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More "Laziness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fact that most failures are directly attributable to laziness rather than to lack of ability or poor health, or any other cause. It is the most difficult thing in the world for some people to exert themselves to "make the effort" to succeed. They just do enough to "hold ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... is already answered under 2a. Not writing might be accounted for by 2b, but unfortunately the sprain is not bad enough—and "laziness, sheer laziness" is the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... strange, incomprehensible, admirable fellow, Linden is!" said Mr. Motley one day when he and the doctor were sunning themselves in profound laziness on deck. It was rather late Sunday afternoon, and the morning service had left a sort of respectful quietness ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... usual, and reached Nurila about noon. From the hilliness of the road and the laziness of the coolies combined, they did not arrive until two P.M., so that we breakfasted at three o'clock. To occupy the time, however, we took advantage of the products of the country, and set to work upon a quantity of apples, and having both thirst and hunger to assuage, I think we got through about ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... was a helpless captive, given over to all sorts of coddling, laziness, and luxury, and there was a droll mixture of mirth and melancholy in his face, as he lay trussed up in bed, watching the comforts which had suddenly robbed his room of its Spartan simplicity. A delicious couch was there, with Frank reposing in its depths, half hidden under several ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... Carbine—Maid of the Mint, so that a horse owned by the Duke was again associated with the blue ribbon, Carbine having been imported from Australia by his Grace some years before. Carbine had another name, "Old Jack," given him because of his laziness, and a whip-stock, had to be used occasionally to keep him up to the mark. An Australian picture of the horse was painted by Mr. W. Scott, and after being in the possession of Mr. Herbert Garratt for ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... its presence, feasting her eyes with its glory. She turned from the vision, therefore, with a sigh of utter bliss, and with soft quiet steps and groping hands stole back into the darkness of the rock. What was darkness or the laziness of Time's feet to one who had seen what she had that night seen? She was lifted above all weariness, ...
— Harper's Young People, December 9, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... a long sigh. He was lying back in a big easy-chair and sending out ring after ring of blue smoke, which he watched, as they disappeared, with half-shut eyes. One would have fancied him the embodiment of happy laziness, unless one had chanced to notice the tension of the fingers which grasped an arm of ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... planer on his well-turned sentences. Now, the competition with gentlemen who are so cultivated is severe upon one who must speak absolutely upon the impulse of the occasion. It is either incapacity or downright laziness that has kept me from competing in ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... from the centre of their activities. He was never tired of meeting new faces, and would go to endless trouble to bring an interesting personality within the circle of his acquaintance. Craven's comparative indifference about society, his laziness in social matters, was a perpetual cause of surprise to Braybrooke, who nevertheless was always ready to do Craven a good turn, whether he wanted it done to him or not. Indeed, Craven was indebted to his kind old friend for various introductions ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... got sharper in these long hours of idleness. And with the pleasure of living, he gained there a delight in doing nothing, an indolent feeling took possession of his limbs, and his muscles gradually glided into a very sweet slumber. It was the slow victory of laziness, which took advantage of his convalescence to obtain possession of his body and unnerve him with its tickling. He regained his health, as thorough a banterer as before, thinking life beautiful, and not seeing why it ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... C. Laziness.—Indifference is likewise a common source of faulty judgments. To attend to the concept and discover its intension as a means for correct judgment evidently demands mental effort. Many people, however, prefer either to jump ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... that I was not properly dressed, which handicapped my movements considerably. Decency compelled me to keep my legs under the table, until I could slip into my bedder. I was not in a condition to treat visitors who goaded at my laziness with any courage; tact was the only thing possible. In my agitation I did not notice that Nina had put on the clock quite twenty minutes, and when she asked me if I was going to sit in front of the marmalade for the rest of the day, I had to reply that I thought ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... content. He did not like the laziness and the disinclination for sober, legitimate work of this prospective son-in-law of his, for whose ideas he had no respect and of whose nature he had no understanding. So he turned the conversation to Herbert Spencer. Judge Blount ably seconded ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... himself in a good cause. Upon his friends R. H. D. had the same effect. And it was not only in proximity that he could distribute energy, but from afar, by letter and cable. He had some intuitive way of knowing just when you were slipping into a slough of laziness and discouragement. And at such times he either appeared suddenly upon the scene, or there came a boy on a bicycle, with a yellow envelope and a book to sign, or the postman in his buggy, or the telephone rang and from the ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... this fashion: "Ah! I am so sorry I have done so badly the past month; no wonder papa was vexed with me. I don't believe I ever had such a bad report before. What has come over me? It seems as if I can't study, and must have a holiday. I wonder if it is all laziness? I'm afraid it is, and that I ought to be punished. I wish I could shake it off, and feel industrious as I used to. I will try very hard to do better this month, and perhaps I can. It is only one month, and then June will be over, and Miss Day is going North to spend July ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... on his belly on the ground in a soft bed of brown leaves, preening and primping his plumes with his little white, conical bill. Now he gave his quills a deft touch, now the feathers of his wing, now those of his dainty breast. Lying there in the sun he presented a perfect picture of feathery laziness. Many a bird I have seen arranging his toilet after a bath while perching on a limb or a twig, and even, as in the case of the brown creeper, while clinging to the bole of a tree, but never before did I see one doing this while lolling on the ground. He was not ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... an ancient city had once stood. His walking tours did him good, and frequently while the girls lay stretched upon the grass that lined the theatre enclosure, to idle the time or read or write enthusiastic letters home, Uncle John, scorning such laziness, would take his stick and climb mountains, or follow the rough paths that diverged from the highway ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... lesser joy does not hinder a greater, and that pleasure may never breed pain, which they think always follows dishonest pleasures. But they think it madness for a man to wear out the beauty of his face, or the force of his natural strength; to corrupt the sprightliness of his body by sloth and laziness, or to waste it by fasting; that it is madness to weaken the strength of his constitution, and reject the other delights of life; unless by renouncing his own satisfaction, he can either serve the public ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... have been very negligent in not writing to you before, as I meant to do, but laziness after exertion is very pleasant. My exertion was not small, as, besides speaking at the beginning of the evening, I sate up for the division, and did not get home till near four in the morning. The triumph was very great; ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... up at the timid knocking, and rubbed her eyes. It was long since she had slept in the daytime and she was annoyed at such laziness. She opened the back door and led the old woman ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the rivers, where the greater part of their food is obtained. Moreover, the most of them have been either buried since the settlement of the country or civilized into comparative innocence, industry, or harmless laziness. There are bears in the woods, but not in such numbers nor of such unspeakable ferocity as town-dwellers imagine, nor do bears spend their lives in going about the country like the devil, seeking whom they ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... same intellectual laziness, this very same downright dislike at divine truth, in our own people every day. There are in every congregation people who take up their lodgings at the gate and refuse to go one step farther on the way. A visit to the Interpreter's House always upsets ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... himself for any emergency, had looked long around him to choose a spot where the grass was especially high and thick, and had laid himself down to a sound sleep, murmuring as he did so, this sublime observation, "O laziness, but for the sin of Adam you would ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... walking one afternoon along the road to Martigny. The valley was full of shadows like a deep green cup of purple wine. High above them the mountains were tipped with flame. Grimshaw walked slowly—he was a man of great physical laziness—slashing his cane at the tasselled tips of the crowding larches. Once, when a herd of little goats trotted by, he stood aside and laughed uproariously, and the goatherd's dog, bristling, snapped in passing ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... gravely, "goes back for three hundred years. Parients unknown by name, but got by Misery out o' Starvashun. The line began with Poverty out o' Laziness in Queen Elizabeth's time. The breed has been a large 'un wotever you ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... But in regard to leaving it to the Indians whether they will or will not pay the said four reals in kind, besides the fowl, in no consideration am I of the opinion that that should be left to their choice; for the natives are generally so inclined to laziness that they do not sow or cultivate the lands, unless forced to do so by the obligation of paying the tribute in kind, as it is assigned in accordance with the different fruits and products of the many different provinces in these islands. It is seen in these provinces ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... at this. But two days afterward, when we were hoisting the main-top-mast stun'-sail, and the Lieutenant of the Watch was reprimanding the crowd of seamen at the halyards for their laziness—for the sail was but just crawling up to its place, owing to the languor of the men, induced by the heat—the Captain, who had been impatiently walking the deck, suddenly stopped short, and darting his eyes among the ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... result of habit; on so much foundation of nature is based the Scythian fable—the negroes of the South, immediately succeeding the surrender, used the new greatness thrust upon them with surprising innocence. Laziness, liquor and loud asseverations of freedom and equality were its only blessings claimed; and the commission of overt acts, beyond those named, were rare enough to prove the rule of force of habit. Lured from old service for a time, most of them followed not far the gaudy and shining ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... arts, and the first obligation imposed by God on man—namely, the cultivation of the soil. They leave this to the slaves, who are few and ill-fed, and know no more of agriculture than their masters do; ... their great laziness, together with a silly, baseless vanity, makes them look upon all manual labor as degrading, proper only for slaves, and so they prefer poverty to doing honest work. To this must be added their ambition to make rapid fortunes, as some of them do, by contraband trading, which makes good sailors ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... Chesterfield. I laid hold of this as a pretext for delay, that it might be better done, and let Dodsley have his desire. I said to my friend, Dr. Bathurst, "Now if any good comes of my addressing to Lord Chesterfield, it will be ascribed to deep policy, when, in fact, it was only a casual excuse for laziness."' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... laziness, it's wisdom," said Langdon. "What's the use of working when you don't have to, especially in a June as hot as this one is? I conserve my energy. Besides, I'm going to take care of myself in ways that you fellows don't know anything ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... bring their pretty brown babies for the fair English lady to admire or to pat on the head; and when Muriel now and again stooped down to caress some fat little naked child, lolling in the dust outside the hut, with true tropical laziness, the mothers would run up at the sight with delight and joy, and throw themselves down in ecstacies of gratitude for the notice she had taken of their favored little ones. "The gods of Heaven," they would say, with ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... only a fool could doubt it. The rod was the emblem of authority for child, pupil, apprentice and soldier. The negro slave as a workman got less of it than any other class. It was the rule of a Southern master never to use the rod on a slave except for crime if it could be avoided. To flog one for laziness was the ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... able," replied the magistrate, "to show this co't that he has reg'lar employment, or means of suppo't, and he was therefore tried and convicted yesterday evenin' of vagrancy, under our State law. The fine is intended to discourage laziness and to promote industry. Do you want to bid, suh? I'm offered two yeahs, gentlemen, for old Peter French? Does anybody wish ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... toward it. As they did so they noticed a universal movement on the part of the crowd, who made a rush toward the wharf, and in a short time filled it completely. Not even the most extravagant ideas of Italian laziness and curiosity could account for this intense interest in the movements of an ordinary yacht; and so our Americans soon found themselves lost in ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... through St. Roque and the Spanish lines and arrived at Gibraltar on 20th, out of patience with the Spaniards and everything belonging to Spain. Indeed, the Country is a disgrace to Europe. I wish indolence was the only vice of the inhabitants, but added to laziness they are in general mean in their ideas, the women licentious in their manners, and both sexes sanguinary to a degree scarcely credible. In Malaga particularly, few nights pass without some murders. Those who have any regard for their safety must after dark ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... belonged to the whole family. To this day he cannot look back to those moments without tenderness. If Billy had any apparent fault, it was an amiable indolence. But this made him all the safer for the children, and it did not really amount to laziness. While on sale he had been driven in a provision cart, and had therefore the habit of standing unhitched. One had merely to fling the reins into the bottom of the phaeton and leave Billy to his own custody. His other habit of drawing up at kitchen gates was not ...
— Buying a Horse • William Dean Howells
... vitality of the human race which has no vitality to spare; because it lulls to indolence those who must struggle to survive; because the theories of good men who are enthralled by its delusions are made the excuse of the wicked who would rather plunder than work; because it stops enterprise, promotes laziness, exalts inefficiency, inspires hatred, checks production, assures waste and instills into the souls of the unfortunate and the weak hopes impossible of fruition whose inevitable blasting will add to the ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... of which are highly valued in India. The poorest, i.e., those who have not the means to purchase arms for hunting, hire themselves as coolies. This is also an occupation of women, who are very capable of enduring arduous toil. They are healthier than their husbands, whose laziness goes so far that, careless of cold or heat, they are capable of spending a whole night in the open air on a bed of stones rather than take the ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... difficult, but industry all easy; and he that ariseth late must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night; while laziness travels so slowly, that poverty soon ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... his seat, and unrolled with luxurious laziness his bundle of newspapers. Here in Coralio for two days or longer he would read of goings-on in the world very much as we of the world read those whimsical contributions to inexact science that assume to portray the doings of the Martians. ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... for fear of the other's being taken from him. So there he lay, with his paws upon both, growling instead of enjoying himself. He was a larger dog than I, but not nearly so strong, being grown helpless and unwieldly through long habits of greediness and laziness. I saw that I could easily master him and take one of his bones by brute force, and at first I felt inclined to help myself by this means. I thought I had a good right so to do. I actually wanted the necessaries of life, while he was revelling in superfluous luxury. Was I not justified, nay more, ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... of beef; while Godfrey, by pretending to fall asleep on the bench in front of the cabin, was able to carry out a little stratagem that suddenly suggested itself to him. He knew that Dan was a thrifty lad in spite of his laziness, and that he believed in laying by something for a rainy day. He was never out of ammunition for his rifle, but he always took care to keep his little stock hidden away, so that his father could not find it. By watching him on this particular day, Godfrey ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... exception, and so much candy given to the children that half of them were made ill, much to the distress of Miss Flora, who, it was said, promptly sent a physician to undo her work. The Dow family, hard-working and thrifty, and the Nolans, notorious for their laziness and shiftlessness, each received a hundred dollars outright. The Whalens, always with both hands metaphorically outstretched for alms, were loud in their praises of Miss Flora's great kindness of heart; but the Davises (Mrs. Jane Blaisdell's ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... an attack upon the Jennings Method. The overwhelming majority of the human race—indeed, all but a small handful—have this passion for stagnation, this ferocity against change. It is in large part due to laziness; for a new idea means work in learning it and in unlearning the old ideas that have been true until the unwelcome advent of the new. In part also this resistance to the new idea arises from a fear that the new idea, if tolerated, will put one out of business, will set him adrift without any means ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... corpulent man, ludicrously like the King's pictures, with bulging gray eyes that seemed to take in nothing. And this was North, upon whose conduct with the King depended the fate of our America. Good-natured he was, and his laziness was painfully apparent. He had the reputation of going to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... large, untidy woman who always gave the impression of needing to be tucked up. The end of her gray braid hung out behind one ear, her waist hung out of her belt, and even the buttons on her shoes hung out of the buttonholes in shameless laziness. ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... satisfied Irishmen yet? No, and you never will. The more you give, the more they ask. They never will be content. ''Tis not their nature to.' England now suffers for her own weak good nature. The true curse of Ireland is laziness. I left Belfast at twenty, but I am well acquainted with Ireland. In the North they work and prosper. In the South they do nothing but nurse their grievances. Twenty years' firm government, as Lord Salisbury said, would enrich ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... does what she can with the gifts at her disposal. I should leave it at that, if I had not to take into consideration a grave charge brought against her. She is accused of having lost, for want of use and through laziness, the workman's tools with which, so we are told, she was originally endowed. Finding it to her advantage to do nothing, bringing up her family free of expense, to the detriment of others, she is alleged ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... never, so far as I know, satisfactorily answered. He commonly spends his seventy years, if so many are given him, in getting ready to enjoy himself. How many hours, how many minutes, does one get of that pure content which is happiness? I do not mean laziness, which is always discontent; but that serene enjoyment, in which all the natural senses have easy play, and the unnatural ones have a holiday. There is probably nothing that has such a tranquilizing ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... additional ornament of a green stone, much resembling the mineral malachite. Their dress is a very capacious, continuous garment of the yellow skin of the hair seal, seamed with sinews, and very rudely put together. Hundreds of yelping dogs lay about in all possible attitudes of laziness, whilst a few other village pets, e.g., a great bald-headed eagle, of a most bloodthirsty and ferocious aspect, and a couple of large brown bears with uncomfortable looking teeth and arms, suggestive of a long embrace, stood unpleasantly near, though their owners had thought fit ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... fat red arms akimbo, blocking up the doorway, "Nick, me useless man! ye kin prate t' me 'bout arrestin' hoboes. I tell ye right now—that hobo that was a-bummin' roun' here t'other mornin's got nothin' on you fur sheer, blowed-in-th'-glass laziness." ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... lines run down the ages? I tell you? Not I. I don't believe in encouraging laziness. If I tell you, you will let it slip from your memory, like a panic-stricken eel through the fingers of a panic-stricken schoolboy; but if you hunt it up, it will be riveted to your memory, like a ballet, ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... as that, when even the bees were diving deep down into the cups of flowers and stopping there, as if they had made up their minds to retire from business and be manufacturers of honey no more. The day was made for laziness, and lying on one's back in green places, and staring at the sky till its brightness forced one to shut one's eyes and go to sleep; and was this a time to be poring over musty books in a dark room, slighted by the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... immense assemblage of men, and women, and children, whose appearance denoted dirtiness, laziness, and poverty. They were almost all in a state bordering on nudity, but a few of them wore miscellaneous portions of European apparel. The hair of the men was long, except on the forehead, where it was cut square, just above the eyebrows. The children ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... this work of chastity is to be permanent, it will drive to many other good works, to fasting and temperance over against gluttony and drunkenness, to watching and early rising over against laziness and excessive sleep, to work and labor over against idleness. For gluttony, drunkenness, lying late abed, loafing and being without work are weapons of unchastity, with which chastity is quickly overcome. On ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... "Allen is not stupid. He used to be considered just as clever as Bobus; and he is so now to talk to. Can there be any reason but laziness, and want of application, that makes him never succeed in anything, except in answering riddles and acrostics in the papers? He generally just begins things, and makes mother or Armie finish them for him. He really did set to work and finish ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shawls and turbans as before. You are laid gently on the reposing bed; somebody brings a narghile, which tastes as tobacco must taste in Mahomet's Paradise; a cool sweet dreamy languor takes possession of the purified frame; and half-an- hour of such delicious laziness is spent over the pipe as is unknown in Europe, where vulgar prejudice has most shamefully maligned indolence—calls it foul names, such as the father of all evil, and the like; in fact, does not know how to educate idleness as those honest Turks do, and the fruit which, when ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was missing below here," muttered Shep. "Ham and his crowd were too lazy to cut firewood, so they used the board. If that isn't the height of laziness and meanness!" ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... said Mr. Stafford aghast. He took off his spectacles to polish them, and then as he put them on again, "If it's for that Appleton boy I really can't allow it. There's nothing whatever wrong with him but laziness" ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... and begun to lay down new and more conventional planking on the fundamental Amory. But both St. Regis' and Amory were unconscious of the fact that this fundamental Amory had not in himself changed. Those qualities for which he had suffered, his moodiness, his tendency to pose, his laziness, and his love of playing the fool, were now taken as a matter of course, recognized eccentricities in a star quarter-back, a clever actor, and the editor of the St. Regis Tattler: it puzzled him to see impressionable small boys imitating ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... find that there is a country where nobility and knowledge are the same, where men advance in rank as they advance in learning, and promotion is the effect of virtuous industry; where no man thinks ignorance a mark of greatness, or laziness the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... Prize, it has been adjudged by PUNCH to be divided equally between the two illustrious essayists; to the one, in virtue of his incorrigible laziness, and to the other, in honour of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... that six species of fear are unsuitably assigned by Damascene (De Fide Orth. ii, 15); namely, "laziness, shamefacedness, shame, amazement, stupor, and anxiety." Because, as the Philosopher says (Rhet. ii, 5), "fear regards a saddening evil." Therefore the species of fear should correspond to the species of sorrow. Now there are four species of sorrow, as stated above (Q. 35, A. 8). Therefore there ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... being of the "give but not take" kind. One day he said to George Boker, when both were looking at Durer's etching of "Death, Knight, and the Devil," of which I possess a fine copy, "Every man has his devil whom he cannot overcome; I have two—laziness, and love of pleasure." I remarked, "Then why the devil seek to overcome them? Is it not more noble and sensible to yield where resistance is in vain, than to fight to the end? Is it not a maxim of war, that he who strives to defend a defenceless place must be put to death? ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... of the Dutchman, was now just large enough to be as mischievous as a kitten. They were a couple of greasy, copper-hued little rascals, with eyes as black as midnight, and long, wiry hair, like that of a horse's mane. Brimful of animal spirits, they were just the reverse of Hans Vanderbum, whose laziness and stupidity were only excelled by his indifference to the dignity and ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... Pay. "Laziness does not pay." "It does not pay to be uncivil." This use of the word is grossly commercial. Say, Indolence is unprofitable. There is no ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... Yan, and about the same size, but the resemblance stopped there. His chief aim in life was to be stylish. He once startled his mother by inserting into his childish prayers the perfectly sincere request: "Please, God, make me an awful swell, for Jesus sake." Vanity was his foible, and laziness ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... permission, had thrown himself on a wicker lounge and was absorbing cigarettes at a killing rate. I bantered him on his laziness. But ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... once asked Massieu, "What is laziness or idleness?" "It is a disgust from useful occupation; a disinclination to do anything; from which result indigence, want of cleanliness and misery, disease of body and the contempt of others." In writing this answer the ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... down there, Mr. Nicholls. I'll have it taken to Miss Carmody's room in a moment. (She shakes her finger at Eileen with kindly admonition.) That's the first rule you'll have to learn. Never exert yourself or tax your strength. It's very important. You'll find laziness is a virtue instead ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... the peon—the single-roomed adobe-built habitation, or the wattle-built jacal in which he dwells, belongs to the estate owner; and if the dweller, through laziness or other similar cause, fails to put in an appearance in the fields, he is soon forced to vacate it, and, supposing him to be free from debt, to leave the hacienda. He toils all day in the fields, drawing a scanty wage, and ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... is as vital in tennis as it is in bridge, and all bridge players know that the score is the determining factor in your mode of bidding. Let me urge again concentration. Practise seriously. Do not fool on the court, as it is the worst enemy to progress. Carelessness or laziness only results in ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... received your letter in due time, and should have answered it in due season, if I had not been prevented, as L—— conjectures, by laziness. The money was very acceptable to me, and will last me till the end of the term, which is three weeks from next Wednesday. I shall then have finished one half of my college life.... I suppose your farm prospers, and I ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... a corpse wants that, not a man. And I hear that our intellectuals have a longing for the land and want to acquire farms. But it all comes down to the six feet of land. To leave town, and the struggle and the swim of life, and go and hide yourself in a farmhouse is not life—it is egoism, laziness; it is a kind of monasticism, but monasticism without action. A man needs, not six feet of land, not a farm, but the whole earth, all Nature, where in full liberty he can display all the properties and ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... Sertorius, and by illegal means, obtained the consulship, and the Carbos and the Norbani and Scipios were unsuccessfully contending against Sulla on his march to Rome, and affairs were being ruined, partly through the cowardice and laziness of the commanders, and partly through treachery; and there was no use in his staying to see things still go on badly, owing to the want of judgment in those who had more power than himself; and finally, when Sulla, after encamping near Scipio, and holding out friendly ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... said once that one should be careful to distinguish laziness from dignified repose. Alas, that was a mere quibble. Laziness is always dignified, it is always reposeful. Philosophical laziness, we mean. The kind of laziness that is based upon a carefully reasoned analysis of experience. Acquired ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... inimical to the morality taught by Christ. I attacked the sale of indulgences, the avarice of Rome, the laziness, deceit, gluttony, robbery, and blood-sucking of the monks of Aix-la-Chapelle. The arch-priest, and nine of his coadjutors, declared every Sunday that I was a freethinker, a wizard, one whom every man, wishing well to God and the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... would happen at the close of the year, and looked forward to seeing, at least during the interim, their friend in clean clothes, and reading "his copy" in the best journals. But the luxury of having a fixed place to sleep in, stimulated, not industry, but vicious laziness of the most ineradicable kind. Henceforth Sands abandoned all effort to help himself. Uncombed, unwashed, in dirty clothes, he lay in an arm-chair through all the morning, rising from time to time to mess some paint ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... Italians, but the highest striving in all nature is for balance, and he who lets himself be pushed off his chair disturbs the balance instead of preserving it, and he who throws his own cabbages to his neighbor's hogs fosters laziness ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... negatives and traced their ancestry to Colonial considerables—who, however, had signed their names in "lower case" or with a Maltese cross—the world in miniature, with its due proportion of petty graft, petty squabbles, envy, kindness, jealousy, generosity, laziness, ambition, stupidity, intelligence, honesty, hypocrisy, hatred, affection, badness and goodness, as standardised by the code established according to folk-ways on earth—in brief, a perfectly human community ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... The captain approved of the idea, and we agreed that as soon as the turtle-pond was finished we would make the attempt. In two days more we had finished the pond, and had turned thirty turtle, which we put into it. The men, now that they found that they had plenty to eat, began to show signs of laziness, and did not very readily commence the work upon the xebeque. They ate and slept, ate and slept again, on the mattresses spread in the tent. At times they would fish, but it was with difficulty that the captain and I could ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... first peep of dawn the guide arose. In ten minutes after his first shout the whole camp was astir. The men yawned a good deal at first and grumbled a little, and stretched themselves violently, and yawned again. But soon they shook off laziness and sprang to their work. Pots, pans, kettles, and pemmican bags were tossed into the boats, and in the course of half-an-hour they were ready ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... his presence embarrassed me not a little. He was a handsome boy, with blue eyes, long lashes, fair hair, and a gentle habit of speech. When I came to know him better, I learnt the quick wit and subtle power that lay beneath his laziness of manner; but at present the soul of ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... child is often thwarted through sheer laziness. "Don't bother me" is the reply of a parent shirking a sacred duty. Interest is the beginning of knowledge, and where it is discouraged knowledge is discouraged. Any inquiry can be met on the child's plane of intelligence and comprehension, and the parent must arrange for the gratification ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... have been told hundreds of times, and in theory it is accepted everywhere, so I need not say much about it—chiefly this, that it does not excuse want of observation of nature, or laziness of drawing, as some people seem to think. On the contrary, unless you know plenty about the natural form that you are conventionalising, you will not only find it impossible to give people a satisfactory impression of what is in your own mind about ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... indeed, nearly concerned in the fracas which their laziness occasioned, being no other than the faithful Mr. Fairservice, with his friend Mr. Hammorgaw, and another person, whom I afterwards found to be the town-crier, who were sitting over a cog of ale, as they called it (at my expense, as my bill afterwards informed me), in order to devise the terms ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... means do it; you must put on a Joshua's generous and holy resolution, "That whatever others do, you and your house will serve the Lord." You must consider upon it, that well-set speeches concerning the covenant, is not what you are principally to study, but well-set hearts; you must shake off laziness as well as hypocrisy. ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... educate them, and familiarize them with some branch of employment, and make them more competent after this period of service was over to engage in private enterprise. Two years of such training would dissipate all the slackness, lack of precision, and laziness which are so often apparent in young men who have never had any strict discipline in their homes, and whom parental weakness has rendered unfit for ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... it is doubtful whether the cat or the mouse were the more frightened. The cat does more damage to the song birds of this country than any other enemy they have. If kept at home and well fed, cats sometimes become so fat and stupid that they will not molest birds but this is due to laziness and not to any good qualities in the cat. In normal ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... to success; and the child who is indolent in the home, is likely to bring up the rear in the race of life. Laziness is no kin to true happiness. The lazy child is not the truly happy child. He lies in bed until late in the morning, is often careless about his personal appearance, is late to breakfast, late to school, and his name is entirely wanting when the highest credits are awarded. ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... more buffalo robes and more pemmican than any other man in the village. He exchanged his buffalo robes for ponies. After that he always went on the hunt, and lived like the other Indians. He did not wish to sink into laziness ...
— Stories of American Life and Adventure • Edward Eggleston
... idle god, I guess, Since all the fair midsummer of my dreams He loiters listlessly by woody streams, Soaking the lush glooms up with laziness; Or drowsing while the maiden-winds caress Him prankishly, and powder him with gleams Of sifted sunshine. And he ever seems Drugged with a joy unutterable— unless His low pipes whistle hints of it far out Across the ripples to the dragon-fly That ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... always loved Charity Coe, but he let another man marry her—a handsomer, livelier, more entertaining man with whom Dyckman was afraid to compete. A mingling of laziness and of modesty ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... rule in the highest quarters. Caste has taught the people of this land that humble toil, however honest it may be, is more than mean; it is sinful. There are millions of the higher castes of India who deem it honourable to beg, and dignified to spend their years in abject laziness, but who would regard it as unspeakable degradation to take a hoe or a hammer and earn an honest living by the sweat of their brow. Nor will their caste rules permit of their undertaking such work. ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... was done, and everything was ready for the arrival of the Finland, the captain felt that he had good reason to curse the conscienceless Chilian whose laziness or carelessness had not only caused him the loss of perhaps a quarter of a million of dollars, but had given him days—how many he could not know—with nothing to do; and which of these two evils might prove the worse, the ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... woodwork could be seen, already faded and still new. Spots on the crumpled satins, ashes staining the beautiful marbles, dirty footmarks on the carpets. It reminded one of a huge first-class railway carriage incrusted with all the laziness, the impatience, the boredom of a long journey, and all the wasteful, spoiling disdain of the public for a luxury for which it has paid. In the middle of this set scene, still warm from the atrocious comedy played there every day, his own image, reflected in twenty cold and staring looking-glasses, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... Freedom from the idea of meum, freedom from egoism, freedom from expectations, looking on all with an equal eye, and freedom from desire,—these constitute the eternal religion of the good. Confidence, modesty, forgiveness, renunciation, purity, absence of laziness, absence of cruelty, absence of delusion, compassion to all creatures, absence of the disposition to calumniate, exultation, satisfaction, rapture, humility, good behaviour, purity in all acts having for their object the attainment of tranquillity, righteous ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... would keep his brain clear, his step elastic, his muscles from fleshiness, his nerves from tremor,—in a word, retain his youth in spite of the register,—should beware of long slumbers. Nothing ages like laziness. The hours before breakfast Darrell devoted first to exercise, whatever the weather; next to his calm scientific pursuits. At ten o'clock punctually he rode out alone and seldom returned till late in the afternoon. Then he would stroll forth with Lionel into ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "Certainly. Laziness is a virtue in these strenuous days, I was not born with it, but I have painstakingly acquired it, and I am proud of my success. I have time to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Laziness in his employees gave our Farmer a vast deal of unhappiness. It was an enemy that he fought longer and more persistently than he fought the British. In his early career a certain "Young Stephens," son of the miller, seems to have been his greatest ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... They are not encouraged to work more than eight hours a day; but as what they get depends on what they do, they do not dawdle during those hours, and if one man in a group should prove a loafer, his comrades, who have to suffer for his laziness, soon get rid of him. The tendency is for first-class men to join together, and for second-class men to similarly arrange themselves. Sometimes, of course, the officers, in making estimates of the price to be paid for work, make ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... to be thinking of something. She was lying at full length on one of those marvellous couches from which it is almost impossible to rise, the upholsterer having invented them for lovers of the "far niente" and its attendant joys of laziness to sink into. The doors of the greenhouse were open, letting the odors of vegetation and the perfume of the tropics pervade the room. The young wife was looking at her husband who was smoking a narghile, the only form of pipe she would have ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... Your Aunt Caroline does not believe in rest cures anyway. She thinks poultices are much more effective. It stands to reason that if a thing is in, it ought to come out. Rest cures are just laziness. But, thank goodness, she never expected anything from the Spence family but laziness. And she had told her sister so before ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... death by the sentence of our Lord." Saint Augustine deplored the waste of time spent in reading Virgil, while Alcuin regretted that in his boyhood he had preferred Virgil to the legends of the saints. With the monks such considerations gave excuse for laziness ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... may take the form of hard indifference to suffering, greedy disregard of every moral restraint which interferes with the accumulation of wealth, and cold-blooded exploitation of the weak; or, if they are laborers, the form of laziness, of sullen envy of the more fortunate, and of willingness to perform deeds of murderous violence. Such conduct is just as reprehensible in one case as in the other, and all honest and farseeing men should join in warring against it wherever it becomes manifest. Individual capitalist ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... great drawback to perfect success, and combined with laziness is a decided enemy. Besides this, no one can excel in Photography who does not possess a natural taste for the fine arts, who is not quick in discerning grace and beauty—is regardless of the principles of perspective, foreshortening and other rules of drawing, and who sets about it ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... what!" exclaimed his lordship. "But naturally they'd have the Times! I dare say the beggars were too lazy to look it out. Laziness, what, what!" ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... to laziness and his arm-chair; the conversation fell to the three younger persons—I may say the two—for I also seceded, and left John master of the field. It was enough for me to sit listening to him and Miss March, as they gradually became ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... in respect of sham and real histories, a similar fact may be noticed; the sham story appearing a great deal more agreeable, life-like, and natural than the true one: and all who, from laziness as well as principle, are inclined to follow the easy and comfortable study of novels, may console themselves with the notion that they are studying matters quite as important as history, and that their favorite ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of a smouldering volcano,—and the chief Symbols of greatness among us, Religion, Poesy, Art, are burning as feebly as tapers in the catacombs, . . the Church resembles a drudge, who, tired of routine, is gradually sinking into laziness and inertia, . . and the Press! ... ye gods! ... ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... did so, and found him already in his boots and walking on the terrace with Coquet, his Master of the Household, Vitry, La Varenne, and a gentleman unknown to me. On seeing me he dismissed them, and while I was still a great way off, called out, chiding me for my laziness: then taking me by the hand in the most obliging manner, he made me walk up and down with him, while he told me what further thoughts he had of this affair; and hiding nothing from me even as he bade me speak to him whatever I thought without reserve, he required to ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... canal basin, which gives the place its name; fished till the packet captains came to know him and point him out as a fixture in the scenery. But, lazy as he was, Tired Tinkham didn't monopolize all the laziness in Noah's Basin. In one particular laziness was epidemic, even among the otherwise industrious, and it took the form of shirking the road tax. No roads were wretcheder than theirs; nobody cared less than they. ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... an incorrigible dawdle, and made humble confession of the same, offering to do all in her power to make up for the morning's laziness. But what would Midas ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... will be no scenery. This is not laziness on my part; it is self-control. Nothing is easier to write than scenery; nothing more difficult and unnecessary to read. When Gibbon had to trust to travellers' tales for a description of the Hellespont, and the Rhine was chiefly familiar to English students through the medium of Caesar's ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... servants of the place, had taken care of him, and would continue to do so even after his father's death, or, if they did not, his uncle, the Hon. John McPherson, in London, would never see him want, he thought; so, with no bad habits except his extreme indolence, which amounted to absolute laziness, the boy's days passed on, until the hot summer morning in June, when he lay asleep on a broad bench under the shade of a yew tree, with his face upturned to the sunlight which penetrated through the overchanging boughs and fell in patches upon him. Occasionally a fly or honey-bee came ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... big job, Jimmie, but I want to make a man out of you, temper, laziness, gambling, and all. You got it in you to be something more than a tango lizard or a cigar-store bum, honey. It's only you ain't got the stuff in you to stand up under a five-hundred-dollar windfall and—a—and a sporty girl. If—if two glasses of beer make you as silly ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... "Laziness. If it were anything else, you know, you'd say it ran in the family. But wait till you ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam
... ex-Harrovian, proud, but abnormally sensitive of his club-foot,' 'the martyr of Missolonghi,' 'the pageant-monger of a bleeding heart.' Now this again is Jargon. It does not, as most Jargon does, come of laziness; but it comes of timidity, which is worse. In literature as in life he makes himself felt who not only calls a spade a spade but has the pluck to ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... be doing, and doing to the purpose: so, by diligence, shall we do more with less perplexity. Sloth makes all things difficult, but Industry all things easy, as POOR RICHARD says: and He that riseth late, must trot all day; and shall scarce overtake his business at night. While Laziness travels so slowly, that Poverty soon over-takes him, as we read in POOR RICHARD who adds, Drive thy business! Let not that drive thee! and Early to bad and early to rise, Makes a man healthy, wealthy, ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... - I know I am a rogue and the son of a dog. Yet let me tell you, when I came here I had a week's misery and a fortnight's illness, and since then I have been more or less busy in being content. This is a kind of excuse for my laziness. I hope you will not excuse yourself. My plans are still very uncertain, and it is not likely that anything will happen before Christmas. In the meanwhile, I believe I shall live on here 'between the sandhills ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for an infinite mind to reconcile contradictions; or as if anything absurd and repugnant could have a necessary connexion with truth or flow from it. But, whoever considers the weakness of this pretence will think it was contrived on purpose to humour the laziness of the mind which had rather acquiesce in an indolent scepticism than be at the pains to go through with a severe examination of those principles it has ever embraced ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... spirit of the sea all lay in that luminous haze, that warm light filled with the laziness of June; and, for one delightful moment, it seemed to Phyl that summer days long forgotten, rapturous mornings half ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... hardly help tolerating this effusively-offered sympathy, although he made no profession of liking it, and continued to warn me against having more to do than I could help with Crofter. Pridgin was even less cordial, but his laziness prevented his taking any active steps to cut the connection. Wales, on the other hand, though Tempest's chum, took more kindly to the new-comer, and amused himself now and again by ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... under it from fear and weariness. It is hot and stifling, a dirty feather-bed; but once wrapped in it, one cannot move to throw it off, or even wish to do so; there is no need to will, or to think; one is sheltered from cold, from responsibilities. Laziness, cowardice!... Come, away with it!... Let the chilly wind blow through the rents. You shrink at first, but already this breath has shaken the torpor; the enfeebled energy begins to stagger to its feet. What will it find outside? No matter what, ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... same, the fleshpots of Pitlochry had by no means put his wife out of his mind. His incurable laziness and procrastination in small things had led him to let slip post after post; but that very morning, at any rate, he had really written her a decent letter. And he was beginning to be anxious to hear from her about the yachting ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... dark before we are home; and since the patrols were withdrawn, I hear there's a highwayman down this road again. That is one of the blessings of peace, Scudamore; even as Latin and Greek are. 'Apertis otia portis'—Open the gates for laziness. Ah, I should have done well at old Winton, they tell me, if I had not happened to run ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... is thy own soul, that is either to be saved or lost. Thou shalt not lose my soul by thy laziness; it is thy own soul, thy own ease, thy own peace, thy own advantage or disadvantage. If it were my own that thou art desired to be good unto, methinks reason should move thee somewhat to pity it. But alas! it is thy own; thy own soul! "What shall it profit ...
— The Heavenly Footman • John Bunyan
... assure you, my dearest John, Willis is entirely wrong. I examined the bushes myself; I went quite through them, and found them quite—entirely ripe. That was just Willis's laziness, depend upon it. These old servants" (Elizabeth had gone to get more cream, the lady having emptied the jug on her despised strawberries) "are too lazy to be of much use. Depend upon it, John, you will know no peace until you get rid of ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... sheep when Mackenzie arrived where they fed. The flock was widely scattered, as if the shepherd had been gone a long time, the dogs seemingly indifferent to what befell, showing a spirit of insubordination and laziness when Mackenzie set them about their work. Mackenzie spent the morning getting the flock together, noting its diminished ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... good cause. Upon his friends R. H. D. had the same effect. And it was not only in proximity that he could distribute energy, but from afar, by letter and cable. He had some intuitive way of knowing just when you were slipping into a slough of laziness and discouragement. And at such times he either appeared suddenly upon the scene, or there came a boy on a bicycle, with a yellow envelope and a book to sign, or the postman in his buggy, or the telephone rang and from the receiver there poured ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... these two went off to search the fir-wood, but nobody dared to speak or stir, for Swan was still close underneath, so close that they could hear him grumbling to himself over the laziness of a woman who had been hired to weed the walks for him, and was slowly scratching ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... can with the gifts at her disposal. I should leave it at that, if I had not to take into consideration a grave charge brought against her. She is accused of having lost, for want of use and through laziness, the workman's tools with which, so we are told, she was originally endowed. Finding it to her advantage to do nothing, bringing up her family free of expense, to the detriment of others, she is alleged to have gradually inspired her race with an abhorrence ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... just saying that we shall miss you so much this summer. That you're always our stand-by. It's Rob who gets up the rides and picnics, and comes over and stirs us out of our laziness by making us go fishing and walking and tennis-playing. I'm afraid we'll simply go into our shells and stay there after ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... had rebelled against a vacation on a farm, but his carriage was better and his figure sturdier, and his hands weren't half so white and gentlemanlike. Underneath his lazy ease was a hint of something to depend on in an emergency. Perhaps even his laziness wasn't so ingrained as ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... lengthiest details as to the nature and office of Amtsvorstehers, details that were perfectly incomprehensible and wholly indifferent to Anna, and spared neither himself nor her. While he talked, however, he was criticising her, comparing the laziness of her attitude with the brisk and respectful alertness of other women when he talked. He knew that these other women belonged to a different class; his wife, the parson's wife, the wives of the inspectors on other estates, these were not, of course, in the same sphere as ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... "Shame on your laziness, dad!" said Shiela, as Cardross looked after her in pretended pity; "anybody can shoot ducks from a boat, but it takes real hunters to stalk turkeys! I suppose Eudo loads for you and Gray pulls ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... used the discretion of the animals. For ages men have been taught what is good for their bodies and their minds and their souls. There has been no question about the wisdom of being temperate and industrious and honest and kind; and the folly of immoderation and laziness and chicanery and meanness is so well known that a geometrical proposition has not been more definitely proved. Yet only a few people in any community observe the rules of life, and of these few no one observes ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... intimate in the house, made his way up there and Sir John Purefoy joined the party. Sir John was a hunting man who lived in the county and was an old friend of the family. Lady Purefoy hunted also, and came in later. Arabella was the last,—not from laziness, but aware that in this way the effect might be the best. Lord Rufford was in the room when she entered it and of course she addressed herself to him. "Which is it to be, Lord Rufford, ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... investigating; the shoddiest goods were worth owning at a price; the least attractive prospect had to be faced and understood, for any commodity becomes a bargain when the price is right. There was no room for laziness or indulgence in her life. There was also no ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... authority for child, pupil, apprentice and soldier. The negro slave as a workman got less of it than any other class. It was the rule of a Southern master never to use the rod on a slave except for crime if it could be avoided. To flog one for laziness was ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... good and plenty, get specific directions and follow them. Most people won't read directions; more can't follow them. Those people have their knives out for "book farmers and professors," but you can't improve on experience and experiment by the light of laziness or of nature. ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... towns, and getting the trade into their hands, are indeed more industrious and effective than the Mexicans; yet their children are brought up Mexicans in most respects, and if the "California fever'' (laziness) spares the first generation, it is ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... are particularly galling to some Englishmen. The sort of faults which the average Englishman is least willing to condone are unpunctuality, untidiness, promises not kept, inexact answers and false excuses, forgetfulness of favours received but fresh favours asked for, slovenly work, laziness, and obstinacy. When the missionary first meets his flock he sees pleasant and courteous manners, and readiness to please and to obey, a certain aptitude and handiness in work, a real spirit of devotion, and many such-like qualities. The dark skin, the picturesque dress or absence ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... we do more with less perplexity. Sloth makes all things difficult, but Industry all things easy, as POOR RICHARD says: and He that riseth late, must trot all day; and shall scarce overtake his business at night. While Laziness travels so slowly, that Poverty soon over-takes him, as we read in POOR RICHARD who adds, Drive thy business! Let not that drive thee! and Early to bad and early to rise, Makes a ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... shall form one grand collection of specimens and deposit it in the British Museum or some other public place, and this main object being always kept in view, we are at liberty to collect and work for ourselves as we please. Depend upon it unless some sudden attack of laziness supervenes, such an opportunity shall not slip unused out of my hands. The great difficulty in such a wide field is to choose an object. In this point, however, I hope to be greatly assisted by the scientific folks, to many of whom I have already had introductions (Owen, Gray, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... hung over everything, the furniture, the ceilings, the woodwork could be seen, already faded and still new. Spots on the crumpled satins, ashes staining the beautiful marbles, dirty footmarks on the carpets. It reminded one of a huge first-class railway carriage incrusted with all the laziness, the impatience, the boredom of a long journey, and all the wasteful, spoiling disdain of the public for a luxury for which it has paid. In the middle of this set scene, still warm from the atrocious comedy played there every day, his own ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... may interest the reader to mention a valuable discovery which was the result of laziness! A man who was employed in a tin-smelting establishment at this laborious work of stirring the molten metal in order to purify it, accidentally discovered that a piece of green wood dropped into it had the effect of causing ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... he continues, "is to be limited to some particular parts of the world."[193] And again: "Bad laws have made lazy men—they have been reduced to slavery because of their laziness." The first portion of this remark—that bad laws have made lazy men—is not applicable to the African race. For they were made lazy, not by bad laws, but by the depravity of human nature, in connection and co-operation with long, long centuries of ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... so much the ponderous laziness of Peter's time as an opposition polite and elastic, which never ranted and never stood up,—for then Nicholas would have throttled it and stamped upon it. But it did its best to entangle his reason and thwart ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... the distance in sixteen days. For it was not the donkeys that proved recreant to my confidence; they, poor animals, carrying a weight of 150 lbs. each, arrived at Simbamwenni in first-rate order; but it was Maganga, composed of greed and laziness, and his weakly-bodied tribe, who were ever falling sick. In dry weather the number of marches might have been much reduced. Of the half-dozen of Arabs or so who preceded this Expedition along this route, two accomplished the entire distance in eight days. From ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... night at Lady Buckingham's, and am ashamed of my laziness in not going. I dine with his Lordship on Saturday, and to-day I am going with Mie Mie and Mrs. W(ebb) to Mr. Gregg's, who has got a little ball for a dozen children of her age, because it is the birthday ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... hotly. "I do! She was thrown out of her buggy through your negligence and infernal laziness! The ponies ran away, and were stopped by a stranger who wasn't afraid of risking his bones, while you were limping around somewhere like a ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... but an idle god, I guess, Since all the fair midsummer of my dreams He loiters listlessly by woody streams, Soaking the lush glooms up with laziness; Or drowsing while the maiden-winds caress Him prankishly, and powder him with gleams Of sifted sunshine. And he ever seems Drugged with a joy unutterable— unless His low pipes whistle hints of it far out Across the ripples to the dragon-fly That like a wind-born blossom ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... The "laziness" of her husband, as Mrs. Parker did not hesitate so call it, annoyed his good wife. She did not find things any easier—she could not retire from business. In fact, the new order of things made her a great ...
— The Last Penny and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... upward chips and slivers from a beam. How awkward! at what disadvantage he works! But see him on the ground, dressing his timber under him. Now, not his feeble muscles, but the force of gravity brings down the axe; that is to say, the planet itself splits his stick. The farmer had much ill-temper, laziness, and shirking to endure from his hand-sawyers, until, one day, he bethought him to put his saw-mill on the edge of a waterfall; and the river never tires of turning his wheel: the river is good-natured, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... my good and loving nurse saved my life, I must ever remember with deep gratitude. There are stages of fever, when, as they say, "a nurse is everything;" and a very little laziness, selfishness, or inattention on Nurse Bundle's part would probably have been my death-warrant. But night and day she never relaxed her vigilance for one instant of the crisis of my malady. She took nothing for granted, would ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Mere spiritual laziness is at the bottom of much failure in religion. There is no success anywhere in life save through the constant pressure of the will driving a reluctant and protesting set of nerves and muscles to their ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... who has freed himself from the fetters of the thoughtlessness and stupidity of the commonplace; he who can stand without moral crutches, without the approval of public opinion—private laziness, Friedrich Nietzsche called it—may well intone a high and voluminous song of independence and freedom; he has gained the right to it through fierce and fiery battles. These battles already begin ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... mystery and suspense and ceaseless action; even if the style and concept of these yarns be grossly lacking in certain approved elements. So the tale be written with strong evidence of sincerity and with a dash of enthusiasm, why grudge it a small place of its own in readers' hours of mental laziness? ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... acquaintance," said Lady Dalrymple, with a smile, and not taking the Baron's offered hand—not, however, from pride, but simply from laziness—for she hated the bother, and didn't ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... doubt whether to reckon the Peucini, Venedi, and Fenni among the Germans or Sarmatians; [267] although the Peucini, [268] who are by some called Bastarnae, agree with the Germans in language, apparel, and habitations. [269] All of them live in filth and laziness. The intermarriages of their chiefs with the Sarmatians have debased them by a mixture of the manners of that people. [270] The Venedi have drawn much from this source; [271] for they overrun in their predatory excursions ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... and laughed, while Mrs. Kew said, confidentially, as the couple moved away: "She needn't be a reflectin' on the poor beast. That's Mis' Seth Tanner, and there isn't a woman in Deep Haven nor East Parish to be named the same day with her for laziness. I'm glad she didn't catch sight of me; she'd have talked about nothing for a fortnight." There was a picture of a huge snake in Deep Haven, and I was just wondering where he could be, or if there ever ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... present comfort, but also because it was getting a principle with her, as apparently with many middle-aged Englishwoman, that she must always be going abroad. Yet she knew that Miss Gurney did not particularly want to have her, and had invited her more from laziness than ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... It strikes one as curious that people should be ready to sympathize with the slouch who lets his place go to ruin out of laziness, and never think of the storekeepers' just claim on the money he's wasted. Anyway, there's nothing to stop people from bidding; but, in case they hold off, we have fixed up how we'll ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... always yelling—generally imprecations of a serio-comic character. He rarely flogs his mules; but when one of them rouses his indignation by extraordinary laziness, he roars out, "Come here, Judge, with a big club, and give him h——ll." Whilst the animal is receiving such discipline as comes up to the judge's idea of the infernal regions, Mr Sargent generally remarks, "I wish you was Uncle Abe, I'd ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... real play itself; but Robson was nervous of venturing on a purely "legitimate" role. I was half persuaded to write a burlesque on "A New Way to pay Old Debts," and Robson had promised to do his very best with Sir Giles; but a feeling, half of laziness, and half of reverence for the fine old drama, came over me, and I never got farther than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... wholly unnecessary. You can take charge of one watch, yourself, you know, and your mate will of course command the other, so that you can have no possible use for a second mate. Why, a smart, active young fellow like you ought to be ashamed of such an act of laziness as the carrying of a second mate. Pay the man his wages, if you please, and let him pass into ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... hookworm eradicated by a few simple improvements in sanitation. Dr. Stiles had long been advocating such a campaign as an indispensable preliminary to improving Southern life. But the humorous aspect of the hookworm always interfered with his cause; the microbe of laziness had ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... quite sure whether this is not an encouragement to laziness on the part of the reader. In most respects he is as well able to picture the future of Jeffreys, and Raby, and Percy, and ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... industrious?" their mother would ask, but in tones so sweet and so kindly that she seemed ready to pity laziness as a misfortune, and to glance through tears at the child who ...
— La Grenadiere • Honore de Balzac
... is present with him. How he delights in the law of God with his inward mind, and yet finds another law in his body, warring against the law of God, and bringing him into captivity to the law of sin. How he is crippled by old bad habits, weakened by cowardice, by laziness, by vanity, by general inability of will, till he is ready,—disgusted at himself and his own weakness,—to cry, Who shall deliver me from the body of ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... of the movement. I have always been, am, and propose to remain a mere scholar. All that I have ever proposed to myself is to say, This and this have I learned, thus and thus have I learned it; go thou and learn better; but do not thrust on my shoulders the responsibility for your own laziness if you elect to take, on my authority, conclusions the value of which you ought to have ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... up into the sky to distract her adversary. Much the same as this was also done by certain Californians." [316] "At a lunar eclipse the Orinoko Indians seized their hoes and laboured with exemplary vigour on their growing corn, saying the moon was veiling herself in anger at their habitual laziness." [317] The umbrated moon did good in this way: as many of us remember the beautiful comet of 1858 did good, when it frightened some trembling Londoners into a speedy settlement of old debts, in anticipation of the final account. Ellis says of the Tahitians: "An eclipse ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... F. Apthorp gives us an ingenious explanation in "The Opera Past and Present." He says that after Tell Rossini's pride would not allow him to return to his earlier Italian manner, while the hard work needed to produce more Tells was more than his laziness could stomach.... Perhaps, but it must be remembered that Rossini did not retire to his library or his music room, but to his kitchen. The simple explanation is that he preferred cooking to composing, a fact easy to believe ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... blessings, is justly appropriated to induustry and temperance; the refreshing rest, and the peaceful night, are the portion only of him who lies down weary with honest labour, and free from the fumes of indigested luxury; it is the just doom of laziness and gluttony, to be inactive without ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... company, though not without grudging, paid the poet the stipulated share of profit; and the curious document, recovered by Mr. Malone, not only establishes the terms of the bargain, but that the players, although they complained of the laziness of their indented author, were jealous of their right to his works, and anxious to retain possession of him, and of them.[26] It would have been well for Dryden's reputation, and perhaps not less productive to the company, had the number of his plays been still further abridged; ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... sleeps?" asked the young man. "A fool you are, and a fool you will remain," replied the eagle. "Are you not yet aware that God has created him for the express purpose of guarding the hell-hounds? It is from sheer laziness that he sleeps for seven weeks at a stretch. When he has no stranger as a servant, he will be obliged to rouse himself and do ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... recitation and why he had not dared to tell her his recent marks. She trusted him so thoroughly now that she did not stop him so often when he talked, instead of working. If she had guessed the real reason of his laziness, she would have been honestly disappointed in him. This was the tragedy of it. He could never let her suspect that he was not still fooling the Rho house. She was a girl entirely without sentimentality—this was what he liked in her at first, ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... replied. "It is a fit of sheer laziness. I ought to be elsewhere, but I was born without a conscience. If I had one I should try to quiet it by reminding it that I am fulfilling a long-delayed promise—I am making a garden for Mrs. Larrabbee. You know her, of course, since she is ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Thorndyke, "this is mere laziness. Berkeley wants to witness a display of your forensic wisdom. A learned counsel may be in a fog—he very often is—but he doesn't state the fact baldly; he wraps it up in a decent verbal disguise. Tell us how you arrive at your ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... on the table before me,—fresh gathered roses,—the pride of my gardener's heart. Little Fanchon is at my feet, too idle to eat the biscuits with which I am trying to tempt her,—biscuits from Boston, sent to me by kind Mrs. S., and which Fanchon ought to like; but you know her laziness of old, and she improves in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... of Madam de Vercellis nearly as I had entered it, I returned to my former hostess, and remained there five or six weeks; during which time health, youth, and laziness, frequently rendered my temperament importunate. I was restless, absent, and thoughtful: I wept and sighed for a happiness I had no idea of, though at the same time highly sensible of some deficiency. This situation is indescribable, few men ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... being English myself, I know it is connected with weaknesses as well as merits. In its irony there is condescension and therefore embarrassment. This patronage is allied to the patron, and the patron is allied to the aristocratic tradition of society. The larks are a variant of laziness because of leisure; and the leisure is a variant of the security and even supremacy of the gentleman. When an undergraduate at Oxford smashes half a hundred windows he is well aware that the incident is merely a ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... tin foil round it. [Laughter.] You can see, upon close inspection, the mark of the planer on his well-turned sentences. Now, the competition with gentlemen who are so cultivated is severe upon one who must speak absolutely upon the impulse of the occasion. It is either incapacity or downright laziness that has kept me from competing in the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... to the laziness of fallen man, is that of fishing down-stream, and not up. What Mr. Stewart says on this point should be read by every tyro. By fishing up-stream, even against the wind, he will on an average kill twice as many trout as when fishing down. If trout are out and feeding ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... well know, recalls them to the boat in which they were sent out. The instant this is heard the ducks come trooping in as fast as possible, followed by their pupils. In order to encourage them to be punctual, the first duck is rewarded with something nice, but the last one is whipped for its laziness. And it is said to be very funny to see how the ducks will waddle, and run, and fly over each other's backs, that they may escape the punishment which they know awaits the ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")
... that of Diogenes, the Cynic, was not very discrepant when he defined lechery—The occupation of folk destitute of all other occupation. For this cause the Sicyonian sculptor Canachus,[225] being desirous to give us to understand that slowth drowsiness, negligence, and laziness, were the prime guardians and governesses of ribaldry, made the statue of Venus, not standing, as other stone-cutters had ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... noteworthy that this "life-ideal" seems to have led, inevitably, to fanaticism and other excesses, so that even at this early date there was much occasion for alarm. Gross immorality was disclosed as well as luminous purity; indolence and laziness as well as the love of sacrifice and toil. So we shall find it down through the centuries. "The East had few great men," says Milman, "many madmen; the West, madmen enough, but still very many, many great men." We have ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... so besotted with your philosophy and your heathenry, and your laziness, and your contempt for God and man, that you will see your nation given up for a prey, and your wealth plundered by heathen dogs? I tell you, Cyril has sworn that God shall do so to him, and more also, if there ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... it was an idle life; and if I myself were not inclined to sloth and laziness, I would never countenance ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... with admiration to the bed which she had dug up that morning, and complained of the laziness of the gardener: he had not done this nor that, but he was such a good man—since he became ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... come first, as one might say, with a sort of dizziness in his foot, then he had a kind of laziness in his joints, and then his leg broke out, and then it swelled, and then it closed again, and then it broke out again, and then it festered, and then it grew better, and then it grew ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... of us such a burden to have the management of our own fate, the forming of our own opinions, the fearful responsibility of our own destiny, that we are all only too ready to say to some man or other, from love or from laziness, 'Where thou goest, I will go; thy people shall be my people, and thy ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... in action. The Master points out that while "there must be no laziness, but constant activity in good work ... it must be your own duty that you do—not another man's, unless with his permission and by way of helping him." The teacher has, however, a special duty in this connection; for while he must offer to his boys ...
— Education as Service • J. Krishnamurti
... Chinese proverb that if one man lives in laziness another will die of hunger; and Montesquieu has said, "The fact that many men are occupied in making clothes for one individual is the cause of there being many people without clothes." So one explains the other. We cannot understand the starved and runty ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... them, intermarried with them, and from these had gradually grown up a band of as mongrel, miserable vagabonds as is often seen. They were the terror of the neighborhood. Except for their supreme laziness, they would have been as dangerous as brigands; for they were utter outlaws. No man cared for them; and they cared for no man. Parson Dorrance's heart yearned over these poor Ishmaelites; and he determined to see if they ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... of least resistance seems against it; our laziness, and our wish to think well of ourselves merely because we are ourselves, undoubtedly go against it, as they do against everything in the world worth having. In our own day certain ways of thinking, culminating in development ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... schools for officers of all ranks, with a two-hour course each day in law, military art, etc. There is little taste for military life in France; such a procedure would lessen it. The leisure of army life attracts three out of four officers, laziness, if you like. But such is the fact. If you make an officer a school-boy all his life he will send his profession to the devil, if he can. And those who are able to do so, will in general be those who have received the best education. An army is an extraordinary thing, but since ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... date (November 5th), which amply indemnifies my patience - nay, almost makes me amends for your blindness; for I think, unless you had totally lost your eyes, you would not refuse me a pleasure so easy to yourself as now and then sending me a drawing. I can't call it laziness; one may be too idle to amuse one's self, but sure one is never so fond of idleness as to prefer it to the power of obliging a person one loves! And yet I own your letter has made me amends, the wit of your ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... because it conflicts with the rights of the joint family, and is a serious blow to all the old Hindu family privileges. The Hindu joint family system, while it has been a source of some blessing to the land, has also been a serious curse in that it has fostered laziness, dissension and improvidence, and has put a ban upon individual initiative ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... married to Hector Vaucogne, by whom she had one daughter, Elodie. She was thirty years of age before she had any suspicion of the calling of her parents, and at that time she took over the management of their establishment. She proved a capable manager, and in spite of the laziness of her husband, was able to keep up the reputation of the house, though in a few years she killed herself with ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... felt tired, they called it laziness and felt disgraced, and thus they had spent their days, working, working from the gray dawn, until the darkness came again, and all for what? When in after years these girls, broken in health and in spirits, slipped away to premature graves, or, worse still, settled ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... manual labor was strongly developed in the boy as he grew older, which his father considered simple laziness. Instead of trying to cure him of his laziness, however, the father decided to give up the farm, and open a store, hoping that the boy would take more kindly to mercantile duties. So he put up a building in Bethel, and in partnership ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... faithful member of the Little Fire order (Ma-ke-tsa-na-kwe), but he grew careless, neglected his sacrifices, and resigned his rank as "Keeper of the Medicines," from mere laziness. In vain his fathers warned him. He only grew hot with anger. One day Mi-tsi went up on the mesas to cut corral posts. He sat down to eat his dinner. A great black bear walked out of the thicket near at hand and leisurely approached ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... that anybody can be right who differs from you. You've sponged on me for a long time; but I suppose I've learned something from you, so we'll call it even. I think, however, that what you call acting according to impulse is simply an excuse to cover your own laziness.' ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... loiter away their lives, like Soloman's sluggard, with their arms across, and at the winding up of the year scarcely have bread to eat. To speak the truth, tis a thorough aversion to labor that makes people file off to North Carolina, where plenty and a warm sun confirm them in their disposition to laziness for their whole lives."[189] The gangs of outlaws that infested North Carolina during the early years of the 18th century and defied the authority of the governors, were composed largely of runaway servants from Virginia. The laxness and ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... exacted from them the maximum amount of work they were capable of performing. They granted them no privileges, allowed them no holidays, except those required by the law, and never permitted the slightest approach to laziness. Chauncey Jerome's master proved no exception to the rule, and when the boy exhibited an unusual proficiency and quickness in his trade, the only notice his employer took of it was to require more work of him. When only a little over sixteen years old, this boy was able to do ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... the kind, degree, and cause of the fault: take for instance the ordinary fault of laziness. This would be treated very differently when it arose from mental defects—from a tendency to love other things, great or grovelling, or from a ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... in the New Salem grocery store during which there was nothing for him to do, and was therefore in circumstances that made laziness almost inevitable. Had people come to him for goods, they would have found him willing to sell them. He sold all ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... influence was not very great. What chiefly concerns us here is to note Schiller's awakening interest in historical studies. In the spring of 1786, during an absence of the Koerners which deprived him of his wonted inspiration, he found himself unable to work. Letter after letter tells of laziness and mental vacuity. As he could do nothing else he took to desultory reading, and this did not satisfy him. 'Really', he wrote on the ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... former confidence in God, which was founded upon such wonderful experience as I had had of His goodness; as if He that had fed me by miracle hitherto could not preserve, by His power, the provision which He had made for me by His goodness. I reproached myself with my laziness, that would not sow any more corn one year than would just serve me till the next season, as if no accident could intervene to prevent my enjoying the crop that was upon the ground; and this I thought so just a reproof, that ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... breeds laziness, but it also calls out quick passion and the fire of excitement. Catching the inspiration of the boy's earnest spirit, the whole assemblage of knights and barons, prelates and people, shouted their approval, and the ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... "It's not laziness, it's wisdom," said Langdon. "What's the use of working when you don't have to, especially in a June as hot as this one is? I conserve my energy. Besides, I'm going to take care of myself in ways that you fellows don't know ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the many years she had been in England had not made good old Anna think better of English people, and, as was natural, her prejudices had lately become much intensified. She lived in a chronic state of wonder over the laziness, the thriftlessness, and the dirt of Englishwomen. She had described those among whom she dwelt to her niece Minna in the following words: "They wash themselves from head to foot each day, but more never. Their houses are dreadful, ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... trotting along. I do not know why on this first trip he never showed the one of his two most prominent traits—his laziness. As I found out later on, so long as I drove him single (he changed entirely in this respect when he had a mate), he would have preferred to be hitched behind, with me between the shafts pulling buggy and him. That was his weakness, but in it there also ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... school this year,—couldn't afford books and clothes, and couldn't spare their work. There go part of them to the fields now,—three big boys astride mules, and a strapping girl with bare brown legs. Careless ignorance and laziness here, fierce hate and vindictiveness there;—these are the extremes of the Negro problem which we met that day, and we scarce knew ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... for the black inhabitants of the West Indies, than that of these settlers, I very much doubt. They are not a hard-working people, it is true; but hard work in the climate of the tropics is unnatural, and can only be brought about by unnatural means. That they are not sunk in utter laziness one can see by their neat cottages and trim gardens. Their state does not correspond with the idea of prosperity of the political economist, who would have them work hard to produce sugar, rum, and tobacco, that they might earn money to spend in ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... those days,' I answered, shaking my bridle, for Covenant was beginning to show signs of laziness. 'But here comes one who might perhaps tell us ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Besides, the laziness and incapacity of the negro had been more than he could endure. With no ties of tradition or habits of life to bind him, he simply refused to tolerate them. In this feeling Elsie had grown early to sympathize. She discharged Aunt Cindy for feeding her children from the kitchen, ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... heaven, he will be sure to take care for you and yours. I know your excuse is, that having procured for him the accustomed services of the Church, you need do no more for him; for you verily believe he is already in a blessed state. But this is rather a poor shift to excuse your own sloth and laziness, than that you believe it to be so in good earnest. For there is no man, says Origen, but the Son of God, can guess how long, or how many ages, a soul may stand in need of the purgation of fire. Mark the word ages; he seems to believe that a soul may, ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... element, it is due to the indolence of the people. I have not yet seen any vestiges of buildings, topes, etc. to indicate that Candahar has ever been a very populous place, the want of trees considering the ease with which they may be cultivated, is a strong evidence of the extreme laziness of the Affghans, who appear to me remarkably low in the scale of civilization; and in personal habits, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... this subject. Some held that it was absurd to blame men for not being able, "when p'raps they couldn't if they wor to try." Others thought that they might have tried first before saying that "p'raps they couldn't." One admitted that it was nothing but laziness that had prevented him from learning, whereupon another opined that dirtiness had something to do with it too. But all agreed in wishing earnestly that they had learned the noble and useful art, and in regretting deeply that they had not been ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... children and baskets, sit in the shade of the knobby trees which stretch their trunk-like branches horizontally over the beach, forming a natural roof against sun and rain. The half-grown boys are too lively to enjoy contemplative laziness; gossip and important deliberations about pigs and sacrifices do not interest them, and they play about between the canoes, wade in the water, look for shells on the sand, or hunt crabs or fish in the reef. Thus an hour passes. The sun has ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... be twice bidden. The terrible result of his fling of just resentment sobered him completely. He knew, better than any one on board, how nearly the Good Hope had gone bodily down below their feet; and he could tell, by the laziness with which she met the sea, that the peril was by ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and called it laziness, working the harder to recover lost time, and as the hours glided by listening intently for the slightest sound from the quarry below that should indicate the coming of Ram with ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... he could; he must bear the agony and remorse silently from now on. The old laziness and indifference returned slowly as he retraced his steps, and when he entered the silent cabin again he went naturally to the crooked stairs leading up to the loft. The door was closed and locked! Mary had, in this final fashion, ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... began to learn Latin; one of his nightly exercises that he brought home with him being to get by heart a number of Latin words for vocabulary. After a few years he came into trouble with his master for laziness and truancy, and received a severe beating; his mother intervened and got the master dismissed from his post, and Butzbach ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... inhibition of immediate action is often necessary, in order to have time to think the matter over; this prudent attitude becomes a habit with some individuals. Besides, there are the negative motives of fear, shyness and laziness that tend to deter from the actual execution of a plan. Hamlet's "conscience" that makes "cowards of us all", so that "the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... other arts. If criticism is, generally speaking, praise, it is, more definitely, praise of the right things. Praise for the sake of praise is as great an evil as blame for the sake of blame. Indiscriminate praise, in so far as it is the result of distrust of one's own judgment or of laziness or of insincerity, is one of the deadly sins in criticism. It is also one of the deadly dull sins. Its effect is to make criticism ever more unreadable, and in the end even the publishers, who love silly sentences to quote about their bad ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... to work slowly; but he knows well, because his task is a day-long one, that his forces must be economised, that over-exertion must be avoided. This lesson was brought home to me when exasperated by the seeming laziness of the coolie cultivators, I would seize a man's hoe and fly at the work, hoe vigorously for perhaps five minutes, swear at the man for his lack of strenuousness, then retire and find myself puffing and blowing and almost in a state ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... suggestion or a new idea as an attack upon the Jennings Method. The overwhelming majority of the human race—indeed, all but a small handful—have this passion for stagnation, this ferocity against change. It is in large part due to laziness; for a new idea means work in learning it and in unlearning the old ideas that have been true until the unwelcome advent of the new. In part also this resistance to the new idea arises from a fear that the new idea, if tolerated, will put one out of business, will set him adrift without any means ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
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