity of contemplation. It is on record that the weather, at that moment, was of the finest English quality; he took long walks and explored London ...
— The American • Henry James

... climate, and the food which was attainable up country. In 1860, he also made up his mind to follow Mr. Glover to Australia. There are no doubt many difficulties for Englishmen living in Sarawak jungles. Some become acclimatized to them, others cannot bear the low diet, the loneliness, the apathy and indifference of the Dyaks. The Bishop was once accused, by a person who ought to have known better, that he was too apt to gather his clergy at Sarawak and keep them from their Dyak parishes: but it ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... combinations of force. But the strength of her government lay not so much in her people, or even in her statesmen and soldiers, as in her men of wealth. A political establishment founded upon such supports was peculiarly liable to all the dangers of corruption and of public ignorance and apathy in the conduct of affairs. These causes appear conspicuously in the history of the Punic wars, as contributing largely to the overthrow and final extinguishment of Carthage, which left to her successful rival the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... jaded immigrants, worn out by their journey in the sweltering Colonist cars. Piles of dilapidated baggage surrounded them, and among it exhausted children lay asleep. Drowsy, dusty women, with careworn faces, were huddled beside them; men bearing the stamp of ill-paid toil sat in dejected apathy; and all about each group the floor, which was wet with drippings from the roof, was strewn with banana skins, crumbs, and scraps of food. There had been heavy rains, and the atmosphere was hot and humid. It was, however, the silence of these newcomers ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss

... "That's the idea. And the truth of the matter is that I am a superstitious man. I really believe, childishly, that the mechanics and motions of the galaxy may turn themselves upsidedown just to snap man out of his apathy and give him some ...
— No Moving Parts • Murray F. Yaco

... whistling of bullets, and other sounds that carry on their wings the swift-borne messengers of death. Besides this, there was an indifference as to life, existing in his bosom at that moment, that led him to experience a degree of apathy that it would be difficult for us to describe, or for the reader to realize. He felt as he did when he exclaimed, in his lonely cell in prison, as he was left for the last time by her he so loved—"Welcome, welcome, death! I would ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray

... quarters of the globe, we have written earlier in this volume, when dealing with the definitive work on this Greek by Senor Manuel B. Cossio. El Greco, through sheer intensity of temperament and fierce sincerity, could pluck out from men who had become, because of their apathy and grotesque pride, mere vegetable growths, their very souls afire; or if stained by crimes, these souls, he shot them up to God like green meteors. To be sure they have eyes drunk with dreams, the pointed ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... the Ladies' Kennel Club had made their vast grand-stand, were a number of pitiful vestiges of the Waterloo of women-kind. There was a shattered Elswick bicycle, about sixteen yards and a half of nun's veiling, and fifty-three tortoise-shell side-combs. I gazed on the debris with apathy mingled with contempt. My movements were languid, my plans of the vaguest. I knew that I wished to avoid my wife, but had no clear idea how the avoiding was to ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas

... round the chapel as the minister gave out the hymn. The heads of the boys were bent over their hymn-books, searching, with whispering, among the pages which they turned with wet thumbs. There was no apathy now. All the slow sun-burnt faces showed signs of having understood. One or two men sat with their eyes fixed on the evangelist as if waiting for more. A woman wiped her eyes and sighed. There was no restlessness. He had succeeded in making all these people, so different from the driven, excited, ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone

... we had judged her too severely, and that her unreasonableness and her extraordinary caprices had been born of mental disorder more than of moral obliquity. Gerald gave up everything to nurse her and rouse her from her apathy; but she faded away without ever once coming back to a more normal self, and that was the end of it all. Gerald's father had died meanwhile, and he had fallen heir to the property and the estates. They were very much encumbered, but he is gradually getting affairs into a less chaotic state; ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... elation was very different from the apathy which had possessed them so short a time before. Indeed, Mollie's description of the ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope

... considered in a most liberal and enlightened spirit. No movement in this day and generation can be successfully brought to an issue unless it can be shown that there is some general demand for the measures proposed, and until very recently in Spain there was general apathy with regard to the education of women. For many years girls have been carefully instructed in two things, religion and domestic science, and for neither of these things was any extended course of study necessary. The parochial schools, with all their narrowness, prepared ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... danced with fun or languished with sullen scorn. The younger ones were bright and happy in their expression, but the older ones seemed already to realize the curse that rests upon their decaying race, and to move with melancholy languor, as if brooding over it in stifled rebellion or resigned apathy. Some would be called beautiful anywhere: they were graceful in form, had fine regular features and lovely, expressive eyes; others were attractive only on account of their animation; while one comical little negro girl, who had somehow got mixed with the Malay race, was as ugly as a Hottentot, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... almost all sciences are few." "What he gave me to publish was but a small part." "To remain insensible to such provocation is apathy." "Minds ashamed of poverty would be proud of affluence." "To be totally indifferent to praise or censure is a real defect in character."—Wilson's Punctuation, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... star of France being in the ascendant, the Rhine was no longer their friendly ally and western limit. No stage in the history of a people is more gloomy and calls more loudly for sympathy than when national prestige is gone, and dignities usurped by foreign conquerors. Though the apathy of despair is a theme more becoming the poet than the historian, we find a vivid description of the sadness and desolation produced by the French domination given by one who deeply felt the disgrace of ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... plunder mercilessly for the subsistence of their troops: the English commander would take nothing from the people but what was paid for on the spot in money or in bills on the English government. Yet, such was the apathy (or worse) of the Portuguese authorities, that even on these terms provisions were not forthcoming; and important operations were constantly delayed or frustrated by the want of the necessary subsistence for ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

... abuses to be done away with have never been so flagrant as in the other provinces. Hence the work of reform has in every case been carried out in a more just and moderate spirit. The chief fault to be found in the political temper of the people lies in their apathy. When they do go to the poll, not a few of the electors prefer to vote for the candidate whom they believe to have the most honesty and public spirit, even if they do not happen to agree altogether with his political views. But the preference of men ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... this scene was perhaps the most interesting in the drama. What then must it have been when done by Garrick. A critic now before us speaking of Garrick and Mrs. Pritchard in this part, says, "His distraction of mind and agonizing horrors were finely contrasted by her apathy, tranquillity, and confidence. The beginning of the scene, after the commission of the murder, was conducted in terrifying whispers. Their looks and action supplied the place of words. The poet here gives only an outline of the consummate actor— "I have done the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various

... a case of shrouds comin' in by express on that train, two cases layin' in my place waitin' on 'em," the undertaker said, resentfully, waking out of his abstraction and apparent apathy. ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... scar'd by the griefs I have known, Wounds, apathy only can heal, My joys and my sorrows are flown, For ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham

... astonished at the coolness and apathy of Staps, and the Emperor seemed for a moment confounded by the young man's behaviour.—After a few moments' pause the Emperor resumed the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... away from his door and his neighbours dwelt in good-fellowship with him, so long he was happy, and cared not whether he was thus happy under a monarchy, an empire, or a republic. This wisdom, which the peddler called apathy and cursed, the young man had imbibed from nature and the teachings of Reine Allix. "Look at home and mind thy word," she had said always to him. "It is labour enough for a man to keep his own life clean and his own hands honest. Be not thou at any time as they ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various

... appropriate to my age, there were no signs of any consternation in the ranks of the authorities from Commander-in-chief down to Commissioner of Police. Nor did any lachrymose letter in the Times predict a speedy downfall of the Empire for this apathy of its local guardians. I recited my poem under a tree at the Hindu Mela and one of my hearers was Nabin Sen, the poet. He reminded me of this after I had ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore

... sails and other matters was fixed upon. But while this was being done, the American observed that, though his original offer of assistance had been hailed with hectic animation, yet now when it was reduced to a business transaction, indifference and apathy were betrayed. Don Benito, in fact, appeared to submit to hearing the details more out of regard to common propriety, than from any impression that weighty benefit to himself and his voyage ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... mind most is the apathy of people—the people down here. It's really terrible!" said the science mistress, in her melancholy voice. "Sometimes I hardly know how to bear it. One thinks of all that's going on in London—and in the big towns up north—and here—it's like a vault. Everyone's really against ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... an atonement adjure his brethren, by Christ's death for their sins, not to let the heathen perish? How can one who has had no experience of Christ as a present and divine Saviour, have power to stand against the rationalism and apathy of the church? This method of Scripture interpretation makes evangelism an enterprise of fanatics not sufficiently educated to know that Buddha and Confucius were teachers of truth long before the time of Christ. Can we more ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong

... robes, smoking their stone pipes or calumets in silence. There was nothing peculiar in their appearance. Their faces were neither dignified nor coarse in expression, but wore an aspect of stupid apathy, which formed a striking contrast to the countenance of the young hunter, who seemed an amused ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne

... turning passionately toward him, "it is men like you, who have neither faith, nor hope, nor regret, who are wandering aimlessly in a nightmare of apathy and indolence and indifference, who ought to be the first to welcome the new light breaking in the sky. What is life worth to you? You have nothing to hope for—nothing to look forward to—nothing you can kill the aimless with. ...
— Sunrise • William Black

... part of the night in the cabins; gambling went on usually till daybreak; and the quarter-deck, that most reverential of spots to every sailor-mind, was often covered by lounging groups, who smoked, chatted, or played at chess, in all the cool apathy of men indifferent to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... not so easy as that. He had no glad shaft of promise with which to pierce that deadly Nessus-coat of apathy. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... grievances) been fairly weighed and justly examined, I do think that means might have been devised to restore these workmen to their avocations, and tranquillity to the county. At present the county suffers from the double infliction of an idle military and a starving population. In what state of apathy have we been plunged so long, that now for the first time the house has been officially apprised of these disturbances? All this has been transacting within 130 miles of London, and yet we, "good easy men, have deemed full sure our greatness was a ripening," and have sat ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... unhappy, that each individual feels but his own misery. His country has ceased to exist for him. Even those time are gone when the guerillas called the citizens to arms for the sole and generous purpose of vindicating the national honor. The despondency and apathy of the nation are visible even in the battles fought by the Spaniards among themselves in their civil dissensions. They fight from habit, and discharge their muskets at their countrymen because they can do nothing else, and because every shot ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880

... underestimate the influence of the economic ruin that affects everybody. The latter particularly, feeling that in some way they must justify themselves to politically minded foreign visitors, seek an excuse for their apathy in the one institution that is almost universally unpopular. I have many non-Communist friends in Russia, but have never detected the least restraint that could be attributed to fear of anybody in their ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome

... dangerous light which might naturally be expected from the sufferings in which it has involved both Princes and subjects, nor are its future effects dreaded from its past enormities. The cause of this impolitic and anti-patriotic apathy is to be looked for in the palaces of Sovereigns, and not in the dwellings of their people. There exists hardly a single German Prince whose Ministers, courtiers and counsellors are not numbered, and have long ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... come the aristocrat," answered Mikhalevich good-humoredly; "but rather thank God that in your veins also there flows simple plebeian blood. But I see you are now in need of some pure, unearthly being, who might rouse you from your apathy." ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... equally their efforts slackened, their grips became more feeble. Finally, as if by common consent, they rolled apart. A leaden tide of apathy crept over Woolfolk's battered body, folded his aching brain. He listened in a sort of indifferent attention to the tempestuous breathing of Iscah Nicholas. John Woolfolk wondered dully where Millie was. There had been no sign of her since he had fallen down the step ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer

... result that he acquired an excellent conversational knowledge of it. The lad had opinions and the courage of them, and when he saw the cause of the Spanish beginning to fail he was exasperated by the apathy of the Whigs at home, and accordingly, with the audacity of youth, wrote to ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... and looked at the scene on deck. The crew were going about their job in perfect silence, and amongst the passengers a sort of stunned apathy prevailed. The thing had been so sudden, that most of them as yet hardly realised what ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... had learned it first from the apathy of the audience. He had learned it afterwards from the demeanour and the speech far from apathetic of the manager and leader of the troupe. They were a company of six, Les Merveilleux, five jugglers, plate spinners, eccentric musicians, ventriloquists, and one low comedian. Lackaday was the low comedian, ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

... love of a fribble was only strong and ardent when there was no occasion for it, a man who blended the faults of Grub Street with the faults of St. James's Street, and who united to the vanity, the jealousy and the irritability of a man of letters, the affected superciliousness and apathy of a man of ton. The Whartons over-praise Walpole where Lord Macaulay under-rates him; the truth lies between the two. He was not in the least an estimable or an admirable figure, but he wrote admirable, indeed incomparable letters to which the ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... growth has gone the spiritual uplift of a great human race. From contempt and amusement they have passed to the pity, perplexity, and fear on the part of their neighbors, while within their own souls they have arisen from apathy and timid complaint to open protest and more and more manly self-assertion. Where nine-tenths of them could not read or write in 1860, to-day over two-thirds can; they have 300 papers and periodicals, and their voice and expression are compelling attention. Already ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois

... we all knew to be the truth, but still we would rather have shut our eyes to the unpleasant fact. It is extraordinary that men should be able to disregard the future, even when on the very brink of the grave. Is it apathy, or stolid indifference, or disbelief in a future existence that enables them to do so? I speak of those without the Christian's hope—men who lead profligate lives; men stained with a thousand crimes; men who have never feared God, who seemed scarcely to have a knowledge ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston

... the flattering courtesies with childlike pleasure. Her happiness was his. Often when overcome with the cares and anxiety of public affairs a smile from her ladyship had a charm like magic. A quiet caress was sure to arouse him from the deepest apathy. ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour

... I perceived that I had suffered a paralytick stroke, and that my speech was taken from me. I had no pain, and so little dejection in this dreadful state, that I wondered at my own apathy, and considered that perhaps death itself, when it should come, would excite less horrour than seems now ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... with hereditary dispositions to disease; with organs varying greatly in their normal condition. At the same time a temperate or intemperate life, skilful or unskilful regimen, physical exercises well adapted to strengthen the weaker parts, physical apathy, vicious indulgence, misdirected or excessive effort, will all in their different ways alter his bodily condition and increase or diminish his chances of disease and premature death. The power of will over character ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... made a conscious effort, and half opened her eyes again. But she seemed not to share his anxiety for action, and her mental and physical apathy were not to be mistaken. The girl was utterly exhausted with fire-fighting and ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower

... he wondered why they had halted, blocking half a division of infantry and cavalry behind them. There really was no reason at all. He did not know it, but he had seen the first case of that indescribable disease that raged in France in 1870-71—that malady that cannot be termed paralysis or apathy or inertia. It was all three, and it was malignant, for it came from a befouled and degraded court, spread to the government, infected the provinces, sparing neither prince nor peasant, until over the whole fair land of France ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers

... Scarce to the brink will these rebellious limbs Support me. Hark! how the rude deep below Roars round the rugged base, as if it called Its long-reluctant victim! I will come. One leap, and all is over! The deep rest Of Death, or tranquil Apathy's dead calm Welcome alike to me. Away vain fears! Phaon is cold, and why should Sappho live? Phaon is cold, or with some fairer one— Thought worse ...
— Poems • Robert Southey

... were pacing the rounds on every side of the palace. Some of the King's attendants asked whether he would venture to lie down surrounded by enemies. He answered that they could hardly use him worse than his own subjects had done, and, with the apathy of a man stupified by disasters, went to bed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... no need to tell of the stages by which he arrived at the conclusion that he must enlist: from the first dawning wonder at such a possibility, through qualms of doubt and fear and spasms of hope and—almost—courage, to a dull apathy of resignation. No need to tell either the particular circumstances that "conscripted" him at last, because although his name is not real the man himself is, and one has no wish to bring shame on him or his people. I have only described him so closely to make ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)

... classes, still half savage, do not have a sufficiently ardent desire to ameliorate their condition: this M. Dunoyer shows. But as this absence of desire is itself the effect of misery, it follows that misery and apathy are each other's effect and cause, and that the ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... find Emily Brunell at all costs, stirred him from the apathy of despair into which he had fallen, and roused him to instant action. Leaving the house, he went to the nearest telephone pay station, where he could converse in comparative privacy, and called up Henry Blaine's office, only to discover that the master detective ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander

... when a hearty meal of excellent soup and a large lump of bread were given to between three and four hundred men, chiefly dock labourers out of employ. It was a touching sight to notice the stolid apathy depicted on most of the countenances, which looked unpleasantly like despair. One of the men assured me that for every package that had to be unladen from the docks there were ten pair of hands ready to do the work, where only one could be employed. Many of the men, he assured ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... steadiness, and soon after making a signal with his handkerchief, was swung off. After hanging about twenty-five minutes, his body was cut down and buried near the gallows. His deportment during his journey to and at the place of execution was marked with the same apathy and indifference which he discovered before and since his trial. We do not learn he has made any confession ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford

... it is because I have been threatened with legal proceedings by my creditors, and have just come victoriously out of a hard struggle to appease them for the time. This little fight has roused me from my apathy; it has rallied my spirits, and made me feel like my old self again. I am no longer content with silently loving my dearest friend; I open my heart and ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins

... closer, and his eyes glowed. At last his apathy was shaken off, and his words came in a torrent. "What I was then I am to-day. Mentally, I am like an inebriate, who no longer finds satisfaction in plain food and drink, but craves stimulants. I ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge

... my apathy, when objects, long sought, and earnestly desired, were placed within my reach. After dinner—at which an unwonted and perverse epicurism detained me longer than usual—I lighted a cigar and paced the piazza, minutely attentive to the aspect and business of a very ordinary village. Finally, with ...
— Other Tales and Sketches - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... he was in Norwich: the "Romantic Ballads" were published there, and in May he received a letter from Allan Cunningham, whose cheery commendatory verses ushered in the book. The letter suggests that Borrow was indolent from apathy. The book had no success or notice, which Knapp puts down to his not sending out presentation copies. "I judge, however," says he, "that he sent one to Walter Scott, and that that busy writer forgot to acknowledge the courtesy. Borrow's lifelong hostility to ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... sleep under the dusky wings of gathering dreams where the white bridge spans it! Beyond, where the blue-green sky is cut by a broken line of hill and tree, the rocks become animated in the clear-obscure, and the apparently dead matter, rousing from its apathy, takes awful ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... Thucydides mentions as a worthless man, and one who was constantly ridiculed by the comic dramatists. From his utter disregard of what was said of him, and his carelessness for his honour, which, though it was mere shameless impudence and apathy, was thought by some to show firmness and true courage, he was pleasing to no party, but frequently made use of by the people when they wished to have a scurrilous attack made upon those in power. At this time he was ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... sulky cousin; I don't call him anybody," drawled Sir Charles, who was now relapsing into his normal condition of semi-apathy. ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... his labor with a look which only bespoke a sullen apathy; but in his heart there raged a hell of evil passions. That night when he was locked in his cell, he slept not, but sat till morning endeavoring to devise some ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... cross-town and recklessly passed over Broadway with its traffic in full swing, looking neither to the right nor to the left. The officer shouted to rouse him from his apathy, but ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... time had elapsed that only the most fortunate of accidents could give song and symphony their proper places among the wonders that were ultimately to find a home in the Jewel City. Fortunately, accident for once proved kind; vigorous direction emerged fortuitously from apathy. ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... Europe had, therefore, no reason to fear that their subjects would follow the example of the English Puritans, and looked with indifference, perhaps with complacency, on the death of the monarch and the abolition of the monarchy. Clarendon complains bitterly of their apathy. But we believe that this apathy was of the greatest service to the royal cause. If a French or Spanish army had invaded England, and if that army had been cut to pieces, as we have no doubt that it would have been, on the first day on which it came face to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the fair who assembled on the occasion, that there was a man to spare; for had there been 79 ladies and only 78 gentlemen, there might, in the course of the evening have been some disorder among the caps; notwithstanding the apathy which one of the company entertains for the 'youth' of the present day, and her determination 'Never to give herself a moment's uneasiness on account of any of them.' A hint here; men and women ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford

... beach every day last winter, growing ruddy and strong, but the air had revived him only for a little time, he soon sank back into weakness and apathy. He had dismissed her with a kiss awhile ago, and had seemed to suffer instead ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin

... longer pampered body, subdued to spareness, braced by toil, elastic from exertion, and patient from habit, is not a clog, but a meet companion for its immortal associate. Prosperity, among many other evils, engenders religious apathy, and luxurious selfishness. She presents a gorgeous stage, on which the puppets of vanity and petty ambition act their insignificant parts; adversity educates and ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... twenty-five years. Still, a commercial treaty with France, on free-trade lines, was negotiated between Louis Napoleon and Mr Cobden; and Mr Gladstone carried it through parliament in the face of strong opposition. Lord John Russell again introduced a Reform Bill, but the apathy of Lord Palmerston, and the pressure of other business, led to its quiet withdrawal. The rejection by the Lords of a bill to abolish the duty on paper seemed likely at one time to lead to a collision between the two Houses. Ultimately the Commons contented themselves with a protest against this ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous

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

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

... back North for service, desire has at once manifested itself for similar privileges in young people who had not previously shown even interest enough to attend our winter night schools. This is the best evidence that inroads are being made into that natural apathy which is content with mediocrity or even inferiority. This is everywhere the world's most subtle enemy. Even if selfishness or envy has been the motive, the fact remains that they have often kindled that discontent with the ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... the extraordinary tolerance too long extended to this criminal propaganda. For two whole years it was carried on with relative impunity under the very eyes of the Government of India in Calcutta. Month after month they must have seen its audacity grow in direct proportion to official apathy. They must have seen a reign of lawlessness and intimidation spread steadily over a great part of the Metropolitan province. The failure of the ordinary machinery of justice to check these crying evils was repeatedly ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... be deficient, it is of the utmost importance to utilize to the full that amount of the life-giving fluid, be it more or be it less, which the bounty of nature furnishes. Rarely, indeed, is nature absolutely a niggard. Mostly she gives far more than is needed, but the improvidence or the apathy of man allows her gifts to run to waste. Careful and provident husbanding of her store will generally make it suffice for all man's needs and requirements. Sometimes this has been effected in a thirsty land by conducting all the rills and brooks that flow from ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... apathy of all the New World aborigines. As Humboldt observed of another tribe, "their poverty, stoicism, and uncultivated state render them so rich and so free from wants of every kind, that neither money nor other presents will induce them to turn three steps out of their ways." They maintain a passive ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... Magdalena's apathy left her then. She stood up and faced him, drawing her heavy brows together after his own fashion. "You will never beat me again," she said. "Let us have an understanding on that subject before we go to bed to-night. I am your daughter, and I shall always obey you except where the ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... turned away, not sullen, not morose, but with a strange apathy settled on him. He had once heard a man say, "I feel as though I wanted to crawl into a hole and die." That was the way he felt now, for to be beaten in the game which you have played like a man yourself and have been fouled into an unchallenged defeat, without the voice of the umpire, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... does he ever fail to deserve applause; but there is one, above all, which has infinitely added to his reputation. It is that of the Vieux Celibataire in the comedy of the same name by COLIN D'HARLEVILLE, which he personates with a good humoured frankness, an air of indolence and apathy, and at the same time a grace that will drive to despair any one who shall venture to take up this part after him. On seeing him in it, one can scarcely believe that he is the same man who renders with such warmth and feeling the part of Alceste in ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... licensed lodging-house accommodating 350. This was a sad sight, because three-fourths of the men were unemployed poor, chiefly dock-labourers, willing and glad to work, if work could be got. On many a face there were stamped hopelessness and apathy. Two poor fellows were sipping a cup of tea, without milk or sugar, given to them by a poor man, but they had not a morsel of bread; and this was their breakfast,—a late one truly, for it was ten at night. Out all day in search of work, their last coppers were paid for the night's ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe

... taught little else than set forms of devotion, they arrive to the years of maturity uninstructed in the use of reason, and usually continue profoundly ignorant the remainder of their days, which are spent, or rather loitered away, in apathy and indolence. ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... of Thomas Jefferson, said that it was the dark, the appalling, the despairing future that had awakened the public mind rather than the Southampton Insurrection. He asked whether silence would restore the death-like apathy of the Negro's mind. It might be wise to let it sleep in its torpor; "but has not," he asked, "its dark chaos been illumined? Does it not move, and feel and think? The hour of the eradication of the evil is advancing, it must come. Whether it is affected by the energy of our minds or by ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... turned aside, and after hovering in the distance to tantalise me the more, she slowly stood away to the northward. I was almost as much overcome as when poor King was blown off the island. I now passed my days in a dull state of apathy; I had no books, no writing materials. Had I, as I might when I visited the cabin, brought away a Bible I saw on the captain's table which he had been reading for the last time, what a blessing and a comfort it would have, ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston

... hands. The Connecticut Medical Society expelled him in 1797 for violating their law against the use of nostrums, or secret remedies. The leading English physicians appear to have looked on with singular apathy or contempt at the miracles which it was pretended were enacting in the hands of the apostles of the new practice. In looking over the reviews of the time, I have found little beyond brief occasional notices of their pretensions; the columns of these journals being occupied ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... grinning with the delight of a thing so exciting. At the mention of the number of the dead, however, something like awe passed over them, and changed their countenances to dismay. Nick alone was indifferent. By the cold apathy of his manner, the captain saw at once that the battle of Lexington had not been a secret to the Tuscarora, when he commenced his own account. As the captain always encouraged a proper familiarity in his dependants, he now told ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... 'Tis this has roused my apathy, That He who rules creation May change the dismal hap of thee, And hasten to restore thee In safety from thy danger, To thine own, in joy and glory, To save us from the stranger. With princely ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various



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



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