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More "Inaction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heart and brain needed more than this, she was cheerful in spite of their hunger. Almost all of God's favorites among women, before their life-work is given them, pass through such hunger,—seasons of dull, hot inaction, fierce struggles to tame and bind to some unfitting work the power within. Generally, they are tried thus in their youth,—just as the old aspirants for knighthood were condemned to a night of solitude and prayer before the day of action. This ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... no longer, the Committee of Safety which had been criticized for its inaction, dispatched Woodford with an army independent of Henry's command to drive Dunmore from Gosport. Dunmore removed himself to Norfolk. In December 1775 Woodford's men, supported by some North Carolinians, faced Dunmore's ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... of this momentary inaction. In a few minutes he had a fire glowing in the stove, a lamp lighted, the chill driven from that long deserted room. Except for that chill and a slight closeness, the cabin was as he had left it. Outside, his two dogs snarled ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... stood to execute this order, let go the anchor in five fathoms water. The raft backed about two fathoms on the line, which was then at full stretch. The sail was taken in, and everything made snug for a tedious period of inaction. ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... me the assurance that no external consideration would weigh in the balance and influence my decision. I had to silence all my passions; prejudices, principles already formed, love, and even self-interest were to remain in a state of complete inaction. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... no doubt, truth in the charge he made against David of negligence in his judicial and other duties. Ever since his great sin, the king seems to have been stunned into inaction. The heavy sense of demerit had taken the buoyancy out of him, and, though forgiven, he could never regain the elastic energy of purer days. The psalms which possibly belong to this period show a singular passivity. If we suppose that he was much in the seclusion of his ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... these laws Mr. Jefferson did nothing as Vice-President. But whatever was his motive for official inaction, it was not because he approved them. He wrote the Kentucky "resolutions of '98,"—the strongest protest that could be made against them, and to be thenceforth held by nullifiers and secessionists as their covenant of faith. But he acted secretly, taking ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... gathered his muscles for a forward spring. The first was to lean and send a downward sweep of the dagger across the rope by which Shorty was leading the horse, and the second was a backward lunge that drove the knife deep into the bared throat of the Captain, stunned into momentary inaction by the ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... forth To manifest his glory by its beams, Inhabiting his own eternity, Beyond time's limit or what bound soe'er To circumscribe his being, as he will'd, Into new natures, like unto himself, Eternal Love unfolded. Nor before, As if in dull inaction torpid lay. For not in process of before or aft Upon these waters mov'd the Spirit of God. Simple and mix'd, both form and substance, forth To perfect being started, like three darts Shot from a bow three-corded. And as ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... fatigue. And here I only speak of the physical pain. But do you not know what terrible sufferings a child so well gifted, with a mind so capable and ready to receive all kinds of knowledge, will feel in the forced inaction, the death of intellectual faculties to which you are about ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... I was in my element again. We were forced into inaction once more, but it was a form of inaction which differed from that weary waiting which had so torn my nerves ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... injury to the innocent, from the procrastinated determination of the charges which might be brought against them; the advantage to the guilty, from the opportunities which delay would afford to intrigue and corruption; and in some cases the detriment to the State, from the prolonged inaction of men whose firm and faithful execution of their duty might have exposed them to the persecution of an intemperate or designing majority in the House of Representatives. Though this latter supposition may seem harsh, and might not be likely often to be verified, yet it ought not to ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... Army of the Potomac began to arrive, I had recovered all my old vigour, and had become restless through inaction. Nobody could say when the Eleventh would come. The troops, as they landed, found roomy locations for their camps, for the rebels were far off at Yorktown, and with only flying parties of cavalry patrolling the country up to our ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... Besides he did not know anything; he did not occupy himself about anything. He appeared even to have forgotten the profession which he was said to be ignorant of, and seemed to have gone astray, to be bowed down by sheer inaction. ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... in reply excused his inaction by explaining that the military governor and others had given him to understand that they were exclusively charged with the work of reconstruction in Louisiana. To this the President rejoined under date of ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... uttered Claud. "I'm sick of inaction. I don't mind death; but it's a beastly bore waiting to be killed. One can't quite regulate supplies. Now, if to-morrow was the day for our dispatch, we might have a beano out of our spare biscuits and ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... through the earlier days of his stay, and Lance seemed to be lulled into a continual doze whenever he was unoccupied, and that was almost always. It had grieved his elder brother to see this naturally vivacious being so inert and content with inaction, only strolling about a little in early morning and late evening, and languid and weary, if not actually suffering, during the heat and glare of the day. He was now, with his air-pillow and a railway rug, lying on the beach beside Felix, who with his safety inkstand ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of states declare it to be unconstitutional to refer to the providence of God in any of their public acts." The Quarterly Review informed its readers that "the supreme felicity of a true-born American is inaction of body and inanity of mind." Dickens's American Notes was an ungrateful return for the kindness and enthusiasm with which he had been received in this country. De Tocqueville's Democracy in America was widely read in England and doubtless had ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... strictest precautions were required barely to preserve existence. A total cessation from every intellectual effort was one of the most peremptory laws prescribed to him. Schiller's habits and domestic circumstances equally rebelled against this measure; with a beloved wife depending on him for support, inaction itself could have procured him little rest. His case seemed hard; his prospects of innocent felicity had been too banefully obscured. Yet in this painful and difficult position, he did not yield to despondency; and at length, assistance, and partial deliverance, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... to the origin of the world. Moses, the confidant, the interpreter, the historian of the Deity, makes us (if we may use such an expression) witnesses of the formation of the universe. He tells us that the Eternal, tired of his inaction, one fine day took it into his head to create a world that was necessary to his glory. To effect this, he forms matter out of nothing; a pure spirit produces a substance which has no affinity to himself; although this God fills all space with his immensity, ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... same conduct of Mr. Buchanan is the precise explanation of the prodigious haste which the South Carolinians have used in their proceedings. They knew that the President in power could not, if he would, act with vigor against his own party. His inaction was assured; there were two months of interregnum, of which it was important to make the most; so that Mr. Lincoln, on coming into office, might find himself checked, or at least harassed, by the power ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... whether or not to make an attempt to recall Almo to his natural way of life? Should they do any of these things without appealing to the Emperor or would it be better first to inform Commodus? They debated over and over every line of conduct any one of them could suggest. After all complete inaction and entire secrecy ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... was, so far as I knew, nearly unanimous among business men. Every one who owned shares in Mexican companies, every one who had invested hopefully a little while before in Mexican railways, every one who had any kind of interest in Mexico was of the same opinion about the inaction of the ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... depress him more as he crouched there in the enforced inaction; he could hear rustlings in the low water-growth as of reptiles creeping along, the splashes in the river, and all about him the croaking, hooting, and barking of the nocturnal creatures which made the place their home; ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... despatches to this island. The lapse of one year shows that one or other of these circumstances has already taken place, and the consequence of my detainer until orders are received from France will most probably be, that a second year will be cut out of my life and devoted to the same listless inaction as the last, to the destruction of my health and happiness, and the probable ruin of all my further prospects. I cannot expect, however, that my private misfortunes should have any influence upon Your Excellency's public conduct. It is from being engaged in a service calculated for ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... before him, refusing to obey his command to take them up again and help him attempt, even at that late hour, to retrieve the fortunes of the day. Crispin looked on in scorn and loathing. His passions awakened at the sight of Lesley's inaction needed but this last breath to fan it into a very blaze of wrath. And what he said to them touching themselves, their country, and the Kirk Committee that had made sheep of them, was so bitter and contemptuous that none but men in the most parlous and pitiable ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... with it their power of producing or continuing putrefaction. This is the whole philosophy of the preservation of meat by cold. The fishmonger, for example, when he surrounds his very assailable wares by lumps of ice, stays the process of putrefaction by reducing to numbness and inaction the organisms which produce it, and in the absence of which his fish would remain sweet and sound. It is the astonishing activity into which these bacteria are pushed by warmth that renders a single summer's day sometimes so disastrous to the great butchers of London and Glasgow. The ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... suspicious Henry II. Fourteen years of this King's reign had passed away, and Earl Richard had received no great employments, no new grants of land, no personal favours from his Sovereign. He was now a widower, past middle age, condemned to a life of inaction such as no true Norman could long endure. Arrived at Bristol, he read the letter of Henry, and heard from Dermid the story of his expulsion and the grounds on which he vested his hopes of restoration. A consultation ensued, at which it is probable the sons of Nesta assisted, as it was ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... as a companion, for she neither spoke nor stirred, so that the governess would have thought her drowsy, but for the uprightness of the straight back, and the steady fold of the fingers on the knee. Much as Miss Fennimore detested the sight of inaction, she respected the reverie consequent on the blow she had given. It was a refreshing contrast with Bertha's levity; and she meditated why her system had made the one sister only accurate and methodical, while the other ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... energie.—Ills ne se donneroient aucune peine pour avoir des habits, ou de meilleures provisions; ils aiment mieux porter des haillons que de les raccommoder. Ills passent le dimanche, qui est le jour du repos, entierement dans l'inaction.—L'inaction est leur souverain bonheur; aussi travaillent-ils ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... of Turkey; but never, under the most despotic of infidel governments, did I behold such squalid wretchedness as I have seen since my return, in the very heart of a Christian country. And what are your remedies? After months of inaction, and months of action worse than inactivity, at length comes forth the grand specific, the never-failing nostrum of all state physicians from the days of Draco to the present time. After feeling the pulse, and shaking the head over the patient, prescribing the usual course of warm water ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... men, women, and children were attracted to the heights around the city to behold the spectacle. From the Capitol and from the President's mansion, the vivid flashes of artillery could be seen; but no one doubted the result. It is only silence and inaction we dread. The firing ceased at nine o'clock P.M. The President was on the field, but did ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... Colonel an occasion for argument and parley. Chafed at this fresh experience of the capricious uncertainty of woman, he had walked on with Vance to the Manor-house. Left alone, Caroline could not endure the stillness and inaction which increased the tumult of her thoughts; she would at least have one more look—it might be the last—at the scenes in which her childhood had sported—her youth known its first happy dreams. But ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is the greatest of evils, because truth is always sad; "mentira," on the other hand, is merciful and kind. He carries doubt so far that he doubts his very doubts. Such a philosophy should logically lead to quietism. That pessimism did not in the case of Espronceda bring inaction makes one suspect that it was largely affected. There is nothing profound in this very commonplace philosophy of despair. It is the conventional attitude of hosts of Romanticists who did little but re-echo the Vanitas vanitatum ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... upon myself individually considered. If the experiment is not made, the United States can never be satisfied, that in a juncture apparently so favorable, it would not have succeeded, and their Minister would find it extremely difficult to justify before them a state of absolute inaction. ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... under that interdiction, but since our commercial code practically prevents usury altogether, and our law will not recognise contracts for interest upon private accommodation loans to unprosperous borrowers, it is now scarcely necessary. The idea of a man growing richer by mere inaction and at the expense of an impoverishing debtor, is profoundly distasteful to Utopian ideas, and our State insists pretty effectually now upon the participation of the lender in the borrower's risks. This, however, is only one part of a series of limitations of ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... in towards Dublin, running evenly like pellets in the groove of the Naas Road. At the crest of the hill at Inchicore sightseers had gathered in clumps to watch the cars careering homeward and through this channel of poverty and inaction the Continent sped its wealth and industry. Now and again the clumps of people raised the cheer of the gratefully oppressed. Their sympathy, however, was for the blue cars—the cars of their friends, ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... youths were immured. Sentinels were continually on guard in the corridors and court and around the bastions; the food was inadequate and often loathsome; an hour's walk in the yard daily, between two soldiers with loaded muskets, was the only respite from solitude and inaction; "Lives of the Saints" were the only books allowed; intercourse with the outward world was entirely cut off; surveillance was incessant; on Sunday they were guarded to the chapel, but kept apart; every quarter ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... was announced he naturally made all haste to reach his capital. Meanwhile the desire of keeping his army intact caused him to refrain from any movement which involved the slightest risk of bringing on a battle, and, in fact, reduced him to inaction. So much is readily intelligible. But what at this time withheld Sapor, when he had so grand an opportunity of making an impression upon Rome—what paralyzed his arm when it might have struck with such effect it is far from easy to understand, though perhaps not impossible to conjecture. The ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... Labour World seemed imminent. But when it was authoritatively explained that "industrial action," instead of meaning work, as was supposed, was a euphemistic term for striking, harmony reigned once more. It was, however, unanimously resolved that in future the expression "industrial inaction" be always used in such connection, as "action" was a word repugnant to all right-thinking Lead-Swingers, and, anyhow, calculated in such a context to give rise ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... course different from that recently pursued by several of my contemporaries; I publish my memoirs while I am still here to answer for what I write. I am not prompted to this by the weariness of inaction, or by any desire to re-open a limited field for old contentions, in place of the grand arena at present closed. I have struggled much and ardently during my life; age and retirement, as far as my own feelings are concerned, have expanded their peaceful ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... and after the three mellow strokes had died away the silence grew slowly maddening. When inaction was no longer bearable, Griswold sprang up and went to stand at the open window. The summer night was hot and breathless. In the north-west a storm cloud was creeping up into the sky, and he watched its black shadow climbing like a terrifying threat of doom ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... biography,—events belonging to the narrative of the time,—and the individual receives a reflected light from many men and things. Dates and facts make the task of statement or commentary more easy to the writer, and his work more interesting to the general reader. But the case of the mere thinker, the man of inaction, whose sphere of achievement is for the most part a little room, and who produces his effects in a great measure in silence or solitude, is a very different one. The names of his publications, the dates of them, the number of them, the publisher's price for them, the critic's ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... certainly I intend no injustice to any, and if I have done any I deeply regret it. To be told, after more than five weeks' total inaction of the army, and during which period we have sent to the army every fresh horse we possibly could, amounting in the whole to 7918, that the cavalry horses were too much fatigued to move, presents a very ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... and the lanes were perfect quagmires of half-melted snow and slash, in which the dogs paddled and splashed their way with a perfect indifference to the state of their glossy coats; any amount of slush being better than enforced inaction. ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... her eyes registered in memory the casual movements without, while her consciousness was occupied only with her soul's experience. But soon this period of blissful inaction was sharply terminated. Her still watching eyes brought her a message so incongruous with her immediate surroundings as to shake her out of her waking dream. She became suddenly conscious of a nineteenth-century intruder amid her ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... was now nearly twenty years of age. He possessed much of the character of his father, was without vice, but rather inclined to inaction than otherwise. Much was to be ascribed to his education and college life, and more to his ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... my faculties, and no sense of drowsiness or fatigue. I rose and sat by the fire, watching the trees and clouds tumultuously tossing and fleeing overhead, and hearkening to the wind and the rollers along the shore; till at length, growing weary of inaction, I quitted the den, and strolled towards the borders of the wood. A young moon, buried in mist, gave a faint illumination to my steps; and the light grew brighter as I walked forth into the links. At the same moment, the wind, smelling salt of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... And Lamarck conceived that he had found in Nature such causes, amply sufficient for the purpose in view. It is a physiological fact, he says, that organs are increased in size by action, atrophied by inaction; it is another physiological fact that modifications produced are transmissible to offspring. Change the actions of an animal, therefore, and you will change its structure, by increasing the development of the parts ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... that this was now no time for inaction. Much yet remained to be done. So up he got again, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... through our own deeds: this would be the right task. But before we can do this we must first know it!—There is a thoroughness which is merely an excuse for inaction. Let it be recollected how much Goethe knew of antiquity: certainly not so much as a philologist, and yet sufficient to contend with it in such a way as to bring about fruitful results. One should not even know more about a thing than ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... feared the appearance of the sky. All was calm, oppressively calm, and fearful to one who knew how suddenly storms arise under such circumstances. He would have warned them, but he did not dare to, for fear of discovering himself. So he was compelled to sit in a state of inaction and watch with feverish ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... was not so easy. Not only were the troops weak and exhausted from want of supplies, but the enemy had been much encouraged by our long inaction. Of Wellington we had no great fear. We had found him to be brave and cautious, but with little enterprise. Besides, in that barren country his pursuit could not ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... betrothed. He chided himself that he had allowed her father to persuade him against following her to the cabin of her mother. Then doubt began to perplex him; then suspicion. A bird croaked significantly as it flew above his head. He could not longer endure inaction. Kaala's footprints were still traceable in the sand. He would go as far as they might lead. He set off at a round pace, stopping now and then to assure himself, and presently stood perplexed near the Spouting Cave, for there they ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... every event of life hath conspired to feed my early prepossessions; and, in this awful crisis of my fate, I have placed myself and my throne rather under the guardianship of spirits than of men. This alone has reconciled me to inaction—to the torpor of the Alhambra—to the mutinies of my people. I have smiled, when foes surround and friends deserted me, secure of the aid at last—if I bided but the fortunate hour—of the charms of protecting ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... necessary he should erect upon it military lines and intrenchments. But do not droop for that—awaken thy soul within thee, my son. Think you part with a vain vision, an idle dream, nursed in solitude and inaction.—I weep not, yet what am I now like to lose?—Look at these towers, where saints dwelt, and where heroes have been buried—Think that I, so briefly called to preside over the pious flock, which has dwelt here since the first ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... own short-sighted reason alone. Most men, at such times, take refuge in a sort of fatalism; they stand inactive, until urged in this or that direction by the press of outward circumstances; or they rush blindly forward, under impatience of suspense, preferring risk to inaction. ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... legitimate and useful activity of our workmen renders still more painful for them, if possible, the measures taken against them by those who reproach them for their idleness and who prosecute them to-day under the pretext of an inaction ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts
... usurpation but through abrogation; the Government had acted because of the default of the States, it had practically been forced to exercise powers limited to the States because the States lapsed through neglect and inaction. Then the Government discovered the vulnerable spot in our great charter, the Achilles heel of the Constitution. It was just six innocent-looking words in section eight empowering Congress to "regulate commerce ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... where they could; some burst open the gates of the great stables, where the regiment of Flanders was stationed, and mixed pell-mell with the soldiers. Others, about four thousand in number, had remained in the Assembly. The men were quiet enough, but the women were impatient at that state of inaction; they talked, shouted, and ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... some last terrible thought she starts to her feet, and, as though inaction has become impossible to her, draws her white silken wrap around her, and sweeps rapidly out of all view of the waning Chinese lamps into the gray obscurity of the coming day that lies in the ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... my palpitations were frequent: I was sensible of a continual oppression, and my weakness became at length so great, that I could scarcely move or step without danger of suffocation, stoop without vertigoes, or lift even the smallest weight, which reduced me to the most tormenting inaction for a man so naturally stirring as myself. It is certain my disorder was in a great measure hypochondriacal. The vapors is a malady common to people in fortunate situations: the tears I frequently ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... symbolical significance in the fact of its lawgiver Merlin, and its emperor Arthur, being both of them not dead, like Sigurd, like Dietrich, like Charlemagne and Roland, but lying in enchanted sleep. Long inaction and the day-dreaming of idleness had refined and idealized the heroes of this Keltic race—a race of brilliant fancy and almost southern mobility, and softened for a long time by contact with Roman colonists and Christian priests. They were not the brutal combatants of an active fighting age, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... docilely at her heels, had reached the garage and started the car. Like all cars which have been spending a considerable time in secluded inaction, it did not start readily. At each application of Billie's foot on the self-starter, it emitted a tinny and reproachful sound and then seemed to go to sleep again. Eventually, however, the engines ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... and, armed with their cameras, retired to safe distances, where the work could not possibly interfere with them or they with it, and took photos of the progress of the carts. We cannot complain, however, of their action (or inaction, rather), for the resulting pictures make a good memorial of the crossing of the Salado by the "Tacuruers." The ladies rushed to assist when they saw that photos were being taken, but, as the carts were well over the danger line by the time the ladies were at the ropes, we have no pictured ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... propeller was still turning. To a man, the various captains reported that their men had obeyed instructions to the letter. No acts of violence had as yet been committed by any of the American crews. The ex-sailors, though chafing at their inaction, had assumed ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... a weary interval of inaction and pain, came a time when I could get up and move about without discomfort, and one fine frosty day, which seemed the brightest of my life, Geist and Ramon helped me down-stairs and led me into a pretty little morning-room, opening into one of the conservatories, ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... urged the case of Louisiana upon the attention of Congress, and I can not but think that its inaction ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... laugh, but you are moved to pity at the unconsciousness of those poor devils, possessed by a fixed idea, blind men led by dreams, drawn on by an invisible leash. The terrible feature of it all was this, that when M. Joyeuse returned home, after those long, cruel days of inaction and fatigue, he must enact the comedy of the man returning from work, must describe the events of the day, tell what he had heard, the gossip of the office, with which he was always accustomed to entertain the ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... time to remove them. Have they days of danger? He knows them, and will be a refuge and defense in them. Have they days of duty? He knows them, and will furnish the strength and the help they require. Have they days of inaction when they are laid aside from their work, by accident or disease? He knows them, and says to his servants under every privation, 'It is well that it was in thy heart.' Have they days of privation when they are denied the ordinances ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... still blindly turns her wheel for men and nations. Concurrently with, and tributary to, these warlike preparations, crushing taxes have been levied, journals have been suppressed, and the country, which three years ago was prosperous and happy, now stagnates in a forced inaction, gold has become a curiosity, and the mills stand idle ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... course represent the sum as 10-8. It is equally clear that two equal forces acting in opposite directions, both being finite and each distinguished from the other by its direction only, must neutralize or reduce each other to inaction. Now the transcendental philosophy demands; first, that two forces should be conceived which counteract each other by their essential nature; not only not in consequence of the accidental direction of each, but as prior to all direction, nay, as the primary ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the impression of a grosser mass of character than most men. It has been said of him that his presence could be felt in a room you entered blindfold; and the same, I think, has been said of other powerful constitutions condemned to much physical inaction. There is something boisterous and piratic in Burly's manner of talk which suits well enough with this impression. He will roar you down, he will bury his face in his hands, he will undergo passions of revolt and agony; and meanwhile his attitude of mind is really both conciliatory and ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sword with which she had achieved so many conquests; the Voices, too, were silent, and all this troubled her. The king kept her away from all active warfare, and she grew restive and impatient with her life of inaction. The army, which under her influence had been reformed of half its vices, now separated from her by the king's orders and fell into the most wild excesses. Joan prayed and pleaded to be allowed to go again into combat, and finally the king allowed her to do so; but such success attended her, and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... Haroun's care with women left,[go] By hope unblest, of fame bereft, While thou—whose softness long endeared, Though it unmanned me, still had cheered— To Brusa's walls for safety sent, Awaited'st there the field's event. Haroun who saw my spirit pining[gp] Beneath inaction's sluggish yoke, 820 His captive, though with dread resigning, My thraldom for a season broke, On promise to return before The day when Giaffir's charge was o'er. 'Tis vain—my tongue can not impart[gq] My almost drunkenness of heart,[169] When first this liberated ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... Tientietnikov's eyes had become extinguished for ever, and upon it there followed a darkness denser than before. Henceforth everything conduced to evolve the regime which the reader has noted—that regime of sloth and inaction which converted Tientietnikov's residence into a place of dirt and neglect. For days at a time would a broom and a heap of dust be left lying in the middle of a room, and trousers tossing about the salon, and pairs ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... made, and the rest of the day thus cleared for inaction, he sat down and wrote a letter. Ever since his fall he had been successfully practising the art of throwing a morsel straight into one or other of the throats of the triple-headed Cerberus, his conscience—which was more clever ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... Spaniards on the Panaro had achieved a Pyrrhic victory over Traun at Campo Santo (February 8, 1743), but the next six months were wasted in inaction, and Lobkowitz, joining Traun with reinforcements from Germany, drove back the enemy to Rimini. The Spanish-Piedmontese war in the Alps continued without much result, the only incident of note being a combat at Casteldelfino won by the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... ashes. It appeared that the nibble, which had seemed but the preliminary to swallowing the bait, was after all no more than a nibble; that the fish had merely nosed the worm and swum away. In the meantime, while eaten up by the suspense of this inaction, she was witness to activity of the most strenuous variety. Never had she seen a man spring up into favour as did Harrison Blake. His campaign meetings were resumed the very night of Bruce's conviction; ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... trouble in our own lifetime has sprung from a long period of inaction—from ignoring what fundamentally was happening to us, and from a time-serving unwillingness to face facts as they forced themselves ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... ill, and yet I abandoned myself to my fate, allowing myself to slip without the slightest attempt at resistance, along the easiest way, towards death or idiocy or paralysis, towards anything that meant the indifferent passivity of inaction. I had bad, confused dreams. The silence irritated me. I fancied to myself that the sea ought to make some sound, that it was holding itself deliberately quiescent in preparation for some event. I remember that Marfa and the doctor prevented me from rising ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... ye betray God's cause when ye have it in your hands to establish it as ye please? The Queen, ye say, will not agree with you. Ask ye of her that which by God's word ye may justly require, and if she will not agree with ye in God, ye are not bound to agree with her in the devil!" The inaction of the nobles proved the strength which Mary drew from the attitude of France. So long as France and England were at war, so long as a French force might at any moment be despatched to Mary's aid, it was impossible for them to put pressure ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... orders to keep quiet; and it took all Mrs Jo's authority and the girls' ingenuity to keep him from leaving his sofa long before strained back and wounded head were well. Daisy cooked for him; Nan attended to his medicines; Josie read aloud to while away the long hours of inaction that hung so heavily on his hands; while Bess brought all her pictures and casts to amuse him, and, at his special desire, set up a modelling-stand in his parlour and began to mould the buffalo head he gave her. Those afternoons seemed the pleasantest part ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Lily!" he protested again. And words failing him, he sought by a gesture to disclaim such a sinister motive for inaction. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... period of forced inaction, he could contemplate at leisure the features and form of his charmer. She was not one of the slender beauties of romance; she was as plump as a partridge; her cheeks were two roses, not absolutely damask, yet verging thereupon; her lips twin-cherries, ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... the courage of the assassin and made merry the midnight ride of armed mobs bent upon righting wrongs by committing crimes before which the atrocities of savage warfare pale. Wholesale murders have been committed and sovereign majorities awed into silence and inaction by reason of the widespread illiteracy of the masses. The very first principles of republican government have been ruthlessly trampled under foot because the people were ignorant of their sovereign rights, and had not, therefore, courage ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... The man was standing stock-still, as if scanning the premises. The watchman dodged back behind the building on the corner of the street, hid his lantern, and peered slyly at the thief, who was still looking at the store. What was the meaning of such mysterious inaction? The watchman, instead of waiting to catch the culprit in the act of breaking and entering, stepped softly forward. Grasping his staff with a firm grip, to give a sudden whack, should the villain turn upon him,—"What ye 'bout, ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... the body, the heart, the lungs, the stomach, the liver, &c., are maintained in their normal state of health. Their condition, moreover, is only to be improved by the muscular movements belonging to exercise. The heart itself is intended for action, not for inaction. By action it thrives, and by disuse it becomes weakened. It is so with all the other organs. In conclusion, therefore, it must be said that the whole system can only be kept in perfect health by muscular movements, and that in addition to keeping ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... which these words were answered was answer sufficient. The English and Gascon lords, assembled together under the banner of the Prince, were bent on a career of glory and plunder. The inaction of the long truce, with its perpetual sources of irritation and friction, had been exasperating in the extreme. It was an immense relief to them to feel that war had at last been declared, and that they could ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... unmistakable sensation that a breeze was coming, the rebound from inaction and grumbling, lying full-length on deck, to alert excitement was instantaneous and most pleasing. The anchor was rattled up in a minute, and it was scarcely stowed away before the genial air arrived, with ripples ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... resist. Did he not foresee tyranny worked out and resistance complete, and his own favourite republic succeeding to the death of tyrants? One remark of Mary's with regard to the time when Machiavelli considered himself most neglected is worth recording: "He bitterly laments the inaction of his life, and expresses an ardent desire to be employed. Meanwhile he created occupation for himself, and it is one of the lessons that we may derive from becoming acquainted with the feelings and actions of celebrated men, ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... was found both within and without the questioner. Those who were young in the weary days of Palmerstonian rule will remember the disgust at purely political life which was produced by the bureaucratic inaction of the time, and we can hardly wonder that, like many of the finer minds among his contemporaries, Edward Denison turned from the political field which was naturally open to him to the field of social effort. His tendency in this direction was aided, no doubt, partly by the intensity ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... many mistakes at Washington, and they are still making many. If it has been decided to conquer the Filipinos, then conquer them at once. Let the struggle not be drawn out and the drops of blood multiplied. The Republican party is being weakened by inaction at the Capital. If the war is not ended shortly, the party in power will feel the evil effects at the ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... however, as became the arm of the service to which he belonged, was impatient of inaction, and had not yet learned to look on hostilities ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... be exquisite,' said Lesbia. 'I am very tired of inaction, though I dearly love learning Spanish,' she added, with a lovely smile, and a look that was half submissive, half mutinous. 'But I have really been beginning to wonder whether this boat ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... consequence of the restoration of peace. The President might have dissolved it by withdrawing the army and navy officers who administered it, but he did not do so. Congress could have put an end to it, but that was not done. The right inference from the inaction of both is, that it was meant to be continued until it had been legislatively changed. No presumption of a contrary intention can be made. Whatever may have been the causes of delay, it must be presumed that the delay was consistent with the ...
— California, Romantic and Resourceful • John F. Davis
... seemed to prognosticate. Old Geysir, however, proved less courteous than we had begun to hope, for after labouring uneasily in his basin for a few minutes, he roused himself on his hind-legs—fell—made one more effort,—and then giving it up as a bad job, sank back into his accustomed inaction, and left the disappointed assembly to disperse ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... his speeches in the campaign; how we felt that at last we had found in him a leader, bold and fearless, and that now, when the first real test of leadership came, it appeared that we were to be disappointed and that by his silence and inaction he would permit Senator Smith to win and allow Martine, the popular choice, to be defeated, thus setting aside the verdict of the election. He listened intently but without comment to all I had to say. Proceeding with my argument, I said: "The people of New Jersey accepted your word ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... Then, wearied at his inaction and feeling the need of movement and exercise, McTeague would light his pipe and take a turn upon the great avenue one block above Polk Street. A gang of laborers were digging the foundations for a large brownstone house, and McTeague found interest and amusement in leaning over the barrier ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... allow—and to the vehement And striving spirit readily I pardon The excess of action; but to thee, my General, Above all others make I large concession. For thou must move a world, and be the master— He kills thee who condemns thee to inaction. So be it then! maintain thee in thy post By violence. Resist the Emperor, And, if it must be, force with force repel: I will not praise it, yet I can forgive it. But not—not to the traitor—yes!—the word Is spoken out— Not to the traitor can I yield a pardon. That is no mere excess! ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... bolder at the sight of their own violence, they broke open the prisons, and thus obtained a re-enforcement of hundreds of desperadoes, ripe for any wickedness. The troops were paralyzed by Louis's imbecile order to avoid bloodshed, and in the same proportion the rioters were encouraged by their inaction and evident helplessness. They attacked the great armory, and equipped themselves with its contents, applying to the basest uses time-honored weapons, monuments of ancient valor and patriotism. The spear with which Dunois had cleared his country of the British invaders; the sword with which the ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... independent Irish Executive will possess immense power. It will be able by mere administrative action or inaction, without passing a single law which infringes any restriction to be imposed by the Irish Government Act, 1893, to effect a revolution. Let us consider for a moment a few of the things which the Irish ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... the name of the Lord thy God in vain. 2. Strike! till the last armed foe expires! 3. You wrong me, Brutus. 4. Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? 5. Why stand we here idle? 6. Give me liberty, or give me death! 7. Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens, and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds. 8. The clouds poured out water, the skies sent ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... have managed that, sir"; but, like all men of inaction, Shelton after action was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... here are, it may be said, admirable, composed of good and saintly priests; but they vegetate, torpid with inaction; they neither read nor work; their joints become ankylose; they die of weariness in ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... to extinguish what they had deemed but an accidental fire, were now paralyzed into idiotic inaction, at the defiance of the incendiary, thinking him some sudden pirate or fiend dropped down ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... her hold; but since, in the last analysis, it had never lain there, since it was above all needful that the determining touch should be given by any hand but hers, she presently found courage to subside into inaction. She had done all she could—even more, perhaps, than prudence warranted—and now she could but await passively the working of the forces she ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... placed, as they say, in the post of honour. These feelings, in such minds—however proper the proceedings may have been in a military point of view—I cannot prevent or remove. Time, provisions, and money, are wasting in inaction. The enemy is concentrating troops and fortifying positions around Athens, each of which positions will be a pretext for delay; even were I not aware that abundant excuses of other kinds will not ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... perhaps a week after Tenney's accident, when he was getting impatient over inaction, and next day the doctor came and pronounced the wound healing well. If Tenney had a crutch, he might try it carefully, and Tenney remembered Grandsir had used a crutch when he broke his hip at eighty-two, and healed miraculously ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... times when the mind's inaction Has robbed the soul of power, When moments of deep reflection Arrive at so late an hour That they lose the force of their mission In the laggard way they come, And like withered buds of fruition, ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... disgust, his anger—nay, his hatred—into his father's face, follow it with his commission, crushed into a ball, and rush forth from that ghost-haunted house, never to re-enter it again. Instead of this theatrical performance, then, Ivan chose silence and inaction. And finally, with bursting brain, he escaped to his own room, where he found ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... speed of their pursuit was their undoing. Trying to catch themselves so that they might use their rifles, or fling themselves upon the ground, they brought themselves into a brief but deadly interval of inaction, and in that flash one of the men went down under Alan's first shot. Before he could fire again the second had flattened himself upon the earth, and swift as a fox Alan was on his feet and racing for the kloof. Mary stood with her back against the huge rock, gasping ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... experiment. Do not let us say, "The experiment has been tried before; it is useless to attempt it again." I believe there is enough of novelty in General Booth's scheme to justify a hope of success. But for past failures I can but say that people do not regard failure as a ground for inaction when their interest is deeply involved. When I was a boy, some 45 years ago, I saw at the old Polytechnic experiments in electricity: the electric light, the electric cautery, &c. For years I expected to see them introduced into the work-day world. Now, at last, they are coming into use, but I ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... to occur. And Lamarck conceived that he had found in Nature such causes, amply sufficient for the purpose in view. It is a physiological fact, he says, that organs are increased in size by action, atrophied by inaction; it is another physiological fact that modifications produced are transmissible to offspring. Change the actions of an animal, therefore, and you will change its structure, by increasing the development of the parts newly brought into use and by the diminution of those less used; ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... propositions to urge, for they gained self-confidence from drill and guard-duty, and were growing impatient of inaction. "Ought to go to work, Sa,—don't believe in we lyin' in camp, eatin' up the perwisions." Such were the quaint complaints, which I heard with joy. Looking over my note-books of that period, I find them filled with topographical memoranda, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... forces they commanded, hopes which had been so signally frustrated, the Queen's partizans now set up a premature song of triumph, soon to be turned into notes of lamentation. The Mina of 1834, old and bed-ridden, with his energies, mental perhaps as well as physical, impaired by long inaction, was a very different man from the Mina of 1810. When fighting against the French, the sympathies of the Navarrese were with him; now they were against him, and in a war of this description, that difference was of immense importance. In spite ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... the universal law of the human frame, that exercise is indispensable to the health of the several parts. Thus, if a blood-vessel be tied up, so as not to be used, it shrinks, and becomes a useless string; if a muscle be condemned to inaction, it shrinks in size, and diminishes in power; and thus it is also with the bones. Inactivity produces softness, debility, and unfitness for the functions they are designed to perform. This is one of the causes of the ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... beauty of poise, of line, of delicacy, of reserve—with nothing of the superfluous, and little even of color, beyond a gleam of chrysoprase in fine, gray eyes and a coppery, metallic luster in hair that otherwise would have passed as chestnut brown. It was a beauty that came as much from repose in inaction as from grace in movement, but of which a noticeable trait was that it required no more to produce it in the way of effort than in that of artifice. Through the transparent whiteness of the skin the blue of each clearly articulated vein and the rose of each hurrying flush counted ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... longer, the Committee of Safety which had been criticized for its inaction, dispatched Woodford with an army independent of Henry's command to drive Dunmore from Gosport. Dunmore removed himself to Norfolk. In December 1775 Woodford's men, supported by some North Carolinians, faced Dunmore's army of redcoats, loyalists, and former ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... by a violent eruption which left a huge chasm on one side, extending into the heart of the mountain. It was, when I last visited it in 1860, clothed with vegetation to the summit, and contained twelve populous Malay villages. On the 29th of December, 1862, after 215 years of perfect inaction, it again suddenly burst forth, blowing up and completely altering the appearance of the mountain, destroying the greater part of the inhabitants, and sending forth such volumes of ashes as to darken the air at Ternate, forty ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... intently. He made a slight sign of recognition with his hand, and then she turned away, gone a little pale now. She stood looking at her lions, as if trying to recollect herself. The lion at her feet helped her. He had a change of temper, and, possibly fretting under inaction, growled. At once she summoned him to get into the chariot. He hesitated, but did so. She put the reins in his paws and took her place behind. Then a robe of purple and ermine was thrown over her shoulders by an attendant; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Texian forces, suddenly and unexpectedly appeared amongst them. He assembled the troops, harangued them, and deprecated the proposed expedition to Matamoras as useless, that town being without the proposed limits of the republic. Nevertheless, so great was the impatience of inaction, that two detachments, together about seventy men, marched by different roads towards the Rio Grande, under command of Grant and Johnson. Their example might probably have been followed by others, had not the arrival ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... gesticulating in the shade and beside a lunch-stand,—flee to watering places, sit in the cafes or stroll about? What wonder then that the inhabitant of tropical countries, worm out and with his blood thinned by the continuous and excessive heat, is reduced to inaction? Who is the indolent one in the Manila offices? Is it the poor clerk who comes in at eight in the morning and leaves at, one in the afternoon with only his parasol, who copies and writes and works for himself and for his ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... be something, to make myself something, to do something. Why should I rust, and be stupid, and sit in inaction because I am a girl? What would happen to me if thee should lose thy property and die? What one useful thing could I do for a living, for the support of mother and the children? And if I had a fortune, would thee want me to lead ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... wait. The Athenian soldiers stationed at Eion were chafing at their inaction, and mutinous speeches were heard on all sides. What a man was this Cleon, this cowardly braggart, under whom they were to take the field against the most daring and skilful leader in Greece! They had ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... 1878 the winter had brought to a temporary standstill the operations of the British troops engaged in the first Afghan campaign, and I took the opportunity of this inaction to make a journey into Native Burmah, the condition of which seemed thus early to portend the interest which almost immediately after converged upon it, because of King Thebau's wholesale slaughter of his relatives. Reaching Mandalay, the capital of Native ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... the legitimacy of cable-cutting is covered by no precedent," I had no intention of denying that belligerent interference with cables had ever occurred. International precedents are made by diplomatic action (or deliberate inaction) with reference to facts, not by those facts themselves. To the best of my belief no case of cable-cutting has ever been made matter of diplomatic representation, and I understand Mr. Parsone to admit that no claim in respect of damage to cables was ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... extreme voluptuousness. For a moment he almost lost control of himself, and continued automatically. But there was a moment of inaction, of cold suspension. He was not going to take her. He drew her to him and soothed her, and caressed her. But the pure zest had gone. She struggled to herself and realized he was not going to take her. And then, at the very last moment, when his fondling had come near again, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... negative power of the king remained unlimited. The veto power acquired by the upper classes might prevent him from enacting a particular law, or enforcing a given policy, but no one had a veto on his inaction. He might be unable to do what the classes having a voice in the management of the government forbade, but he could decline to do what ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... But inaction at such a crisis was an intolerable state, and the last thing I wanted was time to think. With nothing more to do I must needs wonder what I was doing in the boat, and then what Raffles could want with the boat if it was true that Levy was not seriously hurt. I could see the strategic value of my ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... the fourteenth, the Molinosists, Madame Guyon, Fnlon, and others in the seventeenth century, all belonged to that contemplative company of Christians who thought that the highest state of perfection consisted in the repose and complete inaction of the soul, that life ought to be one of entire passive contemplation, and that good works and active industry were only fitting for those who were toiling in a lower sphere and had not attained ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... peace, and then a third, with the inaction telling upon us all. For we were constantly on the strain, and the slightest sound suggested ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... growth? Through adherence to what principle may we reach spiritual illumination? There are certain well established facts about the laws of growth that we should not overlook when seeking the way forward. Nothing whatever can grow without use, without activity. Inaction causes atrophy. Physiologists tell us that if the arm be tied to the body so that it cannot be used it will in time become so enfeebled, that it is of no further service. It will wither away. That is nature's law of economy. She never gives life ...
— Self-Development and the Way to Power • L. W. Rogers
... one of the horsemen, grown tired of the unearthly inaction and suspecting something of what had happened, slewed his head round very cautiously. In a flash he realised the position and imparted his ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... a moment of hopeless and helpless inaction. Then suddenly General Belch laid his hands upon the sofa on which Abel was lying, and moved it ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... constrained to keep; for, to tell the truth, sitting astride upon the hard branch of a tree, though easy enough for a short spell, becomes in time so painful as to be almost unendurable. Caspar especially had grown impatient of this irksome inaction; and highly exasperated at the rogue who was forcing it upon them. Several times had he been on the point of forsaking his perch, and stealing down for his gun; but Karl, each time perceiving his design, very prudently persuaded him ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... we stood there, and during every second of that hour the rifle-fire increased in fierceness and came nearer, and seemed to make another instant of inaction a crime. The men were listening with their mouths wide apart, their heads cocked on one side, and their eyes staring. They tightened their cartridge-belts nervously, and opened and shot back the breech-bolts ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... quarters a tendency to disparage culture as not practical-" a spirit of cultivated inaction" -unworthy of the attention of serious men. The word connotes, perhaps, to these critics certain superficial polite accomplishments, mere frills and decorations, which fritter away our time and dissipate our ambitions. But in its proper sense, culture is far ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... and a concession of its importance, rightfully or wrongfully acquired, as a basis of national credit, a necessity in the honorable discharge of our obligations payable in gold, and a badge of solvency. I do not understand that the real friends of silver desire a condition that might follow inaction or neglect to appreciate the meaning of the present exigency if it should result in the entire banishment of gold from ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... the exceptional persons who exercise them, are the true causes or producers of the whole of that portion of wealth which comes into being with their activity, and disappears or dwindles with their inaction. ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... in dreary inaction. Tommy felt the strain telling on his nerves. He saw no one but Conrad and Annette, and the girl had become dumb. She spoke only in monosyllables. A kind of dark suspicion smouldered in her eyes. Tommy felt that if this solitary confinement ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... relief it turned up on the third day. Several weeks of quiet followed, the British resting after their giant efforts, whilst we prepared to stem their further advance when it should take place. During this period of inaction on the part of the enemy I was sent down into Zululand, and stationed at a small spot named Nqutu, near Isandhlwana, Rorke's Drift, Blood River, and other scenes of stirring battles fought in former days. At Rorke's Drift could be seen, in good repair, the graves ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... it all in his new-found bitterness, was nevertheless impatient in his inaction, and was eagerly awaiting a telegram from Stacy; Barker had disappeared since luncheon. Suddenly there was a commotion on the veranda as a carriage drove up with a handsome, gray-haired woman. In the buzzing of voices around him Demorest heard the name ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... indolence of his whilom patient. He records afterwards how the Duke met his full share of the calamities which fell upon all those who were concerned in Gian Battista's condemnation;[190] and in the Dialogus Tetim, a work which he wrote immediately after the trial, he bewails afresh the inaction of this excellent ruler and the ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... depth and color; the isolation of their comfortable existence in the tasteful yet audacious habitation, the pleasant routine of daily tasks and amusements, all tended to make the enforced quiet and inaction of his convalescence a lazy recreation. He was really improving; more than that, he was conscious of a certain satisfaction in this passive observation of novelty that was healthier and perhaps TRUER ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... nous aurions pu nous donner dans un autre temps, mais que ne nous convient pas dans notre situation europeenne. Elle a de plus ete conduite d'une facon irreguliere, l'action au Tonkin succedant a l'inaction en Egypte. Cette affaire d'Egypte aurait pu servir de base a une entente avec l'Angleterre. Au lieu de cela on n'a pas voulu l'aider, puis on a boude parce qu'elle agissait seule, et lorsque les difficultes ont commence pour elle, on n'a su ni s'entendre absolument pour agir en commun, ni ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... doors cannot shut him out. He can be with a character when that character is most alone. He can make clear to us the thoughts that do not tremble into speech, the emotions that falter and subside into inaction. He can know, and can convey to us, how much of a person's real thought is expressed, and how much is concealed, by the language that he uses. And the reader seeks no motive to account for the narrator's revelation of the personal ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... wholly endorse this criticism, but it should be represented that the inaction of the government, whether due to inability or indifference or to whatever cause, has been the prime preventing cause of an earlier solution of a long standing problem. It seemed, however, as if an attempt was at last to be made ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... neighbour who were watching with her, and, crazy with grief, flung herself over the coffin, moaning and crying out in such heart-breaking accents that all present were for a moment flung into a state of inaction and awe. ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... other hand, that the English Government had known much about the Afrikaner Bond menace, it is singular that precautionary measures had halted with that bare effort of making military observations. The only way to account for this apparent lethargic inaction is the assumption that a persevering patience and friendly attitude was expected in time to effectually dissipate all trouble in South Africa, and that a display of anxiety or of force would have frustrated such peaceable tactics. In refutation ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... Lane. Nothing should be changed in that matter, for why, she said to herself, should Bice suffer because Sir Tom was untrue? It seemed to her that there was more reason than ever why she should rouse herself and throw off her inaction. No doubt there were many people whom she could make, if not happy, yet comfortable. It was comfortable (everybody said) to have enough of money—to be well off. Lucy had no experience of what it was to be without it. She thought to herself she would like to try, to have only what she actually ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... in the stores of Common, Gravier, Poydras, or Tchoupitoulas street could do nothing but buy the same goods back and forth in speculation; loathed by all who did not do it, or whittle their chairs on the shedded sidewalks and swap and swallow flaming rumors and imprecate the universal inaction and mis-management—there embarked ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... time that the Government of the day, realizing by their action or inaction in the House of Commons they had provoked this movement of Mrs. Pankhurst's, had prepared the policy with which to meet it. As on the eve of a General Election it might be awkward if they made many arrests of women—perchance Liberal women—on their way to the House to present a petition ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... necessarily produced by the difference of time and circumstances. The people grew tired of massacres en masse, and executions en detail: even the national fickleness operated in favour of humanity; and it was also discovered, that however a spirit of royalism might be subdued to temporary inaction, it was not to be eradicated, and that the sufferings of its martyrs only tended to propagate and confirm it. Hence the scaffolds flow less frequently with blood, and the barbarous prudence of CAMILLE ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... Chief among them was their right to worship as Christians, retaining their clergy and their liturgy, which had been compiled by the Spanish bishops Leander and Ildefonso. Christian zeal, however, was not satisfied with a state of inaction. Many times a number of people went to what they considered a glorious martyrdom as the result of their intemperate denunciations of the Koran and the sons of the Prophet. Christianity was allowed to exist without hindrance, but the Moors would ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... inaction proving successful in the future lies in the existence of a strong body of public opinion in Great Britain, educated to such a degree in the facts of the case as to brook no delay in the application ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... effects of arrested development of the reproductive apparatus in women, Dr. Maudsley uses the following plain and emphatic language: "The forms and habits of mutilated men approach those of women; and women, whose ovaries and uterus remain for some cause in a state of complete inaction, approach the forms and habits of men. It is said, too, that, in hermaphrodites, the mental character, like the physical, participates equally in that of both sexes. While woman preserves her sex, she will necessarily be feebler than man, and, having her special ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... so much so that now and then he announced his intention of accompanying Felix on his voyage. But after a visit to the town, and a glance at the Princess Lucia, his resolution changed. Yet he wavered, one time openly reproaching himself for enduring such a life of inaction and ignominy, and at another deriding Felix and his visionary schemes. The canoe was now completed; it was tried on the pool and found to float exactly as it should. It had now to be conveyed ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... interesting than either grace or beauty in the strong, youthful form and the strong, intelligent face. For a long time he retained his crouching seat on the wooden stool that stood before the hearth; then at last the activity at work within his mind made further inaction intolerable. He rose and turned towards ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... make you some tea?" Piers said then, beginning to chafe at the prospect of an indefinite period of inaction. ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... true, and there be no other important circumstances, except the assault, the Department begs to advise you that, had not Midshipman Darrin resented the gross insult tendered the woman under his protection, he would thereby, by such inaction, have rendered himself liable to dismissal from the Navy. It is always the first duty of a gentleman to afford ample protection to any woman under ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... part of industrial production. Soviet assistance, at its height one-third of GDP, disappeared almost overnight in 1990 and 1991 at the time of the dismantlement of the USSR. The following decade saw Mongolia endure both deep recession due to political inaction and natural disasters, as well as economic growth because of reform-embracing, free-market economics and extensive privatization of the formerly state-run economy. Severe winters and summer droughts in 2000-2002 resulted in massive livestock die-off and zero ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... deserted, as well as the back country—an unbroken wilderness of sand and sage. Half a dozen times, Wilbur, wearying of his inaction aboard the schooner, made the entire circuit of the bay from point to point. Standing on one of the latter projections and looking out to the west, the Pacific appeared as empty of life as the land. Never a keel cut those waters, never a sail broke the edge of the ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... writers, with moderate reinforcements they would have had a strong probability of winning the battle. La Marmora saw the importance of getting fresh troops into the field, but, instead of sending for the divisions under Bixio and Prince Humbert, which since eight a.m. had been fretting in inaction close by, at Villafranca, he rode himself to Goito, a great distance away, to look after the reserves belonging to the 2nd corps d'armee; a task which any staff officer could have performed as well. This ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... minutes' inaction, he rose, sounded his whistle; the men got to their feet, fell in, and started, rifles a-trail. But we had proceeded scarcely a dozen rods into the big timber when we discovered our two riflemen, who had so recently left us, running ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... even read too much. We must throw overboard all our cargo of anxieties, preoccupations and pedantry to recover youth, simplicity, childhood, and the present moment with its happy mood of gratitude. By that leisure which is far from idleness, by an attentive and recollected inaction, the soul loses her creases, expands, unfolds, repairs her injuries like a bruised leaf, and becomes once more new, spontaneous, true, original Reverie, like showers at night, refreshes the thoughts which have become worn and discoloured by the heat ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... all inaction. Let your hearts be fixed on virtue, for virtue is the one only friend of him that has gone to the other world. Even the most intelligent by cherishing wealth and wives can never make these their own, nor are these possessions lasting. The Bharata uttered by the lips of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... surprised him, however, was the absolute silence and inaction of the British. True, two shots had been fired, but whether from fort or warship, and with what intent, he hadn't the remotest notion. The hour arranged upon for the general assault was fast approaching. ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... rest of the day thus cleared for inaction, he sat down and wrote a letter. Ever since his fall he had been successfully practising the art of throwing a morsel straight into one or other of the throats of the triple-headed Cerberus, his conscience—which was more clever in catching ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... minister of war and the minister of police gave notice that vigorous measures entrusted to the military commanders would be taken to stifle the insurrection at its birth. But the Chouans and the Vendeans had profited by the inaction of the Directory to rouse the whole region and virtually take possession of it. A new Consular proclamation was therefore issued. This time, it was the general speaking to ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... movement any way, and for several hours before and after noon they lay almost becalmed upon the ocean. This period was passed in silence and inaction. There was nothing for them to talk about but their forlorn situation, and this topic had been exhausted. There was nothing for them to do. Their only occupation was to watch the sun, until, by its sinking lower in the sky, ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... holds his belief tenaciously counts for as much as several men who hold theirs weakly, because he is more aggressive and thereby compels and overawes others into apparent agreement with him, or at least into silence and inaction. This is, perhaps, especially true of moral questions. It is not improbable that a large part of the accepted moral code is maintained by the earnestness of a minority, while more than half of the community is indifferent or unconvinced. In ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... eyes, as if he did not feel at home. Besides he did not know anything; he did not occupy himself about anything. He appeared even to have forgotten the profession which he was said to be ignorant of, and seemed to have gone astray, to be bowed down by sheer inaction. ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... elements, as I suppose, which constitute the hostile aspect that Death assumes to most of us, is that it apparently hales us away from all the wholesome activities and occupations of life, and bans us into a state of apparent inaction. The thought that death is rest does sometimes attract the weary or harassed, or they fancy it does, but that is a morbid feeling, and much more common in sentimental epitaphs than among the usual thoughts of men. To ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... had so far moderated that, tired of our long inaction, we resolved to make a start once more, so shaking the reefs out of the trysail, and rigging our bowsprit out far enough to set a small jib, we got our floating-anchor in, and stood away to the southward and westward, with the wind out from ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... be, as explained by the commentators, that such a man earns no merit by action, nor sin by inaction or omission. Nor is there anybody from the Supreme Being to the lowest creature on whom he depends ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... way to meet this emergency. As to hunting afoot for their horses, the chance of success was almost too small to be considered at all, Pink's horse was not fit for further travel until he had rested. There was one pair of field glasses—and there were nine irate men to whom inaction was intolerable. ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... cameras, retired to safe distances, where the work could not possibly interfere with them or they with it, and took photos of the progress of the carts. We cannot complain, however, of their action (or inaction, rather), for the resulting pictures make a good memorial of the crossing of the Salado by the "Tacuruers." The ladies rushed to assist when they saw that photos were being taken, but, as the carts were ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... us, and here at last there was a fitting object for those remarkable powers which, like all special gifts, become irksome to their owner when they are not in use. That razor brain blunted and rusted with inaction. ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... of your will, they will not fail to draw you in the direction that you may open to their impetuosity. It matters not to them whether they run upon the way of vice or virtue,—all that they require is to go, to run and not to be constrained to inaction, which kills them. They must be managed by a resolute will which holds the reins with a firm grip, and by a calm intelligence, ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... situation perhaps more difficult, and demanding so much caution, as the occasional meeting with a doubtful ship. On the one hand, it being necessary to be fully prepared and not allow the enemy the advantage which may be derived from your inaction; and on the other, the necessity of prudence, that you may not assault your friends and countrymen. Captain Wilson had hoisted the private night-signal, but here again it was difficult, from his sails intervening, for the other ship ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... his command before he had fully recovered, he was advised by medical officers not to attempt any severe duty. But being detailed to the staff of General Russell, commanding the First division, he at once resumed active military duties. On these recent marches, the major, weary of inaction, had taken command of a body of men who acted as additional provost-guard ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... hot-headed young Prince at their head did not know what to make of the pleasant enemy. The alarm he had caused, compelling their own withdrawal into the stronghold, wrath at the mere sight of him there in the heart of Scotland, the humiliating inaction in which they were kept by a foe which neither attacked nor withdrew, must have so chafed the Prince and his companions that the challenge thrown forth like a bugle from the heights to break this oppressive silence and bring about the ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... a superior class of walking gentlemen, while those best qualified are about to do the same thing over in the queen's apartment. The king, however, to offset this, suffers the same torture and the same inaction as he imposes. He also is playing a part: all his steps and all his gestures have been determined beforehand; he has been obliged to arrange his physiognomy and his voice, never to depart from an affable and dignified air, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... strong faith, the inner life of Catherine of Genoa was characterized, in a remarkable degree, by what may be termed rest, or quietude; which is only another form of expression for true interior peace. It was not, however, the quietude of a lazy inaction, but the quietude of an inward acquiescence; not a quietude which feels nothing and does nothing, but that higher and divine quietude which exists by feeling and acting in the time and degree of God's appointment and God's will. It ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... a while, musing, no longer busy with such pleasant things as flowers and weeds; then roused herself. The weariness of inaction was becoming intolerable. She went to a corner of the room, where a large mahogany box was half-concealed beneath a table covered with a cloth; with a good deal of effort she lugged the box forth. It was locked, and she ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... still without attempting to renew the struggle. The enforced few moments of inaction had restored to him his self-control. He was still deeply angered, but the insanity of rage had left him. Outwardly he was himself again. Only a rapid heaving of his chest answered Ned Trent's quick breathing, as the two men glared defiantly at each other ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... that he did reckon the probable acquisition of wealth among his reasons for taking up arms against his neighbors;—that it would ease the Company of a considerable part of their military expense, and preserve their troops from inaction and relaxation of discipline;—that the weak state of the Rohillas promised an easy conquest of them;—and, finally, that such was his idea of the Company's distress at home, added to his knowledge of their wants abroad, that he should have been glad of any occasion ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... when they were alone together except by the expression in his eyes? She asked herself why she was afraid of him, and the answer she seemed to get was that his reticence frightened her. There was something in his continued inaction which alarmed her. It was a silence of conduct which lay like a weight upon her. She felt it now as he stared ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... substituted artificial ones, till habit changed their nature, and they ceased to be unreal. Of this kind was the habit of gaming, which he had adopted, first, for the purpose of relieving him from the languor of inaction, but had since pursued with the ardour of passion. In this occupation he had passed the night with Cavigni and a party of young men, who had more money than rank, and more vice than either. Montoni despised the greater part of these for the inferiority of their ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... for her to be one of the horde of mere spectators. Wheresoever she moved there was some occult stirring of the mental, and even physical, air. Her pulses beat too strongly, her blood ran too fast to allow of inaction of mind or body. When, in passing through the village, she had seen the broken windows and the hanging palings of the cottages, it had been inevitable that, at once, she should, in thought, repair them, set ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... for with some people," he wrote, "the imagination is so vivid as to be almost an extension of consciousness. . . ." But here he stuck absolutely. He was not quite sure what he meant by the words, and how to finish the sentence puzzled him into blank inaction. It was a difficult point to decide, for it seemed to come in appropriately at this point in his story, and he did not know whether to leave it as it stood, change it round a bit, or take it out altogether. It might just spoil its chances of being accepted: editors were such ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... cessation from every intellectual effort was one of the most peremptory laws prescribed to him. Schiller's habits and domestic circumstances equally rebelled against this measure; with a beloved wife depending on him for support, inaction itself could have procured him little rest. His case seemed hard; his prospects of innocent felicity had been too banefully obscured. Yet in this painful and difficult position, he did not yield to despondency; and at length, assistance, and partial deliverance, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... with the alternate quickness and inaction of an inexperienced intellect and an imagination morbidly awakened, to grasp the situation before him. The common sense that had hitherto governed his life told him that the deputy would go to-morrow, and that there was nothing in his wife's conduct ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... break out in his successor's time rather than his own. Even this is perhaps to judge Buchanan's notorious and calamitous laches unfairly. Any action that he took must to a certain extent have been provocative, and he knew it, and he may have clung to the hope that by sheer inaction he would give time for some possible forces of reason and conciliation to work. If so, he was wrong, but similar and about as foolish hopes paralysed Lincoln's Cabinet (and to a less but still very dangerous degree Lincoln himself) when they took up the problem which Buchanan's neglect ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... to lie on the beach with his straw hat over his eyes, and watch their play, and pet Flossy. When he was tired of inaction he used to call to the children, and walk slowly and thought fully on. Flurry ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... health, a few months of such indefatigable labors exhausted her strength. She returned to Chicago, but her ardent spirit chafed in inaction. After a time she resolved to commence a literary enterprise in aid of the object she had so much at heart, and in the spring of 1862 she announced the forthcoming publication of the "National Banner," a monthly paper of sixteen pages, the profits of which were to be devoted to the ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... during the second winter than I did during the first. My limbs were benumbed by inaction, and the cold filled them with cramp. I had a very painful sensation of coldness in my head; even my face and tongue stiffened, and I lost the power of speech. Of course it was impossible, under the circumstances, to summon any physician. My brother William came and did ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... asked Triffitt, who would vastly have preferred action to inaction. "Supposing—you know how things do and will turn out ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... contemplate God so long as they were undisturbed have fallen when pressed with occupation; and frequently they who might live advantageously occupied with the service of their fellow-creatures are killed by the sword of their inaction." ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... months of Pombal's apparent inaction had been incessantly employed in researches into the plot. Extreme caution was evidently necessary, where the criminals were among the highest officials and nobles, seconded by the restless and formidable machinations of the Jesuits. When his proofs were complete, he crushed the conspirators at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... hereafter to be multiplied in value for building; that Henry might, in the meantime, find an opening for practice, but might speedily be independent of it. It sounded promising, and it was escape—escape from forced inaction, from an uncongenial life, from injury to the children, and it would be with Cora, her one friend. What was the demur, and why were they consulting her, who, as Henry knew, was ready to follow him wherever he chose to carry her? At last came a gleam of understanding: 'Then, Doctor, you ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... inquiries as to how he had spent the night he reported that the horses stood quietly in their tracks all night long, while he slept comfortably in the wagon. In the morning the horses started without undue urging as if tired of inaction and glad to go in the direction of provender. They were completely broken by their fast and after ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... horrified inaction, and in that instant a tongue of flame shot like a fiery serpent through the closed curtains behind the dancer. In a moment the cry was caught up and repeated in a dozen directions, and even as it went from mouth to mouth the ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... walk—a thaw had set in, and the lanes were perfect quagmires of half-melted snow and slash, in which the dogs paddled and splashed their way with a perfect indifference to the state of their glossy coats; any amount of slush being better than enforced inaction. ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... at the tip to a needle point. With a coarse laugh Pecksuot snatched at the captain's throat with his left hand, while his right closed like iron over the captain's grasp of the hilt and tried to turn it against him. But the rebound from his forced inaction had strung the soldier's muscles like steel and thrilled along his nerves like fire. A roar like that of a lion broke from his panting chest, and with one mighty effort he wrung the knife from the grasp of the giant, and turning its point drove it deep ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... letter. In the first place it was very difficult to obtain the synodal witnesses. And again, as a contemporary bishop, Lunas de Tuy, assures us, the bishops for the most part were not at all anxious to prosecute heresy. When reproached for their inaction they replied: "How can we condemn those who are ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... superintendence of the distribution, admirably. With this labor Mrs. Bickerdyke's connection with the sanitary work of the army ceased. She had, however, been too long engaged in philanthropic labor, to be content to sit down quietly, and lead a life of inaction; and after a brief period of rest, she began to gather the more helpless of the freedmen, in Chicago, and has since devoted her time and efforts to a "Freedmen's Home and Refuge" in that city, in which ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... the chill of inaction after hard and hungry riding. Ten minutes of cantering will set the ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... and haggard as to eyes, leaned upon his stout, willow stick and looked gloomily away to the west. He was a good deal given to looking to the west, these days when a leg new-healed kept him at the ranch, though habit and inclination would have sent him riding fast and far over prairies untamed. Inaction comes hard when a man has lived his life mostly in the open, doing those things which keep brain and muscle keyed alike to alertness and leave no ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... was going home had upheld Dick through the days that followed Bassett's departure for the West. He knew that it would be a fight, that not easily does a man step out of life and into it again, but after his days of inaction he stood ready to fight. For David, for Lucy, and, if it was not too late, for Elizabeth. When Bassett's wire came from Norada, "All clear," he set out for Haverly, more nearly happy than for months. The very rhythm of the train sang: ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... ever have been miserable. The remembrance of this escape, and the certain knowledge that of all beings whom I knew I was most likely to be mistaken in an emergency, always produced in me a torturing tendency to inaction. There was no such tendency now. I thought I chose Mary, but there was no choice. The feeblest steel filing which is drawn to a magnet, would think, if it had consciousness, that it went to the magnet of its own free will. My soul rushed to hers as if dragged ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... This inaction became most monotonous. It was exceedingly trying, and the condition after the third day was now made plain; that they intended to starve them ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... to the house for supper, and saw the doleful faces of the three waiting there, he couldn't stand inaction. ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... on the morning of the 20th a dense fog obscured everything; consequently both armies were passive so far as fighting was concerned. Rosecrans took advantage of the inaction to rearrange his right, and I was pulled back closer to the widow Glenn's house to a strong position, where I threw together some rails and logs as barricades, but I was disconnected from the troops on my left by a considerable interval. Here I awaited the approach of the enemy, but he ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... of the pavilion to join Bob, was not conscious of any particular nervousness. It had been an ordeal having to wait and look on while wickets fell, but now that the time of inaction was at an end he felt curiously composed. When he had gone out to bat against the M.C.C. on the occasion of his first appearance for the school, he experienced a quaint sensation of unreality. He seemed to be ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... any one of Tennyson's more serious poems, and it will be found pervaded by the thought of life as to be fulfilled and perfected only through moral endurance and struggle. "Ulysses" is no restless aimless wanderer; he is driven forth from inaction and security by that necessity which impels the higher life, once begun within, to press on toward its perfecting this all-possible sorrow, peril, and fear. "The Lotos-eaters" are no mere legendary myth: they shadow ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... looking at the ceiling. "They have taken fright for some reason. They may have an inkling of the awful truth. She is nineteen. Next year she will be twenty—the year after that twenty-one. Then it would be too late. A desperate experiment is better than inaction. I have much to gain and nothing to lose. I must exhibit Kalora. I shall bring the young men to her. Some of them may take a fancy to her. I have seen people eat sugar on tomatoes and pepper on ice-cream. There may be in Morovenia one—one would be sufficient—one bachelor who ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... effect a capture if possible. Captain H——, the second captain of the British detachment, was selected to command the sortie, and with a small force of British marines who have been pining at their enforced inaction and dull sentry-go, and are jealous of the greater glory the others have already earned by their successful butchery of the enemy, a wall was breached and our men rushed out. Being off duty, I witnessed most of the affair. Of course, the sortie ended in failure, as every such movement is foredoomed ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... that action, not inaction was the best outlet for her energies, temporarily smothered by the shock of the raid. It was not in her nature to sit with folded hands among the ruins of the ranch and patiently wait ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... successfully through our campaigning later. We used to "grouse" vigorously over our bad luck, with what justice I do not pretend to say; but no one who has not experienced it, can understand the bitterness of inaction, while the stream of reinforcements is pouring to the front. Scraps of news used to come in of the victorious march of the army northward, and of the gallant behaviour of the C.I.V. Infantry. Companies of Yeomanry used to arrive, and leave for destinations with enticing names that smelt of war, ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... Antonio, who saw in warfare only the wickedness and the cruelty of it, we all were most eager for our inaction to end, and for the battling to begin that would give us opportunity to let the life out of some of those by whom Pablo had been slain. It was with delight, therefore, that we noted the rapidity with which ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... succeeded, for they always had worked. In consequence, he took it quite as a matter of course that, at twenty-three, he should be commander of the Presidenta, stationed in the Baltic for a year of chilly inaction. St. Petersburg was near, and St. Petersburg, as the young commander found, held for him the focal point of the world, in the person of the pretty daughter of one of the court musicians. Twelve years later, while the Presidenta was stationed in the Mediterranean, its young ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... doubt that Cicero was penetrated by the belief that he could thus do his country a real service. In his enforced political inaction, and amid the disorganisation of the law-courts, it was the one service he could render[123]. He is within his right when he claims praise for not abandoning himself to idleness or worse, as did so many ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... this train, but must see the world, and its contemptible grandeurs, lessen before him at every thought? It is enough to make one remain stupefied in a poise of inaction, void of all desires, of all designs, of ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... for him to sit by in silence. The world, misconstruing his inaction, believed him false like Northumberland; the world reported that he had restored mass at Canterbury; the world professed to have ascertained that he had offered to sing a requiem at Edward's funeral. In the second ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... there are some who believe that the Supreme Being is perpetually occupied in the contemplation of himself, and that the nearer man can approach to a state of total inaction the more will he resemble God. For many years the Indian sage never raises his eyes from his navel; absorbed in the profound contemplation of it, his perennial reverie is unbroken by any outward suggestions, the admiring by-standers administering, as chance offers, the little food ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... His main desire has ever been to be let alone. Anything which tended to tighten the bonds which held him to his co-tenant would have been a thing to avoid. He desires liberty, and nothing less will content him. This he will only have by inaction, by mewing his sempiternal youth in his ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... strikes me, is the summary way in which youth is put down by middle-aged and aged people. Youthful emotions are 'bosh and twaddle,' youthful ideas, 'crude, sir, very crude!' and youthful attempts to be and to do something in the world frowned at, as if action of any sort, save inaction, before forty, were an outrage on humanity, and an insult to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... object he had asked Gerasim to get him a peasant's coat and a pistol, confiding to him his intentions of remaining in Joseph Alexeevich's house and keeping his name secret. Then during the first day spent in inaction and solitude (he tried several times to fix his attention on the Masonic manuscripts, but was unable to do so) the idea that had previously occurred to him of the cabalistic significance of his name in connection ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... The girl heard no signs of life upon the ship. Her curiosity became more and more keenly aroused. She had that indefinable, intuitive feeling that she was utterly alone upon the vessel, and at length, unable to endure the inaction and uncertainty longer, made her way to the companion ladder where for half an hour she futilely attempted ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... for me to say. I dared not let him believe that his movements were either watched or under the slightest shadow of restraint. I knew it was useless to urge on him the desirability of inaction until the army moved. Be might perhaps have understood me and listened to me, were the warfare he was now engaged in only the red knight-errantry of an Indian seeking glory. But he had long since ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... Sluys was the beginning and foreshadowed the inevitable end of Leicester's second administration. The inaction of the States was one of the causes of its loss. Distrust of Leicester was the cause of the inaction. Sir William Russell, Lord Willoughby, Sir William Pelham, and other English officers, united in statements exonerating the Earl from all blame for the great failure to relieve ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... with Cuesta, then at Casa del Puerto; and ordering me immediately to repair to the Spanish headquarters and await Sir Arthur's arrival, to make my report upon the effective state of our corps. As for me, I was heartily tired of the inaction of my present life, and much as I relished the eccentricities of my friend the major, longed ardently for ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... announced the victory and, walking back through the clear, still night, saw the comet, forerunner of evil, hanging over the field, as if in recognition of a fiery spirit on earth akin to its own. At headquarters on Monday, the 22d, he looked out at the pouring rain and raged over the inaction which kept the victorious army idle on the field of victory instead of following up the advantage by a march into the enemy's Capital, a movement which he thought could have been ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... right at once had there been anybody there to prescribe a strengthening tonic; but failing that, she tried sweet stimulants that soothed and excited, but did not nourish: tales that caused chords of pleasurable emotion to vibrate while they fanned the higher faculties into inaction—vampire things inducing that fatal repose which enables them to drain the soul of its life blood and compass its destruction. But Evadne escaped without permanent injury, for, fortunately for herself, among much that was far too sweet to be wholesome she discovered Oliver Wendell ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Catherine's high and increasing sense of responsibility. Her tears and sweats are to cleanse the face of the Church, and through the grieving desire of the servants of God, redemption is to be accomplished. She was never, as we know, one of those Christian fatalists whose optimism leads them to inaction. From the day when, reluctant, she left her little cell, she threw her power with unwearied constancy and courage into the life of her day, repugnant though its problems might be to her natural temper. Catherine was, however, profoundly convinced that ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... there, but his orders obliged him to await the arrival of Ganteaume. A continuous calm prevented the latter from leaving Brest, where he was blockaded by the English. At the two ends of the world, discouragement weighed upon the admirals consigned to inaction by unforeseen obstacles met with in the execution of a plan which took no account of accidents of wind or sea. In vain wrote Napoleon to Ganteaume, "You hold in your hands the destinies of the world." ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... ships but the temper and training of the men are the true measure of power on the sea. From the first Togo had asserted his superiority, and by asserting secured it. After the naval engagements of 10 and 14 August the Russian Navy in the Far East accepted a position of helpless inaction. Ukhtomsky kept what was left of the fine fleet, that had been originally assembled at Port Arthur, anchored in the land-locked harbour till the ships were sunk by ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... enough, and with the faintness growing upon me, a sickness that would not be fought down), guiding my course by touch rather than sight, until, finding myself at fault, I stopped again, staring about me beneath my hand. Yet, feeling the faintness increase with inaction, I started forward, groping before me as I went; I had gone but a few paces, however, when I tripped over some obstacle, and fell heavily. It wanted but this to complete my misery, and I lay where I was, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... not be bidden into her own room; she dreaded inaction and solitude. She made herself busy with carrying heavy baskets of turf, and straining her strength to the utmost; fetching all that was wanted, ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... infinitely wiser and better to employ suitable persons to superintend the exercises and amusements of children under seven years of age, in the fields, orchards, and meadows, and point out to them the richer beauties of nature, than to have them immured in crowded school-rooms, in a state of inaction, poring over torn books and primers, conning words of whose meaning they are ignorant, and breathing ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... sort of fight was going on, horrible to us, because the French were in full retreat before our foe, going down like sheep before the butcher's knife, rushing panic stricken hither and thither as men demented, whilst the English soldiers, as though ashamed of their recent inaction and paralysis, were fiercely pursuing, shouting "Kill! kill! kill!" as they went about their work of slaughter, driving back their enemies, and ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Rangihaeata were aggrieved persons. A company of fifty-three Grenadiers was sent to Wellington and a man-of-war to Nelson. Strict orders were given to the disgusted settlers not to meet and drill. On the whole, in the helpless state of the Colony, inaction was wisest. At any rate Mr. Shortland's successor was on his way out, and there was reason in waiting for him. Now had come the result of Hobson's error in fixing the seat of government in Auckland, and in keeping the leading officials there. Had Wellington been the ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... and the consciousness that, however vehemently and however long it may struggle, the resources set before it will not be exhausted when the life to which it is attached shall have faded away; and hence, instead of dreading the languor of inaction, it will have to summon all its resources of promptness and activity to get over any considerable portion of the ground within the short space allotted to the ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... a person in the church stirred. Every one seemed smitten into astonished inaction by the sudden proposal of the minister. Then hands began to go up. Philip counted them, his heart beating with anguish as he foresaw the coming result. He waited a minute, it seemed to many like several minutes, and then said: "All those opposed to the admission of the ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... room in front of his table, he thought of creating a new bouquet; and he was overcome by that moment of wavering confidence familiar to writers when, after months of inaction, they prepare ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... bottles on their heads, goats strayed bleating beneath the piles of pikes; sentries were being relieved, and eating was going on around tripods. In fact, the tribes furnished them abundantly with provisions, and they did not themselves suspect how much their inaction alarmed the Punic army. ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... it was intended that I remain at Sari, that I might be in readiness to hasten forth at the first report of the discovery of Dian; but I found the inaction in the face of my deep solicitude for the welfare of my mate so galling that scarce had the several units departed upon their missions before I, too, chafed to be ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a common obedience to the duty at hand is the practical conclusion of that high Indian wisdom when illusions are past. Not to retreat into the solitude, not to retire into the inaction, that he has known and prized; to fight at the side of his brothers, in his own rank, in his own place, with open eyes, without hope of glory or of gain, and because such is the law: this is the commandment of the god to the warrior Arjuna, who had doubted ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... dispassionate spectator. For him, in all this tangle, there was one thing, and one thing only, that mattered; to be in time. He did not fear murder; but the very reason of her security from death was the cause of a fear so horrible, that he knew inaction would have ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... these of course in an equal space of time attain to greater perfection than among the inhabitants of the tropical latitudes, who find their immediate wants supplied with facility, and prefer the negative pleasure of inaction to the enjoyment of any conveniences that are to be purchased with exertion and labour. This consideration may perhaps tend to reconcile the high antiquity universally allowed to Asiatic nations, with the limited progress of arts and sciences among them; in which they are manifestly surpassed ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... was on his knees, his body stretched forward, his head buried in his hands upon the pillow. With silent awe, they stood apart and watched him, lest they should invade the privacy of prayer. But he did not stir; there was not even the motion of breathing, but a suspicious rigidity of inaction. Then one of them, Matthew, softly came near and gently laid his hands upon Livingstone's cheeks. It was enough; the chill of death was there. The great father of Africa's dark children was dead, and they were orphans. The most refined and cultured ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... remaining is to make this avowal, or be forgotten by you. I do not ask you now to promise to be mine, or even to love me, till I have proved myself worthy of your affection. My past life has been one of thoughtlessness and inaction, but it shall be my endeavor in future to atone for those misspent years. Your image will ever be with me as a bright spirit from whose presence I cannot flee, and whisper hope when my energies would fail. I only ask your remembrance till ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... his hostility to Monte Video during the year. The measures taken against the tyrant by the governments of England and France were half measures. The Earl of Aberdeen and M. Guizot seemed to be associated in wondrous harmony of action, or rather inaction, when the joint interests of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... week in December Dorian went into action in search of Carlia Duke. He acknowledged to himself that it was like searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack, but inaction ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... Queen. But when Elizabeth declared war on behalf of the Reformed Faith, and sent Leicester with an expedition to the Netherlands, Sir Philip Sidney went out, in November, 1585, as Governor of Flushing. His wife joined him there. He fretted at inaction, and made the value of his counsels so distinct that his uncle Leicester said after his death that he began by "despising his youth for a counsellor, not without bearing a hand over him as a forward young man. Notwithstanding, in a short time he saw the sun so risen above his horizon ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... this system of inaction, in combination with our system of diet, you fail to obtain satisfactory results, throw yourself with might and main into another system, which we will explain ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... gasp of relief Nathaniel rose to his feet. Through the door he saw the red glare growing in the northern sky and heard the great bell at St. James ring a wilder and more excited alarm. For a few moments he stood in silent, listening inaction, his nerves tingling with a strange sensation of impending peril. Obadiah's madness, the mysterious trembling of the earth beneath his feet, the volcano of fire, the clanging of the bell and the councilor's insane rejoicing had all come so suddenly that he was dazed. ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... not as a separate kind of activity but as a form of thought. As such it is not neglected in Buddhist psychology: will, desire and struggle are recognized as good provided their object is good, a point overlooked by those who accuse Buddhism of preaching inaction[68]. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... despot, he had himself been ruled by her stronger and loftier spirit. The transcendent cunning on which he had prided himself, as regarded his plan of educating Gnulemah, had amounted to little more than imbecile inaction. ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... were not hampered by the muzzled Paris Press, which had long since ceased to utter any but dictated sentiments; they suffered even more disastrously from the imperious interference of the Tuileries. Canrobert's inaction, mutability, sudden alarms, flagrant breaches of faith, were inexplicable until long afterwards, when the fall of the Empire disclosed the secret instructions—disloyal to his allies and ruinous to the campaign— by ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... with immediate destruction, he descended, and mingling both with the barbarians and his own men, without any one perceiving him or knowing whether he was an officer or a common soldier; and since there was no time for delay or inaction, he mounted a speedy horse, and galloped away, ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... exclaimed, "I am weary of solitude! I have seen scarcely a face that I recognise. My tongue is parched with inaction. I like to talk, and there has been no one to talk to. I might as well have opened up my ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... swiftly put where it would furnish a spot of light to no one else; and in breathless readiness for action, though that is rhetorical, for Rollo's breath was as regular and as calm as cool nerves could make it, he subsided again into the utter inaction which is all eye and ear. And then in a few minutes, from across the road again, and near where he was at ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
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