"Indolent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of sorts, as your polished man of the world sometimes proves when his circle of admirers is a household one. The absence of his wife was an annoyance which, under the circumstances, he could not well resent, but that Lina should have been so indolent, or so forgetful, he considered a just cause of complaint. Thus in that smooth, ironical way, which usually expressed the General's anger, he began a series of complaints, that in another might have been considered grumbling, but in a man of ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... services had not yet begun, and we went down among the rocks to eat our luncheon of bread and oranges; the ocean rolled in languidly, a summer sea; we sat beside sheltered, transparent basins, among high and pointed rocks, and great, indolent waves sometimes reared their heads, looking in upon our retreat, or flooding our calm pools with a surface of creamy effervescence. Every square inch of the universe seemed crowded with particles ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... friendship towards me. Would to God the King's errand might lie in the cadger's gait, that I might have some better way of showing my gratitude than merely by a letter of thanks or this private memorandum of my gratitude. The lad is a good boy and clever, somewhat indolent I fear, yet with the capacity of exertion. Presuming his head is full enough of Greek and Latin, he has now living languages to study; so I will set him to work on French, Italian, and German, that, like the classic Cerberus, he may speak a leash of languages at once. Dined with Gillies, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... frail thread of a worthless life is soon snipped. I wish to God my fate had been true to its first destination, and made a parson of me;—I should have made an excellent country Joll. I think I can, with confidence, pronounce the character that would have been given of me:—He was an indolent good-humored man, civil at all times, and hospitable at others, namely, when he was able to be so, which, truth to say, happened but seldom. His sermons were better than his preaching, and his ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... loading the beds. Numbers of the Egyptian villages were seen in the navigation of the river. The houses are huddled together, are of unbaked clay, and look like so many bee-hives. Every village has its date-trees, and every hut has pigeons. The peasants in general seem intolerably indolent, and groups of them are every where lying under the trees. Herds of fine buffaloes, twice the size of those in Ceylon, were seen along the shore, and sometimes swimming the river. Groups of magnificent cattle, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... not forget that it was still a mere suspicion, which must be endorsed by investigation if the people were to be convinced. And Stephen was unprepared to offer the results of his investigation to a populace which was too indolent and hasty to investigate them as facts and to discriminate nicely between the shades of guilt. Anderson was loved and admired by his countrymen and more especially by his countrywomen. Everything, it seemed, would be forgiven ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... back after removing the coal-scuttle, Tommy Brock was lying a little more sideways; but he seemed even sounder asleep. He was an incurably indolent person; he was not in the least afraid of Mr. Tod; he was simply too ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... here by some who wish well to you, and as I go to London in the spring, I shall, together with Mr. Wedderburn and Mr. Elliot, consider what are the most prudent measures to take for your sake, or whether to take any. Mr. Smith is too busy or too indolent, but I flatter myself Dr. Black will be happy to make out this memorial for you. Let me know if I have any chance of seeing you this winter. I have none of being at Glasgow, and therefore wish you and Mr. Smith would come here, or you by yourself would come ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... an astonishing amount of what is called "reading matter" rolling out of our presses every year; while, significantly, we are producing very few books of permanent literary value. If the college study of literature is to encourage this indolent receptive temper, and relax the intellectual fiber of the student, then we might better drop it from the curriculum. The student must somehow learn that the book that is worth while will tax his ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... been asked with a royal air, and Memmi had ardently kissed the beautiful and guileless hand. Then he suddenly started up in a rage with himself, and left the Duchess. Massimilla remained in her indolent attitude on the sofa; but she wept, wondering how, young and handsome as she was, she could fail to please Emilio. Memmi, on the other hand, knocked his head against the tree-trunks like ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... came they found that the smith was nearly through his work. They stood watching him as he was driving in one of the last nails, feeling a kind of indolent curiosity in the work, when suddenly there arose in the road behind them a frightful outburst of shrieks and cries. The smith dropped the horse's foot and the hammer, and started up. Dudleigh and Edith also turned by a quick movement to see ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... found himself face to face with Madame Volmar, and their glances met. However, he gave no sign of recognition, and on her side there was but a slight sudden drooping of the eyelids. She had again assumed the air of a languid, indolent, black-robed woman, who modestly shrinks back, well pleased to escape notice. Her brasier-like eyes no longer glowed; it was only at long intervals that they kindled into a spark beneath the veil of indifference, the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... aware that bears, being of rather an indolent disposition, are not accustomed to hoard up a store of provision for their wants in winter, but prefer—in their own country, at least—sleeping through the short dreary days and long bitter nights, and thus avoid the necessity of taking food for some weeks, although they ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... chatting in the indolent stile of men who were to stay here all this day at least, we were suddenly roused at being told that the wind was fair, that a little fleet of herring-busses was passing by for Mull, and that Mr Simpson's vessel was about to sail. Hugh M'Donald, the skipper, came ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... enemies of the king, as they had wrongfully said of Roland, who had but done his duty faithfully to Queen Isabella, and was assuredly no enemy of her son, although he might well be opposed to the weak and indolent king, his father. However, when the search relaxed I borrowed the cloak of the good man's wife and set out for London, whither I have traveled on foot, believing that you and Bertha would take me in and shelter me in ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... the cause of his depression. There was Mr Ashton, the vicar, who had succeeded Mr. Browning, a thoroughly good and kind- hearted man, but one without an original thought in him; whose habitual courtesy and indolent mind led him to agree to every opinion, not palpably heterodox, and to utter platitudes in the most gentlemanly manner. Mr. Gibson had once or twice amused himself, by leading the vicar on in his agreeable admissions of arguments ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... fleets sought gold and peafowl and monkeys in the jungles of the Peninsula, as everybody knows. Above the rapids the Malays plant enough gambir to supply the wants of the whole betel-chewing population of Pahang, and, as the sale of this commodity wins them a few dollars annually, they are too indolent to plant their own rice. This grain, which is the staple of all Malays, without which they cannot live, is therefore sold to them by down river natives, at the exorbitant price of half ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... useful, and consequently happy; and more especially that thou mayest combat that false principle of honour, or rather of intolerable pride and folly, which so strongly prevails in our nation, where the most indolent, and the least useful, fancy themselves, and are reputed the most noble. Let us endeavour to make them sensible that men are noble, but in exact proportion with their being rational. The happiness which ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... learned from various reliable sources," the detective replied, "that Ralph Mainwaring has a younger brother, Harold, who is as much of a money-lover as himself, though too indolent to take the same measures for acquiring it. He is a reckless, unprincipled fellow, and having about run through his own property, I understand, he has had great expectations regarding this American estate, depending upon his share ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... bower, All flush'd or frosted with forest flower In the warm sun's wanton glances; And I grew deaf to the song bird—blind To blossom that sweeten'd the sweet spring wind— I saw her only—a girl reclined In her girlhood's indolent trances. ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... policy of the Church makes itself felt everywhere, high and low; and by long habit the people have become indolent and supine. The splendid robes of ecclesiastical Rome have a draggled fringe of beggary and vice. What a change there might be, if the energies of the Italians, instead of rotting in idleness, could have a free scope! Industry is the only purification of a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... the towns and cities women help in their husbands' shops, as in France, and while they may not always possess the energy and business skill which characterize the French women, they are at least no more indolent and easy-going than their male companions. The women of the nobility are often less educated than their plebeian sisters, and for the most part lead a very narrow and petty existence, which produces ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... proficiency does not appear to have been brilliant. He was indolent and careless, however, rather than dull, and, on the whole, appears to have been well thought of by his teachers. In his studies he inclined toward the Latin poets and historians; relished Ovid and Horace, and delighted in ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... from Marivaux, Lesage, Prevost, and Voltaire downwards, and glances, sometimes with actual comptes rendus, at pieces of the class not included. That it is conducted on the somewhat irresponsible and indolent principles of its time might be anticipated from previous things, such as the clause in the Preface to Wieland's just noticed book, that the author had "gone to Weimar, where perhaps he is still," an observation which, from the context, seems not to be so ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... in the newspapers that the Sultan of Priok, when visiting an aviation camp, was so overcome by the heat that he had to be carried away, regaining consciousness on arriving at his quarters. However, the attack may have been induced to some extent by general lack of exercise and the indolent life that characterises his compatriots who ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... colder, or a night-march has miscarried. Then you never wish to see the sun rise again. There was a time when a man who boasted that he had never seen the sun rise was branded as a lazy sloth, an indolent good-for-nothing, who willingly missed half the pleasures of life. After twenty months continuous trekking in South Africa one is not sure that one's opinions on this subject fall into line with those of the majority. For after a baker's dozen of sunrises one has generally reached that ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... you haven't any principles," Mrs. Armiger declared; and Alexa Glennard, lifting an indolent smile, said: "I shall never write ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... long time he was unsuspected, and indeed, if he had been, he cared very little about it. He went from tribe to tribe, living an indolent life, which suited his taste perfectly; and as he was very necessary to the Indians as an interpreter during their bartering transactions with the Whites, he was allowed to do just as he pleased. He was, however, fond of shifting from tribe to tribe, and the traders seeing him now with ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... on the hall table, swinging his foot and regarding the spectacle with the indolent curiosity that one might exhibit toward the gambols of some ugly new importation of the Zoological Society. When the story was told he ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... by the wreckage of those wars it would have become Italy's mainstay through the Empire. The earlier Romans and Latins who had first accepted colonial allotments or had migrated severally there for over a century were of sterner stuff than the indolent remnants that had drifted to the city's corn cribs. These frontiersmen had come while the Italic stock was still sound, not yet contaminated by the freedmen of Eastern extraction. Cities like Cremona and Mantua were truer guardians of the ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... could see, beneath a confusion of black eyelashes and dark eyebrow, that the blue eyes looked straight out in front of her, her arm lay along the wicker side-rest of the chair, languid, indolent, relaxed. ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... plausible grounds for their judgement. Many circumstances contributed to qualify him in a very special degree for the task which, looking at his letters in that light, he may be said to have undertaken. His birth, as the son of a great minister; his comparative opulence; even the indolent insignificance of his elder brothers, which caused him to be looked upon as his father's representative, and as such to be consulted by those who considered themselves as the heirs of his policy, while the leader of that party in the House of Commons, General Conway, was his cousin, and the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... as German. It worked on a poor material, morally considered; among peoples who have not been distinguished for stamina of character, earnestness, contemplative habits, and moral elevation,—peoples long enslaved, frivolous in their pleasures, superstitious, indolent, fond of fetes, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... was indolent. I was accustomed to pass the day with my mistress; my greatest pleasure was to take her through the fields on beautiful summer days, the sight of nature in her splendor having ever been for me the most powerful ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... will pay the least attention to him. It is, at all events, too late in the day for we 'Saxons' to be either cajoled or amused by such nonsense. An overwhelming majority of the Irish people have been proved indolent beyond all parallel, and not much more provident than those unhappy savages who sell their beds in the morning, not being able to foresee they shall again require them at night. A want of forethought so remarkable, and indolence so abominable, as characterize ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... adroit phrases as would catch the ear of a listening, applauding audience. Straight, hard thinking was not the road to political preferment in Clay's day. Calhoun had that power, as Lincoln had it. Webster had the capacity for it, although he was too indolent to employ his great gifts steadily. Yet it was Webster who analyzed kindly and a little sadly, for he was talking during Clay's last illness and just before his own, his old rival's defect in literary quality: "He was never a man of books.... I could never ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... in the Gardens at Naples, some four or five gentleman were seated under a tree, drinking their sherbet, and listening, in the intervals of conversation, to the music which enlivened that gay and favourite resort of an indolent population. One of this little party was a young Englishman, who had been the life of the whole group, but who, for the last few moments, had sunk into a gloomy and abstracted reverie. One of his countrymen observed this sudden gloom, and, tapping him ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Mowbray, with his calm sadness, "you should not thus allow your time to be absorbed in indolent lounging. A man has his career in the world to run, and college is the threshold. If you enter the world ignorant and awkward—and the greatest genius is awkward if ignorant—you will find the mere fops of the day pass you in the course. ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... then unprovided with the slightest artificial contrivance for the betterment of its naturally unhygienic conditions. There was no systematic drainage, and the entire refuse matter of an ignorant and indolent population might have been left to fester under the rays of a tropical sun during the dry season, had it not been for the zopilotes, or turkey-buzzards, which, protected by law, had multiplied to ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... all ignorant men—are beginning to be alarmed at the press of women into other—I had almost said any other—avenues of labor than that of housewifery. Eagerness to break up housekeeping and try boarding for a while, in order "to get rested out," is not confined to the incompetent and the indolent. Nor is it altogether the result of the national discontent with "the greatest plague ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... but I thought I saw the indolent Bimbo suddenly start at the word "bushrangers," and his apparently heavy-looking eyes were lighted up with an energetic look that I little expected from a man such as his outward appearance denoted. Whether my surmises were correct or not, the man resumed ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... up at her blankly, his laughing, impertinent brown face sobered at once by the sight of her own. He made a reply in Italian, raising his shoulders. Some ill-dressed, loafing stragglers on the wharf drew near Sylvia with an indolent curiosity. She turned to them and asked, "Do any of you speak English?" although it was manifestly inconceivable that any of those typical Neapolitans should. One of them stepped forward, running his hand through greasy ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... store cattle, or accustoming them to change of food, are eminently practical. After speaking of the desirableness of providing a good stock of vegetables, he continues,—"And yet, after all, how many indolent farmers remain, who for want of spring food are forced to turn their cattle out to grass before it is ready for pasture! which not only starves the cattle, but lays the grass-roots open to be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... without sashes, were women, scantily covered, sounding every note in a scale from black to white. Yet, Lee observed, the whitest were, essentially, black. What amazed, disturbed, him was their indolent blinking indifference, their indecent imperviousness, in the ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... world, or to enforce his opinions upon others, rarely becomes a learned man. A great many confused, dreamy ideas, no doubt, float through the brain of such a man; but he has little exact and reliable knowledge. The truth is, there is a sort of indolent, listless absorption of intellectual food, that tends to idiocy. I knew a person once, a gentleman of wealth and leisure, who having no taste for social intercourse, and no material wants to be supplied, which might have required the active exercise of his powers, gave himself up entirely ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... refugees, from peripatetic philosophers to indolent aborigines, the testimony of her charm can be gathered. I speak as a victim. I love England with a fervour born of admiration (without admiration no one ever falls in love). I love her ways and her mind, ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... the old school of the dance, Lanyard was unversed in that graceless scamper which to-day passes as the waltz with a generation largely too indolent or too inept of foot to learn ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... Thirty-Years War, and the still dolefuler spiritual atrophy (the flaccid Pedantry, ever rummaging and rearranging among learned marine-stores, which thinks itself Wisdom and Insight; the vague maunderings, flutings; indolent, impotent daydreaming and tobacco-smoking, of poor Modern Germany) which has followed therefrom,—ACH GOTT, he might have been a "SUCCESS of a Fritz" three times over! He might have been a German Cromwell; ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... navigation. The Thames managed better for York's upstart rival London, and yet the Ouse is not destitute of sea or river craft. These were of both steam and sail, and I myself have witnessed the energy with which the reluctance of the indolent stream is sometimes overcome. I do not suppose that anywhere else, when the wind is low, is a vessel madly hurled through the water at a mile an hour by means of a rope tied to its mast and pulled by a fatherly old horse under the intermittent ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... and for the first time was aware of the presence of the indolent figure in the doorway. The glow of a cigarette was at the man's lips, but the ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... Throes, rebuffs, even failure to achieve what we wish, are to be welcomed, for the effects of vigorous endeavor inweave themselves into our characters; moreover through struggle we lift ourselves from the degradation into which the indolent fall. In the intervals of strife we may look back dispassionately upon what we have gone through, see where we erred and where we did wisely, watch the workings of universal laws, and resolve to apply hereafter what we have ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... pleasant summons to a Creole ball. With one glance I made a mental picture of him—a young, high-bred face, marred somewhat by dissipation and late hours, yet beneath that dim light appearing almost boyishly fresh, and bearing upon its every feature the plain impress of reckless humor, and indolent content. It was the face of a youth rather than a man; of one more accustomed to looking upon gay companions at the club than on the horrors of a battlefield; one who could justly be expected to boast of fair conquests, yet who might prove somewhat slow at drawing sword to front ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... interrupted Harry; "it was given me for a certain purpose, to wit, the reconquest of the country and its restoration to its former owners. But since the people are too indolent and too self- indulgent to allow me to do this for them, of course I have no claim upon the treasure, and could not possibly dream of appropriating it to ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... cannot express the pleasure your letter and that of your Lorchen caused me. An answer speedy as an arrow's flight ought indeed to have responded, but I am always rather indolent about writing, because I think that the better class of men know me sufficiently without this. I often compose the answer in my head, but when I wish to write it down I generally throw aside the pen, from not ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... happen.) The Vicar was struck at the time by the fact that, after all, no one on earth had the slightest idea of what this great monster thought about when he saw fit to rest from his labours. But he was too indolent to follow up that new theme that day; he fell back from its suggestion into his ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... the chronic state of the disease presents a rather dry, indolent and bluish appearance, except that here and there the tissues show more activity of the disease, more especially so over the anal region, due to harsher disturbance during the act of stooling. ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... extended observation, it should be found that the same ominous groups of cases clusterings about individual practitioners were observed in a remote country, at different times, and in widely separated regions, it would seem incredible that any should be found too prejudiced or indolent to accept the solemn truth knelled into their ears by the funeral bells from both sides of the ocean—the plain conclusion that the physician and the disease entered, hand in hand, into the ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... doctor, yet she does not seem to have been one bit in love. He was too grave and good, though as devoted a lover as could be asked for. It was a queer match and a dangerous experiment, but after a while their mutual qualities adjusted themselves. He kept her steady, and she roused him from indolent repose. As a critic of that time says: "She was as bustling, restless, energetic and pushing as he was modest, retiring and unaffected." Lover gives this picture of them: "There was Lady Morgan, with her irrepressible vivacity, her humor ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... the most crude implements, and have but very little knowledge of farming, and are too indolent to put into practice what little they do know of soils and crops. It seems to make little difference what season they plant in. The climate is always warm, most of the year extremely hot; too hot for an American or white man, ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman
... in the plains, and hunted the buffaloes; dressed well; were cleanly; rich in horses; bold, independent, and good warriors. The War-are-ree-kas lived chiefly by fishing, and were found on the banks of the rivers and lakes throughout the country. They were more corpulent, slovenly, and indolent than the Shirry-dikas, and more peaceful. The Banattees, as we have before mentioned, were the robbers of the mountains. They were a wild and contemptible race, and at enmity with every one. In summer they went about nearly naked. In winter they clothed themselves in the skins of rabbits ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... hand. When he was not singing, he stood looking like a sulky child. When he began to sing the first recitative, it went tolerably well, but every now and then he gave a kind of shriek, which I could not bear. He sang the arias in a most indolent way, and yet some of the notes with too much emphasis, which is not what I like. This has been an invariable habit of his, which the Bernacchi school probably entails; for he is a pupil of Bernacchi's. At court, too, he used to sing all kinds of airs which, ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... condition in their native country, where they were the victims of idolatry, barbarism, and war. The negroes imported were usually between the ages of fourteen and thirty, two-thirds of them being males. The new negro, just transferred from the wilds of a distant continent, was indolent, ignorant of the modes and implements of labor, and of the language of his master and, perhaps, of his fellow-laborers. To tame and domesticate, to instruct in the modes of industry, and to reduce to subordination and usefulness a barbarian, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... their littleness. He did not at this time profess the austere devotion which, at a later period, gave to his court the aspect of a monastery. On the contrary, he was as licentious, though by no means as frivolous and indolent, as his brother of England. But he was a sincere Roman Catholic; and both his conscience and his vanity impelled him to use his power for the defence and propagation of the true faith, after the example of his renowned predecessors, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of his indolent habits, which were incorrigible, young Montgomery was removed from the seminary at Fulneck, and placed in the shop of a baker at Mirfield, in the vicinity. He was then in his sixteenth year; and having already afforded evidence of a refined taste, both in poetry and music, though ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... stuck into a bladder came the heckling. Denson, that indolent, liberal-minded sceptic, did most of the questioning. He lay contorted in a chair, with his ugly head very low, his legs crossed and his left boot very high, and he pointed his remarks with a long ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... over, the crowd dispersed, and now that the speeches had been read, each one fell back into his place again, and everything into the old grooves; the masters bullied the servants, and these struck the animals, indolent victors, going back to the stalls, a ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... but, with deliberate mind I say, that I have never seen anything so ghastly in its inner tragic meaning,—not in Pisan Maremma—not by Campagna tomb,—not by the sand-isles of the Torcellan shore,—as the slow stealing of aspects of reckless, indolent, animal neglect, over the delicate sweetness of that English scene: nor is any blasphemy or impiety—any frantic saying or godless thought—more appalling to me, using the best power of judgment I have to discern its sense and scope, than the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... poverty, also in accumulation enough, lies impassably separated from it; opposed, uncommunicating, like forces in positive and negative poles. The gods of this lower world sit aloft on glittering thrones, less happy than Epicurus's gods, but as indolent, as impotent; while the boundless living chaos of ignorance and hunger welters, terrific in its dark fury, under their feet. How much among us might be likened to a whited sepulcher: outwardly all pomp and strength, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... with some trouble and expense, has been brought to the state in which you see it, will afford to the poorest people an opportunity of giving to their children some share of education, and I will not suppose that anybody can be so indolent, and so unprincipled, as not to exact from their children a regular attendance upon it. I sincerely exhort you, and beg of you now, for the last time, that after this institution has been got into some ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... further, and something red gleamed, among the trees and undergrowth. Smoke was observed at the same moment, and immediately after came the hum of voices and the sight of persons stretched on the ground in lolling, indolent positions, while some were sitting on a fallen tree, and two were engaged in broiling some venison, which evidently was meant to furnish dinner for the rest. The majority were smoking a species of red clay pipe, and the appearance of the party suggested that they were resting after a laborious ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... reverse. Feeble, languid, and inert, sitting motionless for hours at her window, or moving her small fingers over the strings of her guitar, to some soft and languishing air, she would have seemed to a stranger incapable of rousing herself from that indolent repose, in which mind as well as body participated. But, the slightest disregard of her commands—and sometimes even the neglect to anticipate her wishes, on the part of the servants; was sufficient to awake her. The inanimate and delicate ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Holland, so that this venerable masterpiece was at least forty years old. But what would you have? It is the passions which wear out body as well as soul, the clothes as well as the body; and our worthy burgomaster, apathetic, indolent, indifferent, was passionate in nothing. He wore nothing out, not even himself, and he considered himself the very man to administer the affairs of ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... a faultful temper, which, having so mighty a power of realization at command, never became so much interested in any fact of human history as to spend one touch of heartfelt skill upon it;—which, yielding momentarily to indolent imagination, ended, at best, in a Puck, or a Thais; a Mercury as Thief, or a Cupid as Linkboy. How wide the interval between this gently trivial humor, guided by the wave of a feather, or arrested by the enchantment of a smile,—and the habitual dwelling of the thoughts of the great ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... not a banking bubble by which he had not lost, nor a mining company of vast promise and brief existence in which he had not held shares. Uncompromisingly averse to the jog-trot work of ordinary mortals. Bill was neither indolent nor timid in his own peculiar fashion of seeking riches. He would have gone up in a balloon to any height, or down in a diving-bell to depths yet unsounded, had the promise been large enough; and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... stir up his rather indolent-minded Grace—he did not mean the countess to hear it; but some people's eyes and ears are wonderfully quick at gathering what is to their own credit, and Kate, who had not heard a bit of commendation for a long ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mistook his talent after all. He used to be very much dissatisfied that I preferred his Letters to his Sermons. The last were forced and dry; the first came naturally from him. For ease, half-plays on words, and a supine, monkish, indolent pleasantry, I ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... tell where the apartments of the adulteress ended and that of the divine courtesan began. Haunts of her long, indolent, self-pleasing nights and days, they presented everywhere the impress of Phaedra's luxurious humour. A peculiar glow, such as he had never before seen, like heady lamplight, or sunshine to some sleeper in a delirious dream, hung upon, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... the chief danger of all that class of reading is its easiness, and the indolent, careless mental habits it induces. A great deal of the reading of young people on all days is really reading to no purpose, its object being merely present amusement. It is a listless yielding of the mind to be ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... am safe!" said he, with an arrogant little air of satisfaction. "I was born under an indolent star, but I confess to you, privately, of the two I would rather gather my harvests with the sickle than the sword. How ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Professor wondered secretly whether France too was beginning to be tarred with the Modernist brush. No!—impossible. For that the Canon was either too indolent or too busy. ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... permission to leave cards by proxy is often abused by selfish and indolent men is no doubt true. But the social advantage which it gives to a large class of men who are neither selfish nor indolent more than counterbalances any disadvantages, and saves to "society" a solid element that might be entirely ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... Europe which have suffered the greatest physical degradation. "Feudalism," says Blanqui, "was a concentration of scourges. The peasant, stripped of the inheritance of his fathers, became the property of inflexible, ignorant, indolent masters; he was obliged to travel fifty leagues with their carts whenever they required it; he labored for them three days in the week, and surrendered to them half the product of his earnings during the other three; without their consent he could not change his residence, or ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... directly associated with the human interest of their calling. Our capacity of appreciating the beauties of the earth we live on is, in truth, one of the civilised accomplishments which we all learn as an Art; and, more, that very capacity is rarely practised by any of us except when our minds are most indolent and most unoccupied. How much share have the attractions of Nature ever had in the pleasurable or painful interests and emotions of ourselves or our friends? What space do they ever occupy in the thousand ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... the indolent Mortimer, which seems to hint that if good society might on any account allow itself to be impressible, he, one of good society, might have the weakness to be impressed by what he here relates. It is hidden with great pains, but it is in him. The gloomy Eugene ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... business a success. In our Christian walk we are to seize upon every opportunity to make progress. There is no time in this short life for ease. Carelessness and indolence are dangerous and destructive to spirituality. An indolent man will never accomplish much for God nor be of any great benefit to his fellow men. But oh, how easy ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... winding path above the inn, and made love to one another. Their journey had made them indolent, the afternoon was warm, and it seemed impossible to breathe a sweeter air. The flowers and turf, a wild strawberry, a rare butterfly, and suchlike little intimate things had become more interesting than mountains. ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... more successful, and by bringing up a reserve, after ten or twelve hours hard fighting, they compelled the Holstein centre to give way, and by two o'clock the army was in full retreat, but in good order. The Danes appear to have been either too fatigued or too indolent to follow up their advantage. The members of the Holstein government, who were in Schleswig, fled immediately to Kiel, on hearing the battle was lost; all the officials also left the town; the post-office was shut, the doors locked, and all business suspended. The battle was more sanguinary ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... she said with difficult composure. 'I just caught his voice. He has no doubt come back from Paris to stay. This is a rather vexatious, indolent way he has, never ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... friends in town, in less than a week got the first confirmed in his station. "I have been on board," said he, "ever since; and, as this way of life is becoming familiar to me, have no cause to complain of my situation. The surgeon is a good-natured, indolent man; the first mate (who is now on shore on duty) is indeed a little proud and choleric, as all Welshmen are, but in the main a friendly honest fellow. The lieutenants I have no concern with; and, as for the captain, he is too much of a ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... him over with indolent insolence. "Some folks find this climate don't agree with them. Some folks find it better to ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... better speak frankly to you, Captain Rainham," he said. "Your aunt, as you probably know, did not like your father. I am not sure that she actually distrusted him. But she considered him weak and indolent, and she recognized that he was completely under the thumb of his second wife. Your late aunt, my old friend, had an abhorrence for that lady that was quaint, considering that she had scarcely ever seen her." He permitted himself the ghost of a smile. "She was deeply afraid of any of her property ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... silent, and both were sad. Like a queen she leaned on her full white arm, With that regal, indolent air she had; ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... is of such certainty and importance that a person, not indolent or prejudiced, might ask for no other. It is that sempiternal desire for change[562]—that principle of revolution, which is so much more certain than any evolution, and which governs human life, though it is always bringing that life back to the old places, "camouflaged," as they ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... not one of these personages, and a woman, moreover, so indolent and void of character as not to be of the least consequence in her own house, Rebecca soon found that it was not at all necessary to cultivate her good will—indeed, impossible to gain it. She used to talk to her pupils about their "poor mamma"; and, though she ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of every man in the world is to find his true master, and, for his own good, submit to him; and to find his true inferior, and, for that inferior's good, conquer him. The punishment is sure, if we either refuse the reverence, or are too cowardly and indolent to enforce the compulsion. A base nation crucifies or poisons its wise men, and lets its fools rave and rot in its streets. A wise nation obeys the one, restrains the ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... was told, "the yeomanry of the Northern States are so well armed that we have found it impossible to hold the country against their militia; but in the Southern States, aside from the difference between the energetic Northerners and the more indolent Sonthrons, the long distances between the plantations, and the fact that the gentry don't dare to trust their slaves with weapons, make them practically defenceless. The plan now seems to be, therefore, to wear the ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... Edmundsbury, they say. Charitable burghers of St. Edmundsbury? To me Jocelin it seems rather, Samson, and Warinus whom he leads, have privily hoarded the oblations at the Shrine itself, in these late years of indolent dilapidation, while Abbot Hugo sat wrapt inaccessible; and are struggling, in this prudent way, to have the rain kept out![11]—Under what conditions, sometimes, has Wisdom to struggle with Folly; get Folly persuaded to so much as thatch out the rain from itself! For, indeed, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... supper. Marie poured out a glass of wine from a bottle on the table; apparently they had been supping. They began to converse together in low tones. My repast arriving, I fell to. A few moments later, I heard Marie say, in her composed indolent tones: ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... the risk of moving farther up the hill-path to a less exposed lurking place, was hesitating only because his indolent soul rebelled at the thought of having to drag Ford's body so many added steps to its burial in the river, when the clink of shod hoofs upon stone warned him that the time for scene-shifting had passed. Pushing the mustang ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... him with twenty-five thousand, and gained the battle of Arques, in spite of the disparity. This extraordinary result may probably be ascribed in great measure to the contrast of personal character in the two generals. Mayenne was slow and indolent. Of Henry it was said, that he lost less time in bed than Mayenne lost at table; and that he wore out very little broad-cloth, but a great deal of boot-leather. A person was once extolling the skill and courage of Mayenne in Henry's presence. "You are right," said Henry, "he is a great captain, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... Jurgen and the Centaur another boy with the small blue-eyed person in whom he took delight. And this fat and indolent looking boy informed them that he and the girl who was with him were walking in the glaze of the red mustard jar, which Jurgen thought was gibberish: and the fat boy said that he and the girl had decided never to grow any older, which ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... in a quiet undertone, "does it occur to you that you are making no preparations to defend the camp! That, in fact, you seem wholly indolent in the matter?" ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... or hunter, and is not only so by hereditary descent, but he is one of the noted "mighty hunters" in the province to which he belongs. Far and wide is his name known—for Ossaroo possesses, what is somewhat rare among his indolent countrymen, an energy of mind, combined with strength and activity of body, that would have given him distinction anywhere; but among a people where such qualities are extremely rare, Ossaroo is of course a ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... be impertinent. My dear liberty, shall I leave thee? My faithful solitude, my darling contemplation, must I bid you then adieu? Ay-h, adieu. My morning thoughts, agreeable wakings, indolent slumbers, all ye DOUCEURS, ye SOMMEILS DU MATIN, adieu. I can't do't, 'tis more than impossible—positively, Mirabell, I'll lie a-bed in a morning as long as ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... passage Plato discusses types of music in relation to action, the Lydian which is sorrowful, and the Ionian which is indolent; showing that selection must be made if men are not to be at the mercy of random influences. It is not necessary, as Plato would have it, to banish Lydian and Ionian harmonies from society; but within one's personal economy, within the republic of one's own soul, one must prefer with ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... austere in the practice of its duty and charity, living in the world to console and edify it, without mingling in its joys and passions—but a clergy such as intrigue, cupidity, and ambition had made it; that is to say, the court abbes, rivalling the Roman priests, indolent, libertine, elegant, impudent, kings of fashion, autocrats of the salon, kissing the hands of those ladies of whom they boasted themselves the paramours, giving their hands to kiss to the women of the people whom they honored ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... brutally simple—the face of a pioneer. The forehead was broad and strong, and the chin was square and determined; but the full, dark-blue eyes had in them shadows of rashness and recklessness, the mouth was somewhat self-indulgent and indolent; though the hands clasping both knees were combined of strength, activity, and also a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... as though their condition were meant to be a state of uniform indulgence, and vacant, unprofitable sloth. To multiply the comforts of affluence, to provide for the gratification of appetite, to be luxurious without diseases, and indolent without lassitude, seems the chief study of their lives. Nor can they be clearly exempted from this class, who, by a common error, substituting the means for the end, make the preservation of health and spirits, not as instruments of usefulness, but as sources of pleasure, their ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... I am far from saying that this depreciation of the cloistered life is just in either case but any impartial critic of monastic institutions must admit that their virtues avoid publicity and their faults attract attention. In all countries a large percentage of monks are indolent: it is the temptation which besets all but the elect. Yet the Buddhist ideal of the man who has renounced the world leaves no place for slackness, nor I think does the Christian. Buddhist monks are men of higher aspirations ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... more or less witty way, just as an advocate pleads in court on the most contradictory briefs. The newspaper critic always finds a subject to work up in the book he is discussing. Done after this fashion, the business is well adapted to indolent brains, to men devoid of the sublime faculty of imagination, or, possessed of it indeed, but lacking courage to cultivate it. Every play, every book comes to their pen as a subject, making no demand on their imagination, ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... over the wheel and walked. He was a spare man, sinewy and upright, and past the golden age of youth. He lounged over the road in a careless manner that concealed his agile strength, his tireless endurance. This indolent carriage and his seemingly slight build had, on more than one occasion, been disastrously misleading to importunate or beery strangers. He could, and did, fight whenever chance offered, with a cold passion, a destructive abandon, that had won him, throughout the turbulent confines ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... eyes, and far greater firmness and determination in all the lines of her face, so that, in spite of superficial dissimilarity, Bessie Harper really resembled her mother more nearly than either Camilla, calm, gentle, by nature possibly, a little indolent, ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... sea-green. Against this bright afterglow the hills of Imbros stood almost black. I stared at them. Then the luminous green turned to the blue of the zenith, and the hills were lost. And the cold of the Gallipoli night chilled me, as I lay there, too indolent ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... would have to be done; I've been going on in a most uncomfortable manner. In spite of my continual remonstrances, I could not persuade you to work. You must have recognised that you contained two men: the one indolent, dreamy, always carried away by the pleasures or caprice of the moment—a feather-brain. The other: ambitious, clear-headed, and eager for work. Your part would give my part no chance. Very well; we are partly separated. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... picking cherries. Marian saw her and came too, establishing Jilly comfortably at the foot of the tree with a rubber doll and the two pups as companions. Jilly was usually a placid baby and she settled down contentedly to trimming up her doll with dandelions. Buz, the indolent, curled himself at her feet and was asleep inside of five minutes, but Huz looked up longingly into the tree at Jane. He seemed to be racking his doggish brain as to the best method of reaching her. He kept making little futile leaps, whining impatiently. ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... indeed a pleasure unknown to those indolent beings who let the sun gain his meridian splendour before they reluctantly leave ...
— The Little Quaker - or, the Triumph of Virtue. A Tale for the Instruction of Youth • Susan Moodie
... Soudan by the hopes of gratifying peculiar tastes. The majority had harems of the women of the country, which were limited only by the amount of money they could lay their hands on by any method. Many were hopeless and habitual drunkards. Nearly all were dishonest. All were indolent and incapable. ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... direct and inspire, and our better men felt all through their lives how much that meant. In general we soon came to feel and appreciate a most kindly influence as proceeding from him. I think we had no teacher whom we at the last regarded more affectionately or approached more closely; and many an indolent one was won to warm interest ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... size, and are more fierce in their nature, than upon the Magdalena, and other great rivers that run into it. These rivers flow through a low country within the tropics; their climate is of the hottest kind, and consequently most suitable to the development of the great reptiles. The indolent character of the natives, too— half-Indian, half-Spanish—prevents them from attacking and destroying these creatures with that energy that is exhibited by the inhabitants of our own country. The consequence ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... vouchsafe any more, and Mrs. Meadowsweet was too innocent and indolent and comfortable in her ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... man acts always with reason, and prepares his own lentils." Among the Romans it was not much esteemed, and from them the English may have inherited a prejudice against it, on account, it is said, of its rendering men indolent. It takes its name from lentus 'slow,' and, according to Pliny, produces mildness and ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... in danger. If the tongue and the knees and the hands are too much engaged in it, the mind grows weary or idle. If the mind is too busily employed, the spirit has a diminished share, or the body is indolent. It is necessary to provide occupation for the mind, but not to occupy it in following great mental efforts for which it is unprepared. If the mind is unprepared, it no sooner reaches one point than it has to follow the speaker to another; and thereby the spirit loses ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... as a receptacle for convict labour; it was not a populous place when we took it in 1685, nor, as far as we can gather, had the population much increased up to the year 1787, and the few Sumatrans and Malays that were its inhabitants were an indolent race, and preferred a life of ease to any kind of labour. They were content to get their livelihood from fishing, and they had no artificial wants. They would occasionally work upon pepper plantations, and would bring the berries to Bencoolen for sale to British merchants. Labour was therefore wanted ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... the undulating country may be seen stretching away into the gray of distance, with hills and woods, and stains of smoke which mark the sites of villages. Every now and then a horse comes staggering along the towing-path, trailing a sleepy barge filled with merchandise. A quiet, indolent life these bargemen lead in the summer days. One lies stretched at his length on the sun-heated plank; his comrade sits smoking in the little dog-hutch, which I suppose he calls a cabin. Silently they come and go; silently the wooden bridge lifts to let them through. The horse stops at the bridge-house ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... lack of exercise is enforced, and the resulting interference with normal functions is so great that he lives the winter through in a sort of hibernation. He is nearly poisoned by lack of ventilation in the small living room, where the one stove makes living possible; he gets fat and indolent, and then with relaxed muscles plunges into furious labor again ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... picture steeped in cool shadows, with glints of sunshine here and there, and one could almost imagine now, in looking at it, that the open windows, with glimpses of snowy curtains, the great front door with the cool, deep hall beyond, the shady, vine-covered porch, and the indolent figure on the steps, with dreamy, dark eyes, and hat idly dropped, were but witcheries of the artist's ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... deck chairs in the veranda of the pavilion, smoked, drank whisky, and, the chalice disposed of, meditated. His temporary annoyance passed. It was an altogether splendid summer night, following a blazing, indolent day. Full moonlight brought out dimly the lines of the receding hills, one wave beyond another; far beyond were the pin-point lights of Leatherhead, and in the foreground the little stage from which I used to start upon my gliders gleamed like ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... have one advantage; the greatest sceptic, after a glance at them, can no longer invoke chance, the great Deus ex machina of the ignorant and indolent. ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... the bureau and pulled open the upper drawers. In those drawers were so many things, things which he had kept there, either deliberately or because he was too indolent to destroy them. Old dance cards, invitations, and a bundle of photographs, snapshots. He removed the rubber band from the bundle and stood looking them over. Photographs of school fellows, of picnic groups, of girls. ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... gathering of cattle in Loving's brand began at once, continuing for six weeks. We combed the hills and valleys along the main Brazos, and then started west up the Clear Fork, carrying the beeves with us while gathering. The range was in prime condition, the cattle were fat and indolent, and with the exception of Indian rumors there was not a cloud ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... a week, of the indolent, aimless life led by most of our youthful heirs expectant and apparent," returned Rosa. "I remember once telling you how I envied you for having work and a career. I was youthful then ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... under heaven have been placed beneath him. The spectacle of this small and delicate vanity doing battle against this vanity so infinitely hard and robust is exquisitely diverting. Mme. Recamier put herself so prodigiously out of her way; she who was indolent became active; she who was utterly insensible to children became maternal; she who was of delicate health underwent what only a vigorous constitution would undertake. But all in vain; she either did not or would not see that M. Guizot would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... and in the black country, behind Vera Cruz, you will find these people living a half-indolent, half-savage life, as small cultivators, cattle-herds, fishermen, or hunters. In riding through the forest you may often chance upon such a picture ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... called Esmond, had now business enough on his hands in Castlewood House. He had three pupils, his lady and her two children, at whose lessons she would always be present; besides writing my lord's letters, and arranging his accompts for him—when these could be got from Esmond's indolent patron. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... indolent. Of that there has been abundant proof. Give them a definite object, a fair chance of profit, and they will work as well as the people of this or any other country. Of this I have had ample opportunity of judging, on works where thousands have been employed, both here [England] and in Ireland."—A ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... your son to be idle one minute. I do not call play, of which he ought to have a good share, idleness; but I mean sitting still in a chair in total inaction; it makes boys lazy and indolent.' Chesterfield's Misc. Works, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... cease to dislike him; she went farther, and rapidly. She began to like him, to circle round that tantalizing, indolent mystery as a deer about a queer bit of brush in the undergrowth. She liked to watch him. She was alternately afraid to talk before him and recklessly confidential—all with no response or sign of interest from ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... people they are! All beggars; but that's nothing. Look at them as they gather round. Some, are too indolent to come down-stairs, or are too wisely mistrustful of the stairs, perhaps, to venture: so stretch out their lean hands from upper windows, and howl; others, come flocking about us, fighting and jostling one another, and demanding, incessantly, charity for the ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... there a square-rigged schooner from Maine smothered with fragrant planks and clapboards; an imported citizen is fishing at the end of the wharf, a ruminative freckled son of Drogheda, in perfect sympathy with the indolent sunshine that seems to be sole proprietor of these crumbling piles and ridiculous warehouses, from which even the ghost of prosperity ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... countries have more or less of the same defects, for certain it is that they everywhere attach paramount or undue importance to the conventional learning of the grammar-school and the drawing-room, and the ignorant and the indolent have everywhere the support of a great majority. Johnson ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... merit, to these three taken together, viz., conferring a boon, acquiring a kingdom, and obtaining a son. Learned men have declared that a king, although powerful, should never consult with these four, viz., men of small sense, men that are procrastinating, men that are indolent, and men that are flatterers. O sire, crowned with prosperity and leading the life of a householder, let these four dwell with thee, viz., old consanguineous relatives, high-born persons fallen into adversity, poor friends, and issueless sisters. On being asked by the chief of the celestials, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... an erroneous impression of Mr. Vernon if we designed, by the words "listless ennui," to depict the slumberous insipidity of more modern affectation; it was not the ennui of a man to whom ennui is habitual, it was rather the indolent prostration that fills up the intervals of excitement. At that day the word blast was unknown; men had not enough sentiment for satiety. There was a kind of Bacchanalian fury in the life led by those leaders of fashion, among whom Mr. Vernon was not the least distinguished; it was ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pronounced; but at this moment, when there shone forth the mother-instinct which had never come out or blossomed in her life, but had been overlaid completely with routine and conventionality, rendering it too indolent to put forth petals, Michael had no thought but for that which she had never given him yet, and which, now it began to expand before him, he knew he ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... he is the idol of all the soldiers, whatever their nationality; for he is as ready to rush to the rescue of a French or Austrian knight when pressed as to that of his own men. But the devotion which the whole army felt for him was as gall and wormwood to the haughty Austrian and the indolent Frenchman; and the retirement of the King of France, which left Richard in supreme command, ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... attitudes, and is not a bold and striking gymnast, like many of his kindred. He has a preference for dense woods of beech and maple, moves slowly amid the lower branches and smaller growths, keeping from eight to ten feet from the ground, and repeating now and then his listless, indolent strain. His back and crown are dark blue; his throat and breast, black; his belly, pure white; and he has a white ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... came, in two indolent yellow lines, male lions, female lions, half-grown lions, cub lions that cuffed each other in play, in all perhaps fifty or sixty of them. Of these only two or three looked towards the Professor, for none of them ran or galloped, while the rest spread over the den, ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... maximum of effort on the part of the individual and, therefore, on the part of society as a whole. If some receive more than their share, others will necessarily receive less than their share—the very essence of injustice; the former will become indolent because work is not required of them and the latter will grow desperate because their toil is not fairly rewarded. Injustice is the greatest enemy ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... and the firing of minute guns on Castle Island. These mournful sounds were heard all day, even to the setting of the sun. However doleful the day may have seemed, there was more appropriateness in these signs of mourning than any man of that generation could have known; for with George II. died the indolent but salutary let-them-alone policy under which the colonies enjoyed prosperity and peace. With the accession of the new king the troubles began which ended in the disruption of the empire. George III. was the last king whose accession received official recognition ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... second of them inherited the high spirit and the genius of the great Peter, while the first was a pleasure-seeking princess, resembling some of those Roman empresses who loved to stoop that they might conquer. She is described as indolent and sensual, and she once declared that the chief good in the world was love. Yet, though she neglected affairs of state and gave them over to favorites, she won and kept the affections of her people. She was unquestionably endowed with the magnetic ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr |
