INDOLENCE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Indolence

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noun

Indolence n.

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

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

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Etymology of 'Indolence'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Indolence" Quotes from Famous Books

... I am far from believing that a symbolical religion is ever the earliest author of polytheism; for a symbolical religion belongs to a later period of civilization, when some men are set apart in indolence to cultivate their imagination, in order to beguile or to instruct the reason of the rest. Priests are the first philosophers—a symbolical religion the first philosophy. But faith precedes philosophy. ...

— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... character,—patient, hard-working, uncomplaining, supplying a demand throughout the Orient, made necessary, as we have seen, by the indolence of the Burmese and of the Malays, to ...

— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck

... always happens, the character of Kutusoff availed him more than his talents. So long as it was necessary to deceive and temporize, his crafty spirit, his indolence, and his great age, acted of themselves; he was the creature of circumstances, which he ceased to be as soon as it became necessary to march rapidly, to pursue, to ...

— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... the year?-Generally speaking, the crofts would do so. It would be a very poor croft indeed which would not support them for at least six months a year. In such a case the piece of ground must be very small, or at all events it may be their own indolence which leads them not to make the most of it; but in that way the Shetland fishermen have a great advantage over the operatives in the town, who, if they do not earn a day's wages, cannot get a single farthing's worth of food, except from ...

— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... which, when practiced, will render them more useful both to themselves and to you. And afford nobody any excuse whatever, either wealth or birth, or anything else that accompanies excellence, for affecting indolence or effeminacy or any other behavior that is not genuine. Many persons, fearing that on account of some such possession they may incur jealousy or danger, do much that is unworthy of themselves, expecting by such behavior to live in greater security. As a consequence they commiserate themselves, ...

— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio

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