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More "Laziness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... clear him from the charge of having lied about Guiana; and so on; each successive writer giving in generally on merest hearsay to the general complaint against him, either from fear of running counter to big names, or from mere laziness, and yet absolving him from that particular charge of which his own knowledge enables him to judge. In the trust that I may be able to clear him from a few more charges, I write these pages, premising that I do not profess to have access to any new and recondite documents. ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... this properly understood? Every essential to the beginning of the work was ready:—and the most essential, it cannot be said too often, are methods, and also the most difficult to develop, and the longest opposed by habit and laziness. What we have today reconquered, with unspeakable self-discipline, for ourselves—for certain bad instincts, certain Christian instincts, still lurk in our bodies—that is to say, the keen eye for reality, the cautious ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... and had soon forgotten the events of the day in sound refreshing sleep. When she awoke, the sun was shining brightly, and she was astonished to find that she had slept until half-past seven. She was accustomed to rise very early at home, and was afraid that her cousins would be shocked at her laziness, until she found that Julia was still sleeping quietly in the bed ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... cannot dampen that passion. After a full meal an elephant will stand for hours in a sort of piggish torpor; a gorged bird seeks the tree-shade; an overfed dog and nearly every old dog becomes a picture of laziness. Monkeys rest only during sleep. Old age does not affect their nimbleness; they can be fattened, for I have seen baboons as sleek as seals, but, like Gibbon, Henry Buckle, and Marshal Vendome, they prove ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... 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 be ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... your life you swore like a pagan, smoked like a beadle, and drank like a bell-ringer, be your memory nevertheless honoured—not merely because you were a brave soldier, but also because you revealed to your little nephew in petticoats the sentiment of heroism! Pride and laziness had made you almost insupportable, O my Uncle Victor!—but a great heart used to beat under those frogs upon your coat. You always used to wear, I now remember, a rose in your button-hole. That rose which ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... the mountain road the old carryall was slowly pulled along by a horse into whose joints had crept the dreamy laziness of early summer. Lou, bound about with flowering vines, captive May-queen in purple chains, sat on the rear seat with Tom; and she was shy in this close touch with the mysterious world from afar off; and her timidity ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... was an idle life; and if I myself were not inclined to sloth and laziness, I would ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... through the construction of the transcontinental railways, the financing of the western farms, and the building of our cities is largely due to the old New England doctrine that laziness and extravagance are sins. In some western communities it is popular to laugh at these New England traits; but had it not been for them, these western communities would never have existed. The industry and thrift developed by the old ...
— Fundamentals of Prosperity - What They Are and Whence They Come • Roger W. Babson
... laundress, too, is an institution not to be had in its entirety out of and away from the genuine Chambers. Again, it is not denied that you may be robbed elsewhere. Elsewhere you may have—for money—dishonesty, drunkenness, dirt, laziness, and profound incapacity. But the veritable shining-red-faced shameless laundress; the true Mrs. Sweeney—in figure, colour, texture, and smell, like the old damp family umbrella; the tip-top complicated abomination of stockings, spirits, bonnet, limpness, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... deadly enemy 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. Such ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... you lizard of laziness! When the gentlemen leaves tips for us on going away, you don't complain because there's only two to ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... moon-head goes wagging; darker beams the copper visage, like unscoured copper; in the glazed eye is disquietude; he rolls uneasy in his seat, as if he meant something. Amid unutterable satiety, has sudden new appetite, for new forbidden fruit, been vouchsafed him? Disgust and edacity; laziness that cannot rest; futile ambition, revenge, non-admiralship:—O, within that carbuncled skin what a ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... past, now colourless, fluid and supportable, might assume a tangible, an obscene form, with individual and diabolical features. And he continued to refrain from seeking a conception of it, not any longer now from laziness of mind, but from fear of suffering. He hoped that, some day, he might be able to hear the Island in the Bois, or the Princesse des Laumes mentioned without feeling any twinge of that old rending pain; meanwhile he thought it imprudent to provoke Odette into furnishing ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... 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
... really willing to work wouldn't need no help," grumbled the miserly storekeeper. "It is only on account of laziness you need help." ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield
... and between them the job was soon finished. The little man, who was a confectioner, explained that he had an assistant who came from a distance, and whose laziness was most phenomenal. After this morning, however, his services would be dispensed with. For once he had gone a little too far. Eight o'clock and no sign of him. It was monstrous! The little man produced a few coppers and glanced towards Douglas ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... see less of that spirit that espies all manner of evil beneath the habit of a religious; that discovers in convents and monasteries plotting against the State in favor of the Papacy, the accumulation of untold wealth by oppression and extortion for the satisfaction of laziness and lust, iniquity of the deepest dye allied to general worthlessness. Common sense goes a long way in this world. If it were only a less rare commodity, and if an effective tribunal could be erected for the suppression of mendacity, the religious would appear for the first time ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... roars of laughter the scene that 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 into the appearance of some incoherent landscape, or to rasp out some bars of Beethoven ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... are, and what our work is here. As for all superstitions about "the good old times," and fancies that they belonged to God, while this age belongs only to man, blind chance, and the evil one, let us cast them from us as the suggestions of an evil lying spirit, as the natural parents of laziness, pedantry, fanaticism, and unbelief. And therefore let us not fear to ask the meaning of this present day, and of all its different voices—the pressing, noisy, complex present, where our workfield ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... forest they arranged a mighty hunt. It is well known to you gentlemen that almost all the Czartoryskis within the memory of man, though they spring from the blood of the Jagiellos, are nevertheless not over keen on hunting, though certainly not from laziness, but from their foreign tastes; and the Prince General looked oftener into books than into kennels, and oftener into ladies' alcoves than into ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... toast, sugar, nutmeg, and good Cheshire cheese. The hackin (the great sausage) must be boiled by daybreak, or else two young men must take the maiden (i.e. the cook) by the arms and run her round the marketplace till she is shamed of her laziness."—Round ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... a pupil needs to sit and rest a bit occasionally it is permitted. But do not let our consideration for your comfort become an excuse for mere laziness! There are lazy girls as well as lazy men in the world, I have heard, and it is barely possible that one or two might decide to take my courses sometime. If they do, our required work will give them inspiration, ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... they lived. He said, on birds and animals, having no fish. Their laziness appeared strongly when we halted, for they refused to draw water or to cleave wood to make a fire; but as soon as it was kindled (having first well stuffed themselves), they lay down before it and fell asleep. About ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... idler! Ah! well, we must teach you to work. You won't be the first we have cured of laziness. See how busy all ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... want to shake Phebe. She could do anything she chose, but she never really chooses. Sometimes I think she is only playing with her study. The next day, she astonishes me by some brilliant stroke that makes me forgive all her past laziness. She's splendid stuff, Ted, only she needs a balance-wheel. The fact is, the girl is selfish. She isn't working for love of her profession and the good it can do to others; all she cares for is the pleasure she takes in it, ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... will take the laziness out of me," thought Jack, as he yawned and extended his arms. "What glorious weather! It would be ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... There is a radical difference between pauperism and poverty. People may be poor for generations and generations, even very poor, and still not be considered or classed with paupers. Pauperism generally implies a lack of physical and mental stamina, loss of self-respect and unconquerable laziness. Of course we know now that laziness often rests upon a physical basis, being due to imperfect working of the internal glands. But whatever the cause of the laziness may be, the fact is that it is one of the characteristics of the pauper. And while we cannot speak of pauperism being hereditary, ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... Alas! she was not old enough to have learned that a dishonest man cannot begin even to sweep a crossing honestly till he have in very truth repented of his former dishonesty. The lazy man may become lazy no longer, but there must have been first a process through his mind whereby laziness has become odious to him. And that process can hardly be the immediate result of misfortune arising from misconduct. Had Lopez found his crossing at Birmingham he would ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... get over ground wonderfully well, considering the difficulties under which he labored. More than once he had been held up by Doctor Carmack to the other boys at Scranton High as a rebuke for their laziness. If a fellow who had so much to contend with could always appear so satisfied, and manage to get along as well as he did, they ought to be ashamed to dawdle, and waste time when they had ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... repeated Peyton, 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
... natural inert laziness and ignorance of the people is their own and their country's bane. They are all totally unaware of the treasures at their feet. This dreadful sloth is in part engendered by the excessive bounty of the land in its natural state; by the little want of clothes or other luxuries, in ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... does not very greatly go beyond the impishness of a naughty boy. But when, being promoted to mind the horses, and having a grudge against a certain "wise" mare named Keingala, because she stays out at graze longer than suits his laziness, he flays the unhappy beast alive in a broad strip from shoulder to tail, the thing goes beyond a joke. Also he is represented, throughout the saga, as invariably capping his pranks or crimes with one of ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... School, of which the Rev. John Ruddle was headmaster, from being a lad of bright parts and no common attainments, became on a sudden moody, dejected, and melancholy. His friends, seeing the change without being able to find the cause, attributed it to laziness, an aversion to school, or to some other motive which he was ashamed to avow. He was led, however, to tell his brother, after some time, that in a field through which he passed to and from school, he invariably met the apparition of a woman, whom he personally knew while living, and who had been ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... a sudden human interest in some gracefully modelled canoe gliding out with a crew of Chinook Indians from the shadow of a giant promontory, propelled by a square sail learned of the whites. Knowing the natural, ingrained laziness of Indians, one can imagine the delight with which they comprehended that substitute for the paddle. After all, this may perhaps be an ill-natured thing to say. Who does like to drudge when he can help it? Is not this very Wilson G. Hunt a triumph of human laziness, vindicating ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... the student who knows the facts of the lesson, but who fails to remember the sequence of events—the kind who never can tell whether the Exclusion Bill came before or after the Restoration. There will be the usual amount of specialized tastes, curiosity, timidity, laziness, and rattle-brained thinking. The questioning should probe these peculiarities, and stimulate the pupil's ambition to improve his preparation at its weakest point. Needless to say the questions should not be ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell
... was not worth 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
... Leipzig at present. It is one of my keenest desires to make your personal acquaintance and to pass some days with you. But as that is not possible now, let us, at least, try not to be entirely separated, and let us combat, as far as we can, the laziness about writing, which is, I ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... and laziness are frequently found in the lists of causes of dependence used by charity organization societies, from 10 to 15 per cent of the cases of distress being attributed more or less to these causes. It is now generally agreed, however, that in most cases these ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... must obey him. There must be not only no mutiny, but no neglect, no arguing, no asking why. If he said Go, a man must go; if he said Come, a man must come; and make no words about it. Otherwise the Emperor's service would go to ruin, through laziness, distrust, and mutinous talk. By subordination, by discipline, by mutual trust and strict obedience, that empire of Rome was conquering the old world; because every Roman knew his place, and every Roman ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... the principal 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
... that faint musk of weakness hanging about him that is often mistaken for the scent of evil. It took no psychological examiner to decide that he had drifted into indulgence and laziness as casually as he had drifted into life, and was to drift out. He was pale and his clothes stank of smoke; he enjoyed burlesque shows, billiards, and Robert Service, and was always looking back upon his last intrigue or forward ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... demagogues, that will bar them out of Northern States. Besides, as a class, they will be idle and worthless. It will not be their fault, but it will be the result of their slave education. All their past observation of their masters has taught them that liberty means licensed laziness, that work means degradation; and therefore they will loathe work, and cherish laziness as the sign of liberty. 'Am not I free? Have I not as good a right to do nothing as ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... projectoscopes explain that utter depth of laziness into which the Hans had been dragged by their civilization. There was no incentive for anyone to leave his apartment unless he was in the military or air service, or a member of one of the repair services which from time to time had to scoot through the corridors ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... will work the change in the habits of life of those who thus pretend to cultivate the earth? What shall bring them to a clearer realization of their position, their duties, their opportunities, their prospects? This lethargy of ignorance, indifference, and laziness must be shaken off and laid aside in the immediate future, by study and education, by active interest and participation in every discovery or invention which benefits agriculture; by the exercise of sound judgment in the choice of stock or crops for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... had a long day's journey before us, without a regular baiting-place on the road, so we breakfasted at Inverary, and did not set off till nine o'clock, having, as usual, to complain of the laziness of the servants. Our road was up the valley behind the Castle, the same we had gone along the evening before. Further up, though the plantations on the hills are noble, the valley was cold and naked, wanting hedgerows and comfortable houses. We travelled several miles under the plantations, ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... personae, you will probably not be astonished to be told that their goings-on are excellently entertaining; though I cannot but think that to give both his leading lady and his soubrette, or Singing Chambermaid, the handicap of morally deficient young brothers, does look like laziness on the part of Mr. CAINE. Surely there exist other avenues to calamity. But ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various
... watched it hop in and out of sight, sometimes right side up, sometimes upside down. A dozen times he thought it had gone; but always it came back, flirting its absurd short tail, one bright eye fixed on the occupants of the blind. When Bobby slipped still further into the warm bright land of laziness, he abandoned even the effort of observation, and amused himself by sifting rainbows through ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... went into the 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 ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... does, Barney; and it is a pity there are so few people in it who know how to make use of the things that are scattered all around them. I'm inclined to think the hermit was right when he said that they wanted the Bible. They are too far sunk in laziness and idleness to be raised up by anything else. Just look," continued Martin, glancing round, "what a wonderful place this is! It seems as if all the birds and curious trees in Brazil had congregated here ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... striking illustrations of an opposite nature. The farmers and mechanics and carpenters, among regular laborers, and the entire life of the common people in their homes, give an impression of indifference to the flight of time, if not of absolute laziness. The workers seem ready to sit down for a smoke and a chat at any hour of the day. In the home and in ordinary social life, the loss of time seems to be a matter of no consequence whatever. Polite palaver takes unstinted hours, and the sauntering of the people through the street emphasizes the impression ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... watch the dogs here, if I go away while my master 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 ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... even in the present day, on our own stage, the infallible and inexhaustible source of the ludicrous is the same ungovernable impulses of sensuality in collision with higher duties; or cowardice, childish vanity, loquacity, gulosity, laziness, &c. Hence, in the weakness of old age, amorousness is the more laughable, as it is plain that it is not mere animal instinct, but that reason has only served to extend the dominion of the senses beyond their proper limits. In drunkenness, too, the real man places himself, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... in the discussion of a letter of Edgar's, more than usually discontented with his employment; and another of Alda's, who had been laid under orders to write to her eldest brother, and desire him to remonstrate with Edgar on his inattention, laziness, and pleasure-seeking. The anxiety had long been growing up; Felix had come to write his difficult letter by the light of Geraldine's sympathy, and they were weighing what should be said, when the door-bell rang, some sounds puzzled them, and just as Felix was ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 understanding, emancipation ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... nobody, and surely you must remember one Peter Schlemihl, whom you now and then met at my house in former days; a long-shanked fellow, who had the credit of awkwardness because he was unpolished, and whose negligence gave him an air of habitual laziness. I loved him—you cannot have forgotten, Edward, how often, in the spring-time of our youth, he was the subject of our rhymes. Once I recollect introducing him to a poetical tea-party, where he fell asleep while I was writing, even without waiting to hear anything read. And that brings ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... Aristotle, that cold and rain congregate homogenes, for they gather together you and your crew, at whist, punch, and claret. Happy weather for Mrs. Maul, Betty, and Stopford, and all true lovers of cards and laziness. ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... the impression he might make. In the hunting-field he was now reckless, now so cautious that the men would chaff him. But they knew well enough that whatever he did came either of pure whim or down-right good sense; no one ever questioned his pluck. I believe an intermittent laziness had something to do with ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... circumstances. She never disturbed him but was ready to talk when he wished to listen, listened eagerly when he talked, and was silent and beautiful and restful to look at when he wished to indulge in the dissipation of mental laziness. ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... the 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
... 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, ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 gestures and looks of Massieu were in ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... individual demand the surrender of all this precious time. It has often been said that sleep is a more imperative necessity than food, and the claim seems to be well founded." It is quite likely that some students indulge in too much sleep. This may sometimes be due to laziness, but frequently it is due to actual intoxication, from an excess of food which results in the presence of poisonous "narcotizing substances absorbed from the burdened intestine". This theory is rendered tenable by the fact that when the diet is reduced the hours of sleep ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... certain that if Lincoln were alive, he would be electioneering for Mr. W. G. Harding—unless he came to Zenith and electioneered for Lucas Prout. He did not confuse audiences by silly subtleties; Prout represented honest industry, Seneca Doane represented whining laziness, and you could take your choice. With his broad shoulders and vigorous voice, he was obviously a Good Fellow; and, rarest of all, he really liked people. He almost liked common workmen. He wanted them to be well paid, and able ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... shameful practice of too many Irish farmers, to wear out their ground with ploughing; while, either through poverty, laziness, or ignorance, they neither took care to manure it as they ought, nor gave time to any part of the land to recover itself; and, when their leases are near expiring, being assured that their landlords would not renew, they ploughed even the meadows, and made such a havock, that many landlords ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... Report of the Poor Law Commissioners.) {286} This description of the action of the Old Poor Law is certainly correct; relief fosters laziness and increase of "surplus population." Under present social conditions it is perfectly clear that the poor man is compelled to be an egotist, and when he can choose, living equally well in either case, he prefers ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... pastors and preachers are very negligent in this, and slight both their office and this teaching; some from great and high art [giving their mind, as they imagine, to much higher matters], but others from sheer laziness and care for their paunches, assuming no other relation to this business than if they were pastors and preachers for their bellies' sake, and had nothing to do but to [spend and] consume their emoluments as long as they live, ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... most, who whimper forth Their long complaints, is self-inflicted woe, The effect of laziness or sottish waste. Now goes the nightly thief prowling abroad For plunder; much solicitous how best He may compensate for a day of sloth, By works of darkness and nocturnal wrong, Woe to the gardener's pale, the farmer's hedge Plashed neatly and secured with driven stakes Deep ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... never in any age has every type of literature been so cheap and accessible, or the average of culture so high as now. If a person is ignorant to-day it is his own fault. Nothing stands between him and the stars but his own laziness ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... duty to denounce; if I can but create a suspicion in the minds of the clergy that perhaps they know no more of the Omnipotent than do other men—are possibly mistaking bile for benevolence, gall for godliness and chronic laziness for "a call to preach"—I will feel that these few hours expended grooming Balaam's burro have not been ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... He felt the difference in the touch instantly. Also he smelled the salt in my hand, for a taste of which Unk Wunk will put aside all his laziness and walk a mile, if need be. He tried to grasp the hand, first with his paws, then with his mouth; but I had too much fear of his great cutting teeth to let him succeed. Instead I touched him behind the ears, ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... to tell me that much," remarked Bart, as he moved off. "Just like him, to lie here and wait for a chance ball to bring me in his direction. Jim certainly is the limit when it comes to laziness." ...
— Frank Roscoe's Secret • Allen Chapman
... that has been much abused and vulgarised of late, but something like its true Platonic sense must have been realised by the company at Lord Falkland's, as they "examined and refined those grosser propositions which laziness and consent made current in vulgar conversation":[Q] for a more Platonic programme it would be difficult to conceive. The pattern of the ideal republic is, we know, laid up somewhere in the heavens; but the republic of letters ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... anything will do, and put the people off with that which has cost no exertion. "I know," says one who wields a trenchant pen,[58] "how plausible the excuses are, and I know what relaxation of study results in—laziness in the morning, increasing excesses in the daily papers, increased interest in gardening, several more pipes a day, and so forth. Breakfast comes finally to its long-deferred end about ten; then there is a consultation with the gardener, ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... -sons fit for a parallel—Thomson and Cowper;[2] 850 I don't mean exactly,—there's something of each, There's T.'s love of nature, C.'s penchant to preach; Just mix up their minds so that C.'s spice of craziness Shall balance and neutralize T.'s turn for laziness, And it gives you a brain cool, quite frictionless, quiet, Whose internal police nips the buds of all riot,— A brain like a permanent strait-jacket put on The heart that strives vainly to burst off a button,— A brain which, without being slow or mechanic, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... reason that we have become accustomed to form such a picture of such a personage. Everyone knows to what great abuses the royal tax-farming led, and it seems as though there were a law of nature which renders fatter than the rest of mankind those who fatten, not only upon their own laziness, but also ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... 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 ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... of the shallows. But somehow the spring was there, giving us new life with every breath. There were fewer gulls than usual, and those we saw sailed far overhead, debating departure. There was deeper languor in the laziness of the soldiers of finance, as they lounged and slept upon their floating custom houses in every channel of the lagoons; and the hollow voices of the boatmen, yelling to each other as their wont is, had an uncommon tendency to diffuse themselves in echo. Over all, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... Genius What We Do Not Teach, and Why Taboo in Schools Alleged Novelties in Modern Schools What is to be Done? Children's Rights and Duties Should Children Earn their Living? Children's Happiness The Horror of the Perpetual Holiday University Schoolboyishness The New Laziness The Infinite School Task The Rewards and Risks of Knowledge English Physical Hardihood and Spiritual Cowardice The Risks of Ignorance and Weakness The Common Sense of Toleration The Sin of Athanasius The ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... without 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 impecunious relatives) ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... quite well. The hot weather makes one feel rather limp, I suppose. At any rate, there is nothing else the matter with me but a fit of laziness." ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... calmness of mind, which really is a symptom of glorious health, never merges into the dreamy laziness and ignoble activity exhibited by Brazilians in the east ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... nothing. The mate looked at Fred as if to say more, but then apparently changed his mind and hurried away. Soon a small boat was over the side and this was manned by the mate, Bossermann, Wingate and a sailor named Ulligan, a fellow noted for his laziness and untrustworthiness. Without delay the small boat set ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... tub preparatory to giving me an ice bath. This attendant went to the corner of the room from whence he secured a bath tub on wheels, which he pushed over to the side of my bed. The tub was already partly filled with water, and I afterward learned that owing to the laziness and filthiness of the attendants, the same water was often used over and over again for the different typhoid patients. I observed that this attendant, who was otherwise called an orderly, was about as ignorant and degraded a specimen of humanity as a much boasted civilization ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... 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 ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... His pipe also was in his mouth, but his hand was still steady. Under the influence of drink a new intentness had come into his face, all his features seemed to be more keen and pointed. Every now and again he would remove his pipe, as if he were about to break into speech; then, either through laziness or from the tyranny of his habitual caution, he would replace it and, as it seemed to Granger, relapse into memories. He watched him closely, and he thought he saw the elation of old successes, and emotions of forgotten defeats, flit across ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... more recently settled parts of this country, is consequent to neglecting simple and comfortable precautionary means; sometimes this neglect is owing to misdirected industry, and at others to laziness or ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... position! Get a position!" And patiently, unwearyingly, Thyrsis would set himself to explain to them what it was like to be inspired. It was not perversity upon his part, it was not conceit; it was no more these than it was laziness. It was something that was in him—something that he had not put there himself, something that he could not take out of himself; a thing that took possession of him, without any intention upon his part, without any permission; a thing that required him to do certain acts, and ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... kinds of distractions, voluntary and involuntary. Voluntary distractions are thoughts which the mind freely and directly embraces to the exclusion of pious thoughts which should occupy it in prayer, of which the office is a high form; or they may be thoughts which arise from previous laziness, thoughtlessness, pre-occupation or some engrossing worldly affair. Involuntary distractions are those which come unbidden and unsought to the mind, are neither placed directly, nor by their causes, by the person ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... necessary and useful toil. The struggling, industrious widow as well as the well-conditioned housewife whose husband has a good home and makes a good living, seeks to relieve her children of work. This encouragement of laziness can have but one outcome—the living in the sweat of others' faces than their own. Under conditions such as these, parents possessed of radically ignorant and wrong notions about rearing their children, unconsciously cultivate tendencies which lead to criminality. To ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... beau is carefully and truly represented; and the dogs are admirable. No. 263, portrait of Doctor ANDERSON, the father of wood-engraving in this country, is capital. No. 266, 'Lazy Fisherman,' is Laziness personified. No. 341, 'Sketch from Nature,' in water-colors, is an exemplification of this gentleman's versatility ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... to say such nice things," said Mrs. Graham, smiling. "But you're all nice boys to take an old lady like me with you, and stand for all my laziness and tantrums." ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... the man respond immediately to any noise or unusual sight. There was no period of stretching or yawning. Mick was asleep one instant, and fully awake the next and shouting "Daylight". The black boys were also light sleepers, trained out of their native laziness by association with alert whites. There was Yarloo, who had come in from the west with Boss Stobart's message and had joined the white man's plant at once; and Ranui, a tall fine man from North Queensland, who showed both in his build and name a trace of ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... Dangerfield, but my employer vetoed that proposition. It was a vivid flash of colour. The brightly painted wagons with their canvas tops, the red-shirted men, black of hair and eyes, olive of skin, and graceful in their laziness; the older women bare-headed, bent of shoulder, and brilliantly shrouded in shawls; the younger women straight as arrows, bold and keen of glance, and decked in ribbons and jewelry, and on every hand swarms ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... that slaves have most inveterate habits of laziness. No doubt this is true—it would be strange indeed if it were otherwise. Where is the human being, who will work from a disinterested love of toil, when his labor brings no improvement to himself, no increase of comfort to his wife ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... to be in an unusually enterprising mood. She was a very good-natured girl, honest and well-principled, her only important fault being laziness, which her young charges did their best to conceal ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... 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 ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... 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
... rose at half-past six all the year round and had his cold bath even when he had to break the ice on it. Nelly's laziness, too, was a matter of recent date. She had always loved the winter and had seemed to glow the ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... way no tongue can tell. From my earliest infancy I have been a martyr to it. As a boy, the disease hardly ever left me for a day. They did not know, then, that it was my liver. Medical science was in a far less advanced state than now, and they used to put it down to laziness. ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... work, neither let him eat." It is also a sin against our nature; causing a slow movement, which is a serious disappointment; tardiness, which is like a dead fly in precious ointment; and, that loathsome disease, laziness. Like drunkenness it is an inexcusable shame, that dooms one to poverty and clothes him with rags. Shun idleness as you do the sting of a hornet, or the bite of ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... a lad, was dropped from college for laziness and for gambling. Bismarck failed to get a University degree, because he lacked power to study and because he preferred midnight beer to midnight oil. George Washington, in student days, could never grasp the simplest rules of spelling. The young Lincoln loved ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... religious parties, whose strife was becoming loud and threatening. Spenser is often spoken of as a Puritan. He certainly had the Puritan hatred of Rome; and in the Church system as it existed in England he saw many instances of ignorance, laziness, and corruption; and he agreed with the Puritans in denouncing them. His pictures of the "formal priest," with his excuses for doing nothing, his new-fashioned and improved substitutes for the ornate and also too lengthy ancient ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... standing, as a man Thru' idleness might stand. Among them one, Who seem'd to me much wearied, sat him down, And with his arms did fold his knees about, Holding his face between them downward bent. "Sweet Sir!" I cry'd, "behold that man, who shows Himself more idle, than if laziness Were sister to him." Straight he turn'd to us, And, o'er the thigh lifting his face, observ'd, Then in these accents spake: "Up then, proceed Thou valiant one." Straight who it was I knew; Nor could the pain I felt (for want ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... the 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 remembered were ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... but laziness; is there, Earnshaw?' he said. 'My cousin fancies you are an idiot. There you experience the consequence of scorning "book-larning," as you would say. Have you noticed, Catherine, ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... regiment, and presently—we having dined at the early hour usual in the country—the clock struck eight. Could I go to bed at eight? No, I had not the courage, and no excuse ready. More slow ticking, and more questions and answers about rations and pipeclay. What a clock! For utter laziness and dull deliberation there surely never was its equal—it took longer to get to the half-hour than any clock I ever met, but it did get there at last and struck it. Could I go? Could I? No, still no excuse ready. We drifted from ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... dreary heart-achy days that followed, when weeks passed ere he saw the face of a white man, when he had to combat opium and bhang and laziness in the natives under him, the bird and his funny tricks had saved him from whisky, or worse. In camp he gave Rajah much freedom, its wings being clipt; and nothing pleased the little rebel so much as to claw his way up to his ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... had worn off, Percy was not so "finicky" in her tastes, Bessie was more careful of other people's feelings, Grace really seemed almost cured of laziness, Frank was by no means so hoydenish as she once was, and as for Wynifred, she was just as hearty and happy as it seemed a girl could be. Their independent, busy life on Green Knoll was doing them all ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... 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, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... occupied. It was afterwards kept so warm that the inmates could stay there in their shirt-sleeves without freezing. The Commander, clear-headed and specially fit for his post as he was, did not permit his crew to fall into habits of idleness, dirt, and laziness, but kept them to regular work, bathing and change of linen twice a week. Every second hour meteorological observations were taken. During the whole winter the crew remained in good health, but in spring ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... Carvil inside. "Bessie!—my pipe!" That fat blind man had given himself up to a very lust of laziness. He would not lift his hand to reach for the things she took care to leave at his very elbow. He would not move a limb; he would not rise from his chair, he would not put one foot before another, in that parlour (where he knew his ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... careless vagabond as he was, found Plato, without seeking for him, as he happened to pass that way. We ought," says he, "to praise that slave who, as far as lay in his power, did what he was ordered, and we ought to punish the other whose laziness turned out so fortunate." It is goodwill alone which does one real service; let us then consider under what conditions it lays us under obligations. It is not enough to wish a man well, without doing him good; nor is it enough to do him good without wishing him well. Suppose that some one wished ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... support they gave them 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 ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... things are lost to the world, by the world's own laziness. Why have we not a Boswell in every city? Her majesty pays a laureate, who writes nothing but the annual receipt for his pension. Why not transfer the office to a Boswell? why not establish a Cabinet-dinner Boswell? a Buckingham-palace ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... 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)
... texture; it is the product of numerous and various influences. The ordinary causes of this pre-judgment or mental torsion are an habitual intellectual outlook resulting from education and surrounding influences, and a mental laziness which fails to question its own attitude and to pursue principles to their logical conclusions, and problems to their solution. This explains how reluctantly the mind, in religious matters particularly, will accept views contrary to those with which it has been familiar since early youth ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... occasion; for, though we will always lend thee proper assistance in difficult places, as we do not, like some others, expect thee to use the arts of divination to discover our meaning, yet we shall not indulge thy laziness where nothing but thy own attention is required; for thou art highly mistaken if thou dost imagine that we intended, when we began this great work, to leave thy sagacity nothing to do; or that, without sometimes exercising this talent, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... Smilash, deeply impressed, "you have a penetrating mind, and you know a bad character at sight. Not to deceive you, I am that given to lying, and laziness, and self-indulgence of all sorts, that the only excuse I can find for myself is that it is the nature of the race so to be; for most men is just as bad as me, and some of 'em worsen I do not speak pers'nal to you, governor, nor to the honorable ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... into thin air, and only love was left. She had always known that Jack Meredith was superior in a thousand ways to all her admirers. More gentlemanly, more truthful, honester, nobler, more worthy of love. Beyond that, he was cleverer, despite a certain laziness of disposition—more brilliant and more amusing. He had always been to a great extent the chosen one; and yet it was with a certain surprise and sense of unreality that she found what she had drifted into. She saw the diamond ring, and looked upon it with the beautiful ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... supported on the backs of so many lions, and two flat pilasters upheld in the same fashion by winged griffins, may readily be distinguished. That these griffins are not repeated on the left of the relief, is due perhaps to the haste or laziness of the sculptor. He may have thought he had done enough when he had shown once for all how these pedestals were composed. However this may have been, the lions in this relief play exactly the same role ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... solely of a play really unique in the exact sense of that much-abused word. They were getting their fill of the delicious Italian art which is best described by an American verb—to loaf. And yet they were not wont to be idle, and they had both the sharp, quick American manner, on which laziness sits ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... closing one, looked at it steadily with the other. Then lifting it suddenly above his head, he would extend his broad, left palm, and give himself a blow that would make them all start from their seats. Of all crimes or vices, none excited his indignation so much as laziness. It was with him the unpardonable sin. There was toleration, forgiveness for every one but the sluggard. He said Solomon's description of the slothful should be written in letters of gold on the walls of the understanding. He explained it to them as a metaphor, and made ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... ravines and gullies. The large amount of grass and the grouping of the trees give it a park-like appearance, and the gentle slopes of the verdant mountains remove all wildness from the scene. It is a pleasant spot to halt at. A little nook which while it charms the eye, only suggests peaceful laziness. My coolies sit at a short distance, singing through their noses Kashmirian songs. There is much more melody in their music than in that of their brethren of Hindoostan. Indeed some of the tunes admit of being written, and I have copied a few of the more rythmical, as they sang them. The principal ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... neighbour was a worthless young scamp named Jo Garvey, who lived mainly by hunting and fishing. Jo was a sharp-witted rascal, without a single scruple between, himself and fortune. With a tithe of Hans's industry he might have been almost anything; but his dense laziness always rose up like a stone wall about him, shutting him in like a toad in a rock. The exact opposite of Hans in almost every respect, he was notably similar in one: he had a hobby. Jo's hobby ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... the national utility resulting from this modern amusement, it appears admirably well calculated for the exercise of the legs of our nobility, gentry, and merchants, and may operate as an efficacious remedy for indolence, alias laziness. It will also be conducive to the benefit of those ingenious individuals who devote their talents to the fabrication of ornaments; and we may soon expect to see, in the advertisements of mantuamakers, milliners, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... an animal open; and an exceptionally foolish fool is quite likely to promise enormous benefits to the race as the result of such activities. But when the constructive, benevolent part of the business comes to be done, the same want of imagination, the same stupidity and cruelty, the same laziness and want of perseverance that prevented Nero or the vivisector from devising or pushing through humane methods, prevents him from bringing order out of the chaos and happiness out of the misery he has made. At one time it seemed reasonable enough to declare ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... but natural that he should be led to write stories. First came "John Sherman" and "Dhoya" in 1891, the one a condensed novel with the slightest of plots about a slow-pulsed young man's troubles with love and laziness in Sligo and London, and the other a sketch of Irish faery in old time. Some of the sketches of "The Celtic Twilight" (1893) approach the tale, but such narrations are not told for their own sake, but as illustrations of fairy-lore, ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... ostracism by whipping out of the market any disreputable or useless colleagues. In this last respect, so fortunate were we in our selection that, during the whole course of the expedition, we were spared all those struggles with the laziness or obstinacy of the natives which are generally the lot of such caravans; in fact we had not a single case of desertion—an unheard-of circumstance in ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... dream at all. I will no longer have my career blasted at the outset by your confounded laziness. I think you understand me perfectly. I am clear of you whenever I please. I ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... of the hill, they was struck all of a heap to see him break into a kind of a jog trot 'n' run down the balance o' the way. Well, then, they fell to quarrelin'; for o' course the Pleasant River folks said Aaron Peek was the laziest, 'n' the Edgewood boys declared he hedn't got no such record for laziness's Jabe Slocum hed; an' when they was explainin' of it, one way 'n' 'nother, Elder Banks come along, 'n' they asked him to be the judge. When he heerd tell how 't was, he said he agreed with the ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to rise at six, but, by my servant's laziness, my fire was not lighted before eight, when I dropped into a slumber that lasted till nine; at which time I arose, and, after breakfast, at ten, sat down to study, purposing to begin upon my Essay; but, finding occasion to consult ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... father, and taking out a wisp of a handkerchief that smelled of cyclamen, she had a good scrub round. When she rode up, the young man raised his hat, and looking full at her said: "You did go!" His voice, rather high-pitched, had in it a spice of pleasant laziness. Gyp made him an ironical little bow, and murmured: "My new horse, you mean." He broke again into that irrepressible smile, but, all the same, she knew that he admired her. And she kept thinking: 'Where HAVE I ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... commentators who disparage the inventors of antiquity, the originators of science and grammar, and who attack the creators of antiquity; and because they through laziness and the convenience of books have not been able to create, they attack ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... their laziness. There are many ample stretches of meadow-land at a short distance from the coast, completely covered with bog, and passable only with great precautions, which the construction of a few ditches would ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... in greater harmony than the peasants. What is most needed is an efficient and energetic chief to each village, who has and deserves the confidence of his people. With enough of the fortiter in re to repress any developments of laziness and prevent intemperance, such a man can do much for ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... was going to work immediately. But as time passed, he felt an increasing laziness, which incapacitated him for work, a numbness in his hands, which he concealed even from his most intimate friends, ashamed when he recalled his lightness of touch ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... 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 ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... Abstractions with some interest. You will, however, perhaps permit me to observe that amongst those to whom you have written are not a few who have no right whatever to be numbered amongst Abstractions. Laziness, for instance, and Crookedness, and Irritation—not to mention others—how is it possible to say that these are Abstractions? They are concrete qualities and nothing else. Forgive me for making this correction, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... 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
... found W. W. Westlake, of the Westlake Electric Company, a big, placid man with a mild gray eye and an appearance of well-fed and kindly laziness; a man also who had the record of having ruthlessly smashed more business competitors than any two other pirates in his line. Westlake, unclasping his fat hands from his comfortable rotundity, was glad to see young Turner, also glad to introduce the new eligible to his daughter, a girl of ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... freshness of her dressing-gown and the warmth of the room, she fell into a sort of happy reverie, from which she awoke in a few minutes prompted by a desire to see Dick; to see him asleep; to awaken him; to talk to him; to upbraid him for his laziness. The room, full of the intimacy of their life, enchanted her, and half in shame, half in delight, she affected to arrange the pillows while he buttoned his collar. When this was accomplished she led him triumphantly to the breakfast ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... we did,—wait, until that pleasant morning came round and brought me Clarian's note. I could scarcely brook the slow laziness with which the day dragged by, as if it knew its own beauty, and lingered to enjoy it. At last, however, the night came, the hour also, and punctually with it came Dr. Thorne, a kindly young physician, and a man of much promise, well-read, prompt, clear-headed, resourceful, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... was filled up with a siesta in the Spanish fashion, which arranges for sleep between the two chief meals, and so occupies the hours when Paris is in a busy turmoil. The Spanish cigar also played its part, and consumed time as well as tobacco. Laziness is a mask as gravity is, and that ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... she ought not to disturb the 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 from anything else. ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... graciousness. Kate distrusted him, but she thought there was use in keeping on outwardly good terms; and she had no suspicion of his shameless conduct the night before. Ayre directed their walk to the very same seat on which she and Haddington had sat. As they passed, either romance or laziness suggested to Kate that they should sit down. Ayre accepted her proposal without demur, asked and obtained leave for a cigarette, and sat for a few moments in apparent ease and vacancy of mind. He was thinking ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... Heaven's sake, Arnold," he implored. "To look at you is an incitement to laziness. The world's full of things to write about. Make a choice and have done with it. Write something, even if you have ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... were some honest creatures among them; even in Sodom and Gomorrah a few just people were found. It is true that in later life I once had occasion to depend greatly upon the fidelity of two Oneidas, and they did not fail me. But as a whole the race was a bad one—full of laziness and lies and cowardly ferocity. From earliest childhood I saw a good deal of them, and ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... "Not laziness, old lad—fagged, and must rest when I can. Was I there? Of course I was. But oh, what a mess we made of it! Everything was well thought out; but you were too strong for us. We should have got them all away if they had not trapped us with ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... more, but then apparently changed his mind and hurried away. Soon a small boat was over the side and this was manned by the mate, Bossermann, Wingate and a sailor named Ulligan, a fellow noted for his laziness and untrustworthiness. Without delay the small boat set out for ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... saw the diligence of this holy man he chid the laziness of the other workmen, and said, "You receive more pay than this good man, but do not do half as much work." For this reason the other workmen hated Rinaldo, and made a secret agreement to kill him. They knew that he made it a practice to go every night to a certain ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... out of rock crystal or perfectly clear glass. There is no apparent difference between the head and the tail, save that one end tapers more gradually than the other. Very limited power of motion has been bestowed upon it. It cannot wriggle. It merely squirms in the extremity of laziness or lassitude. These two keep the PINNA company—the lively shrimp, pinkish brown and green with pin-point black eyes, and the little eel as bright and as transparent yet as dull and insipid as glass. One of the oysters attracts the patronage of a rotund crab, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... functional characteristics are the same in whatever part of the world he may be found; and whether in the trackless forests of South America, the coral isles of Polynesia, the jungles of India, or the spicy brakes of Sumatra, he is everywhere known for his gluttony, laziness, and indifference to the character and quality of his food. And though he occasionally shows an epicure's relish for a succulent plant or a luscious carrot, which he will discuss with all his salivary organs keenly excited, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... sun, hot and soft-stroking against leaves. Or a Pleistocene man, smallest of all the males, whose supine acceptance had devolved into laziness.... ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... 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 plan. If Lady Dunstable had asked him a few ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... his reasonings, and by which he judgeth of truth and falsehood, right and wrong; which some, wanting skill and leisure, and others the inclination, and some being taught that they ought not to examine, there are few to be found who are not exposed by their ignorance, laziness, education, or precipitancy, to ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... as if he had known nothing, that they frequently resorted, and dwelt with him, as in a college situated in a purer air; so that his house was a university in less volume; whither they came not so much for repose as study, and to examine and refine those grosser propositions, which laziness and consent made current in vulgar ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... day, Lord? In all my wrong, Self-love and weakness, laziness and fear, This one thing I can say: I am content To be and have what in thy heart I am meant To be and have. In my best times I long After thy will, and think it glorious-dear; Even in my worst, perforce my will to thine ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... little Fanchon at my feet, too idle to eat the biscuits with which I am trying to tempt her,—biscuits from Boston, sent to me by Mrs. Sparks, whose kindness is really indefatigable, and which Fanchon ought to like upon that principle if upon no other, but you know her laziness of old, and she improves in it every day. Well that is a picture of the Swallowfield cottage at this moment, and I wish that you and the Bennochs and the W——s and Mr. Whipple were here to add to its life and comfort. You must come ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... 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 and the sea,' as I think Mr. Swinburne hath it. I ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... solitary willow that has a story attached to it. It was the only tree in the settlement—think what a place that must have been!—except those the missionary had planted in his own garden, and it would never have existed but for the laziness of its owner. Nothing would have induced any of the natives to take the trouble to plant a tree, and therefore the willow had not been planted. But it happened, a long-time ago, that a native had fetched a log ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... whiskers and moustaches horribly into the shade. Talk of owls! I never saw any one stare like you. This, my young friend, is a cup of tea, and this is a hard-boiled egg—the best choti haziri our chaps can manage—and the animal beside you, looking astonished at your laziness, is your horse, vulgarly termed a quad. But give me your hand, old boy, and let me haul you up to take part in this ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... is the name of that young gentleman whose jacket is so out at the elbows; he has been intending to mend it these last two months; but is too lazy to go to his chest for another. He has been turned out of half the ships in the service for laziness; but he was born so—and therefore it is not his fault. A revenue-cutter suits him, she is half her time hove to; and he has no objection to boat-service, as he sits down always in the stern-sheets, which is not fatiguing. Creeping for tubs is his delight, as he gets over so little ground. He is ...
— The Three Cutters • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Judge Trent; "I was just telling Miss Lacey I should go up and knock on her door. She assures me that laziness is not one of my ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... is of all domestic animals the gentlest and most docile. We are warlike in France, and we are citizens. Another reason to be proud, this being a citizen! For the poor it consists in sustaining and preserving the wealthy in their power and their laziness. The poor must work for this, in presence of the majestic quality of the law which prohibits the wealthy as well as the poor from sleeping under the bridges, from begging in the streets, and from stealing bread. That is one of the good effects ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... the negro laborers were satisfied as long as it lasted. The owners of the land, under this system, would furnish the indispensable mule and the farming implements, and take one half the product. The planters themselves relinquished this system. Some of them contend that the laziness and indifference of the negro made the partnership undesirable; many others admit that they were not able to advance the negro tenant his supplies pending the growth of the year's crop, as it was necessary they should do under the sharing system. Now the renting system is almost ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... The primary difficulty, of course, is to reach a classification. The one adopted by Mr. Warner in his book on American charities is: 1. Causes indicating misconduct; 2. Causes indicating misfortune. Under the first head come drink, immorality, laziness, shiftlessness and inefficiency, crime and dishonesty, a roving disposition. Under the second head come lack of normal support, matters of employment, matters of personal capacity, such as sickness or death in family, etc. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... have a king, she had slaves; oh, dozens and dozens of error-fairies, to do her will. Creepin' shadders they was, too, till somebody listened to 'em and give 'em a backbone. There's—let me see"—the apple woman looked off to jog her memory—"there's Laziness, Selfishness, Backbitin', Cruelty—oh, I ain't got time to tell 'em all; an' not one mite o' harm in one of 'em, only for some silly mortal that listens and gives the creetur a backbone. They jest lop over an' melt away, the whole batch of 'em, when Love comes near. She knows what ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... more than good speed. The rapidity with which he insisted on travelling, bred several disputes between him and the party whom he had hired to attend him as a guard. These men were Saxons, and not free by any means from the national love of ease and good living which the Normans stigmatized as laziness and gluttony. Reversing Shylock's position, they had accepted the employment in hopes of feeding upon the wealthy Jew, and were very much displeased when they found themselves disappointed, by the rapidity with which he insisted on their proceeding. They remonstrated ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... we better get out of here;" Mr. Ade's Artie, a Chicago clerk, says, "I got a boost in my pay," meaning "I have got:" the locution is very common indeed. It is no more defensible than "swelp me" for "so help me." It arises from sheer laziness, unwillingness to face the infinitesimal difficulty of pronouncing, "d" and "b" together. As a colloquialism it is all very well; but I regard it with a certain alarm, for where all trace of a word disappears, people are apt to forget the logical ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... he would say to his brother, "what a pleasure this rural laziness is to me. Not an idea in one's brain, as empty ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... habits of laziness, untidiness, extravagance, voice, gestures, clothing, to gain ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... and work without being driven by the contractor's foreman. 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 mistakes, and men will earn extravagantly high wages, or get very ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... Chypre) brought me into closer contact with that composer, and was the means of procuring me many an enlivening talk with that peculiarly good- hearted and really unassuming man, whose talent, alas, declined all too soon. Schlesinger, in fact, was exasperated at his incorrigible laziness. Halevy, who had looked through my piano score, contemplated several changes with a view to making it easier, but he did not proceed with them: Schlesinger could not get the proof-sheets back; ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... 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 into the appearance of some incoherent landscape, or to rasp out some ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... stowed away among her domestic implements, furs, robes, blankets, and painted cases of PAR' FLECHE, in which dried meat is kept. Here she sat from sunrise to sunset, a bloated impersonation of gluttony and laziness, while her affectionate proprietor was smoking, or begging petty gifts from us, or telling lies concerning his own achievements, or perchance engaged in the more profitable occupation of cooking some preparation of prairie delicacies. Reynal was an adept ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... bear. To her mind, trained in all the minutiae of domestic economy, the Warden family lived in careless wastefulness. That five women—for Dora was older than she had been when she began to do housework—should require servants, seemed to this New England-born girl mere laziness and pride. That two voting women over twenty should prefer being supported by their brother to supporting themselves, she condemned even more sharply. Moreover, she felt well assured that with a different family to "support," Mr. Warden would never have broken down so suddenly and ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... must have grown steeper in parts since he was Curdie's age. His back was to the light of the sunset, which closed him all round in a beautiful setting, and Curdie thought what a grand-looking man his father was, even when he was tired. It is greed and laziness and selfishness, not hunger or weariness or cold, that take the dignity out of a man, and ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... then? OUR fault—the fault of our wills and our souls. Our souls were intended to be the masters of our flesh, to conquer all the weaknesses, defilements of our constitution—our tempers, our cowardice, our laziness, our hastiness, our nervousness, our vanity, our love of pleasure—to listen to our spirits, because our spirits learn from God's Spirit what is right and noble. But if we let our flesh master us, and obey its own blind lusts, we sin against God; and we sin against God doubly; ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... life—the honeymoon, as people called it. To taste the full sweetness of it, it would have been necessary doubtless to fly to those lands with sonorous names where the days after marriage are full of laziness most suave. In post chaises behind blue silken curtains to ride slowly up steep road, listening to the song of the postilion re-echoed by the mountains, along with the bells of goats and the muffled sound of a waterfall; at sunset on the shores of gulfs to breathe in the perfume ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... to get some fishing this morning, I fancy," I said. "And possibly I shall idle a good deal, for my time with you here is shortening, and I want to have a great store of laziness behind me for memory, when I've got ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... am too stupid still to begin vexing myself over it. I suppose energy and power of considering will come when my heart does not flutter so. In the meantime, I only want to keep quiet, and I hope that's not all laziness, but some trust in Him who has helped me ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... would be changed into a harmless form if there were a censor. One night I dreamt that an acquaintance, Murray, was dead. The first association to Murray was: "He's a lazy sort of chap." I think that all he stood for was laziness, and he was merely my own laziness symbolised. The dream was a hint to me to be up and doing, for I had been neglecting a task ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... sensations of our animal loss or well-being to become spiritual perceptions, and had they to be created by thought, how often would the soul be obscured by the overwhelming blaze of passion; how often stifled by laziness and stupidity; how often overlooked in the absorptions and distractions of business! Further, would not, in this case, the most perfect knowledge of his economy be demanded of the animal man—would not the child need to be a master ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... sight. The women would 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 every sign of pleasure, "have ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... 'bout mendin', an' sech—she air enough ter skeer any man away. An' Justus knows jes' what sech laziness means. Kin mend clothes hisse'f ez good ez the nex' one, an' useter do it too, strong an' taut, with a double thread, whenst the fambly war leetle chil'n an' gin ter bustin' out'n ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... since he never reached his fiftieth year. Before his death, Yakov had already entered the university in the faculty of physics and mathematics; he did not, however, complete his course; not through laziness, but because, according to his notions, you could learn no more in the university than you could studying alone at home; and he did not go in for a diploma because he had no idea of entering the government service. He was shy with his fellow-students, ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... 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
... that their goings-on are excellently entertaining; though I cannot but think that to give both his leading lady and his soubrette, or Singing Chambermaid, the handicap of morally deficient young brothers, does look like laziness on the part of Mr. CAINE. Surely there exist other avenues to calamity. But it's an amusing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various
... 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 all ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... correct and which answer the question as well as the answer the teacher seeks from the pupil. Such questioning comes either from lack of clearness and definiteness in the teacher's thinking, with a consequent uncertainty as what he really does mean to ask, or else from a mental laziness which shrinks from the effort necessary to ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... didn't you take it to him last night? Because of your damned laziness, I suppose. Do you think I give you wages for you to choose your own hours, and come dawdling up a quarter of ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... weak and the conquered, and enslave him for his own use, shunting the toil and burden of life upon his bowed shoulders. Through long ages he had to work out this wrong premiss in disaster to empires through the laziness and worthlessness of their ruling classes engendered by slave labor, in the dumb suffering and bitter wrongs of millions of enslaved men and women. Through centuries the Church protested against these wrongs in vain, since the evil root, in the face of all ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... to 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Floyd is here," said Mr. Floyd when we were through breakfast, "I shall indulge in laziness no longer, but shall sit by and see him work." And the result was that for the next two weeks he and my mother, Helen and I, all sat in Mr. Raymond's study for an hour or two every morning and looked over his papers. Two or three times Mr. Wickham the lawyer ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... laughing. "Give me a man of thy humor, Hezekiah Negus, who rightly apprehends the value of time, and the danger of keeping his superiors dependent on his laziness." ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... habits? Yes, yes. You agree with me. You take the allegory? Alas! at our time of life we don't like to give up those old habits, do we? It is ill to change. There is the good old loose, easy, slovenly bedgown, laziness, for example. What man of sense likes to fling it off and put on a tight guinde prim dress-coat that pinches him? There is the cozy wraprascal, self-indulgence—how easy it is! How warm! How it always seems to fit! ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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, ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... little less "anyhow" than they are now, in that the volumes of any particular work were at least together, but that is all that can be claimed for them. For years I put off the business of tidying them up, just as I am putting it off now. It is not laziness; it is simply that I ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... accomplishing prior to the middle of the seventeenth century. It is what English may be able to accomplish in the middle of the twentieth century, if we once awaken to the danger of contaminating our speech with unassimilated words, and to the disgrace, which our stupidity or laziness must bring upon us, of addressing the world in a pudding-stone and piebald language. Dr. Bradley has warned us that 'the pedantry that would bid us reject the word fittest for our purpose because it is ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... and in reading these it was but natural that he should be led to write stories. First came "John Sherman" and "Dhoya" in 1891, the one a condensed novel with the slightest of plots about a slow-pulsed young man's troubles with love and laziness in Sligo and London, and the other a sketch of Irish faery in old time. Some of the sketches of "The Celtic Twilight" (1893) approach the tale, but such narrations are not told for their own sake, but ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... to do cuneiform writing on a dab of clay, like the Babylonish king," Ken said; "all spikey and cut in, instead of sticking out; much worse than Braille. Go to it, and let Mother sit here, laziness." ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... "It's sheer laziness. I went to see her last Christmas and she was bursting with health. Her doctor told me himself that there was nothing wrong with her whatever. But she will insist that she's a hopeless invalid, so he has to ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... wet with an April shower. "How delicious, after such a mental sirocco, to feel the pure air and hear the birds sing, and look upon the flowers and blossoms, and sit here, and bask in the sun from laziness to walk into the shade. You must needs acknowledge, Mary, that spring in England is a much more amiable season ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... Russian governor, for Anadyrsk, intending to engage there fifty or sixty native labourers and begin at once the construction of station-houses and the cutting and distribution of poles along the Anadyr River. My own efforts to that end, owing to the laziness of the Anadyrsk people, had been unsuccessful; but it was hoped that through the influence and cooperation of the civil authority something might ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... won't." The curling line of her lips, as they closed on each other, said all the rest; all the cruel truths about his unspeakable, inane, coarse follies, his laziness, his excesses, his lies, his deceptions, his bad faith, his truculence, his improvidence, his shameful waste and ruin of his life and hers. She doubted whether he realized his baseness and her wrongs, but if he could not ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... am now at leisure, And in the country taking pleasure, It may be worth your while to hear A silly footman's business there; I'll try to tell in easy rhyme How I in London spent my time. And first, As soon as laziness would let me I rise from bed, and down I sit me To cleaning glasses, knives, and plate, And such like dirty work as that, Which (by the bye) is what I hate! This done, with expeditious care To dress myself I straight prepare, I clean my buckles, black my shoes, Powder my wig ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... loaded with 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 ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... lash and flicked a flake of skin from her naked shoulder. It stung me as if I had been hit instead. The master halted the file and jumped from his horse. He stormed and swore at this girl, and said she had made annoyance enough with her laziness, and as this was the last chance he should have, he would settle the account now. She dropped on her knees and put up her hands and began to beg, and cry, and implore, in a passion of terror, but the master gave no attention. He snatched the child from her, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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 conclusion. ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... 15 years of age, but I have known some under 10 and a few over 15. Each is compelled by hobo law to let his jocker do with him as he will, and many, I fear, learn to enjoy his treatment of them. They are also expected to beg in every town they come to, any laziness on their ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... are shortened, not by natural and gradual shrinkage, but by deliberate laziness. The national distaste for many syllables appears in wire for telegram, the Artful Dodger's wipe for the clumsy pocket handkerchief, soccer for association, and such portmanteau words as squarson, an individual ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... in bed wid nothin' to do but to circulate yer symtems. I put a spell on yer when I nuss you an' feed you an' s'port you an' spile the life plumb outen you. I ain't claimin' 't wasn't rheumatism in the fust place, but it's a spell now, all right—a spell I did lay on yer, a spell of laziness pure ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... New York, I told him, Now here's your chance to see the world on a big scale. You know already what work and saving and steady habits and sense will bring a man, to; you don't want to go round among the rich; you want to go among the poor, and see what laziness and drink and dishonesty and foolishness will bring men to. And I guess he knows, about as well as anybody; and if he ever goes to preaching he'll know what he's preaching about." The old man smiled his fierce, simple smile, and in his sharp eyes March fancied contempt of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... best things the generous goddess had to bestow, but whose brain had been somewhat overlooked in the distribution of intellectual gifts. Sir Michael Audley made that mistake which is very commonly made by easy-going, well-to-do-observers, who have no occasion to look below the surface. He mistook laziness for incapacity. He thought because his nephew was idle, he must necessarily be stupid. He concluded that if Robert did not distinguish himself, it was because he ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... to be cut, from the product of ten jail deliveries, and nobody dares to cut them, for want of the proper warrant; archbishoprics there are to be filled; and, because they are not filled, the whole nation is running helter skelter into heresy—and all in consequence of your majesty's sacred laziness." Our governments were less remissly administered; since each of us, by continued reports of improvements and gracious concessions to the folly or the weakness of our subjects, stimulated the zeal of his rival. And ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... objects which move both my spleen and laughter so effectually as those young fellows at the Greecian, Squire's, Searle's, and all other coffee-houses adjacent to the law, who rise early for no other purpose but to publish their laziness. One would think these young virtuosos take a gay cap and slippers, with a scarf and party-coloured gown, to be ensigns of dignity; for the vain things approach each other with an air which shews they regard one another for their vestments. ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... capitalists their selfishness and brutality 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. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... weren't disturbed by the music?' Ponto says. 'My girls, you know, practise four hours a day, you know—must do it, you know—absolutely necessary. As for me, you know I'm an early man, and in my farm every morning at five—no, no laziness for ME.' ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that, although Freudian "repression" undoubtedly occurs and is important, it is not the usual reason for unconsciousness of our wishes. The usual reason is merely that wishes are all, to begin with, unconscious, and only become known when they are actively noticed. Usually, from laziness, people do not notice, but accept the theory of human nature which they find current, and attribute to themselves whatever wishes this theory would lead them to expect. We used to be full of virtuous wishes, but since Freud ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... those from the United States are called) and Englishmen, who are fast filling up the principal 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 likely to attack ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... a 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
... expected it you have both remembered me, so inherent it is in your family not to forget an old servant. It looks rather like ingratitude on my part, that where I have been so often obliged, I have appeared so seldom to return my thanks, and where I was also so sure of being well received. Somewhat of laziness was in the case, and somewhat too of modesty; but nothing of disrespect or of unthankfulness. I will not say that your lordship has encouraged me to this presumption, lest, if my labours meet with no success in public, I may expose your judgment to be censured. ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... clink of milk-bottles set down by the back-door, the whole complex machinery of life begin anew! Gissing was amazed now, looking back upon his previous existence, to see himself so busy, so active. Few people are really lazy, he thought: what we call laziness is merely maladjustment. For in any department of life where one is genuinely interested, he will be zealous beyond belief. Certainly he had not dreamed, until he became (in a manner of speaking) a parent, that he had in him such capacity ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... idea. He thought the sand would dig easier, and laziness guided every act of his life. That was five years ago, son, that this lower trail was made, and for the reasons I have just given you. No, I can't tell you any more personal experiences ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... the French soil, and, worst of all, over the hearts and minds of the French people. Enterprise was deadened; invention crippled. Honesty was nothing; honor everything. Life was of little value. Labor was the badge of servility; laziness the very badge and passport of gentility. The serf-owning spirit was an iron wall between noble and not-noble,—the only unyielding wall ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... voluntary and involuntary. Voluntary distractions are thoughts which the mind freely and directly embraces to the exclusion of pious thoughts which should occupy it in prayer, of which the office is a high form; or they may be thoughts which arise from previous laziness, thoughtlessness, pre-occupation or some engrossing worldly affair. Involuntary distractions are those which come unbidden and unsought to the mind, are neither placed directly, nor by their causes, by the person ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... boy, Kit, to say such nice things," said Mrs. Graham, smiling. "But you're all nice boys to take an old lady like me with you, and stand for all my laziness and tantrums." ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... aspect, Saint Eucher compares it to a saint, and the Anonymous Monk of Clairvaux identifies the Devil with the ox. The poor ass is no better treated by Hugh of Saint Victor, who accuses it of stupidity, by Saint Gregory the Great, who taxes it with laziness, and Peter of Capua, who speaks of its lust. It must, however; be observed that Saint Melito compares it with Christ for its humility, and that the exegetists explain the ass's foal ridden by Christ on Palm Sunday as an image of the Gentiles, as they interpret the she-ass ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... only about half that which had been contracted for. The 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 Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... cases of unusual laziness or eccentric ambition, most men would elect to do a full day's work for a full day's pay. For these, who would form the immense majority, the important thing is that ordinary work should, as far as possible, afford interest and independence and scope for initiative. ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... cordially did he hate his prescribed duties. A story is said to have been related to a gentleman by the Duke de Liancourt, of two turnspits employed in his kitchen, who had to take their turns every other day to get into the wheel. One of them, in a fit of laziness, hid himself on the day he should have worked, so that his companion was forced to mount the wheel in his stead, who, when his employment was over, began crying and wagging his tail, and making signs for those ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... it at all," answered Mendouca carelessly. "Her people are getting their supper, probably, and are too lazy to start tack or sheet until they have finished their meal. Bless you, you have no idea what lazy rascals the Portuguese are; their laziness is absolutely phenomenal; they are positively too lazy to live long, and so most of them die early. More over, I expect her skipper is still below poring over his charts and trying to make up what he is pleased ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... delirium might be in his own mind, but there is no delirium here. Neither does it seem to me that a certain university president expresses things with any more wisdom or effectiveness, when he says that it "impressed him with its infinite laziness." Lazy? When once, in the far-distant past, after rising from the primeval sea, it sank back again and deposited twelve thousand feet of strata, then lifted them out into the sunshine, carved eleven thousand feet of them away, and sent them dashing down the ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... unfortunately on the wrong side; and backed by the collective ignorance, pride, laziness, and superstition of Aberalva, showed to his new assailant that terrible front of stupidity, against which, says Schiller, "the ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... to see me act like I was." He rose swiftly, his laziness falling from him now that there was work to do. "Go and fetch in them cayuses. ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... the daily Perusal of those Gentlemen whom I cannot but consider as my good Brothers and Allies, I mean the Fraternity of Spectators who live in the World without having any thing to do in it; and either by the Affluence of their Fortunes, or Laziness of their Dispositions, have no other Business with the rest of Mankind but to look upon them. Under this Class of Men are comprehended all contemplative Tradesmen, titular Physicians, Fellows of the Royal Society, Templers that are not given to be ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... replied he of the keys, "the garb of laziness and filthy debauchery, which has been expelled from out these walls. Know you not, idle knave, of the suppression of this nest of superstition, and that the abbey lands and possessions were granted in August last to Master Robert ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... the young rascal ought to be out of his bed in time for breakfast," he retorted with affected brusqueness. "He has all the Italian laziness in him." ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... 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 ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... the peak itself quite invisible. My boys are quite demoralised by the cold. I find most of them have sold the blankets I gave them out at Buana; and those who have not sold them have left them behind at Buea, from laziness perhaps, but more possibly from a confidence in their powers to ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... perhaps, this strangeness that attracted Paul Trenchard. He was, above everything, a kindly man-kindly, perhaps a little through laziness, but nevertheless moved always by distress or misfortune in others. Maggie was not distressed—she was quite cheerful and entirely unsentimental—nevertheless she had been very ill, was almost penniless, had ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... the life of the dear little joyous creatures, soaring in the blue depths of Heaven; she would even weep bitterly over the dead birds. But if he came home empty-handed, she found fault with his awkwardness and laziness, which obliged them to be content with fish and crabs for dinner. Either way, he took delight in her pretty fits of anger; the more so as she rarely failed to make up for them by the fondest caresses afterwards. The old folks, having been ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... last 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 of ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... on his mantelpiece. It was probably this fact that decided Ashe. If he had been compelled to postpone his visit to the offices of Messrs. Mainprice, Mainprice & Boole until the afternoon, it is possible that barriers of laziness might have reared themselves in the path of adventure; for Ashe, an adventurer at heart, was also uncommonly lazy. As it was, however, he could make ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... wonderful things, Daisy," he remarked, throwing himself back upon the moss with his hands under his head. His cap fell off; his blue eyes looked at her with a sort of contented laziness; never sleepily. ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... amount of grass and the grouping of the trees give it a park-like appearance, and the gentle slopes of the verdant mountains remove all wildness from the scene. It is a pleasant spot to halt at. A little nook which while it charms the eye, only suggests peaceful laziness. My coolies sit at a short distance, singing through their noses Kashmirian songs. There is much more melody in their music than in that of their brethren of Hindoostan. Indeed some of the tunes admit ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... 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
... and Why Taboo in Schools Alleged Novelties in Modern Schools What is to be Done? Children's Rights and Duties Should Children Earn their Living? Children's Happiness The Horror of the Perpetual Holiday University Schoolboyishness The New Laziness The Infinite School Task The Rewards and Risks of Knowledge English Physical Hardihood and Spiritual Cowardice The Risks of Ignorance and Weakness The Common Sense of Toleration The Sin of Athanasius The Experiment Experimenting Why We Loathe Learning ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... well and then rolling on the grass—ask him if there were ever such a day 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 Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... for, for the last thirty years, I have been throwing my letters and bills pell-mell into the same desk, and this confusion has often caused me considerable trouble. But I feel such moral and physical laziness at the sole idea of putting anything in order that I have never had the courage to begin this ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... soil for a speculative Joint Stock Company, at a weekly wage that would have made an European peasant independent for half a year. Yet there was no enthusiasm in their labor, although it was seldom marked by absolute laziness or evasion, and was more often hindered by ill-regulated "spurts" and excessive effort, as if the laborer was anxious to get through with it; for in the few confidences they exchanged there was little allusion to the present, ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... your brief epistle; and, to take vengeance on your laziness, I have, you see, taken a long sheet of writing-paper, and have begun at the top of the page, intending to scribble on to the ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... many pastors and preachers are very negligent in this, and slight both their office and this teaching; some from great and high art [giving their mind, as they imagine, to much higher matters], but others from sheer laziness and care for their paunches, assuming no other relation to this business than if they were pastors and preachers for their bellies' sake, and had nothing to do but to [spend and] consume their emoluments as long ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... mistake that many young people make—don't be offended: I did the same thing—and usually on account of laziness. It is more convenient to imagine one's self soaring over the distant mountain top than to lift a foot and step over the stone just in front of one. Of all the million things that you would like to do there are only a very few that you can do. ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... the Privy Councils, and have no more time to hunt. Some persons thought he did this from motives of policy and to make the King believe he had no ambition; but I am persuaded it was from nothing but indolence and laziness; he loved to live a slothful life, and to interfere ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... had dug ten fathom deep and could find no water, they had liberty to fetch a pitcherful of four gallons and a half in a day from their neighbors'; for he thought it prudent to make provision against want, but not to supply laziness. He showed skill in his orders about planting, for any one that would plant another tree was not to set it within five feet of his neighbor's field; but if a fig or an olive, not within nine; for their roots spread farther, nor ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the soul, that you will excuse me, I hope, for the sake of the result. Besides this is a story which has just been told to me. And now you ask me for one. The opportunity is too good to be missed for one of my laziness ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... nation we may be allowed to call attention to the fact, that in the accounts of the ancients as to the Celts on the Loire and Seine we find almost every one of the characteristic traits which we are accustomed to recognize as marking the Irish. Every feature reappears: the laziness in the culture of the fields; the delight in tippling and brawling; the ostentation—we may recall that sword of Caesar hung up in the sacred grove of the Arverni after the victory of Gergovia, which its alleged ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... OF THE FALL AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. All created spirits must develop. When they have done so, they attain perfection and make way for new dispensations and worlds.[767] In the exercise of their freedom, however, disobedience, laxity, laziness, and failure make their appearance among them in an endless multiplicity of ways.[768] The disciplining and purifying of these spirits was the purpose for which the material world was created by God.[769] It is therefore a place ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... was the prompt response, "generally when I'm lying down at night in the bush, looking up at the stars. And I daresay it does 'denote laziness,' as Aunt Elizabeth says. But at the same time I think it really doesn't matter to God whether one is lying down or sitting up, or on one's knees ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... doubt that it often does so; and it is well that we should see this sometimes, to make us strong to contend with evil before it works out this, its worst mischief, and to rouse us from the easy optimist laziness which sits idle while others are being wronged, and bids them believe 'that all will come right in the end,' when it is our direct duty to do our utmost to ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... allowing a certain number of days between each demand, and the latter is not able to persuade anyone to redeem him, he becomes, by the custom of the country, a pure slave, upon the creditor's giving notice to the chief of the transaction. This is the resource he has against the laziness or untoward behaviour of his debtor, who might otherwise, in the state of mengiring, be only a burden to him. If the children of a deceased debtor are too young to be of service the charge of their maintenance is added to the debt. This opens a door for many iniquitous practices, ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... wild dances of their women, whose outlandish garb was rendered still more effective by the pieces of red stuff cut into hearts and sewed all over their skirts. "These caravans of strange beings, who preserve under every sky their dreamy laziness, their rebellion against the yoke, their love of solitude," had always possessed an irresistible charm for him, and he had never understood the scorn and disgust of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... all those to whom the law of the completion of man through the good is indeed foolish and chimerical, since their lives imply the negation of it: I mean to say the immense multitude of those who live in any kind of way, good easy people, refined possibly, from caprice, coquetry or laziness, but in complete ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... good!" replied the pendulum; "it is vastly easy for you, Mistress Dial, who have always, as everybody knows, set yourself up above me,—it is vastly easy for you, I say, to accuse other people of laziness! You, who have had nothing to do, all the days of your life, but to stare people in the face, and to amuse yourself with watching all that goes ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... and detailed process, is the most perfect and exalted elaboration of the human mind, and when protracted is a painful exertion; indeed, the greater portion of our species reluctantly submit to the toil and lassitude of reflection; but from laziness, or incapacity, and perhaps in some instances from diffidence, they suffer themselves to be directed by the opinions of others. Hence has arisen the swarm of critics and reviewers, those clouds that obscure the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... his favourite expletive till it sounded ferocious, "That ain't quare feelin's. That's just plain old-fashioned laziness. You git yo'self back thar and tend them ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... that, 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 duodecimos are as instructive as the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... from serious organic troubles. Unquestionably the great mass of the people are underfed. This is largely due to the poor quality of the rice which they consume, and to the fact that rice forms too large a part of their diet. I am firmly convinced that much of the so-called laziness of the Filipinos is the direct result of physical weakness due to improper ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... it is true, he became convinced, even in the chill dwellings of real poverty, that this was hardly ever entirely unmerited. Where it had not been brought about by laziness, frivolity, or drink, its source was to be found in ignorance or incapacity, in other words, in an inefficient equipment for the battle of life. He judged all these circumstances, however, to be the outward and visible signs of obscure natural laws, and that ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
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