Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Idle   /ˈaɪdəl/   Listen
Idle

noun
1.
The state of an engine or other mechanism that is idling.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Idle" Quotes from Famous Books



... a yellow light swings like an idle lantern over the car tracks. So the newspaper man stops at the corner and waits. This is the owl car. It may not stop. Sometimes cars have a habit of roaring by with an insulting indifference to the people waiting for them to stop at the corner. At such moments one feels a fine rage, ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... inhabitants, says, "They eat their dinners, and it is so very hot, they go to sleep — and could they do better?" I quite agree with Sir F. Head: the happy doom of the Mendozinos is to eat, sleep and be idle. ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... number of government empleados residing at Manilla makes an important addition to the society of the place, as, from being idle men to a great extent, they seek how to amuse and be amused, and are cultivators of the society of the English, whose dinner tables are probably the chief causes of the intercourse ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking

... no more, it fits not me To have respect to such vain fantasies As idle love presents my ears withall. More reason I should ghostly give my self To sacred prayers for this my former sin, For which this plague is justly fallen upon me, Then to harken to the ...
— Fair Em - A Pleasant Commodie Of Faire Em The Millers Daughter Of - Manchester With The Love Of William The Conquerour • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]

... people exceedingly, and especially the poor, hearing their suits and seeking to despatch them instantly. He also makes the lawyers plead gratis for all poor suitors. He is in very great repute, seven times more so than if (p. 119) he were Pope."[324] His sympathy with the poor was no idle sentiment, and his commission of 1517, and decree against enclosures in the following year, were the only steps taken in Henry's reign to mitigate that curse of ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... It is idle for any wideawake observer to deny that a certain antipathy exists between the French and the Italians. Both, I think, generally prefer the British to their Latin brothers, and I have heard both say unjust and absurdly untrue things about the other. Their antipathy ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton

... these islands result many great inconveniences. In the first place, on account of their greed, they have taken to the cultivation of gardens and other real estate; whence it follows that all the native Indians live idle and vicious lives, without anyone urging them to labor. The Chinese have risen, by buying and selling and bringing provisions to the community, to be the retailers of supplies. From this it results that this country is so expensive to live ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair

... shall we call it, dear friends?" he argued. "Are we not allied against a common foe? The exact terms of the entente, what does it matter? Is it credible that England would remain idle while the legions of Germany ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... committed when we idle our time, and are lazy; when we are indifferent about serving God; when we do anything slowly and poorly and in a way that shows we would rather not do it. They are slothful who lie in bed late in the morning and neglect their duty. ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead

... horses, you idle lads," the lisping voice of the Captain was heard to call. "Ya, ya! there, luego! the morning ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... friars of the Badia, Cardinal Salviati took him into his house, gave him a stipend of four crowns a month, and an apartment at the Borgo Vecchio, he painting any works the Cardinal wished. Francesco was not idle, a great number of frescoes, altar-pieces, and portraits, &c., &c., testifying to his industry. In his later years he was employed with his friend Vasari in the Palazzo Vecchio, where he painted the frescoes in the smaller ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)

... cheeses, like cart-wheels, from Switzerland; almonds, lemons, raisins, olives, boxes of citron, casks of chains; specie from Vera Cruz; cries of drivers, cracking of whips, rumble of wheels, tremble of earth, frequent gorge and stoppage. It seemed an idle tale to say that any one could be lacking bread and raiment. "We are a great city," said the patient foot-passengers, waiting long on street corners for opportunity to ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... is widely different here from that in Europe; and our comfort and character require it should long remain so. Those who strive to introduce many of the European habits and fashions, by displacing our own, do a serious injury to the republic, and deserve censure. An idle person, with good powers of mind, becomes torpid and inactive after a few years of indulgence, and is incapable of making any high effort. Highly important it is, then, to avoid this enemy of mental and moral improvement. I have no wish that you pursue ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... faithful fellow's tongue was thus wagging, his arms were not idle. Intimately acquainted, as became his calling, with the numerous windings and intricacies of the Venetian canals, he threaded them with unhesitating confidence; and, favoured by the darkness of the night, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... live in a mansion? That is my choice, my desire. You will only eradicate it when you have changed my preference. Well, do change it, allure me with something else, give me another ideal. But meanwhile I will not take a hen-house for a mansion. The palace of crystal may be an idle dream, it may be that it is inconsistent with the laws of nature and that I have invented it only through my own stupidity, through the old-fashioned irrational habits of my generation. But what does it matter to me that it is inconsistent? That makes no difference since it exists ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky

... first of May, and the sun had passed the noon line in a bright sky, causing the shadow of Peter Taylor to fall east of north and infusing his substance with the delightful languor called Spring Fever. Leaning upon an idle spade, Peter watched the lazy motions of a negro slave whom he had directed to trim a level lawn ornamented with flowerbeds. The English origin of the overseer was revealed by his ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... been winning his spurs, the keen-eyed scouts of the big leagues had not been idle. The St. Louis team of the National League drafted him into their ranks and took him away from the "bushes." Now he felt that he was really on the highway to success. Almost from the start he created a sensation, ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick

... she heard Claybrook say. "Full up?" He had turned from his idle inspection of the lobby. "Not in two weeks. You can rent a floor in ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... penitence, of deploring his guilt, and employing his few remaining hours in deprecating Heaven's wrath, He abandoned himself to the transports of desperate rage; He sorrowed for the punishment of his crimes, not their commission; and exhaled his bosom's anguish in idle sighs, in vain lamentations, in blasphemy and despair. As the few beams of day which pierced through the bars of his prison window gradually disappeared, and their place was supplied by the pale and glimmering Lamp, He felt his terrors redouble, and his ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... later that evening, when she happened to find herself alone with Sam in the library, and, in merest idle curiosity, she asked: "Sam, what ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington

... wrong of me to exercise my powers just to gratify idle curiosity. No good Theosophist ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth

... though he is talking, not of our Indians, but of the Moors: "Water seems more needed by these infidels than bread, for they wash every day, as their damnable religion directs them to, and they use it in baths, and in a thousand other idle fashions, of which Spaniards and other Christians can make little account." We know that a Spanish queen refrained, not only from washing, but from changing her clothes for a whole year. The Porto Ricans were naked, but unaware of their nakedness, ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... there was plenty to make fun of, and plenty of idle loafers, too, who were not ashamed ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson

... clothed in rags, living among rags, thriving on rags; a people strangely proof against pestilence, gathering rags from the city to their dens, when the cholera was raging outside the Ghetto's gates, and rags were cheap, yet never sickening of the plague themselves; a people never idle, sleeping little, eating sparingly, labouring for small gain amid dirt and stench and dampness, till Friday night came at last, and the old crier's melancholy voice ran through the darkening alleys—'The ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... name among the great in the land of poetry and song. Happy here, ere his first joyous aspirations were repressed—ere the warm and genial emotions of his heart were checked—before time had dissipated his idle dreams, and neglect, contempt and distress had fastened on his mind, and hurried him onward ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... register lay open, and going over to the hall door stood there a while, staring out on the tide of life that rolled by, and listening to the subdued rattle of the traffic in its ceaseless traverse of the Strand. And as he stood in this apparently idle and purposeless lounging attitude, he thought—thought of a certain birthday of his, a good thirty years before, whereon a kind, elderly aunt had made him a present of a box of puzzles. There were all sorts of puzzles in that box—things ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher

... in, radiant and glowing, and men from many miles away visited the Bar L-M to look over the course upon which the race meet was to be held. MacKelvey spent weary days and nights driving his relentless quest; Sledge Hume seemed sullenly idle; Helga Strawn coolly Indifferent to the world about her; and still Wayne Shandon received no encouraging word from Brisbane. May ran through half its allotted days of thaw and bursting seeds; the day for the race was less than ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory

... better go to the workhouse. She'll have an idle enough time there," said the duke who was staunchly ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson

... semi-independent state, the Nawab of which has a revenue of sixteen lacs of rupees, (L160,000,) while the city, being without the pale of English law, is "a city of refuge, a very Goshen of robbers, ... the streets are crowded with a mob of very handsome, idle, lounging fellows, having generally the fullest and finest jet-black beards and black mustaches in the world. Many of these were handsomely dressed, and many (which struck me as a very curious fact) appeared clean!" These were the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... unacquainted maid, So uninformed of whereabout I am, And in a wild completely solitary, Hope to find out my strangely absent lord! Sadness there is, and an unquiet fear, Within my heart, to trace these hereabouts Of idle woods, unthreaded labyrinths, Rude mannered brooks, unpastured meadow sides, All vagrant, voiceless, pathless, echoless, Oh for the farthest breath of mortal sound! From lacqueyed hall, or folded peasant hut,— Some noontide echo sweetly voluble; Some song of toil reclining ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... of the ball on the bat travelled but slowly upward, and reached her after the striker had begun to run. The effect was curious, but it was not new to her, though she listened and counted with idle interest. ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture

... Moors consists chiefly in their numerous herds of cattle, yet, as the pastoral life does not afford full employment, the majority of the people are perfectly idle, and spend the day in trifling conversation about their horses, or in laying schemes of depredation ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... children observed, not far off, a party of youths rowing on the bosom of a lake. They sat in a rocking, unsteady little bark, but were in gay spirits, blowing bubbles, watching idle clouds, and throwing up empty shouts to be caught up and ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May

... are by no means idle. They are instructing their people in the dogmas of their Church; and for this they have classes in the evening,—the zealous at least, among them have. Apart from their petty persecution in preventing us getting a place of worship (the affair of the 'Madre di Dio' you know all about, as also ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... are all so idle and debauched, such gobbling and drinking rascals, and expensive in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various

... these attributes,—succeeds in attaining to the eternal and immutable region of kine. He, who is stained with adultery, sees not such a region; nor he, who is a slayer of his preceptor; nor he, who speaks falsely or indulges in idle boasts; nor he, who always disputes with others; nor he who behaves with hostility towards the Brahmanas. Indeed, that wicked wight, who is stained with such faults fails to attain even a sight of these ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... seventeen year old son of a Mexican laborer, who had married one of the mission Indian women, united in himself the bad qualities of both races, as has so often been the result of such crosses. He had grown up idle, indifferent to his parents, vicious and cruel, leading astray the other youths of the mission, among whom he was easily the master, and causing his parents and Father Zalvidea no end of anxiety. The Father, in fact, ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter

... it is explicit. "Every one of us shall give account of himself to God." This necessarily implies a perfect recollection of our lives. We are to answer for all the deeds done in the body; for every idle word, for every secret and sinful thought and feeling. This requires a perfect recollection of every event, sentiment, and emotion of our lives. The soul, therefore, must carry into the unseen world a perfect recollection of ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... she spoke. "When you were telling me about your musical fancies you made me remember how once when I was young I climbed a high hill and had an adventure with a wind that was very swift and eager. At first I recollect I tried not to heed it, because I had been dull and idle and unhappy; but I found that I could not be very long in the presence of so much life without being made ashamed, and that brave windstorm put me through a course of repentance of the very sternest kind before it let me go. I tried just to promise that I would be more wide-awake and more true, ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair

... his hat and gloried simply that he was alive. He did not even note the cottontail that came out from behind a bush to peer at him, nor mark the sweeping shadow of a passing eagle that swung high above the little valley. His eye now and again fell upon the abandoned mill, gaunt, idle and silent; yet he regarded it lazily, the spell of the spot and the languor of the ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough

... a youth of resolution and energy. He entertained the same opinion as Fritz; and instead of wasting his time in idle despondency, got together some articles of merchandise, and sailed for the Indian Archipelago, promising his friends that he would return to his ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... loyalty!" exclaimed Warwick, starting to his feet; "and know that thou hast done more to melt and yet to nerve my spirit than—But complaints in one are idle, and praise were ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... standard of street poetry, had for burden some gibberish which was said to have been used as a watchword by the insurgents of Ulster in 1641. The verses and the tune caught the fancy of the nation. From one end of England to the other, all classes were constantly singing this idle rhyme. It was especially the delight of the English army. More than seventy years after the revolution, a great writer delineated, with exquisite skill, a veteran who had fought at the Boyne and at ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands

... obloquy, and spite Expire e're morn, the mushroom of a night! Transient as vapours glimm'ring thro' the glades, Half-form'd and idle, as the dreams of maids, Vain as the sick man's vow, or young man's sigh, Third-nights ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte

... them. If therefore I can make out in this Essay, that there were such Animals as Pygmies; and that they were not a Race of Men, but Apes; and can discover the Authors, who have forged all, or most of the idle Stories concerning them; and shew how the Cheat in after Ages has been carried on, by embalming the Bodies of Apes, then exposing them for the Men of the Country, from whence they brought them: If I can do this, I shall think my time not wholly lost, nor the trouble altogether useless, ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson

... in search of adventures, for he had the nature of a warrior and could not bear to be idle. So he buckled on his two swords, took his huge bow, much taller than himself, in his hand, and slinging his quiver on his back started out. He had not gone far when he came to the bridge of Seta-no-Karashi ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... was too sensible to gratify their idle curiosity, but the very return of her brightness, and her unwillingness to talk about the matter, only added to the foolish desires of outsiders to find out what had really occurred. So some of these naughty busybodies began questioning the children ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young

... people for her piety, her charity and her wisdom. If such records as are there to be read by earnest seekers after truth be not sufficient to convince, and to reveal those others whom I have named in the light of their true baseness, then were it idle for me to set up in these pages a passing refutation of the falsehoods which it has grieved me so ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini

... is a serious attempt to while away an idle hour. The best criticism that the author received of "Her Ladyship's Elephant" was from an old lady who wrote him that it had made her forget a toothache; the most discouraging, from a critic who approached the book ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells

... Doughty ("Arabia Deserta," i. 223) speaks of the Badawin who sit beating the time away, and for pastime limning with their driving-sticks (the Bkr) in the idle land." ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... delicate magnificence of leaf tracery and flower petal and feather, soft fur and the shining wonder of living skin, musical with thunder and the singing of birds; but an arena nevertheless, an arena which offers no seats for idle spectators, in which one must will and do, decide, strike and strike ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells

... that has yet settled upon the earth. In the midst of the most extravagant superstition, there have been individuals who have disowned the popular belief, and considered it a mark of wisdom and true philosophy to discard the idle fancies and absurd schemes of faith that possessed the minds of the great mass of their contemporaries. This was the case with Horace, as appears from lines thus quite freely but ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... universally rich and fruitful, and full of the plantations of trees of all sorts, insomuch that it invites the most slothful to take pains in its cultivation, by its fruitfulness; accordingly, it is all cultivated by its inhabitants, and no part of it lies idle. Moreover, the cities lie here very thick, and the very many villages there are here are every where so full of people, by the richness of their soil, that the very least of them ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... it certainly marred the enjoyment of the last part of her trip. Before quitting Jersey the Queen was made acquainted with the fact that Louis Philippe's voluntary protestations with regard to the marriage of his son, the Duc de Montpensier, had been so many idle words. He had stolen a march both upon England and Europe generally. The marriage of the Due de Montpensier with the Infanta Luisa of Spain was announced simultaneously with the marriage of her sister, the Queen of Spain, to her cousin the Due ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler

... occupied by the families of members of the staff; in the others boarders were taken, the laboratory, of course, furnishing all the patrons. Near the railway station was a small saloon kept by an old Scotchman named Davis, where billiards were played in idle moments, and where in the long winter evenings the hot stove was a centre of attraction to loungers and story-tellers. The truth is that there was very little social life of any kind possible under ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... little on the left; by turning to the left, therefore, he would find it. But, as we have said, it was at least a league from the Chateau d'If to this island. Often in prison Faria had said to him, when he saw him idle and inactive, "Dantes, you must not give way to this listlessness; you will be drowned if you seek to escape, and your strength has not been properly exercised and prepared for exertion." These words rang in Dantes' ears, even beneath the waves; he hastened to cleave his way through them to see ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... temporal and spiritual, negotiations between Dysart and Brownell made rapid progress. The newcomer's tent was pitched upon the twenty acres selected, and gleamed white against the mountain-side, suggesting to Palmerston's idle vision a sail becalmed upon a sage-green sea. "Dysart's ship, which will probably never come in," he said to himself, looking at it with visible indignation, one morning, as he sat at his tent door in that state of fuming ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham

... to bomb New York from the air has a big surprise coming to him—a lot of big surprises. The war department may not have been doing much advertising, but it has not been idle." ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston

... reason. The crimes, and the misfortunes, of the suffering people, were presumptuously compared with those of their ancestors; and they arraigned the Divine Justice, which did not exempt from the common destruction the feeble, the guiltless, the infant portion of the human species. These idle disputants overlooked the invariable laws of nature, which have connected peace with innocence, plenty with industry, and safety with valor. The timid and selfish policy of the court of Ravenna might recall the Palatine legions for the protection of Italy; the remains of the stationary troops ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... said Dyke. "I don't think I used to be idle, but this hot sun has stewed all the spirit ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn

... more vigour and vivacity than the most debased of English operatives. He may be more immoral; but he is less brutish. If we are a little vain, and very fond of gaiety; and if we are improvident, we are not idle; and, with all our street fighting, we are not a discontented race. Except an Arab, who can be so happy as we know how to make ourselves, upon the ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... to the great, bare rock. Here the line and flies were adjusted, and the fishing began. Willis watched every motion as for a brief second the fly was allowed to drift down the stream, "to be floated here and there by idle little eddies, to be sucked down, then suddenly spat out by tiny suction holes;" then it fell quietly into the current and floated out to the end of the line, bringing up sharply just at the edge of a bleak ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley

... differences and aversions due to religion—Puritan, Quaker and Church of England, intercolonial tariffs and what not. For the planter-class we were mere traders; they for us were men too lightly presumed to live an idle life of gambling, sport and hard drinking—a life foreign to ours. The colonies were to one another like foreign countries. In the Revolution you may read clearly the effect of these opinions, when Washington expressed the wish that his officers would forget that they ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... twenty-eight years longer, without adding to the high literary reputation which he had attained. He read much while he retained his eyesight, and now and then wrote a short essay, or put an idle tale into verse; but he appears never to have planned any considerable work. The miscellaneous pieces which he published in 1710 are of little value, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... his anger was just, there is no concession, however great, Miss Moncton, that I would hesitate to make: I love and revere Sir Alexander, but he has taken up idle prejudices against me, and I am too proud—obstinate, if you will—to ask his forgiveness for what I never can ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie

... haver vengado las injurias hechas a su Divina Magestad." Herrera, Hist General, dec. 8, lib. 4, cap. 17.] But, however grateful was this homage to Gasca's heart, he was not a man to waste his time in idle vanities. He now thought only by what means he could eradicate the seeds of disorder which shot up so readily in this fruitful soil, and how he could place the authority of the government on a permanent basis. By virtue of his office, he presided over the Royal Audience, the great judicial, ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... latter as a growing lad, his mother as an essentially Egyptian figure, conventionally drawn according to the rules which had determined the figures of gods and kings for fifteen hundred years. Under these circumstances it is idle to speak of this well-known relief picture as a portrait of the Queen. It is no more so than the granite statues in the Vatican are portraits of Philadelphus and Arsinoe. The artist had probably never seen the Queen, and if he had, it would not have produced the slightest ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... dashed forward, dodging among the running crowd. He meant, I think, to stop the fight, because he could not be an idle spectator once he was informed of the fact. I of course had no intention of turning tail, and hastened on the heels of Porcupine. The fight was in its fiercest. There were about fifty to sixty normals, and the middles numbered by some ninety. The normals wore uniform, but the middles ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri

... What can I say to you? Athene watched over you. You were of those who dwell alone, but whom the gods are with. You had the clue and the sword, and they are nothing to you; you lose them both at his word, at the mere breath of his lips, and know no god but his idle law, that shifts as the winds of the sea. And you count that gain? Oh, just Heaven! Oh, my dear, my heart is broken; how can I tell you? One man loved you who was great and good, to whom you were a sacred thing, who would have lifted you up in heaven, and never have touched too ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... his old impulsiveness he had come to rescue them, never pausing to think of what risks he himself might run. And now they were gone! Could Diggle have suspected that his carefully-hidden tracks were being followed up, and have removed the prisoners to some spot remoter from the river? It was idle to speculate; they were gone; and there was no ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... without effect. The old count sat low in his saddle and urged his horse with a mechanical jerk of the heels. Thus they passed through the village of Bastelica—a place with an evil name. It was early still, and but few were astir, for the peasants of the South are idle. In Corsica, moreover, the sight of a flying man always sends others into hiding. No man wishes to see him, though all sympathies are with him, and the pursuer is avoided as ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman

... which she could be always with Neil, "the new Grey." Sometimes she thought of the real Grey, who was still at Oxford, which Neil had left for good. He was not fond of study, and greatly preferred his idle, pleasant life at home, breakfasting when he pleased and as he pleased, either in bed or in the breakfast-room, lounging through the morning, playing duets with Blanche, sorting her worsteds for her, or teasing her about the grotesque figures she was embroidering ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes

... upon those points where they wish to excel, and yet are doubtful whether they do or not. As, for example, Cardinal Richelieu, who was undoubtedly the ablest statesman of his time, or perhaps of any other, had the idle vanity of being thought the best poet too; he envied the great Corneille his reputation, and ordered a criticism to be written upon the "Cid." Those, therefore, who flattered skillfully, said little to him of his abilities in state affairs, or at least but 'en passant,' and as it ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... Bible, which was long forbidden, now open to all, how can we of this enlightened day still adhere to such idle dogma or ever quote these words of Christ to Nicodemus as authority for any water baptism?[154] By this whole context and by all of Christ's relevant sayings upon the Mount and elsewhere he had no allusion to water baptism. Had he meant baptized ...
— Water Baptism • James H. Moon

... for waste de vittles, now, and th'ow away de bread, Jes' for to strength dese idle hands to scratch dis ole bald head? T'ink of de 'conomy, Marster, ef dis ole ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... to her and embraced me." On hearing this, the chamberlain said to himself, "What is passing in his mother's breast? What have I not done I can yet do, and it were better that I preserve this youth some days, for such a rose may not be wounded through idle words, and such a bough may not be broken by a breath. For some day the truth of this matter will be disclosed, and it will become known to the king when repentance may be of no avail." So he went before the king ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... the increasing demands of the incomparable Miss JESSIMINA upon the dancing attendance of your humble servant, I am lately become as idle as a newly painted ship, and have not drunk in the legal wisdom of the learned Moonshees who lecture in the hall of my Inn of Court, or opened the ponderous treatise of Hon'ble Justice BLACKSTONE or ADDISON on Torts, for many ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... idle. He raised a troop of horse to pursue and conquer the rebels; but to his alarm he found the people quite outspoken and, in fact, in open rebellion in ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick

... on this point I can only speak from hearsay, and am quite willing to end here my series of illustrations, fearing that I may already have been wrongly set down as a lavulator temporis acti. Not the idle praising of times gone by, but the getting a lesson from them which may be of use to us, has been my object. And I believe enough has been said to show that the great complexity of modern life, with its multiplicity of demands upon our energy, has got us into a state of chronic hurry, the ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... no one to care for them, for their father and mother are drunken and idle, and send them about to beg. The children have been told that a kind Christian man lives at this house, and they are going to pull the bell and ask him ...
— Child-Land - Picture-Pages for the Little Ones • Oscar Pletsch

... suffice To save you. When by evil lust entic'd, Remember ye be men, not senseless beasts; Nor let the Jew, who dwelleth in your streets, Hold you in mock'ry. Be not, as the lamb, That, fickle wanton, leaves its mother's milk, To dally with itself in idle play." ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... just over. Blanche, seeing a pleasantly-idle morning before her, proposed to Arnold to take ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... with! that is the only comfort for people like me, for then they can fold their hands and idle away their time as before. Perhaps it is a sign of exceptional weakness, but I find some comfort in it. Now I can ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... grove," said Patty, "but I don't want to play anything. This is a day just to be idle and enjoy ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells

... to the American army from the British, urging the men to fly from all their hardships and miseries, and join the English force, where they would be received, and furnished with every comfort. In this condition of things it was very important to keep the American soldiers, cold, hungry, and idle, from thinking too much of their troubles. Washington could not give them balls, nor invite them to dine; but he wisely considered that the best thing he could give them was occupation,—a most wonderful medicine ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton

... the "Liberator." I told him I did; but, just having made my escape from slavery, I remarked that I was unable to pay for it then. I, however, finally became a subscriber to it. The paper came, and I read it from week to week with such feelings as it would be quite idle for me to attempt to describe. The paper became my meat and my drink. My soul was set all on fire. Its sympathy for my brethren in bonds—its scathing denunciations of slaveholders—its faithful exposures of slavery—and ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass

... not only idle, but stupid, to lament the departure of childhood's joys. It is as if something precious and valued had been forcibly torn from us, and we go sorrowing for lost treasure. But these things fall off from us naturally; we ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... be the walk, dinner, the Saturday afternoon home-letters to be written and then, until Monday, holiday, freedom to read and to talk English and idle. And there was a new arrival in the house. Ulrica Hesse had come. Miriam had seen her. There had been three large leather trunks in the hall and a girl with a smooth pure oval of pale face standing ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson

... happen to be all alone and in an idle mood, I play a game of solitaire, of which I am very fond. I use playing cards marked in the upper right-hand corner with braille symbols which indicate the ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... It was three o'clock. There was no time to lose. The day was passing swiftly, and at this rate evening would come on before one might be aware. The thought of standing idle any longer, while the precious hours were passing, was intolerable. Once more I made a hasty survey, and now, pressed and stimulated by the dire exigencies of the hour, I determined to make an effort toward the Quebec side. On that ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... Christendom took the Cross for the central symbol of its faith. What would have happened to Western Christendom without Augustine we do not know, and it is idle to try to guess, but Europe in its religious thinking followed for a thousand years the direction he gave it. His theology is only the travail of his soul, glowing and molten. His Confessions reveal to us more clearly than any other record we have Paganism becoming Christian. ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... appearance, or anything which might be repeated, maliciously or otherwise, to that man. He did not say to Miguel Rapponi, for instance, what he thought of Andy Green as a man or a rider. He did not mention him at all. He had learned in bitterness how idle gossip may eat away the efficiency of ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower

... the prospect will be to a person sitting quietly in the centre of the room; on the contrary, the farther out the glass is set, the more convenient the window will be for a person rising and looking out of it. The one, therefore, is an arrangement for the idle and curious, who care only about what is going on upon the earth: the other for those who are willing to remain at rest, so that they have free admission of the light of Heaven. This might be noted as a curious expressional reason for the necessity (of which no man of ordinary ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... would such stirring monuments be; full of life and commotion; than hermit obelisks of Luxor, and idle towers of stone; which, useless to the world in themselves, vainly hope to eternize a name, by having it carved, solitary and alone, in their granite. Such monuments are cenotaphs indeed; founded far away from the true body of ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... what I tole yer," he whipped out suddenly, just becoming aware that Roy's pencil had been idle. Peggy breathed hard. There was menace ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham

... excitement lasted Miss Dimple was in a state of jubilee. But by and by the novelty wore off; she had told the family everything she could possibly think of, and now longed for a few pairs of fresh ears into which to pour her stories. Everybody else was working for Christmas; Dotty alone was idle; for no one had time to give her a daily stint, and see that she ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May

... go. There is plenty of work in these days for a Christian woman to do. Surely I should go mad if I were to remain idle. You have work here, I have none, therefore I must go. Nurses are wanted in the ambulance corps ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... not be supposed, however, that the Germans in the tower were idle all this time. Bullets went through the opening in both directions and already two of the Frenchmen had been killed; two more were wounded. The fight ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay

... declaratory of international law on this point, and setting forth that England had no right to interfere with, or to permit, the escape of slaves from vessels driven into her ports. The resolutions were idle, because they could effect nothing, and mischievous because they represented that the sentiment of the Senate was in favor of protecting the slave-trade. Upon these resolutions, absurd in character and barbarous in principle, Mr. Webster did not even ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge

... ties were in patterns and styles that startled Battle Field. He had taken on manners and personal habits befitting a "man of the world"—but he had not lost that simplicity and directness which were as unchangeably a part of him as the outlines of his face or the force which forbade him to be idle for a moment. He and Pierson—Pierson was pupil, now—took a suite of rooms over a shop in the town and furnished them luxuriously. They had brought from New York to look after them and their belongings the first English manservant ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips

... and change its wildest passions into a holy calm. Till all nations receive the Bible in its integrity and own it as their only rule of policy, till kings reign for Christ and lay their crowns at His feet, a lasting peace is an idle dream. Treaties will no more bind nations that lie under the influence of unsanctified passions, that chains him who dwelt among the tombs, and within whom dwelt a legion of devils. Till other and better days come, the best cemented peace is only a pause—a truce—an ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie

... Eben walked at a little distance from the party, apparently taking no more interest in the affair than one of idle curiosity. ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan

... and turned once more to the window. Consciousness had flooded back indeed. What would Sheila have said to see him there? The unearthly beauty and stillness, and man's small labours, garden and wall and roof-tree idle and smokeless in the light of daybreak—there seemed to be some half-told secret between them. What had life done with him to leave a reality so clouded? He put on his slippers, and, gently opening the door, ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... out of her window came the mocking tones of the idle boys who had chosen as the vehicle of their scorn the very words which showed the relation of the fool to the eternal, and revealed in him an element higher far than any yet developed in them. They turned his glory into shame, ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald

... proposed to me, as proper in a boy, in order that in this world I might prosper, and excel in tongue-science, which should serve to the "praise of men," and to deceitful riches. Next I was put to school to get learning, in which I (poor wretch) knew not what use there was; and yet, if idle in learning, I was beaten. For this was judged right by our forefathers; and many, passing the same course before us, framed for us weary paths, through which we were fain to pass; multiplying ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... achievements of our great undertaking. We shall be able to point to you in proof that zeal for knowledge may thrive even under the pressure of secular callings; that mother-wit does not necessarily make a man idle, nor inquisitiveness of mind irreverent; that shrewdness and cleverness are not incompatible with firm faith in the mysteries of Revelation; that attainment in Literature and Science need not make men conceited, nor above ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... of the Sea," is never so beautiful as when it is dying. I have read that the Romans—after they ceased to be a brave people, and became idle and pleasure-loving—used to have these fish brought in before dinner and shown to the guests. The gay, thoughtless ladies, as they clapped their hands with delight at the beauty of the quickly-changing colours—white turning to sky-blue, and then to deep red—cared no more for the suffering ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham

... adaptable to any light scheme of colour, where they may appear indeed as guests of honour—invited from the past to be courted by the present. It is not often that such pieces are offered as parts of a scheme of modern decoration, and the fingers of to-day are too busy or too idle for their creation, yet it sometimes happens that a valuable piece of drapery of exceptional colour belongs by inheritance or purchase to the fortunate householder, and in this case it should be used as a picture would be, for an independent bit ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler

... rather a pamphleteer than an orator, deserves, on many accounts, a place in such a disquisition. The length of my prolegomena and digressions compels me to postpone this part of the subject to another occasion. A Magazine is certainly a delightful invention for a very idle or a very busy man. He is not compelled to complete his plan or to adhere to his subject. He may ramble as far as he is inclined, and stop as soon as he is tired. No one takes the trouble to recollect his contradictory opinions or his unredeemed pledges. He may be as superficial, as inconsistent, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... capitalist, 'if it were not for foreign competition I should be able to sell these things that you have made, and then I should be able to give you Plenty of Work again: but until I have sold them to somebody or other, or until I have used them myself, you will have to remain idle.' ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... anything in common with English Catholicism of the early sixteenth century. English Catholicism long before the Reformation had been a Protestant Catholicism, always in revolt against Roman claims, always preserving its insularity. It was idle to question the Catholic intentions of a priesthood that could produce within a century of the Reformation such prelates as Andrews and Ken. It was ridiculous at the prompting of the party in the ascendancy ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie



Words linked to "Idle" :   idle talk, unemployed, moon on, lie about, otiose, unwarranted, bum around, baseless, lazy, arse about, out of work, lie around, loll around, bum about, lounge about, ineffectual, waste one's time, run, slug, indolent, bum, loll, moon, operation, idling, unprofitable, ineffective, bone-lazy, idle wheel, work, inactive, warm the bench, unsupported, fuck off, slothful, work-shy, faineant, loaf, busy, frig around, daydream, irresponsible, ride the bench, arse around, leisured, lackadaisical, moon around, unengaged, frivolous, uneffective, lounge around



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com