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More "Laxity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... visionary self-delusions: and this cause lies in the diplomacy of Europe. Treaties of peace are so constructed, as almost always to sow the seeds of future wars. This seems to the inexperienced reader a matter of carelessness or laxity in the choice of expression; and sometimes it may have been so; but more often it has been done under the secret dictation of powerful courts— making peaces only as truces, anxious only for time to nurse their energies, and to keep open some plausible call ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... or the authority of the Gospels, it is necessary that we should examine the quotations from them, or what are alleged to be quotations from them, in the early writers. Now these quotations are notoriously lax. It will be necessary then to have some means of judging, what degree and kind of laxity is admissible; what does, and what does not, prevent the reference of a quotation ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... sleep in a low, sweet voice. He had been brought up chiefly by his father's mistress, who was known as the Vicomtesse d'Oilly, a widow, and a rather good sort of woman. Her natural sensibility, and the laxity of morals then reigning at Paris, permitted her to occupy herself at the same time with the happiness of the father and the education of the son. When the father deserted her after a time, he left her the child, to comfort her somewhat ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... unrivalled save by one another as confectioners. Eustacie had been their pet in her younger days; now she was out of their reach, they tried in turn to comfort her; and when she would not be comforted, they, too, felt aggrieved by the presence of one whose austerity reproached their own laxity; they resented her disappointment at Soeur Monique's having been transferred to Lucon, and they, too, left her to the only persons whose presence she had ever seemed to relish,—namely, her maid Veronique, and Veronique's ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spoken of at its first appearance, in a letter from Thomas Warton to his brother [8]. "The Dictionary is arrived; the preface is noble. There is a grammar prefixed, and the history of the language is pretty full; but you may plainly perceive strokes of laxity and indolence. They are two most unwieldy volumes. I have written to him an invitation. I fear his preface will disgust, by the expressions of his consciousness of superiority, and of his contempt of patronage." In 1773, when he gave a second edition, with additions and corrections, ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... we must occupy ourselves with other investigations You cannot fail to have remarked the extreme laxity of the examination of the corpse. To be sure, the question of identity was readily determined, or should have been; but there were other points to be ascertained. Had the body been in any respect despoiled? Had the deceased any articles of jewelry about ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... activity, employed the period of delay in preaching the Word at Dieppe. After his arrival in Scotland, he wrote to his Dieppe congregation, upbraiding them for their Laodicean laxity in permitting idolatry to co-exist with true religion in their town. Why did they not drive out the idolatrous worship? These epistles were intercepted by the Governor of Dieppe, and their contents appear to have escaped the notice of the ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... day feel. I will therefore adduce the opinion of Mrs. Graham, the first historian of the Republic, as to the estimation in which he was generally held:—"Zenteno has read more than usual among his countrymen, and thinks that little much. Like San Martin, he dignifies scepticism in religion, laxity of morals, and coldness of heart, if not cruelty, with the name of philosophy; and while he could shew creditable sensibility for the fate of a worm, would think the death or torture of a political opponent matter for congratulation." I was his political opponent, as wishing ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... which render our colleges superior to all other places of education. Their institutions, although somewhat fallen from their primaeval simplicity, are such as influence, in a particular manner, the moral conduct of their youth; and in this general depravity of manners and laxity of principles, pure religion is no where more strongly inculcated. The academies, as they are presumptuously styled, are too low to be mentioned; and foreign seminaries are likely to prejudice the unwary ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... more than fair to say that whatever laxity was apparent at this hour in the Eleventh Corps was by no means incompatible with a readiness to give a good account of itself if an attack should be made ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... be said for the prepuce. Puzey, of Liverpool, has found it of extreme value, and even unequaled by any other part of the body, for furnishing skin-grafts,[81] these grafts showing a vitality that is simply phenomenal, considering the laxity of its tissues and its seemingly adipose character. There is no doubt, however, that for skin-transplanting there is nothing superior to the plants offered by the prepuce of a boy, and where any large surface is to be covered this should undoubtedly be chosen, as offering ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... the State machinery of Florence, was the problem of his life. The successful solution of this problem was easier now, after two generations of the Medicean ascendency, than it had been at first. Meanwhile the people were maintained in good humour by public shows, ease, plenty, and a general laxity of discipline. The splendour of Lorenzo's foreign alliances and the consideration he received from all the Courts of Italy contributed in no small measure to his popularity and security at home. By using his authority over ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... ever been willing to humour the taste of his people for magnificent spectacles, was received back to Rome with the lesser honours of the Ovation, conceded by the Senate (so great was the public sense of deliverance) with even more than the laxity which had become its habit under imperial rule, for there had been no actual bloodshed in the late achievement. Clad in the civic dress of the chief Roman magistrate, and with a crown of myrtle upon his head, his colleague similarly attired ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... members one of another,—of one body, of which Christ is the head. Consider what it would be, if our judgments of men and things were like Christ's judgments; neither strengthening the heart of the careless and sinful by our laxity, nor making sad the heart of God's true servant by our uncharitableness; not putting little things in the place of great, nor great things in the place of little; not neglecting the unity of the Spirit; not stickling for a sameness in the form. Or, if we carry our views ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... that disaster should have overtaken a fleet manoeuvred by a soldier! I recollect that Mr. Purvis also informed me that the boilers of two or three of the vessels (instancing the destroyed Chao-Yung) were worn-out and unfit for service. Laxity of discipline, too, seems to have resulted in disobedience or disregard of orders. As an instance of this, it is alleged that instructions telegraphed from the conning-tower of the flagship were varied or suppressed by ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... and signified by a curt, reluctant laugh that he saw the joke. For Edward Henry could no longer depend on Mr. Seven Sachs. Mr. Seven Sachs had to take the greatest pains to keep the muscles of his face in strict order. The slightest laxity with them—and he would have been involved in another ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... absence of the master of the house she would have much preferred high tea in the schoolroom, combined with a certain laxity as to hours and to dress; but Damaris, in whom the sense of style was innate, stood out for the regulation dignities of late dinner and evening gowns. To-night, however, thanks to her own unpunctuality, Miss Bilson found ample excuse for ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... for example, in the grim intensity of her political method, in her maritime and commercial ascendancy. But she repeated no previous state at all in the lax disorder of her internal administration, a laxity that made vast sections of her area lawless beyond precedent, so that it was possible for whole districts to be impassable, while civil war raged between street and street, and for Alsatias to exist in her midst in which the official police never set foot. She was an ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... What I accused the Postmaster General of was of having given a contract which was a byword for laxity and thereby laying himself open reasonably to the suspicion that he was conferring a favour on Mr. Godfrey Isaacs because he ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... remains still rich and prosperous in Martinique there can be no question; but whether it continues to wield any powerful influence in the maintenance of social order is more than doubtful. A Polynesian laxity of morals among the black and colored population, and the history of race-hatreds and revolutions inspired by race-hate, would indicate that neither in ethics nor in politics does it possess any preponderant authority. By expelling various religious orders; by establishing lay schools, lyces, and ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... doubtful. One of the most glaring blunders, "idol" for "old," is obviously due to the printer, and a more careful comparison with the Latin would have easily removed them all. But at seventy-six a little laxity may be pardoned, and these were the only Oxford lectures which Froude himself prepared for the press. The publication of English Seamen and the Council ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... perplexity. In the earliest age of all,—the age which was familiar with the universal decay of heathen virtue, but which had not yet witnessed the power of the Gospel to fashion society afresh, and to build up domestic life on a new and more enduring basis;—at a time when the greatest laxity of morals prevailed, and the enemies of the Gospel were known to be on the look out for grounds of cavil against Christianity and its Author;—what wonder if some were found to remove the pericope de adultera from their copies, lest it should be pleaded in extenuation of breaches of the seventh ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... time when the quarter-deck was in charge of a midshipman. I heard with pain many severe remarks on these matters, and in defence I could only say that as Captain Flinders is a sensible man and a good seaman, such matters could only be attributed to the laxity of discipline which always takes place when the captain's wife is on board, and that such lax discipline could never again take place, because you had wisely resolved to leave Mrs. Flinders with ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... ritual above righteousness, but it is so much easier to count one's beads than to curb one's temper, so much easier to fast in Lent than to be unswervingly just, that if once the easier thing gets attached to it an exaggerated importance, fidelity in it is allowed to atone for laxity in greater things, and the last result is Pharisaism, where we see conscience concerned about the tithing of garden herbs, but with no power over the life, and religion not merely tolerating but actually ministering to moral evil. It was in the name of religion that the Pharisees suffered ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... very minute percentage), Greek is of an inestimable value. Great poets, even, may be ignorant of it, as Shakespeare probably was, as Keats and Scott certainly were, as Alexandre Dumas was. But Dumas regretted his ignorance; Scott regretted it. We know not how much Scott's admitted laxity of style and hurried careless habit might have been modified by a knowledge of Greek; how much of grace, permanence, and generally of art, his genius might have gained from the language and literature of Hellas. The most Homeric of modern men could not read Homer. ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... This laxity of emotional tone was further increased by an incident, when, two days later, she kept an appointment with Nicholas in the Sallows. The Sallows was an extension of shrubberies and plantations along the banks of the Froom, accessible ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... simultaneously, and became well known in Spain and in Italy as well as in France. At the same time the period of chivalry began. The theme of their tender and passionate poems was love. They indulged in a license which was not offensive, owing to the laxity of manners and morals in Southern France at that day, but would be intolerable in a different state of society. Kings, as well as barons and knights, adopted the Provencal language, and figured as troubadours. In connection with jousts and tournaments, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... pleasure, for to all women wit and intellect have their charm. But still there was a cold and sharp levity in the tone of the man of the world that prevented the charm sinking below the surface. To Mrs. Leslie he seemed unconsciously to betray a laxity of principle; to Evelyn, a want of sentiment and heart. Lady Vargrave, who did not understand a character of this description, listened attentively, and said to herself, "Evelyn may admire, but I fear she cannot love him." Still, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book I • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... virtue by way of excess, so is there a vice opposed to it by way of deficiency, which latter is opposed both to the virtue which is the mean, and to the vice which is in excess. Now the same vice pertaining to deficiency is opposed to both cruelty and savagery, namely remission or laxity. For Gregory says (Moral. xx, 5): "Let there be love, but not that which enervates, let there be severity, but without fury, let there be zeal without unseemly savagery, let there be piety without undue clemency." Therefore savagery ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... upon the life, "so dear to the gods," of this "pious and holy poet." But Sophocles, in private life, was a profligate, and in public life a shuffler and a trimmer, if not absolutely a renegade. It was, perhaps, the very laxity of his principles which made him thought so agreeable a fellow. At least, such is no uncommon cause of personal popularity nowadays. People lose much of their anger and envy of genius when it throws them down a bundle or two of human foibles ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... him. But as soon as he began to talk, the old fire flamed up, and he discoursed eloquently about Irish Home-Rule, the divorce question, (one of his hobbies), and the dangers that threatened America from plutocracy and laxity of wedlock, and the facilities of divorce that sap the sanctities of domestic life. It was during that conversation that Gladstone tittered the sentence that I have often had occasion to quote. He said: "Amid all the pressure of public cares and duties, I thank God for the Sabbath with its rest ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... something to bring coin before I can afford to go on with what I think doubtfully to be a duty. It is a most difficult work; a touch of the parson will drive off those I hope to influence; a touch of overstrained laxity, besides disgusting, like a grimace, may do harm. Nothing that I have ever seen yet speaks directly and efficaciously to young men; and I do hope I may find the art and wisdom to fill up a gap. The ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... movement somewhat as in older-fashioned days of Second Empire laxity well-to-do people evaded military service under conscription by paying a substitute to take their place in the fighting line. On account of her husband, and the children she had just had or was going to have, she did ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... fine poem is the church-yard of Mauchline, and the subject handled so cleverly and sharply is the laxity of manners visible in matters so solemn and terrible as the administration of the sacrament. "This was indeed," says Lockhart, "an extraordinary performance: no partisan of any sect could whisper that ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... continued unchecked; agents of Rome were again busy in the country in collusion with the Popish nobles, and nothing was done to counteract them. In these circumstances the ministers could not keep silence, and none of them spoke more strongly against the laxity of the Government than Robert Bruce, the man the King had so recently and so specially honoured, who reproached James with the fact that during his absence in Denmark more reverence was paid to his shadow than had been shown since his ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... the Cardinal, whose members pledged themselves to determined recusancy; with the result that here and there church-doors were closed, and the Book of Common Prayer utterly refused. Owing partly to Bishop Downman's laxity towards the recusants, the principles of the League had retained their hold throughout the county, ever since '68, when ten obstinate Lancastrians had been haled before the Council, of whom one, the famous Sir John Southworth himself, suffered ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... (recruit) you ever saw! Having been old Dodge's roommate up to reveille this morning, I am in a position to state that he took advantage of the general laxity last night, and slipped out of barracks after taps last night. He and some other embryo cadets got a rowboat, through connivance with a soldier in the engineer's detachment. They rowed across the river, to Garrison, and had some kind of high old racket. It must have been high," ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... melodious versifier: but it must not be supposed that he is rigidly exact in his use of rhyme. The contrary can be proved from the entire body of his poems. Adonais is, in this respect, neither more nor less correct than his other writings. It would hardly be reasonable to attribute his laxity in rhyming to either carelessness, indifference, or unskilfulness: but rather to a deliberate preference for a certain variety in the rhyme-sounds—as tending to please the ear, and availing to satisfy it in the total effect, without cloying ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... itself upon an issue which may be most readily described as one of civilization. The seceders resented growth in material prosperity; they repudiated the introduction of written sermons and organ-music; they deplored the increasing laxity in meddlesome piety, the introduction of polite manners in the pulpit and classroom, and the development of even a rudimentary desire among the younger people of the church to be like others outside in dress and speech and deportment. They did battle as long as they could, inside ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... as Lea rightly says, no injustice in holding the Church mainly responsible for the laxity of morals which is characteristic of medieval society. It had unbounded and unquestioned power, and this with its wealth and privileges might have made medieval society the purest in the world. As it was, "the period ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... signals to individual ships of his own division to make more sail, by setting all he could on the Barfleur, and by getting out his boats to tow her head round. Sir Gilbert Blane unintentionally gives a similar impression of laxity. ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... than English. He has been put in the school of Richardson, but it is certain that Richardson would have been shocked at the supposed scholar: and it is not certain that Bage would or need have felt complimented by the assignment of the master. He has the special laxity of the time in point of "morality," or at least of decency; its affectations of rather childish perfectibilism and anti-theism; and the tendency of at least a part of it to an odd Calibanic jesting. Bage is good-tempered enough as it ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... and when the French trader is asked, "How do you know your delivery is up to description so far as cup quality is concerned?" he answers that this is arrived at from the general appearance and the smell of the coffee in the green. Perhaps one reason for the laxity in buying cup quality may be explained by the fact that coffee is roasted very high, in fact it is burned almost to a charred state; and unless the coffee is unusually bad in character, the burned taste eliminates any foreign ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... teachers, soldiers, physicians, lawyers, clergymen, etc. In only one case was the crime committed through want or suffering. Yet, though the offenders had been proven guilty in every instance, only two cases were known in which the penalty of the law had been enforced. Does not this bespeak laxity of public morals in Boston in regard to such abuses ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... exemplary of the confessors Philip V. ever had, if he were not aware of such unlawful labour, and when it was that he intended it should cease. To which the subtle Jesuit, who was unwilling to be accused of laxity in morals, replied that the King had not spoken to him upon the subject, alluding to his relations with Philip as his Confessor, in which relation alone he wished it to be understood that he was to be considered—always adding, for their satisfaction, ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... religion. He not only made the proper use of wit himself, but taught it to others; and, from his time, it has been generally subservient to the cause of reason and truth. He has dissipated the prejudice that had long connected cheerfulness with vice, and easiness of manners with laxity of principles. He has restored virtue to its dignity, and taught innocence not to be ashamed. This is an elevation of literary character above all Greek, above all Roman fame. As a teacher of wisdom, he may ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... shall not be accused of pedanticism or of political bias if we prefer them to the later versions. We therefore in this book do not speak of Fiume but of Rieka, not of Cattaro but of Kotor, and so forth. In other parts a greater laxity is permissible, since no false impression is conveyed by using the non-Slav version. Thus we have preferred the more habitual Belgrade to the more correct Beograd, and the Italian Scutari to the Albanian Shqodra. The Yugoslavs themselves are too deferential towards the foreign nomenclature ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... Review, March, 1812, vol. vii. p. 191: "The moral code of chivalry was not, we admit, quite pure and spotless, but its laxity on some points was redeemed by the noble spirit of gallantry which courted personal danger in the defence of the sovereign ... of women because they are often lovely, and always helpless; and of the priesthood.... ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... resemblance to the mermaid, but repudiates the idea of its having given rise to the fable, by being mistaken for one. This error he imagines must have arisen at a time when observations on such matters were made with culpable laxity; but now more recent and minute attention has established the truth ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... 1621. In this last year came his fall. He was charged with bribery, and condemned; the king remitted the imprisonment and fine, and for the remainder of his life Bacon devoted himself to science, rejecting every suggestion toward a renewal of his political activity. The moral laxity of the times throws a mitigating light over his fault; but he cannot be aquitted of self-seeking, love of money and of display, and excessive ambition. As Macaulay says in his famous essay, he was neither malignant nor tyrannical, but he lacked warmth of affection and elevation ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... spirit of enterprise and the consciousness of his strength led him generally to prefer the wrong side to the right, and to support error with more vivacity and appearance of enjoyment than he did truth. His fault seemed to consist in the abuse of his strength; in that laxity of colloquial morals (if I may use the phrase) of which I have, just spoken, and which led him to triumph, with equal pleasure, in ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... suggestion, and also made an expressive gesture to indicate the general laxity of her dress—the soiled dressing-gown, her untidy hair. Then she leaned forward again, holding both hands, palms out, to the mica pane in the door of the stove, through which ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... before their minds that they are the guardians of the law, and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more. As a finality he was obliged to confess that he was a bad citizen, and also that the general laxity of the time, and the absence of a sense of duty toward any part of the community but the individual himself were ingrained in him, am he was no better than the rest ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... truth, a sort of whipping-boy, by whose vicarious agonies all the other transgressors of the same class are, it is supposed, sufficiently chastised. We reflect very complacently on our own severity, and compare with great pride the high standard of morals established in England, with the Parisian laxity. At length our anger is satiated. Our victim is ruined and heart-broken. And our virtue goes quietly to sleep ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... cases, with almost certain effect, by the will and conduct of the master—passes over, with an indolent and epicurean censure, the lighter delinquencies which he may happen to detect, laughs perhaps at his own laxity, and, when at length alarmed, discharges the culprit without a character, and relieves himself, at the expense of he knows not whom, by making of a corrupted menial a desperate outcast. If it be said ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... religions of the Americans the more anomalies you find. I asked a New York lady at Newport if she had ever met Miss ——, a prominent Chinese missionary. She had never heard of her, and considered most missionaries very ordinary persons. This same lady, when some one spoke about laxity of morals, replied, "It is not morals but manners that we need"; and I can assure you that this high-church lady, a model of propriety, judged her men acquaintances by that standard. If their manners were correct, she apparently did not care what moral lapses they committed ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... scarcely conscious of its presence, and makes them somewhat careless as to forms and times of public or of that of private worship. I do not think that I am wrong in saying that there is a growing laxity in that matter among people who are really trying to live Christian lives. We may well take the lesson which Christ's prayers teach us, for we all need it, that no life is so high, so holy, so full ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... You follow one extreme, and we the other. I don't say that a middle course exists. The history of mankind shows our painful efforts to find one, but they have invariably resolved themselves into asceticism, or laxity, acting and reacting. The moral question is, if a naughty little man, by reason of his naughtiness, releases himself from foolishness, does a foolish little man, by reason of his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the want of heartiness of belief in the value of knowledge respecting the laws of health and disease, and of the foresight and care to which knowledge is the essential preliminary, which is so often noticeable; and a corresponding laxity and carelessness in practice, the results of which ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... are heterodox rather than low-caste. The Rajas of Bharatpur, Dholpur, Nabha, Patiala, and Jind are all Jats. The Jats are a fine and interesting people, who seem to suffer little deterioration from the notorious laxity of their matrimonial arrangements. They are skilled and industrious cultivators. A saying has been current in Upper India that, if the British power is ever broken, the succession will pass to ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... needs be many. So much so, that the prison-house was eventually full to overflowing, and the town-hall was full also. Besides the number lodged in prison, a number had escaped by leaping down the walls, and there were others who were suffered to pass through the gates (a laxity easily explained, since no one, excepting those who were anticipating their own downfall, cherished any wrathful feeling against anybody). But what was a source of still graver perplexity to the Theban commander ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... that proceeded the stream of culture which is known as Humanism, and which, no doubt, in time, was so largely concerned in bringing about that indifference to spiritual things which, leading to general laxity and indulgence, filled Savonarola ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... too pleased. Now, if you wait for me while I change my boots we'll go out together." And the two men crossed the Green Park talking of the great moral laxity of the time they lived in; whereas in the eighteenth century men were even accused of boasting of their successes, now the conditions were reversed, men never admitting themselves to be anything else but virtuous; women, on the contrary, publishing their liaisons, and taking little pleasure ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... and from corrections of grammar to alterations of rhythm; if he is in for a penny, he is in for a pound. The first poem in the Rossetti MS. may be adduced as one instance—out of the enormous number which fill Mr. Sampson's notes—of the dangers of editorial laxity. ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... metaphors. Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse, retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public. Plato's quarrel was not so much with poetic art as with ancient myth and emotional laxity: he was preaching a crusade against the established church. For naturalistic deities he wished to substitute moral symbols; for the joys of sense, austerity and abstraction. To proscribe Homer was a marked way of protesting against the frivolous reigning ideals. The case is much as if we should ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Tendilla set himself vigorously to reform these excesses: he knew that laxity of morals is generally attended by neglect of duty, and that the least breach of discipline in the exposed situation of his fortress might be fatal. "Here is but a handful of men," said he; "it is necessary that each ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... myself, with my Scots caution, as a model of tact and discretion; but after many conversations with Doggie, I'm beginning to have my doubts. I also imagined that I was very careful of my personal belongings; but facts have convicted me of criminal laxity." ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... soldiers lodging, fire, candle-light, small-beer, salt and vinegar gratis.' Burke's Corres. iv. 258. Johnson wrote in 1758 (Works, vi. 150):—'The manner in which the soldiers are dispersed in quarters over the country during times of peace naturally produces laxity of discipline; they are very little in sight of their officers; and when they are not engaged in the slight duty of the guard are suffered to live every man his own way.' Fielding, in Tom Jones, bk. ix. ch. 6, humourously describes an ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... other transgressors of the same class are, it is supposed, sufficiently chastised. We reflect very complacently on our own severity, and compare, with great pride, the high standard of morals established in England, with the Parisian laxity. At length, our anger is satiated, our victim is ruined and heart-broken, and our virtue goes quietly to sleep for seven ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... writers of that very paper are given to frequent and sneering attacks on the alleged yellowness and the boasting proclivities of the jingo Yankee sheets; also, they are prone to spasmodic attacks on the laxity of our marriage laws. Perhaps what they say of us is true; but for unadulterated nastiness I never saw anything in print to equal the front page of a so-called sporting weekly that circulates freely in London, and I know of nothing to compare with the brazen exhibition ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... Divine Master. If, on the other hand, he be a Christian, let him remember that while he is commanded to preach repentance and remission of sins in the Saviour Jesus, he is also warned against 'teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.'" All this seems like charity, but really it is laxity. ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... taken place between himself and Mr. Adams. Those who know all the story about Mr. Airy being arrested in his progress by the neglect of Mr. Adams to answer a letter, with all the imputations which might have been thrown upon himself for laxity in the matter, know also that Mr. Airy's conduct exhibited moral courage, honest feeling, and willingness to sacrifice himself, if need were, to the attainment of the ends of private justice, and the establishment of a national claim. A writer in a magazine, in a long and elaborate article, argued ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... not alienation of mind, but general laxity and feebleness, a deficiency rather of his vital than intellectual powers. What he spoke wanted neither judgment nor spirit; but a few minutes exhausted him, so that he was forced to rest upon the couch, till a short cessation ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... to be officially welcomed in the ancestral temple. With reference to this curious law, which is totally un-Chinese in its startling originality, it may be mentioned that it seems to have gradually led to that laxity of morals in ancient Yiieh which is still proverbial in those parts; for, when the First August Emperor was touring over his new empire in 212 B.C., he left an inscription (still on record) at the old Yiieh capital, ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... For the Christian there were two courses open—both excesses, yet either almost unavoidable: on the one side, a terrible rigorism, making life unsupportable, next to impossible; on the other, a laxity of thought and action leading ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... went to morning-prayers at least three or four times in the week; though I cannot say that his behaviour there accorded very well with the business he was engaged upon. Some blamed the Bishops and other ministers for their laxity and the flattery that they shewed to His Majesty: but I do not think that charge is a fair one; for they were very bold indeed upon occasion. Dr. Ken, who preached pretty often, was as outspoken as a preacher well could be, denouncing the sins ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... me with serious concern of a certain female friend's 'laxity of narration, and inattention to truth.'—'I am as much vexed (said he) at the ease with which she hears it mentioned to her, as at the thing itself. I told her, "Madam, you are contented to hear every day said to you, what the highest of mankind have died for, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... of care for the coming generation, and, especially, of that great love which one day will come into their lives. It should not be called a "sin"; at the same time it should not be laughed at and made the subject of a whispered jest. Sexual laxity should be treated in the same way as dishonesty and untruthfulness—a sin against oneself, against the beauty of one's own soul, and against those who believe in us and love us and are our world. Children should be taught to respect the ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... of wax or copal screwed out of the natives at a cost of five centimes or less, he received into his pocket a bonus of fifteen centimes, that is to say the bonus to Meeus was three times what the natives got; if by any laxity or sense of justice, the cost of the wax or copal rose to six centimes a kilo, Meeus only got ten centimes bonus, ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... begun by Bernald's running across Doctor Robert Wade one hot summer night at the University Club, and by Wade's saying, in the tone of unprofessional laxity which the shadowy stillness of the place invited: "I got hold of a queer fish at St. Martin's the other day—case of heat-prostration picked up in Central Park. When we'd patched him up I found he had nowhere to go, and not a dollar in ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... 'Guffawgraph,' as he jocularly called it in his 'Prospectus,' and, from the first, its guiding spirit. Happily so, for his was a spirit fitted to rule, both by power, and tact, and taste. With 'Uncle MARK' in the chair, I knew there would be neither austere autocracy, nor faineant laxity, neither weakness of stroke nor foulness of blow, neither ...
— Punch, Volume 101, Jubilee Issue, July 18, 1891 • Various
... that the apparently unreasonable position of the law was assumed with a good object in view, and it is probable that the object was the protection of the court from the swarm of so-called experts which might be hatched by a laxity in the wording of the law. Few things would be easier for a dishonest person than to swear he was a competent expert, and then to swear that a document was, in his opinion, forged or genuine, according ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... awakening force. Those of good family led, for the most part, worldly and frivolous lives, while the humbler sort were as ignorant as the peasants among whom they lived. The religious wars had led to laxity and carelessness; drunkenness ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... taking the vote and of safeguarding the honesty of elections should be the most important and fundamental of all questions in a republic. Such laws ought to be preliminary to all other laws. Yet as a matter of fact the laxity and ambiguity of many state election laws and the utter inadequacy of provisions for enforcement are almost unbelievable. The contemplation of the actual facts seriously reflects upon the intelligence and good faith of the successive ...
— Woman Suffrage By Federal Constitutional Amendment • Various
... bewildering outcry against the slightest license in literature. Strange that in a manifestly impure age there should be a national tendency towards chaste literature. I am not sure that a moral literature does not of necessity imply much laxity in practical morality. We seek in art what we do not find in ourselves, and it would be true to nature to represent an unfortunate woman delighting in reading of such purity as her own life daily insulted ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... commands must be avoided, as it leads to laxity in execution. Commands should be given with spirit ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... has twelve visitas or dependent towns. From this condition there results, among other evils, this: that when there is any cura who is unruly or of evil conduct, there is no method of summoning him to the convent and replacing him with another. Hence proceeds the laxity which is ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... access to the harbor of New-York, the number of hiding-places about its waters, and the laxity of its newly organized government, about the year 1695, made it a great rendezvous of pirates, where they might dispose of their booty and concert new depredations. As they brought home with them wealthy lading of all kinds, the luxuries of ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... becoming dresses for boys and girls, decreed that lute playing and deportment should become obligatory subjects in the curriculum, and otherwise reformed the scholastic calendar which, before his day, had drifted into sad confusion and laxity. Sometimes he honoured the ceremony of prize-giving with his presence. On the other hand it must be admitted that, judged by modern standards, certain of his methods for punishing disobedience smacks of downright pedantry. Thrice a year, on receiving ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... quietly. Then, encouraged by this evidence of laxity in his officer, made bold to add, "A queer fish, sir." This was tentative, and Mr Powell, busy with his own view, not saying anything, he ventured further. "They are more like passengers. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... which a man of rank in the management of his duties should set store upon:—A lively manner and deportment, banishing both severity and laxity; a frank and open expression of countenance, allied closely with sincerity; and a tone in his utterances utterly free from any approach to vulgarity and impropriety. As to matters of bowls and dishes, leave such ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... who had heard early in the morning that the Queen was dying, had crowded every street that led to the palace. Some had even pressed into the courts in their anxiety to know the truth. Laxity seemed to prevail among the guards, for many people who carried weapons ill-concealed in their lambas, and whose looks as well as movements were suspicious, were allowed to enter. These were the partisans of Rambosalama. Indeed it is probable that even among the guards ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... been given during the war, and here I may as well mention—although this tale does not pretend to be a history of the war—that it has been carried on with far too great laxity, owing to the ignorance of our Generals and the demoralizing influence of self-interest and nepotism. We should have sent our forces far into the Cape Colony to get help from our brothers in a war that had been forced upon us by England. The Colonial Afrikanders never had the opportunity ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... observation post, for which it was admirably adapted, as it looks down into the British position on Groen Kop. Moreover, the customary movements for protection, such as the relief of outposts, were carried out with such extraordinary laxity and neglect that De Wet was soon able to acquaint himself with almost every detail of the defence. Even the emplacements of a field gun and a pom-pom were disclosed by shots casually fired for ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... who, as these have nothing to leave them, are left unprotected; the illegitimate daughters of Spaniards and Indian women (and they are numerous), every one of whom is ruined if she is not sheltered here, because of the great laxity [of morals] in the country; and all are taught and instructed until they depart married. Some married women who quarrel with their husbands are also sheltered there, until the trouble is smoothed over; and there ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... moon, a warning to all Sabbath-breakers." Thereupon the stranger vanished; and the man was caught up with his staff and faggot into the moon, where he stands yet.' According to some narrators the stranger was Christ; but whether from German laxity in such matters or for some other reason, no text is quoted in evidence, as by the more orthodox British nurses. Luke ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... who was firm in his religious convictions in his native village, having heard of the religious laxity prevalent in America, had fully made up his mind not to be misled by the temptation and allurements of the free country, but he succumbed in his struggle and renounced his Judaism when first submitting his chin to the barber's razor, at the entreaties and persuasions of his Americanized ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... regarding entering the water is as follows: "No one of the party shall enter the water for swimming or bathing except at the time and place designated, and in the presence of a leader." Laxity in the observance of ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... for you and Fairdale," went on Duane. "I don't accuse you and your court of dishonesty. I say STRANGE! Law here has been a farce. The motive behind all this laxity isn't plain to me—yet. But ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... guest; and the elder Mr. Langton and his lady, being fully capable of understanding his value, were not wanting in attention. He, however, told me, that old Mr. Langton, though a man of considerable learning, had so little allowance to make for his occasional 'laxity of talk[1392],' that because in the course of discussion he sometimes mentioned what might be said in favour of the peculiar tenets of the Romish church, he went to his grave believing him to be ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... regard it as "practically obsolete." But the event has proved that no law is obsolete until it is repealed. It has also proved Lord Coleridge's observation that there is, in the case of some laws, a "discriminating laxity," as well as Professor Hunter's remark that the Blasphemy Laws survive as a dangerous weapon in the hands of any fool or fanatic who likes to set them ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... live as he liked; it was hoped, but it was by no means demanded, that he would make himself agreeable, like a gentleman invited to a dinner-party. Allowing, however, for everything that was a concession to worldly traditions and to the laxity of man's nature, there must have been in the enterprise a good deal of a certain freshness and purity of spirit, of a certain noble credulity and faith in the perfectibility of man, which it would have been easier ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... many characteristics of Russian society, both intellectual and moral, such as the absence of intellectual interests, routine, narrowness, and egotism in the middle-class merchants; self-satisfied philistinism; the patriarchal laxity of provincial morals; the lack of humanity and the Asiatic ferocity towards inferiors; the slavery of women and children under the weight of family despotism. His volume of articles on Pushkin constitutes a complete ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... the uttermost ends of the World, but that was not the way the thing was to be done. Flesh and Blood were bought and sold in those days, and it did not much matter about the colour. By that strange Laxity which then tempered the severity of the Laws, I was permitted, for many days after my Fate was settled, to remain in a kind of semi-Enlargement. I suppose that Mr. Shapcott gave bail for me; but I was taken into his Family, and treated with the most Loving Kindness, till the fearful intelligence ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... entertained himself! Few men relish infidelity in a woman, whose proper sphere would seem to be in believing and in worshipping, and not in cavilling, or in splitting straws on matters of faith. Perhaps it is that we are apt to associate laxity of morals with laxity of belief, and have a general distaste for releasing the other sex from any, even the smallest of the restraints that the dogmas of the church impose; but we hold it to be without dispute that, with very few exceptions, every ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... ideas; with the politician, his notion of liberty and equality; with the divine, what he deems orthodox; with the political economist, what he considers to be value and rent! By this means we may avoid, what is perpetually recurring, that extreme laxity or vagueness of words, which makes every writer, or speaker, complain of his predecessor, and attempt sometimes, not in the best temper, to define and to settle the signification of what the witty South calls "those rabble-charming ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... sad is the laxity with which men in these days suffer the most inconsistent opinions to lie jumbled lazily together in their minds,—holding the antimoralism of Paley and the hypophysics of Locke, and yet gravely, and with a mock faith, talking of God as a pure spirit, of passing out ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... myself with fasting, to see if any weakness or laxity in my office, as shepherd of this flock, might be the occasion of this license given to Satan. And it behooveth you, each in his own soul, and in his own household, to make inquisition lest some sin of his or ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... vigilant protectors she has had to guard her sleep," I said, with bitter self-reproach, no longer daring to blame Blaise for a laxity of which I had been equally guilty. "You are right," I went on, "she must know nothing. Now tell me at once exactly ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... with each other, it was believed that when the canoe approached the floating turtle, the male would separate from the female and both would dive down in different directions. So at Mowat in New Guinea men have no relation with women when the turtles are coupling, though there is considerable laxity of morals at other times. In the island of Uap, one of the Caroline group, every fisherman plying his craft lies under a most strict taboo during the whole of the fishing season, which lasts for six or eight weeks. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... dismisses it with a burst of indignation. He next considers the less offensive view, that all benevolence and generosity are resolvable in the last resort into self-love. He does not attribute to the holders of this opinion any laxity in their own practice of virtue, as compared with other men. Epicurus and his followers were no strangers to probity; Atticus and Horace were men of generous dispositions; Hobbes and Locke were irreproachable ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... contrite Maso, and stretched his arm towards the Leman, in a way to give the observers an inkling of his subject. The countenance of the Herr Hofmeister changed from official sternness to an expression of decent concern as he listened, and ere long it took a decidedly forgiving laxity of muscle. When the other had done speaking, he bowed a ready assent to what he had just heard, and returned to ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... concerning the way of salvation. This, too, accounts for the fact that in this writing the accusation is more impressively repelled than before, that the doctrine of justification by faith lone resulted in moral laxity, and that, on the other hand, the fundamental and radical importance of righteousness by faith for the whole moral life is revealed in such a heart-refreshing manner. Luther's appeal in this treatise to kings, princes, the nobility, municipalities and communities, to declare against the misuse of ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... scientific teaching known to the author; it is in harmony with the laws of vocal hygiene; it gives the singer beautiful tones, and leaves her with improved, and not injured, vocal organs. Such an arrangement of the registers is not marred by the rigidity of Madame Seiler's nor the laxity of Mackenzie's, but combines flexibility with sufficiently ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... unseemliness. He acted upon his audience, and the audience reacted upon him. He thundered against the profligacy of the rich, the selfishness of Society, the iniquities of the government, the excesses of the monks, the laxity of discipline in the schools, and the growing tendency in the Church to worship the Golden Calf. In some instances priests and monks had married, and he thundered ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... every-day life, deserve hanging without the mercy of trial. A due observance of Sunday, and especially the English country observance of Sunday, is one of the saving graces of our national constitution. In the large towns, a growing laxity concerning the 'keeping of the seventh day holy,' is plainly noticeable, the pernicious example of London 'smart' society doing much to lessen the old feeling of respect for the day and its sacredness; but in small greenwood places, where it is still judged decent and obedient ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... of laxity, he had still less sympathy with the extreme piety bordering on folly of those whom he called "crazy saints." Enemy to every exaggeration, he blamed those who, for example, imposed upon themselves two consecutive fast days. Once when the Fast of Esther fell on a Thursday, a woman applied to Rashi ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... that of you. I'd issue a divorce coupon with every marriage certificate, and done with it," he said, in desperate disgust. "Then this whole cursed business would be done away with. It isn't a question of our laxity of divorce laws," he said, after a pause, "it's a question of the senseless severity of the laws in other States. That's what throws this demoralizing business ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... of adhesion, nonadhesion, immiscibility.] Incoherence. - N. nonadhesion[obs3]; immiscibility; incoherence; looseness &c. adj.; laxity; relaxation; loosening &c. v.; freedom; disjunction &c. 44; rope of sand. V. make loose &c. adj.; loosen, slacken, relax; unglue &c. 46; detach &c. (disjoin) 44. Adj. nonadhesive, immiscible; incoherent, detached, loose, baggy, slack, lax, relaxed, flapping, streaming; disheveled; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... modes of investigation, in their unwillingness to accept theories not proven, in their partiality for Facts, and in their devotion to the Inductive Method, although the nature of proof is still but dimly comprehended by them as a body, and much laxity creeps into their practical efforts at demonstration. Under the influence of Positivism, however, the Scientific field is being rapidly cleared of unestablished theories which formerly mingled with it, claiming to be an integral part of its area, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... actors admirable in private as in public life, and all the gentle and generous associations of the histrionic art, have not weakened the testimony of its greatest name against its less favourable influences; against the laxity of habits it may encourage; and its public manners, bred of public means, not always compatible with home felicities and duties. But, freely open as Dickens was to counsel in regard of his books, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... 1. Laxity of method in cultivating. 2. Poor means of transmission. 3. Severe competition by the United States. 4. Disturbed condition ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... material to choose from, and more of it, the 'Varsity wouldn't stand a ghost of a show in the eyes of the professional judges unless Billy would "brace up" and "take hold." Billy was willing as Barkis, but the faculty said it would put a premium on laxity to make Billy a 'Varsity captain even though the present incumbents were ready, any of them, to resign in his favor. "Prex" said No in no uncertain terms; the challenge was declined, whereat the institute crowed lustily and the thing got into the rival papers. As a result a select company of student ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... of the Civil Service, are, as a rule, a docile set; but every now and again a Government finding some laxity among prefects and sub-prefects makes a few examples. Three or four prefects of departments are transferred in disgrace to less important towns; two or three are cashiered, and the same method is followed with some of the sub-prefects. ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... intelligent delight in natural objects are seen more pleasantly in Grongar Hill (published in the same year as Thomson's Winter), a poem not without grammatical inaccuracies, one of which deforms the first couplet, but full of poetical feeling. In an ease of composition which runs into laxity he reminds us occasionally of George Wither. His chief merit is, that while independent of Thomson, he was inspired by the same love, and wrote with the same aim. Dyer is not content with bare description, but likes to moralize on the landscape he surveys. Thus, when looking on a ruined ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... proceeded from a thin upper stratum alone, on the other we have as a rule tacitly set down individual endowment (with a strong emphasis on our own) as illustrations of national character. In this respect, too, we showed that laxity in proving what we wanted to prove which abounds everywhere from the point where calculation with things weighable and measurable leaves off, and judgment begins. We think it an established fact—in accordance with just this arbitrary test of genius—that ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... in their stolen setting were cut and set by Sterne himself. Let us allow that the most expert of lapidaries is not justified in stealing his settings; but let us still not forget that the jewels are his, or permit our disapproval of his laxity of principle to make us unjust to ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... she still wore her dressing-gown, an unprecedented laxity. Beside her on the table-cloth lay a crumpled piece of buff paper. So it was by telegram that the news had come. Instantly I thought. The telegram is from father. He is coming home. Maybe he is on his way. In London even! The ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... of casting down your first ideas carelessly and at large, and then clipping them here and there, and forming them at leisure; this method, after all possible pains, will leave behind it in some places a laxity, a diffuseness; the frame of a thought (otherwise well invented, well turned, and well placed) is often weakened by it. Do I talk nonsense, or do you understand me?" [Footnote: Gray's Letters, vol. 2, p. ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... movement, or of muscular weakness, and occasional arthritic changes and a liability to re-dislocation, are the commonest sequelae. Prolonged immobilisation is liable to lead to stiffness by permitting of the formation of adhesions; while too early movement tends to produce a laxity of the ligaments which ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... said, for the overthrow of that anarchy in which the Unguarded laxity of the king had plunged the first Country in the world,—vous me pardonnec, Mademoiselle,—was now from the German princes, who, she flattered herself, Would rise In ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... avoid some observation on the contradictions, caused by the extreme rigor and the extreme laxity of this new public faith, which influenced in this transaction, and which influenced not according to the nature of the obligation, but to the description of the persons to whom it was engaged. No acts of the old government of the kings of France are held valid in the National Assembly, except ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... still rich and prosperous in Martinique there can be no question; but whether it continues to wield any powerful influence in the maintenance of social order is more than doubtful. A Polynesian laxity of morals among the black and colored population, and the history of race-hatreds and revolutions inspired by race-hate, would indicate that neither in ethics nor in politics does it possess any preponderant authority. By expelling various ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... Valmy guards had thronged at every turn, more vigilant than pickets who hold the lives of a sleeping army in their keeping, but at Amboise the doors swung open to the touch of almost the first comer, though it was not easy to be certain how much of this laxity was due to the guarantee of Villon's presence. A careless porter kept the outer gate, a single sentinel, lounging in the guard-room, let them pass into the central court unchallenged, and the servant or two they met upon the stairs gave them no more than a heedless ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... was nonsensical and mystical. They disowned even the title of a regular clergy, and allowed the preaching of any one who could draw together a congregation that would support him, or who was willing, without recompense, to minister to the spiritual necessities of his hearers. Although such laxity of discipline afforded scope to the wildest enthusiasm, and room for all possible varieties of doctrine, it had, on the other hand, this inestimable recommendation, that it contributed to a degree of general toleration which was at that time unknown to any other Christian establishment. The very ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... population, will of necessity defeat the aim of those who desire to improve the conditions of the poor by methods other than the practice of artificial birth control. To a very great extent Malthusian teaching was responsible for the Poor Law of 1834, the most severe in Europe, the demoralising laxity of the old Poor Law being replaced by degrading severity. Again, as recently as 1899, a Secretary of State reiterated the Malthusian doctrine by explaining that great poverty throughout India was due to the increase of population under the pax Britannica. Now the ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... severe rebuke from him, but his meditative temper drew him away from it even in his youth. It is not impossible that if his days had not been cut short, he might have impressed Parisian society with ideas and a sentiment, that would have left to it all its cheerfulness, and yet prevented that laxity which so fatally weakened it. Turgot, the only other conspicuous man who could have withstood the license of the time, had probably too much of that austerity which is in the fibre of so many great characters, to make any moral counsels ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... circumstance, but always insisting, with his companions of the same order, even on points that might seem inconsiderable, and urging upon them, that though they might think the deity was easily pacified, and ready to forgive faults of inadvertency, yet any such laxity was a very dangerous thing for a commonwealth to allow: because no man ever began the disturbance of his country's peace by a notorious breach of its laws; and those who are careless in trifles, give a precedent for remissness in important duties. Nor was he less severe, in requiring and observing ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... time, though the general structure of metres was not very much altered, the quantity of individual syllables appears to have undergone a complete change. Although metres quantitative in scheme continued to be written, they were written, as a rule, with more or less laxity; and though rhyme was sometimes adapted to them in Latin, it was more frequently used with a looser syllabic arrangement, retaining the divisional characteristics of the older prosody, but neglecting quantity, the strict rules of ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... those forces which come into action when the antagonist force is withdrawn. But though there is an inaccuracy in saying that the freezing of water is due to the loss of its heat, no practical error arises from it; nor will a parallel laxity of expression vitiate our statements respecting the multiplication of effects. Indeed, the objection serves but to draw attention to the fact, that not only does the exertion of a force produce more than one change, but the withdrawal of a force produces more than one change. ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... thought man could do and would do for the glory of God—transact religious forms, and fight; and upon those two points he was severe; but within the sphere of common practical life, where man's great trial lies, his code exhibits the disdainful laxity of a legislator who accommodates his rule to the recipient, and shows his estimate of the recipient by the accommodation which he adopts. Did we search history for a contrast, we could hardly discover a deeper one than that between St. Paul's overflowing standard ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... of the master of Crompton, and he had his house full half the year. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that his servants were found willing to compound for some occasional ill usage, in return for general laxity of rule, and many unconsidered trifles in the way of perquisites. His huntsmen and whips got now and then a severe beating; his grooms found it very inconvenient when "Squire" took it into his mad head to sally forth on horseback across country ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... weather-beaten antlers so excited him that he even forgot to maintain his chain of cigarettes. His dark eyes shone bright and eager and his full red lips grew tense in resolute lines that completely altered the previous laxity of his expression. ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... disadvantage to his children of the miserable story was thus left uncorrected, and this, rather oddly, was counted as HIS sacrifice. His mother, whose arrangements were elaborate, looked after them a great deal, and they enjoyed a mixture of laxity and discipline under the roof of their aunt, Miss Tramore, who was independent, having, for reasons that the two ladies had exhaustively discussed, determined to lead her own life. She had set up a home at St. Leonard's, and that contracted shore ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... she left the blossoms, and, being fond of precedent, we still do the same; unless we stop to think, we know not why. You may say there is here some perfidy to the republic and the honored dead, or at least some laxity of morals. We are lax, indeed, but possibly that is why we are so kind. We are not willing to "hurt folks' feelings" even when they have migrated to another star; and a flower more or less from the overplus given to men who made the greater choice will do no harm, tossed to one whose soul may ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... they received from Alexander IV of hearing confessions throughout the world. Not less strong was the hostility of the monastic orders which is often expressed in Matthew Paris's free-spoken abuse of them. They were accused of terrorising dying men out of their possessions, of laxity in the confessional, of absolving their friends too easily, of overweening ambition and restless meddlesomeness. They were violent against heretics and enemies of the Church. They answered hate with hate. They despised ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... darkness did Collins pass the last six or seven years of his existence, in the house now occupied by Mr. Mason, a bookseller in Chichester. His malady is described by Johnson as being, not so much an alienation of mind as a general laxity and feebleness of his vital, rather than his intellectual, powers; but his disorder seems, from other authorities, to have been of a more violent nature. As he was never married, he was indebted for protection and kindness to his youngest sister; and death, the only hope of the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... from his youth up. When I first knew Dr. Reilly he was Secretary of the Illinois State Board of Health, located at Springfield, and an occasional correspondent of the Chicago Herald. The State of Illinois owes to him its gradual rescue from a dangerous laxity in the matter of granting medical licenses, until to-day the requirements necessary to practise his profession in this state compare favorably with those of any other state of the Union. Shortly after I went from the Herald to the News, as related in a previous chapter, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... Albans in 1621. In this last year came his fall. He was charged with bribery, and condemned; the king remitted the imprisonment and fine, and for the remainder of his life Bacon devoted himself to science, rejecting every suggestion toward a renewal of his political activity. The moral laxity of the times throws a mitigating light over his fault; but he cannot be aquitted of self-seeking, love of money and of display, and excessive ambition. As Macaulay says in his famous essay, he was neither malignant nor ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... know your delivery is up to description so far as cup quality is concerned?" he answers that this is arrived at from the general appearance and the smell of the coffee in the green. Perhaps one reason for the laxity in buying cup quality may be explained by the fact that coffee is roasted very high, in fact it is burned almost to a charred state; and unless the coffee is unusually bad in character, the burned taste eliminates any foreign ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... place between himself and Mr. Adams. Those who know all the story about Mr. Airy being arrested in his progress by the neglect of Mr. Adams to answer a letter, with all the imputations which might have been thrown upon himself for laxity in the matter, know also that Mr. Airy's conduct exhibited moral courage, honest feeling, and willingness to sacrifice himself, if need were, to the attainment of the ends of private justice, and the establishment ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... self. That they were "disciplinary" stifled every question, subdued every doubt, and removed the subject from the realm of rational discussion. By its nature, the allegation could not be checked up. Even when discipline did not accrue as matter of fact, when the pupil even grew in laxity of application and lost power of intelligent self-direction, the fault lay with him, not with the study or the methods of teaching. His failure was but proof that he needed more discipline, and thus afforded a reason for retaining ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... not nearly so marked as it had been in infancy. These two things were conspicuous; the less salient peculiarities were observed later; the curious little beaky nose that jutted out at an unusual angle from the face, the lips that were too straight and determined for a child, the laxity of the limbs when the body was in ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... right; there was! A gravely-reproachful, sternly-commiserating 'leader,' wherein the apparently impeccable and highly conscientious writer 'deplored' the laxity of those who supported M. Carl Perousse in ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... great a number of enemies, composed of Chinese and Japanese. That argument was not the one of least weight in the council in determining that our fleet should not sail against the enemy. I think that there has been neglect and laxity in the matter of not driving out the Japanese. But, in the case of the Chinese [it is] the greed for the eight pesos that each one pays for the license to remain in the country, and the excessive profits ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various
... occurred, did not terminate so peacefully. About the middle of the third century disagreements respecting matters of discipline rent the Churches of Carthage and Rome. At Carthage, the malecontents sought for greater laxity; at Rome, they contended for greater strictness. At that time the confessors and the martyrs, or those who had persevered in their adherence to the faith under pains and penalties, and those who had suffered ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... this systematic manner resemble those windows whose shutters hardly permit the entrance of air enough to breathe, or light to see with. Generally these rules are made only to be broken, but D'Argenton allowed no such laxity. ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... or four generations and that you have most scrupulously observed the rules of etiquette and propriety. It's but fair that you should try, with one mind, and show some little regard for what's right and proper. But if you contrariwise behave with such laxity as to let people gratify their wishes by guzzling and gambling, and my aunt comes to hear of these nice doings, a little scolding from her will be of little consequence. But if the various women, who attend to the household, get scent of the state ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... younger days; now she was out of their reach, they tried in turn to comfort her; and when she would not be comforted, they, too, felt aggrieved by the presence of one whose austerity reproached their own laxity; they resented her disappointment at Soeur Monique's having been transferred to Lucon, and they, too, left her to the only persons whose presence she had ever seemed to relish,—namely, her maid Veronique, and Veronique's mother, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The Herb. D.—The leaves have an herbaceous, somewhat acrid, roughish taste, accompanied with an aromatic flavour. Agrimony is said to be aperient, detergent, and to strengthen the tone of the viscera: hence it is recommended in scorbutic disorders, in debility and laxity of the intestines, &c. Digested in whey, it affords an useful diet-drink for the spring season, not ungrateful to ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... drawn up, of the movements of the persons concerned, explaining the plan by which each priest (if he desired) might go on his own circuit where he would be most needed. She lamented, however, the fewness of the priests, and attributed to this the growing laxity of many families—living, it might be, in upland farms or in inaccessible places, where they could but very seldom have the visits of the priest and the ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... and had to be well fed and handsomely clothed. Learned men from other states were to be officially welcomed in the ancestral temple. With reference to this curious law, which is totally un-Chinese in its startling originality, it may be mentioned that it seems to have gradually led to that laxity of morals in ancient Yiieh which is still proverbial in those parts; for, when the First August Emperor was touring over his new empire in 212 B.C., he left an inscription (still on record) at the old Yiieh capital, denouncing the "pig-like adultery" of the region, ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... teaching." Motowori repeated these ideas in a slightly different way: "It is because the Japanese were truly moral in their practice, that, they required no theory of morals; and the fuss made by the Chinese about theoretical morals is owing to their laxity, in practice.... To have learned that there is no Way [ethical system] to be learned and practised, is really to have learned to practise the Way of the Gods." At a later day Hirata wrote "Learn to stand in awe of the Unseen, and that will prevent ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... remembered her as a young woman, pretty and pale, and frequently weeping, who used to sing him to sleep in a low, sweet voice. He had been brought up chiefly by his father's mistress, who was known as the Vicomtesse d'Oilly, a widow, and a rather good sort of woman. Her natural sensibility, and the laxity of morals then reigning at Paris, permitted her to occupy herself at the same time with the happiness of the father and the education of the son. When the father deserted her after a time, he left her ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... less careful as regards cleanliness, &c., after exposure to infection, and militates against effective treatment. It is to be pointed out, however, that the lower control possessed by some individuals may be the actual predisposing cause, both of laxity in sexual matters and of the excessive ingestion of alcohol. There appears no doubt that alcohol is an important factor in the prevalence of venereal disease, although probably not so potent ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health
... outsiders, but their family names show that at one time they probably did so, and this laxity of feeling survives in the toleration with which they readmit into caste a woman who has gone wrong with an outsider. They eat flesh and fowls, and the Dholewars eat pork, while as already stated they are fond of liquor. To ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... generally to prefer the wrong side to the right, and to support error with more vivacity and appearance of enjoyment than he did truth. His fault seemed to consist in the abuse of his strength; in that laxity of colloquial morals (if I may use the phrase) of which I have, just spoken, and which led him to triumph, with equal pleasure, in every ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... loyalty to the Apostolic See. Let this spirit be freely evolved out of that philosophical condition of mind, which in former Discourses I have so highly, so justly extolled, and it is impossible but, first indifference, then laxity of belief, then even heresy will be the ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... famous a hand than that of David Rizzio. So that here at least we have a vague echo of the name of a balladist and of a ballad-air composer. Between them, the maid of Mellerstain and 'Davy' have harmonised most musically, albeit with some touch of moral laxity, the spirit of pastoral and of ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... livres the hour for the bailiff. The black brood of judicial leeches suck so much the more eagerly, because the more numerous, a still more scrawny prey, having paid for the privilege of sucking it.[1351] The arbitrariness, the corruption, the laxity of such a regime can be divined. "Impunity," says Renauldon, "is nowhere greater than in the seigniorial tribunals. . . . The foulest crimes obtain no consideration there," for the seignior dreads supplying the means for a criminal trial, while his judges or prosecuting attorneys ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the whole able-bodied population, and details as for extra duty were the means by which physicians, clergymen, civilian office-holders, etc., were exempted from service in the army. These lists were rigidly scrutinized, and the laxity which had grown was corrected as far as possible. The aggregate of Hood's army, "present and absent," on August 1st, was 135,000, though his "aggregate present" was only 65,000. [Footnote: Ibid.] It included, of course, prisoners of war, deserters, and men otherwise missing, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... from previous correspondence that you and the President are not disposed to minimize the blots on the administration of the South African Republic, the weak points in the Constitution, and the ignorance and laxity that prevails in financial matters. To do so would be to fatally ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... would speak of the consequences to the tradesmen with whom they deal. In proportion to the delays which the tradesman has had to contend with in procuring payment of the account, is the degree of laxity with which he may expect to be favoured in the examination of the items; especially if he have not omitted the visual means of corrupting the fidelity of the servants. The accuracy of a bill of old date is not in general very easily ascertainable, and it would seem to be but ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... harsh rigidity of the old Russian laws had not the slightest influence, either in changing this national attitude or in diminishing the prevalence, at the very least as great as elsewhere, of sexual laxity or sexual aberration. Nowadays, as Russia attains national self-consciousness, these laws against immorality are being slowly remoulded in accordance with the national temperament, and in some respects—as in its attitude towards homosexuality ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... in derogation of natural right, it was peculiarly dependent upon artificial sustention; the South would not express the condition in this language, but acted upon the idea none the less. It was true that the North was not aggressive towards slavery, but was observing it with much laxity and indifference; that the crusading spirit was sleeping soundly, and even the proselyting temper was feeble. But this state of Northern feeling could not relieve the South from the harassing consciousness that slavery needed not only toleration, but positive protection ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... the smaller communities were at all applicable to their case, which was rather one of involvement in a common ruin than the result of any specific accusation. It is true there are instances of laxity at individual houses, showing a too easy discipline where they occurred, but there is nothing sufficiently extensive or important to compromise the Order as a whole, or materially damage its character in the eyes of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... quite unnecessary for us to give proofs of the laxity of moral principle which prevails so generally among the French. The world has not now to learn, that notwithstanding their high professions, they have but little regard either for truth or morality. According ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... herself to make so great a breach in the Sunday habits of her youth. As soon as David's ideals began to tease her out of thought and sympathy, his freedoms also began to affect her. She was no longer so much chilled by his strictness, or so much shocked by his laxity. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... particulars remained a peculiar people. As a rule, indeed, they were less rigid in their religious views and more tolerant of foreign customs than those Jews who remained in Palestine. But Paul's father was not one who had given way to laxity. He belonged to the straitest sect of his religion. It is probable that he had not left Palestine long before his son's birth, for Paul calls himself a Hebrew of the Hebrews—a name which seems to have belonged only to the Palestinian Jews and to those whose connection ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... with fire and sword, it is surely better that he should, in spite of all feelings of tenderness and compassion, cast aside the dearest affections at the command of his Redeemer, than that he should, in mere laxity and tenderness, turn aside from what seemed to him to be his duty. At least, this appears to be the opinion of the Apostle Paul. He tells us that he was "a blasphemer and a persecutor and injurious," that "he did many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth," that "being exceedingly mad ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... A 9 o'clock curfew law and that not enforced; parents allowing their children to roam the streets at night; misdemeanors winked at by those in authority, particularly the police; a general laxity on the part of parents and city ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... been done, but still more remained to be done. Complaining of his numerous deficiences, he thus wrote to congress:—"We have no store of ammunition, no tools for intrenching, no engineers to direct the construction of military works; we have no money, and want clothing: there is a total laxity of discipline; and the majority is not to be depended on in another action." If the English had, at this time, made a general assault, the Americans must inevitably have been driven from all their positions, and the war would soon have been over. After the battle of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... years. The National Metropolis in those days resembled, as has been well said, in recklessness and extravagance, the spirit of the English seventeenth century, so graphically portrayed in Thackeray's Humorist, rather than the dignified caste of the nineteenth cycle of Christianity. Laxity of morals and the coolest disregard possible characterized that period of ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... third example of the prevalent laxity of morals that occurred was the case of the Sanborn contracts. I was a member of the House when they were investigated, but took no special part in ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... languages were of small avail in managing the interior concerns and the vexatious finance of a great estate. The neighbors complained that her spoiled and neglected servants infected theirs, and that her laxity of discipline was more ruinous in its effects than the rigor of Blue Bluffs. But she just held out to them her helpless little hands in so piteous and charming a way that they could not cherish an instant's enmity. If she tried to remedy the evil complained of, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... and were enrolled in the holy clergy of the Church that is with us, I have debarred them from practising such poetry; and I am taking much trouble to sever this theatrical pursuit from ecclesiastical gravity and modesty, a pursuit that is the mother of laxity and is also capable of causing youthful souls to relax and casting them into the mire of fornication, and carrying them to bestial passions." The result of this asceticism was a jaundiced and inhuman outlook on life. There was much ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... laxity in the tenth century was to be brought to a close in the eleventh partly by the pressure brought to bear on the Papacy by the Saxon emperors, but still bore by the ambitious resolution of Gregory VII. This remarkable ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... "What-is-there-to-do?-I-do-it Pharisee," always on the search for a precept to fulfil; and, lastly, the "dyed Pharisee," whose externals of devotion were but a varnish of hypocrisy.[3] This strictness was, in fact, often only apparent, and concealed in reality great moral laxity.[4] The people, nevertheless, were duped by it. The people, whose instinct is always right, even when it is most astray respecting individuals, is very easily deceived by false devotees. That which it loves in them is good and worthy of being loved; but it has not sufficient penetration to distinguish ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... I accused the Postmaster General of was of having given a contract which was a byword for laxity and thereby laying himself open reasonably to the suspicion that he was conferring a favour on Mr. Godfrey Isaacs because he was ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... having walked round the ranks. "I am sorry to find all this laxity in the important matter of dress, and I rely upon you to take immediate steps to have ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... rib the elastic fibers were quite normal, but there was transformation of the connective tissue of the dermis into an unformed tissue like a myxoma, with total disappearance of the connective-tissue bundles. Laxity of the skin after distention is often seen in multipara, both in the breasts and in the abdominal walls, and also from obesity, but in all such cases the skin falls in folds, and does not have a normal appearance like that of the true ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Papacy, which strove to produce in the pastor a complete mortification and in the flock an undue excitement of the senses, engendered in the former severity and pride, in the latter laxity or stubbornness, and in this way created an unnatural separation between the priests and the people, which can not exist along with brotherly communion, as taught by the Gospel—and thus, because inwardly untrue and at war with nature, it hastened toward destruction ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... Giles Winterborne was nowhere to be seen or heard of. At the close of his tenure in Hintock he had sold some of his furniture, packed up the rest—a few pieces endeared by associations, or necessary to his occupation—in the house of a friendly neighbor, and gone away. People said that a certain laxity had crept into his life; that he had never gone near a church latterly, and had been sometimes seen on Sundays with unblacked boots, lying on his elbow under a tree, with a cynical gaze at surrounding objects. He was ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... temptations which beset Hugh. I hated all excess, and suffered in body if I drank or ate more than was wise. As regards worse things than wine and cards, I think Miss Wynne was right when she described me as a girl-boy; for the least rudeness or laxity of talk in women I disliked, and as to the mere modesties of the person, I have always ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... safe to presume that the apparently unreasonable position of the law was assumed with a good object in view, and it is probable that the object was the protection of the court from the swarm of so-called experts which might be hatched by a laxity in the wording of the law. Few things would be easier for a dishonest person than to swear he was a competent expert, and then to swear that a document was, in his opinion, forged or genuine, according to the requirements of his ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... arrive at this common basis, he had to reduce dogma to a low level, and his result was generally repudiated. Even Selden applied to Aconcio the remark ubi bene, nil melius; ubi male, nemo pejus. The dedication of such a work to Queen Elizabeth illustrates the tolerance or religious laxity during the early years of her reign. Aconcio found another patron in the earl of Leicester, and died ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and I am willing," said Phillotson with grave reserve, opposition making him illogically tenacious now. "A great piece of laxity will be rectified." ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... countries besides the one under our consideration religious houses and institutions have sometimes been effectually rooted out, at least for a time. When the French Constituent Assembly, by one of its destructive decrees, closed those establishments all over France, such of them as by their laxity deserved to die, ceased at once to exist, and poured forth their inmates to swell the ranks of a corrupt society, and add religious degradation to the immoral filth of the world. Those religious houses, within whose walls the spirit of God had not ceased to dwell, were indeed ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... 3d of September, from his headquarters at Gjatsk, the Emperor ordered his army to prepare for a general engagement. There had been for some days much laxity in the police of the bivouacs, and he now redoubled the severity of the regulations in regard to the countersigns. Some detachments which had been sent for provisions having too greatly prolonged their expedition, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... on the other hand, he be a Christian, let him remember that while he is commanded to preach repentance and remission of sins in the Saviour Jesus, he is also warned against 'teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.'" All this seems like charity, but really it is laxity. ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... of taking the vote and of safeguarding the honesty of elections should be the most important and fundamental of all questions in a republic. Such laws ought to be preliminary to all other laws. Yet as a matter of fact the laxity and ambiguity of many state election laws and the utter inadequacy of provisions for enforcement are almost unbelievable. The contemplation of the actual facts seriously reflects upon the intelligence and good faith of the ...
— Woman Suffrage By Federal Constitutional Amendment • Various
... that it is Christianity which is our chief guide, when the words of Christ point in such a very different direction from that which we have seen fit to take? Perhaps it is in order to compensate for our laxity of interpretation upon these points that we are so rigid in stickling for accuracy upon those which make no demand upon our comfort or convenience? Thus, though we conventionalise practice, we never conventionalise dogma. Here, indeed, we stickle for the letter most inflexibly; yet one would ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... indeed the fact, it cannot be held to be astonishing that disaster should have overtaken a fleet manoeuvred by a soldier! I recollect that Mr. Purvis also informed me that the boilers of two or three of the vessels (instancing the destroyed Chao-Yung) were worn-out and unfit for service. Laxity of discipline, too, seems to have resulted in disobedience or disregard of orders. As an instance of this, it is alleged that instructions telegraphed from the conning-tower of the flagship were varied or suppressed by the officer ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... Rights. The smaller and domestic fraction of Free Methodism separated itself upon an issue which may be most readily described as one of civilization. The seceders resented growth in material prosperity; they repudiated the introduction of written sermons and organ-music; they deplored the increasing laxity in meddlesome piety, the introduction of polite manners in the pulpit and classroom, and the development of even a rudimentary desire among the younger people of the church to be like others outside in dress and speech and deportment. They did battle ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... miles across the North Sea was a bold venture and one that the British had not believed the Germans would attempt at that time. British vigilance had been lax or the German fleet could never have gone so far from its base without discovery; and this laxity proved costly for the British; and might even have proven more ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... nothing is more common now than to see hardened criminals, both in England and Scotland, disposed of by the police magistrates, and for capital crimes receive a few months imprisonment. Their names and crimes never appear in the returns at all. There is no fault attached to any one for this seeming laxity. The thing is unavoidable. If the class of cases were all sent to the higher tribunals which formerly were considered privative to them, the judges, were they twice as numerous as they are, would sit in the criminal courts from one year's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... vias' was often heard to proceed, and he was by profession a speculator, yet in that significant book, the 'Autobiography,' he describes this age of Truth-hunters as one 'of weak convictions, paralyzed intellects, and growing laxity ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... elements inorganically arranged, instances enough have already appeared, and more are daily presenting themselves, to justify its extension to all cases in which chemical elements may be supposed combined with a certain degree of laxity, and so to speak in a tottering equilibrium. There can be no doubt that the process, in a great majority, if not in all cases, which have been noticed among inorganic substances, is a deoxidizing one, so far as the more refrangible rays are concerned. It is obviously so ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois
... sometimes think that all the life of man sprawls abed, careless and unkempt, until it must needs clothe and wash itself and come forth seemly in act and speech for the encounter with one's fellow-men. I suspect that all things unspoken in our souls partake somewhat of the laxity of delirium and dementia. Certainly from those slimy, tormented lips above the bristling grey beard came nothing but dreams ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... who comes into the world than to the lessons of the teachers. Men were dismissed from the colony, or otherwise punished, on bare suspicion of wrong-doing or wrong-thinking. Nor is it unlikely that hostility in high places may have availed itself of this laxity of law to ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... these by saying that, to the savage mind, which draws no hard and fast line between man and nature, all such things are possible; possible enough, at least, to be used as incidents in story. Again, as has elsewhere been shown, the laxity of philological reasoning is often quite extraordinary; while, lastly, philologists of the highest repute flatly contradict each other about the meaning of the names and roots on which they agree in founding their ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... reasons also with singular laxity and inaccuracy. After quoting the dictum that "on a certain amount of testimony we might believe any statement, however improbable," (pp. 140-1,) he scornfully adds;—"So that if a number of respectable witnesses were to concur in asseverating that on a certain ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... find. I asked a New York lady at Newport if she had ever met Miss ——, a prominent Chinese missionary. She had never heard of her, and considered most missionaries very ordinary persons. This same lady, when some one spoke about laxity of morals, replied, "It is not morals but manners that we need"; and I can assure you that this high-church lady, a model of propriety, judged her men acquaintances by that standard. If their manners were correct, she apparently did not care what moral lapses they committed ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... proud, was difficult: nothing was really good enough for him but the middling good; but he himself was prepared for adverse comment, resolute for his noble course. Hadn't Limbert moreover in the event of a charge of laxity from headquarters the great strength of being able to point to my contributions? Therefore I must let myself go, I must abound in my peculiar sense, I must be a resource in case of accidents. Lim-bert's ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... post, for which it was admirably adapted, as it looks down into the British position on Groen Kop. Moreover, the customary movements for protection, such as the relief of outposts, were carried out with such extraordinary laxity and neglect that De Wet was soon able to acquaint himself with almost every detail of the defence. Even the emplacements of a field gun and a pom-pom were disclosed by shots ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... argues at length (and, to my ignorance, persuasively) in favour of a genial laxity in the application of phonetic rules to old proper names. Do they apply to these as strictly as to ordinary words? 'This is a question that has often been asked . . . but it has never been boldly answered' (i. 297). ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... intellect have their charm. But still there was a cold and sharp levity in the tone of the man of the world that prevented the charm sinking below the surface. To Mrs. Leslie he seemed unconsciously to betray a laxity of principle; to Evelyn, a want of sentiment and heart. Lady Vargrave, who did not understand a character of this description, listened attentively, and said to herself, "Evelyn may admire, but I fear she cannot love him." Still, time passed quickly in Lumley's presence, and Caroline thought she ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book I • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... The laxity of the discipline which pervaded the camp at Cambridge, the inexperience of the officers, and the contests and petty squabbles about rank, all tended to excite great jealousy and discontent in the army. As yet, Burr was attached ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... have a great influence on private morals; and gradually into family and social life there comes that laxity in the daily relations of the citizens which Plato has wittily termed, "equality between things that are equal and those that ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... sense of incongruity, from the Vision of Mirza, or the paper on Westminster Abbey, to the true account of the death of Partridge, or the Tale of a Tub. If, however, he could wonder at the latitudinarian laxity of my taste, there was at least one special department in which I could marvel quite as much at the incomprehensible breadth of his. Nature had given me, in despite of the phrenologists, who find music indicated ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... chief priests," said the old man, "pronounced it unlawful to cast into the treasury the thirty pieces of silver, seeing it was the price of blood; but the gentility of the present day is less scrupulous. There is a laxity of principle among us, Mr. Murdoch, that, if God restore us not, must end in the ruin of our country. I say laxity of principle; for there have ever been evil manners among us, and waifs in no inconsiderable number, broken loose from the decencies of society—more, perhaps, in my ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... administration successfully maintained its ground; and, when {148} the Virginian group tried in the House to prove laxity and mismanagement against Hamilton, he was triumphantly vindicated. Had the United States been allowed to develop in tranquillity and prosperity for a generation, it is not unlikely that the Federalist party might have struck its roots so deeply as to be impervious to attacks. ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... to deal with countries and communities of an almost unexampled laxity, a laxity passing the laxity of savages, the laxity of civilised men grown savage. He dealt with a life which we in a venerable and historic society may find it somewhat difficult to realise. It was the life of an entirely new people, ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... camps regarding entering the water is as follows: "No one of the party shall enter the water for swimming or bathing except at the time and place designated, and in the presence of a leader." Laxity in the observance of this rule ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... of these occurrences where one is reported, because it is the interest of all parties to hush them up. The victims are, all hours of the night, climbing down ladders or crossing over from State to State, that they may reach laws of greater laxity, holding reception six months after marriage to let the public know for the first time that a half year before they were united in wedlock. Ministers of religion, and justices of the peace, and mayors of cities, willingly ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... of another,—of one body, of which Christ is the head. Consider what it would be, if our judgments of men and things were like Christ's judgments; neither strengthening the heart of the careless and sinful by our laxity, nor making sad the heart of God's true servant by our uncharitableness; not putting little things in the place of great, nor great things in the place of little; not neglecting the unity of the Spirit; ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... Hignett was roused. This, she felt indignantly, was the sort of thing she had been afraid would happen the moment her back was turned. Evidently laxity—one might almost say anarchy—had set in directly she had removed the eye of authority. She marched to the window and pushed it open. She had now completely abandoned her kindly scheme of refraining from rousing the sleeping ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... "Irish Eclogues." He showed them, at the same time, an ode inscribed to Mr. John Home, on the superstitions of the Highlands, which they thought superior to his other works, but which no search has yet found. His disorder was no alienation of mind, but general laxity and feebleness—a deficiency rather of his vital than his intellectual powers. What he spoke wanted neither judgment nor spirit; but a few minutes exhausted him, so that he was forced to rest upon the couch, till a short cessation restored his powers, and he was again able to talk with his former ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... "Laxity or no laxity, it is extravagant for him to be housed in the finest mansion in the city with a retinue of servants and attendants only excelled by Sir William Howe; to be surrounded by a military guard of selective ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... husband's family, and to fill a definite position in the aristocratic society of the place. The tone of that society was not a little lax. Yet, being notably defective in the saving grace of humour—as to the feminine portion of it, at all events—its laxity proved sadly deficient in vital interest. The fair Neapolitans displayed as small intelligence in their intrigues as in their piety. In respect of both they remained ignorant, prejudiced, hopelessly conventional. Their noble ancestresses ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... from what Cook himself tells us (above), and from what is now well known of the laxity of Tahitian morals, that this punishment would seem excessive to the natives, and especially to the women, who were accustomed themselves to bear ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... stampede of young colts, it seemed—and soon returned, each doing his part in bringing 'Bijah, for every separate boy had hold of him somewhere, as if at the least laxity on their part there was danger of his escape. 'Bijah grinned broadly and bore ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... how much of the blame was General Rutowski's: one could surmise some laxity of effort, and a rather slovenly-survey of facts, in that quarter. The Enterprise, from the first, was flatly impossible, say judges; and it is certain, poor Rutowski's execution was not first-rate. "How get across the Elbe?" Rutowski had said to himself, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... Liverpool, has found it of extreme value, and even unequaled by any other part of the body, for furnishing skin-grafts,[81] these grafts showing a vitality that is simply phenomenal, considering the laxity of its tissues and its seemingly adipose character. There is no doubt, however, that for skin-transplanting there is nothing superior to the plants offered by the prepuce of a boy, and where any large surface is to be ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... commented on the social changes in the years of his absence, and, I remember, was very hard upon what he deemed the follies incidental to a high state of civilization. Still later he darkly alluded to the moral laxity of the higher planes of Eastern society; but it was not long before he completely tore away the veil, and revealed the naked wickedness of New York social life in a way I even now shudder to recall. Vinous intoxication, it appeared, was a common habit of the first ladies of the city. ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... withal, that Angelo has been wont to set himself up as an example of ghostly rectitude, and to reflect somewhat on the laxity of the Duke's administration. These reproofs the Duke cannot answer without laying himself open to the retort of being touched with jealousy. Then too Angelo is nervously apprehensive of reproach; is ever on the watch, and "making broad his phylacteries," lest malice should spy ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... the main clause of their defense being that their conduct does not deprive their wife and family of satisfactory maintenance. Many a woman today, irreproachably respectable and church-going, will admit to herself if not to her neighbors, that she closes her eyes to her husband's laxity in sexual matters, "as long as he ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... has mastered even the rudiments of royalty, and we shall not take the trouble of answering it fully. We are now discussing the question for the benefit of persons of some degree of knowledge. Suffice it to say that any laxity of practice at Ottawa would do a good deal of damage to the monarchical principle itself, which, as Mr. Bagehot has pointed out, owes much of its force and permanence even in England to its hold on the imagination. The princess cannot go ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... the most of it by throwing themselves into the lower. Drinking was a habit of the country; and the drink that was drunk was of the strongest kinds, the fiery wines of Hungary and strong liquors. There reigned also a deplorable laxity of morals; and the graceful Polish women were very seductive. That Hoffmann followed the example of his colleagues, and plunged into the giddy whirlpool of miscalled pleasure, will perhaps appear natural when we take into consideration the sources of discontent that had for some time been ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... thy way?" With this entering wedge the parson clove into an analysis of practical politics which did not stick at instancing corruption near at hand, and whose climax was a bitter denunciation of ignoble leadership and the doubly ignoble laxity of the indifferent led. It was as pointed an attack on local conditions as he could frame without complications with his deacons, who were politically of divers minds, and the fusion managers might have used its final exhortation to "vote your conscience" as their own ammunition, ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... one extreme, and we the other. I don't say that a middle course exists. The history of mankind shows our painful efforts to find one, but they have invariably resolved themselves into asceticism, or laxity, acting and reacting. The moral question is, if a naughty little man, by reason of his naughtiness, releases himself from foolishness, does a foolish little man, by reason of his foolishness, save himself ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... changing their character. Schemes of plunder formed no part of the early plans of the rioters; now it began to be known that the rioters had their eyes turned towards the Bank of England and were planning to cut the pipes which provided London with water. With a little more laxity on the part of authority, and a few more successes on the part of the mob, it is possible that Lord George Gordon might have found himself a puppet Caesar on ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... eternity of its divine essence. And it would for a certainty fall on the day when it should allow a single stone of its edifice to be touched. Remember the terrible period through which it passed at the time of the Council of Trent. The Reformation had just deeply shaken it, laxity of discipline and morals was everywhere increasing, there was a rising tide of novelties, ideas suggested by the spirit of evil, unhealthy projects born of the pride of man, running riot in full license. And at the Council itself many ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... mountain-lands to replant the woods. These, however, seem to have been little observed, and it is generally true that the present condition of the forest in Italy is much less due to the want of wise legislation for its protection than to the laxity of the Governments in enforcing ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... things are not driven home, and effects upon which more skilful artists would dwell at length are dropped in a concentration upon other objects. The book, in the American edition, is also marred by numerous typographical defects that betray a singular laxity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... him, went to morning-prayers at least three or four times in the week; though I cannot say that his behaviour there accorded very well with the business he was engaged upon. Some blamed the Bishops and other ministers for their laxity and the flattery that they shewed to His Majesty: but I do not think that charge is a fair one; for they were very bold indeed upon occasion. Dr. Ken, who preached pretty often, was as outspoken as a preacher well could be, denouncing the sins of the Court in ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... was the state of New England, the laxity of New York and Virginia needs little evidence. Contemporary travelers found the New Yorkers singularly attached to the things of this present world. Philadelphia was prosperous and therewith content. Virginia was ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... her influence has any real power over the man. It is very hard for the man himself to know; for the passion having in itself a betterment, may deceive him as well as her. It might be well that a woman asked herself whether moral laxity or genuine self-devotion was the more persuasive in her to the sacrifice. If her best hope be to restrain the man within certain bounds, she is not one to imagine capable of any noble anxiety. God cares nothing about keeping a man respectable; he will give his very self ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
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