"Sinecure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... took it as a piece of news with which they had no nearer concern than with any other piece of news—any other Accident or Offence—in the English papers. Some laughed; some said, by way of complete excuse, that the post was virtually a sinecure, and any fool who could spell his name was good enough for it; some, and these the more solemn political oracles, said that Decimus did wisely to strengthen himself, and that the sole constitutional purpose of all places within the gift of Decimus, was, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... were dependent on him, this gleaner of ideas exacted certain dues. He received a salary on the staff of the National Guard, where he held a sinecure which was paid for by the city of Paris; he was government commissioner to a secret society; and filled a position of superintendence in the royal household. His two official posts which appeared on the budget were those of secretary-general ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... Calvin gave up the sinecure benefices he had held, and towards the end of the year left France because of the growing persecution, for he had already rendered himself suspect. After various wanderings he reached Basle, where he published the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... against each other when the locomotive jerked on or came to a stop. They were in good condition, but their eyes were sad and their tails were woefully rubbed. After seeing Kroonstadt Railway-station, I realized that the work of a Staff officer on the lines of communication was no sinecure. ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... in this state. He condemned political institutions worked for the benefit of a class, and leading, especially in legal matters, to endless abuses and chicanery. The abuses everywhere imply 'inequality' in some sense; for they arise from monopoly. The man who holds a sinecure, or enjoys a privilege, uses it for his own private interest. The 'matter of corruption,' as Bentham called it, was provided by the privilege and the sinecure. The Jacobin might denounce privileges ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... among the prisoners was no sinecure. Many of them were deeply tainted with the foul atheism engendered by the Revolution; many more with the practical atheism that comes of reckless living. Scenes of cruelty and depravity would occasionally take place, only too likely where a large number of men were left ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown
... by the wind; occasionally I extended my walk as far as the chateau metamorphosed into a barrack, and the public gardens, a miniature St. Cloud, with its cascade, its dolphins, and its other aquatic monsters all standing idle. A very good sinecure is that of a Triton in a Louis Quinze basin! I should ask ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... granting the valuable sinecure office of clerk of the pells to Barre in exchange for the pension secured to him by the whigs. His private means were only L300 a year, and, as such matters were then regarded, he might have taken the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... the precarious state of Schimmelpenninck's grandeur; that it not only depended upon the whim of Napoleon, but had long been intended as an hereditary sovereignty for Jerome. Another Dutchman asked him not to ruin his friend and his family for what he was well aware could never be called a sinecure place, and was so precarious in its tenure. "Foolish vanity," answered the Minister, "can never pay enough for the gratification of its desires. All the Schimmelpennincks in the world do not possess property enough to recompense me for the sovereign honours which I have ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... commissary of police attached to the railway station at Havre. He was a former officer who considered his present occupation as practically a sinecure, spending much of his time at the cafe. He was a confirmed gambler, who could lose or win without change of expression. A room on the first floor of the Cafe du Commerce was his usual haunt, and there Roubaud frequently spent half the night playing ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... of makeweights his utility had been discovered, and now with the smith's hammer in his hand he joined the group, his bulging eyes all a-stare and his loose lips hanging apart. The old justice of the peace, whose office was a sinecure, since the war had run the law out of the Cove, came with a punctilious step, though with a sense of futility and abated dignity, and at every successive note of the distant trumpet these wights experienced a tense bracing of the nerves to await helplessly the inevitable ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... you incautiously ask the way, and who piteously whines 'para zapatos' - for the wear and tear of shoe leather, to the highest official, one and all hold out their hands for the copper CUARTO or the eleemosynary sinecure. As it was then, so is it now; the Government wants support, and it is always to be had, at a price; deputies always want 'places.' For every duty the functionary performs, or ought to perform, he receives his bribe. The Government is too poor to keep him honest, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... the man that holds down this job don't earn his salt, Jose. It's what they call a sinecure," Alan was saying at the very instant ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... interest with me; but that is needless, for I am willing to do him any good, that will do me no harm. Pray advise with Walls and Raymond, and a little with Bishop Sterne for form. Tell Raymond I cannot succeed for him to get that living of Moimed. It is represented here as a great sinecure. Several chaplains have solicited for it; and it has vexed me so, that, if I live, I will make it my business to serve him better in something else. I am heartily sorry for his illness, and that of the other two. ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... night-dress, and his eyes staring wildly about him. It was evidently impossible to leave him, and so I spent the rest of the night nodding and shivering in the armchair. No, it was certainly not a sinecure that I had undertaken. ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... of Jonathan Wild. In 1817 a committee sanctioned by the ministers recommended a measure for the gradual abolition of sinecures, which then figured prominently in the domestic charter of reform. Their recommendations were adopted, and a large number of sinecure offices were swept away. But inasmuch as sinecures had been largely given to persons who had held public offices of business, it was thought necessary to institute pensions to an amount not exceeding one-half of the reduction. In 1816 a private member, named Curwen, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... appreciation and description of Nature as she appears on the broad sweeps of the Scottish moors, combined with its novelty, gave it great success, and Thomson went on to write also of Summer, Spring and Autumn, publishing the whole work as 'The Seasons' in 1730. He was rewarded by the gift of sinecure offices from the government and did some further writing, including, probably, the patriotic lyric, 'Rule, Britannia,' and also pseudo-classical tragedies; but his only other poem of much importance is 'The Castle of Indolence' (a subject appropriate to his own ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... revenge upon his colleagues, and towards Franklin he cherished an envious hatred which developed into a monomania. Perhaps Franklin was correct in charitably saying that at times he was "insane." He began by asserting that Franklin was old, idle, and useless, fit only to be shelved in some respectable sinecure mission; but he rapidly advanced from such moderate condemnation until he charged Franklin with being a party to the abstraction of his dispatches from a sealed parcel, which was rifled in some unexplained way on its passage home;[61] and finally he even reached ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... secretary, madame. We were at work as you came. I was on the point of inditing a letter to Her Majesty. The office of Seneschal in a province such as Dauphiny is helas!—no sinecure." He sighed like one whose brain is weary. "It leaves a man little time even ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... of girl and women workers in this great metropolis is, indeed, a vast one, and work for them is no sinecure. If they cannot work so thoroughly or efficiently as men, at least it is for them greater toil than for the sterner sex. Of a more delicate organisation, of less robust frame, of smaller powers of endurance, the "buffets of fortune" ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... of her own being was fiercely alert in its readiness to leap upward at any suspicion that her duties were not worth the payment made for them and that for any reason which might include Lord Coombe she was occupying a position which was a sinecure. She kept her serious little room in order herself, dusting and almost polishing the reference books, arranging and re-arranging the files with such exactness of system that she could—as is the vaunt of the model of orderly perfection—lay her ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... it seems clear that Gisors, Chaucer's deputy in the office, was appointed temporarily to the office, on the departure of Chaucer, and deprived of it again as soon as the King found some one to whom he wished to give a sinecure. Surely, if one may be allowed to draw inferences from facts, it seems most likely that Chaucer resigned the offices either to take up some work not now known to us, or to have leisure after more than ten years' occupation ...
— Chaucer's Official Life • James Root Hulbert
... astronomical alderman, in the ancient city of Augsburg, to erect a tremendous wooden machine—a quadrant of 19-feet radius—to be used in observing the heavens. At another time we learn that the King of Denmark had recognised the talents of his illustrious subject, and promised to confer on him a pleasant sinecure in the shape of a canonry, which would assist him with the means for indulging his scientific pursuits. Again we are told that Tycho is pursuing experiments in chemistry with the greatest energy, nor is this so incompatible as might at first be ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... aunt's prayer-book, feeling like the priests, the Sons of Levi, which bare the Ark of the Covenant; and Aunt M'riar carried the Tin of the Shoulder of Mutton, and took great care not to spill any of the Gravy. The office of the Sons of Levi was a sinecure ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... be injured when the tent blew down at Poughkeepsie, and the hands and performers are kicking because we are a month behind on salaries, and they get drunk whenever any jay will buy for them. Everybody gives passes to everybody that wants to get in the show, so the box office man has a sinecure, and people chase us from town to town for money for board, and hay ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... province by a deputy-governor. His position was indeed no sinecure. The two proprietaries, who appointed him, could at any time deprive him of office. The Assembly could refuse to vote his salary, and if he displeased the king of England, he might lose, not only his ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... we were still encamped here, I organized a football match and acted as referee, which in a tropical sun is no sinecure, I can tell you. On Wednesday I rode into Kroonstadt and had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Lowry, Mr. Lane, the Canadian chaplain, and Mr. Carey, the resident Wesleyan minister, and ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... criticism was true; also that Miss Betsy's task was no sinecure, and she therefore thought it best to ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... Wouldn't Dilworthy open his eyes if he . . . knew some of the things Balloon did say to me. There . . . Hopperson's influence ought to count twenty . . . the sanctimonious old curmudgeon. Son-in-law . . . sinecure in the negro institution. . . . That about gauges him . . . The three committeemen . . . sons-in-law. Nothing like a son-in-law here in Washington or a brother- in-law . . . And everybody has 'em . . . Let's see: . . ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... and Archbishop Croke so badly at Thurles the other day; and he is in a fair way now to be denounced with equal fervour by the Nationalists as a County Court judge in Donegal. He finds this post no sinecure. "I do as much work in five days," he said to-night, "as the Superior Judges do in ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... with the cost of horses and coachman! And, then, no demands for money were ever met so cheerfully by my mother as those which went to support Mr. Pitt's policy against Jacobinism and Regicide. At present, after five years' sinecure existence, unless on the rare summons of a journey, this dormant carriage was suddenly undocked, and put into commission. Taking with her two servants, and one of my sisters, my mother now entered ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... that the office of the Forest Ranger is by no means a sinecure. He works hard and he works long and alone and our kindly thoughts should go out to him in his solitary patrols ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... as sociably disposed as the little tomtit—for that is also one of his names—bird study would be a delight, and almost a sinecure. Trustful and fearless, he often comes within a few feet of you, and fixes you with his keen little eyes, which dart out innumerable interrogation points. Sometimes he calls his own name in a saucy way, ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... the only farriers of the party. There were 42 head to shoe, many of which had never been shod before, and as the thermometer stood at 100 degrees in the shade most of the day, their office was no sinecure; they had at first some difficulty in getting a sufficient heat, but after a little experimenting found a wood of great value in that particular. This was the apple-gum, by using which, they could if necessary get a white heat in the iron. At the end of the third day the last ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... definition is bomb-proof, thy fancy unscaleable, thy thought too deep for undermining; that notion is at the head of the poll, a candidate approved of Truth's most open borough; for, in spite of secretary-birds with pens stuck clerk-like behind their ears (as useless an emblem of sinecure office as gold keys, silver, and coronation armour)—in spite of whole flights of geese, capable enough of saving capitols, but impotent to wield one of their own all-conquering quills—in spite, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... unless you got in the vortex of one, when it might twist the spars out of a ship perhaps, though I never saw any mischief done by one myself. Mind your helm," added Captain Miles to the man at the wheel, whose office at present was a sinecure, for the ship was almost becalmed and the rudder swaying to and fro from port to starboard as it listed. "If the wind catches us suddenly we may be taken aback, and I want you to be ready when I give ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... his office, under the energetic admiral, no sinecure. He was kept constantly moving from one point to the other, to see that all was going on well, and to report the progress made. The work never ceased, night or day, and for the first week neither Francis, nor his commander, ever went to bed, contenting themselves with such chance ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... le Baron, I feel ashamed to accept your money for such a sinecure as this. I will tell the story to my friend Lupin. ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... the place was no sinecure. Besides manuscripts and letters which his master signed, Pilorge copied everything. The illustrious author, attentive to the demands of posterity, preserved with religious care copies of his most trifling notes. The tragedy which Chateaubriand read from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... said I, 'he tumbled on a sinecure. Since your mind runs on him and you want to sleep, make it out that he was a bishop, ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... scruples, Elsmere,' said the Liberal tutor with emphasis. 'No one can say a living with 1200 souls, and no curate, is a sinecure. As for hard town work, it is absurd—you couldn't stand it. And after all, I imagine, there are some souls worth ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... public feeling was somewhat unreasonable, for Pitt's health seems now to have been beyond doubt so shattered by his hereditary malady, that he was already in old age though only fifty-eight. It was natural, therefore, that he should choose a sinecure office, and the ease of the Lords. But a popular idol nearly always suffers by removal from immediate contact with the popular sympathy, be the motives for ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... time of dessert, I can give no consecutive account, for as footman, under the orders of this enthusiastic parlour-maid, my place was no sinecure, and but few opportunities of observation through the crack of the door were afforded me. All that was clear to me was that the chief guest was a Mr. Teidelmann—or Tiedelmann, I cannot now remember which—a ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... war, he recovered; and during 1750 was actively employed in his magisterial duties. At this period lawlessness and violence appear to have prevailed to an unusual extent in the metropolis, and the office of a Bow Street justice was no sinecure. Reform of some kind was felt on all sides to be urgently required; and Fielding threw his two years' experience and his deductions therefrom into the form of a pamphlet entitled An Enquiry into the ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... found our sinecure of hot noon-tide filched from us by the cooler hours. The cattle, wearied of standing, and perhaps somewhat hungry and thirsty, grew more and more impatient. We rode continually back and forth, ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... world of their invention—they had no occasion whatever to draw upon mine; so that my time was taken only with being, for them, some remarkable person or thing that the game of the moment required and that was merely, thanks to my superior, my exalted stamp, a happy and highly distinguished sinecure. I forget what I was on the present occasion; I only remember that I was something very important and very quiet and that Flora was playing very hard. We were on the edge of the lake, and, as we had lately begun geography, the lake was the Sea ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... had but recently entered the Navy as a surgical probationer R.N.V.R. He joined purely through patriotic motives, having sacrificed a fairly substantial income in order to do so. Up to the present his work had been almost a sinecure. The Yealm had not had the faintest chance of taking part in an engagement. Her crew—to use Fanshawe's own words—were "that beastly healthy, don't you know", that, out of sheer anxiety to do something, he was learning navigation from ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... to have trouble with her," said Anna-Rose, not heeding his consolations. "It isn't a sinecure, I assure you, being left sole guardian and protector of somebody as pretty as all that. And the worst of it is she's going on getting prettier. She hasn't nearly come to the end of what she can do in that direction. ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... I claim no credit. But I am sincerely glad you are the man. The office is no sinecure. The state of feeling in regard to the Spanish boundary is ominous. Shall you be able to adjust the matter amicably or will ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... Otherwise she will have to be tremendously clever and say all sorts of brilliant things, and that puts a great burden on the author. If you proclaim boldly at the start that she's a beauty, the illustrator has got to look after her, and the author has a comparative sinecure." ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... years, and retired from public life. His party handsomely acknowledged his services by a retiring pension, which Mr Pitt, when minister, exchanged for the clerkship of the pells, thus disburdening the nation by substituting a sinecure. For many years before his death, Barre was unfortunately deprived of sight; but, under that heaviest of all afflictions, he retained his practical philosophy, enjoyed the society of his friends, and was cheerful to the last. He was at length ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... and privilege of access to the same, that thereby the memory and love for the poet and the man may be cherished and perpetuated." Mr. Ordway was made president of the board, and in his hands the office has been no sinecure. His unflagging zeal and his unerring good taste have resulted not only in putting the ancient house into the perfect order of the olden time, but in fertilizing the wornout fields, and preserving for ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... easy task for any one in good physical condition and accustomed to gymnastic work. Two Bedouins assist you from the front while an ancient Sheik is supposed to help push you from the rear. In my case the Bedouins had a very easy job, while the Sheik enjoyed a sinecure. The stones are about a yard high, and the only difficulty of the ascent lies in the straddle which must be made to cover these stones. The ascent is made on the northeast corner of the pyramid, and much help is gained by inequalities in ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... passed a short and merry time at the University, fashioned as nearly as might be on the mode of life of a man about town. In 1740 he was appointed to the vague-sounding office of Clerk of the Irons and Surveyor of the Meltings in the Mint, a sinecure which, after the manner of the time, required no personal attention from the holder. Even in those early days Selwyn, who went by the sobriquet of "Bosky," had many friends—not only among college boys, but in London society. "You must judge by what you feel ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... Lyttelton, the elegant if somewhat amateurish author of "Dialogues of the Dead" and other works; the friend of Fielding, the neighbor of Shenstone at Hagley, and the patron of Thomson, for whom he obtained the sinecure post of Surveyor of the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Hotel de Ville, a little man, and spirited, who had hung on at his post during the German occupation, and done his best to protect his fellow-townsmen against the lust and rapine of the Huns. Under such circumstances the office of municipal magistrate is no sinecure. It is, in fact, a position of deadly peril, for by the doctrine of vicarious punishment, peculiar to the German Staff, an innocent man is held liable with his life for the faults of his fellow-townsmen, and, it may be, for those of the enemy also. Doubtless ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... filled the high and arduous position of wife to such a man as Barty Josselin is well known to the world at large. It was no sinecure! but she gloried in it; and to her thorough apprehension and management of their joint lives and all that came of them, as well as to her beauty and sense and genial warmth, was due her great popularity for many years in an immense and ever-widening circle, where the ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... days, when the Queen was surrounded with her unbroken family of nine blooming and promising children, and still had at her right hand the invaluable counsellor by whose aid England was governed with a wisdom and energy all but unprecedented, her position was so far from a sinecure that no subject who had his daily bread to gain by his wits could have ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... principle, even less than the Church; and he had no scientific leanings except a taste for botany. Although the constantly renewed cries for some not clearly defined system of public support for men of letters are, as a rule, absurd, there is no doubt that Mr Arnold was the very man for a sinecure, and would have justified the existence of Pipe or Hanaper to all reasonable men. But his political friends had done away with nearly all such things, and no one of the very few that remained fell to his ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... more than ever severe and hard; yet probably there never was a time when every pulse of her heart was beating more warmly for the child, and every thought of the future was more entirely regulated with reference to her welfare. It is no sinecure to have the entire devotion of a strong, enterprising, self-willed friend, as Agnes had all her life found. One cannot gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles, and the affection of thorny and thistly natures ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... when he scrawls a card; Constant at routs, familiar with a round Of ladyships, a stranger to the poor; Ambitions of preferment for its gold, And well prepared by ignorance and sloth, By infidelity and love o' the world, To make God's work a sinecure; a slave To his own pleasures and his patron's pride.— From such apostles, O ye mitred heads, Preserve the Church! and lay not careless hands On skulls that cannot teach, and ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... Santobono his name is, and he's a curious character, such as you wouldn't find in France, I fancy. He lives all alone in that falling hovel, and officiates at that old chapel of St. Mary in the Fields, where people don't go to hear mass three times in a year. Yes, it's a perfect sinecure, which with its stipend of a thousand francs enables him to live there like a peasant philosopher, cultivating the somewhat extensive garden whose big walls you ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... real partnership whatever, but mimicking such a partnership by means of the limitations or errors affecting the human eye, where it can apply no other sense to aid or to correct itself. So that the business of astronomy, in these days, is no sinecure, as the reader perceives. And by another evidence, it is continually becoming less of a sinecure. Formerly, one or two men,— Tycho, suppose, or, in a later age, Cassini and Horrox, and Bradley, had observatories: one man, suppose, observed the stars for all Christendom; ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... came to perform the functions of milliner and dressmaker, encouraged thereto by the family for her unerring taste and skill. Her salary, however, had been proportionately increased, and it did not decline when her office as governess became practically a sinecure as her pupils passed beyond the sphere of the schoolroom. Perhaps George Osgood, father of John Osgood, and owner of Wandenong, did not make an allowance to Barbara Golding for her services as counsellor and confidant of his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... heard nothing more of Monsieur Horace, though she often, often thought of him, and wondered what he was doing. He was very busy, very hard-worked; an army-surgeon had no sinecure in the Crimea in those days, as we know, and it was perhaps well for the child, who cared more for him than for any one else in the world, that she knew nothing of his life at this time, of wintry battle-fields and hospital ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... this moment I have half a fowl in my pocket; I was afraid of being exposed; here it is! Now, Sir, you may search me." Wade was so struck, that he gave the man a hundred pounds; and immediately the genius of generosity, whose province is almost a sinecure, was very glad of the opportunity of making him find his own snuff-box, or another very like it, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... the new Hospital at Marlborough was filled to its utmost capacity and Evadne found her work no sinecure. The force of nurses was inadequate to the demand. Often she would be called from her rest to minister to the critical cases which were her special care, and she would go down to the ward saying softly, "The Master is come and calleth for thee," and bending ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... as the wheels revolved smoothly and the stream of creamy flour issued from the mouth of the machine the miller had a sinecure. Ambrose scowling and grinding his teeth scarcely saw what his eyes were turned on. His mind ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... "It would be highly gratifying to us who have thrown aside our former occupations and the prospects that were fair for increasing our fortunes, with a view of serving our country, and who have no desire of being mere sinecure officers if we could at this moment embark and obey the commands of our country, in going in pursuit of a barbarous enemy, who now holds in chains and slavery so many of our unfortunate fellow-citizens; the relieving and restoring of which ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin
... American cities and towns, had driven almost all other birds to flight or local extinction. The sparrow's urban doom might be read in the increasing number of automobiles, but the mina in Tahiti, as in Hawaii, had a sinecure. ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... whole of human society, yet in actual life he was content to live unobtrusively, publishing harmless books for children; and though he abhorred the principle of aristocracy, he did not scruple to accept a sinecure from government through Lord Grey. Notwithstanding his stolid inconsistency and his deficiency in humour, Godwin is a figure whom it is impossible to ignore or to despise. He was not a frothy orator who made his appeal to the masses, but the leader of the trained ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... commons, and it was carried through the lords after the rejection of an amendment proposed by Earl Grosvenor for continuing its operation to 1840. At a later date Mr. Bankes brought in a bill for utterly abolishing many sinecure places, and this was carried against ministers by a majority of one hundred and thirty-four against one hundred and twenty-three. On the 7th of May Mr. Creevey also called the serious attention to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a husband out of a mere man is not a sinecure; it's one of the highest plastic arts known ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... however, were a favourite resort for pirates and other men of desperate character, and Lilburne soon discovered that his place was no sinecure. He found it difficult moreover to refrain from hostilities against a neighbour who used every opportunity to harm and plunder his colony. In March 1683, a former privateer named Thomas Pain[439] had entered into a conspiracy with four other captains, who were ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... laugh at Malcolm's expense. But when the mare was brought out, and he was going to mount her where she stood, something seemed to wake in the marquis's heart, or conscience, or wherever the pigmy Duty slept that occupied the all but sinecure of his moral economy: he looked at Malcolm for a moment, then at the ears of the mare hugging her neck, and last at the ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... mouth of the harbour, signed by a Secretary of State to his late Majesty King William the Fourth, still announces to a heedless world the tolls to be paid for entry by the ships that never arrive; and a superannuated official in a wooden leg and a gold cap-band retains the honourable sinecure of a harbour-mastership, with a hypothetical salary nominally payable from the non-existent fees and port dues. The little river Cale, at the bottom of whose combe the wee town nestles snugly, has cut itself a deep valley in the soft sandstone hills; and the gap in the cliffs formed ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... bodies committed to the dust in Christian fashion. In parishes like these of the Lizard, and on the north Cornwall coast at places like Morwenstow, this duty of giving Christian sepulture has been no sinecure. ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... not an ideal post for him, still it had the patent advantage of being practically a sinecure. He and his wife seem to have been able to get away almost at any time. They sometimes travelled together, but often went in different directions, and as Burton was as restless as a hyena, he never stayed in any one place many hours. Occasionally they met unexpectedly. Upon one ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... as not to interfere with the ordinary jurisdiction. The consent of the bishop of the diocese was at first required, and ordinarily that of the parish priest; but in the not infrequent cases where a slothful vicar would not allow any intrusion on his sinecure, his objections were disregarded. When the parish priest gave consent, the church was used if conveniently situated; otherwise the nearest barn or glade in the woods was utilised for the sermons. Like certain modern ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... and commissary as soon as he reported for duty here, and is already hard at work. The post is not large, but the office of quartermaster is no sinecure. An immense amount of transportation has to be kept in readiness for the field, for which the quartermaster alone is held responsible, and this is the base of supplies for outfits for all parties—large and small—that go to the ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... in debate, he put his hand on his heart, saying, "I am the trusty guardian of my own honour."—"Then," replied Sir Boyle Roche, "I congratulate my honourable friend in the snug little sinecure to which he ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... withstand the temptation of bouncing from L100 a year at Sligo, to L300 in Tipperary? This is the miserable sum of money for which the merchants and landowners and nobility of England are exposing themselves to the tremendous peril of losing Ireland. The sinecure places of the Roses and the Percevals, and the 'dear and near relations,' put up to auction at thirty years' purchase, would almost amount to ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... braces. I felt rowdyish and "bully," (as the historian Josephus phrases it, in his fine chapter upon the destruction of the Temple). It seemed to me that nothing could be so fine and so romantic. I had become an officer of the government, but that was for mere sublimity. The office was an unique sinecure. I had nothing to do and no salary. I was private Secretary to his majesty the Secretary and there was not yet writing enough for two of us. So Johnny K—— and I devoted our time to amusement. He was the young son of an Ohio nabob and was out there for recreation. He got it. We had ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... money for charities, fencers, bearwards, minstrels, common players of interludes, jugglers, tinkers, peddlers, and many others, and adequate whipping of them and starting them in the direct route homeward must have been no sinecure. [Footnote: Lambarde, Duties of Constables, ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... sake, to be kept secret by the board administering the band funds, not only because it was detrimental to the interests of the institution, but also because it might give offence to those who were acting as conductors at a lower salary, if they knew another man had been appointed to a sinecure. From these circumstances Mendelssohn derived not only the advantage of having the grant kept a secret, but also the satisfaction of allowing his friends to applaud him as a model of self-sacrificing zeal for going ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... saw them again, we knew they were to be greatly envied. Between standing waist-high in mud in a trench and being drowned in it, buried in it, blown up or asphyxiated, the post of crossing-sweeper becomes a sinecure. ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... twelve pounds per annum. The present rector was in the annual receipt of forty-three pounds, out of which he had to pay me, but with the aid of a little simony, this was easily avoided, and as I took no fees, I can hardly call it a lucrative appointment, and certainly not a sinecure. ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... frivolous old man, a great lover of little girls, who combined the sinecure of his bishopric with that of almoner to a second-hand empress, whose name will remain celebrated in the annals of devout gallantry or of gallant devotion, the Bishop, a worthy pastor for such a sheep, passed the greater portion ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... And even if his health does give out, his college pals will always find him some sort of sinecure. So ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... country in the world; that his name was mentioned with awe in every palace from Lisbon to Moscow; that his trophies were in all the four quarters of the globe; yet that he was still plain William Pitt, without title or ribbon, without pension or sinecure place. Whenever he should retire, after saving the state, he must sell his coach horses and his silver candlesticks. Widely as the taint of corruption had spread, his hands were clean. They had never ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the open Desert is no sinecure. When I go under the shade from the sun the wind blows unpityingly, when in the sun the flies torment me. Our grand slave-driver Haj Essnousee, is most determinedly bent on showing himself a perfect ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... almost wholly abandoned to weakness, poverty, and unpopularity, and even that no bishop was sent to superintend the exertions, or sustain the efficacy, or cement the connexion of the Church in America with the Church in England. The whole of the united provinces were, by the absurd fiction of a sinecure law, "in the diocese of London!" Of course, in the first collision, the Church was swept away like chaff before the wind. An Episcopal Church has since risen in its room; but it has now no farther connexion with its predecessor than some occasional civilities offered to its ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... Enos assumed the office of peace-maker for the village, Uncle Jaw's efficiency rendered it no sinecure. The deacon always followed the steps of Uncle Jaw, smoothing, hushing up, and putting matters aright with an assiduity that ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... her grace—the grace of another time than ours—for her wit, and her worldly wisdom, which she placed freely at the disposal of the public. Now and then she made a match: but her special gift lay rather in the way in which she came to the rescue when a marriage turned out ill. And she had no sinecure: the result was that she passed the best part of her time in repairing family rents. That might "last its time," she would say. "And then we know that what has been well mended sometimes lasts better ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... secrecy and devotion over, she was enrolled in the hero's band, which now numbered three, and entered upon the duties with feminine energy, for there are no conspirators like women. Ripton's lieutenancy became a sinecure, his rank merely titular. He had never been married—he knew nothing about licences, except that they must be obtained, and were not difficult—he had not an idea that so many days' warning must be given ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... approached three score and ten. Her rare letters to him, however, were kind enough. But he was sure Aileen's anomalous place in the household at Champ-au-Haut—neither servant nor child of the house, never adopted, but only maintained—could have been no sinecure. Anyway, he knew she had kept the devotion of her two admirers, Romanzo Caukins and Octavius Buzzby. From a hint in his aunt's last letter, he drew the conclusion that Aileen and Romanzo would make a match of it before long, when Romanzo should be established. At any rate, Aileen had wit enough, ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... Nathan, rich in ink and poor in will, has ended by capitulating entirely, and has settled down into a sinecure, like any other commonplace man. After lending his pen to all disorganizing efforts, he now lives in peace under the protecting shade of a ministerial organ. The cross of the Legion of honor, formerly the fruitful text of his satire, adorns his button-hole. "Peace at any price," ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... find any one better?" said he. "Doing the work for a lone man who comes as irregularly to meals as a twenty-four-hour day will permit is no sinecure. She furnishes little sunshine in the home, but she does manage to produce a hot dinner ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... mother and Betts Shoreham. Although elderly ladies play cards very little, just now, in American society, or, indeed, in any other, they have their inducements for rendering the well-known office of matron at a ball, a mere sinecure. Mrs. Monson, too, was an indulgent mother, and seldom saw any thing very wrong in her own children. Julia, in the main, had sufficient retenue, and a suspicion of her want of discretion on this point, was one of the last ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... therefore, no sinecure in filling the pannikins. Bruce had in the meantime quenched ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... (zygites), and 54 for the lower (thalamites), each man with his own individual oar. The TRHANITES with the longest oars (full 13 feet 6 inches) have the hardest pull and the largest pay, but not one of the 174 oarsmen holds a sinecure. In ordinary cruising, to be sure, the trireme will make use of her sails, to help out a single bank of oars which must be kept going almost all the time. Even then it is weary work to break your back for a couple of hours ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... station which was built too far from the town, and this of the Sidi Mansur water. And who, you ask, was to blame for these follies? Oh, the controlleur, as usual; always the controlleur! It is no sinecure being an official of this kind in Tunisia, with precise Government instructions in one pocket, and in the other his countrymen's contrary lamentations and ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... schooner, under which the men composing the watch on deck lolled in sleepy indolence, overcome with excessive heat. Bloody Bill, as the men invariably called him, was standing at the tiller, but his post for the present was a sinecure, and he whiled away the time by alternately gazing in dreamy abstraction at the compass in the binnacle, and by walking to the taffrail in order to spit into the sea. In one of these turns he came near to where I was standing, and, leaning over the side, looked long and earnestly ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... college tutor and professor of Arabic. Poor old Jones had been the best and the most shy of university men. As there was never any undergraduate in his time (it is different now) who wished to learn Arabic, his place had been a sinecure, and he had chiefly devoted his leisure to "drawing" pupils who were too late for college chapel. The sight of a lady of his acquaintance in the streets had at all times been alarming enough to drive him into ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... that they detested work of any kind. Yet the chaplain had almost as much business on his hands as the bursar of a great college, in the administration of Carew's affairs, besides filling an office which was by no means a sinecure, in that of his master of the ceremonies. Many a rudeness in that house would have been bitterly avenged, and many a quarrel would have had a serious termination, but for the good offices of Parson Whymper. Nor would Mr. Byam Ryll have been considered ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... custodian of an invisible lady, who was to be seen for a penny each person, children half-price. This appeared to be a contradiction in terms, but public apathy accepted it without cavil. The taking of this phenomenon's gate-money seemed to be almost a sinecure. Not so the galvanic battery, which never disappointed any one. It might disgust, or repel, those who had had no occasion to study this branch of science, but it always acted up to its professions. Those investigators ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... situation, and the fact that the very thought is laughable shows how much we have improved in essentials. In bygone days, a man who became a Minister proceeded to secure his own fortune; then he provided for all his relatives, his hangers-on, his very jockeys and footmen. One lord held eight sinecure offices, and was besides colonel of two regiments. A Chancellor of the Exchequer cleared four hundred thousand on a new loan, and the bulk of this large sum remained in his own pocket, for he had but few associates ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... nothing for you to do, and as far as I am concerned your duties will be a sinecure until the day we arrive in Chili. Katherine, you must take ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... chair to his pupil, Isaac Newton, having now determined to renounce the study of mathematics for that of divinity. Upon quitting his professorship Barrow was only a fellow of Trinity College; but his uncle gave him a small sinecure in Wales, and Dr Seth Ward, bishop of Salisbury, conferred upon him a prebend in that church. In the year 1670 he was created doctor in divinity by mandate; and, upon the promotion of Dr Pearson to the see of Chester, he was appointed to succeed him as master of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... their numbers cannot all be provided for by these channels; and it is the country at large which is taxed to supply the means of sustenance to the younger scions of nobility—taxed directly in the shape of place and sinecure, indirectly in various ways; but in no way so heavily as by the monopoly of the East India Company, which has so long been permitted to oppress the nation, that these detrimentals (as they have named themselves), ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... go and see it at Charing Cross. Indeed, our officers, who are going to Flanders, don't quite like it; they are afraid it should grow the fashion to fight, and that a pair of colours should no longer be a sinecure. I am quite unhappy about poor Mr. Chute: besides, it is cruel to find that abstinence is not a drug. If mortification ever ceases to be a medicine, or virtue to be a passport to carnivals in the other world, who will be a self-tormentor any longer—not, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... is that red weakens an hour. The change has come. There is no search. But there is, there is that hope and that interpretation and sometime, surely any is unwelcome, sometime there is breath and there will be a sinecure and charming very charming is that clean and cleansing. Certainly glittering is ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... soul of an Indian warrior, "ALL HANDS AHOY! Tumble up, lads! Bear a hand on deck!" I jumped out of my berth, caught my jacket in one hand, and my tarpaulin in the other, and hastened on deck, closely followed by the carpenter, and also the cook, whose office being little better than a sinecure, he was called upon whenever help was wanted. The wind was blowing a gale, and the rain was falling in heavy drops, and the schooner was running off to the southward at a tremendous rate, with the ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... Washington, I could be withdrawn from the most unpleasant attitude of a "go-between," but there is no army there, nor any military duties which you with a host of subordinates can not perform. Therefore I would be there with naked, informal, and sinecure duties, and utterly out of place. This you understand well enough, and the army too, but the President and the politicians, who flatter themselves they are saving the country, cannot and will not understand. My opinion is, the country ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... and the Company charter were invalidated, he could still hang on here, doing what he could to salvage something out of the wreckage—if not for the Company, then for Victor Grego. But if Zarathustra were reclassified, Nick would be finished. His title, his social position, his sinecure, his grafts and perquisites, his alias-shrouded Company expense account—all out the airlock. Nick would be counted upon to do anything he could—however much that ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... house-floor is perfectly clean again; as clean as everything else in that wonderful house-place, where the only chance of collecting a few grains of dust would be to climb on the salt-coffer, and put your finger on the high mantel-shelf on which the glittering brass candlesticks are enjoying their summer sinecure; for at this time of year, of course, every one goes to bed while it is yet light, or at least light enough to discern the outline of objects after you have bruised your shins against them. Surely nowhere else could an oak clock-case and an oak ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... course, claiming precedence and preference. These are usually interspersed with solos on the flageolet, to contrast with obligati for the ophecleido; the drummers—side, long, and double—are seldom inactive; the trombones and trumpets have no sinecure, and there is always a great mortality amongst the fiddle-strings. Eight bars of impossible variation is sure to be succeeded by sixteen of the deafening fanfare of trumpets, combined with smashing cymbalism, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... sinecure, no doubt! but made More easy by the absence of all men— Except his Majesty,—who, with her aid, And guards, and bolts, and walls, and now and then A slight example, just to cast a shade Along the rest, contrived to keep this den Of beauties cool as an ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Control, of which on the 5th of April 1910 it was announced that he had been appointed a member. This step was viewed with disfavour by the British government, for, unless Sir Robert Bredon's post was to be merely a sinecure, it imposed two masters on the maritime customs. On the 20th of April Sir Robert Bredon severed his connexion with the Board of Control. At the same time Mr F.A. Aglen (the Commissioner of Customs at Hankow) became acting Inspector ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... of an expedition of this kind is certainly no sinecure; but I am sure that no one who has not occupied a similar post can conceive the anxieties and disquietudes under which I have laboured during all these difficult days. Almost ever since our departure from Ghat we have been in fear, either for ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... two later there arrived here a certain major of the United States Army, a large, broad-chested, rather pompous person of about forty-eight or -nine, who from taking his ease in one sinecure and another had finally reached the place where he was unable to endure certain tests (or he thought so) which were about to be made with a view to retiring certain officers grown fat in the service. As he explained ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... President Monroe's administration, Mr. Adams discharged the duties of the state department, with a fidelity and success which received not only the unqualified approbation of the President, but of the whole country. To him that office was no sinecure. His labors were incessant. He spared no pains to qualify himself to discuss, with consummate skill, whatever topics legitimately claimed his attention. The President, the cabinet, the people, imposed implicit ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... were systematically foisted upon the Irish establishment. Royal mistresses, a host of needy Germans, a Danish Queen banished for adultery, lived in England or abroad upon incomes drawn from the impoverished Irish Exchequer. Nor was it only a question of pensions. Quantities of valuable sinecure offices were habitually given to Englishmen who never came near the shores of Ireland. In short, the English policy towards Ireland was similar to Spain's policy towards her South American Colonies, minus the grosser forms of physical cruelty and oppression. Yet Ireland, like the ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... you are so good as to promise these two posts—the appointment of justice of the peace and the sinecure for my friend—I will undertake to bring you the property, almost intact.—Almost intact, I say, for the co-operation of the legatee and several other persons is absolutely indispensable, and some obligations ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... said the Goblin; "it's YOUR function to feel sorry for them. If they were to leave off being poor you couldn't fulfil your functions. You'd be a sinecure." ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... are plenty who would be glad to take charge of so good a house, and pay me a fair rent. Indeed, I am thinking that it will be best for me to make some such arrangement, especially as you do not seem satisfied with your sinecure position. You represent me as rolling in wealth. Jonas and I are living very comfortably, and we have nothing to complain of, but that is no reason for my squandering the small fortune left me by my husband. I advise you to be a little more reasonable in your demands, or I shall ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... do some chaperoning at last, am I?" queried her father. "The job has ceased to be a sinecure. I suppose I'll have to do all the talking, since young girls, of course, may only speak when spoken to and then must answer with a yes or no. Really, my dear, you're setting yourself an ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... events his aid is desired."—"For how much?" Cho[u]bei spoke bluntly. If Rokuro[u]bei had forgotten Cho[u]bei, Cho[u]bei had not forgotten Rokuro[u]bei. He went on—"To get a price for damaged goods is no sinecure. Fortunately she is only out of repair on the surface.... Say ten ryo[u]?" Kondo[u] laughed scornfully—"And they call Cho[u]bei 'the Blind-man'! Rather is it vision magnified. The entertainment should be the reward; with what Cho[u]bei collects from the happy bridegroom." Cho[u]bei replied ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... Poor thing! It was no wonder that the frightened look had become habitual to her face, and that she always spoke with reserve and constraint, as if to guard against the chance-betrayal of some terrible secret. It was no sinecure, her office—alternately scapegoat and confidante. My own idea is, that having still a little feeble remnant of a conscience remaining, she suffered agonies of remorse at times in the latter capacity. Dancing was her great—almost ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... cheese, or hare, or rabbit, or eel, and I would have to be in the last stage of starvation before I could eat cold lamb or cold veal; so it will be seen by these confessions that my cook's berth is not a sinecure, and that these complimentary dinners, as dinners, are to a great extent wasted upon me. I once, in fact, was asked to a dinner at a club, and I could not touch one single dish! But my friends kindly provided some impromptu dishes without cheese or oysters and other, to ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... daughter Rosa, the sweet-faced, sweet-voiced Virgin; Rendl, the dignified, statesman-like Pilate; Peter Rendl, the beloved John, with the purest and most beautiful face I have ever seen upon a man; old Peter Hett, the rugged, loving, weak friend, Peter; Rutz, the leader of the chorus (no sinecure, his post); and Amalie Deschler, the Magdalen—it would be difficult to speak in terms of too high praise. Themselves mere peasants—There are those two women again, spying round our door; I am sure of it!" I exclaim, breaking off, and listening ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... have no sinecure. Crime would perhaps be less, for some of the motives of crime we may suppose would pass away. But if Socialism were carried out with any fulness, there would be more contraventions. We see already new sins ringing up like mustard—School Board sins, ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... place according to rules which must have been planned from the beginning; by which conception the function of the gods seemed to be limited to forming the plans, and setting the machinery in motion: their subsequent office appeared to be reduced to a sinecure, or if they continued to reign, it was in the manner of constitutional kings, bound by the laws to which they had previously given their assent. Accordingly, the pretension of philosophers to explain physical phaenomena by ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... also denied them; the duty had to be performed In town, lest the wind should blow the local journal into the hands of the enemy and reveal—nothing at all. The position of the barrier guard ceased to be—if it ever were—a sinecure, and he was kept busy picking pockets, examining bills, perusing love-letters, written in all sorts of prose, and in verse which was homely, if ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... Joe put forth, quickly. "It wouldn't be any sinecure, Happy. You'd earn your money; don't ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington |
