INDOLENCE • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Indolence

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noun

Indolence n.

Freedom from that which pains, or harasses, as toil, care, grief, etc. (Obs.) "I have ease, if it may not rather be called indolence."

The quality or condition of being indolent; inaction, or lack of exertion of body or mind, proceeding from love of ease or aversion to toil; habitual idleness; indisposition to labor; laziness; sloth; inactivity. "Life spent in indolence, and therefore sad." "As there is a great truth wrapped up in "diligence," what a lie, on the other hand, lurks at the root of our present use of the word "indolence"! This is from "in" and "doleo," not to grieve; and indolence is thus a state in which we have no grief or pain; so that the word, as we now employ it, seems to affirm that indulgence in sloth and ease is that which would constitute for us the absence of all pain."

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Etymology of 'Indolence'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Indolence" Quotes from Famous Books

... to her indolence. Going through the hall of her boarding-house just now, I saw the long table laid, at which the boarders meet. And I think of those destinies which have been linked with Rose's during the past fortnight, while I am still unable to obtain a clear idea ...

— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc

... all tried to satisfy his curiosity, they could not succeed in conveying very distinct notions to his mind; partly because there was nothing in the tower to which they could compare the external world, partly because, having chiefly lived lives of seclusion and indolence in Eastern palaces, they knew it ...

— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... solicitations, Balbus, I have engaged in a most difficult task, as my daily refusals appear to plead not my inability, but indolence, as an excuse. I have compiled a continuation of the Commentaries of our Caesar's Wars in Gaul, not indeed to be compared to his writings, which either precede or follow them; and recently, I have completed what he left imperfect after the transactions in Alexandria, to the ...

— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar

... the captain of the ship had sailed without him. No one was too glad to see him back again so soon. His mother and his brother Henry knew that neither of them had means to support him as a man of fantastic leisure. His indolence dishonoured the family. Perplexing eccentricities had grown intolerable. Only old Uncle Contarine stood by the boy. He still believed in and loved dear Noll, incorrigible as the good fellow was, and inexplicable from every vantage. When he returned ...

— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland

... appeased. His great work is thus spoken of at its first appearance, in a letter from Thomas Warton to his brother [8]. "The Dictionary is arrived; the preface is noble. There is a grammar prefixed, and the history of the language is pretty full; but you may plainly perceive strokes of laxity and indolence. They are two most unwieldy volumes. I have written to him an invitation. I fear his preface will disgust, by the expressions of his consciousness of superiority, and of his contempt of patronage." In 1773, when he ...

— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

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