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More "Laziness" Quotes from Famous Books



... that must be my excuse. Now, however, there is an appearance of security which gives one a breathing-time, and my gratitude receives a sudden impulse. As for you, Maud, I regret to be compelled to say that you stand convicted of laziness; not a single thing do I owe to your ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... "Not laziness, old lad—fagged, and must rest when I can. Was I there? Of course I was. But oh, what a mess we made of it! Everything was well thought out; but you were too strong for us. We should have got them all away if they had not trapped us with the foot guards. ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn

... began to flow over the dreary scene, and at length it had the effect of rousing Oliver Trench from slumber. With the innate laziness of youth the lad turned on his other side, and was about to settle down to a further spell of sleep when he chanced to wink. That wink sufficed to reveal something that induced another wink, then a stare, then a start into ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne

... worn off, Percy was not so "finicky" in her tastes, Bessie was more careful of other people's feelings, Grace really seemed almost cured of laziness, Frank was by no means so hoydenish as she once was, and as for Wynifred, she was just as hearty and happy as it seemed a girl could be. Their independent, busy life on Green Knoll was doing them all a world ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe

... the start of me—thanks to my laziness in sleeping away the precious hours of the morning in bed. The one thing to do, was to follow her as speedily as possible. In half an hour more, I was out for a little walk by myself—and (what do you think?) my direction also was up the ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... itself quite invisible. My boys are quite demoralised by the cold. I find most of them have sold the blankets I gave them out at Buana; and those who have not sold them have left them behind at Buea, from laziness perhaps, but more possibly from a confidence in their powers to prevent ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... especially for being lazy! You see, cousin," said he, as he stretched himself at full length on a lounge opposite to Marie, "it's wholly inexcusable in them, in the light of the example that Marie and I set them,—this laziness." ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... sorry for my slothfulness when I came in, but since my error has led you to speak to me in such excellent fashion, my laziness has profited me double, for I have had rest of body by sleeping longer, and satisfaction of spirit by hearing your godly discourse." "Well," said Oisille, "let us for penance go to mass and pray Our Lord to give us both will and power to fulfil His commandments; ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... "What is laziness or idleness?" "It is a disgust from useful occupation; a disinclination to do anything; from which result indigence, want of cleanliness and misery, disease of body and the contempt of others." In writing this answer the gestures ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe

... weren't disturbed by the music?' Ponto says. 'My girls, you know, practise four hours a day, you know—must do it, you know—absolutely necessary. As for me, you know I'm an early man, and in my farm every morning at five—no, no laziness for ME.' ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... continues, "is to be limited to some particular parts of the world."[193] And again: "Bad laws have made lazy men—they have been reduced to slavery because of their laziness." The first portion of this remark—that bad laws have made lazy men—is not applicable to the African race. For they were made lazy, not by bad laws, but by the depravity of human nature, in connection and co-operation with ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... what!" exclaimed his lordship. "But naturally they'd have the Times! I dare say the beggars were too lazy to look it out. Laziness, what, what!" ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... laziness, cowardice, bad temper, greediness after pleasure—these are strictly speaking what the New Testament calls sins. Wickedness—iniquity—seem to be harder words, and to mean worse offences. They mean the evil things which a man does, not out of the weakness ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley

... Their dress is a very capacious, continuous garment of the yellow skin of the hair seal, seamed with sinews, and very rudely put together. Hundreds of yelping dogs lay about in all possible attitudes of laziness, whilst a few other village pets, e.g., a great bald-headed eagle, of a most bloodthirsty and ferocious aspect, and a couple of large brown bears with uncomfortable looking teeth and arms, suggestive of a long embrace, stood unpleasantly near, ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... am procrastinating," she replied. "It is a fit of sheer laziness. I ought to be elsewhere, but I was born without a conscience. If I had one I should try to quiet it by reminding it that I am fulfilling a long-delayed promise—I am making a garden for Mrs. Larrabbee. You know her, of course, since ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... all hours and in all circumstances. She never disturbed him but was ready to talk when he wished to listen, listened eagerly when he talked, and was silent and beautiful and restful to look at when he wished to indulge in the dissipation of mental laziness. ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)

... didn't you take it to him last night? Because of your damned laziness, I suppose. Do you think I give you wages for you to choose your own hours, and come dawdling up a quarter of ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... through the construction of the transcontinental railways, the financing of the western farms, and the building of our cities is largely due to the old New England doctrine that laziness and extravagance are sins. In some western communities it is popular to laugh at these New England traits; but had it not been for them, these western communities would never have existed. The industry and thrift developed by the old New England religion were ...
— Fundamentals of Prosperity - What They Are and Whence They Come • Roger W. Babson

... histories and foreign travels, while he neglected the living wonderful present, which weltered daily round him, every face embodying a living soul. For now he began to feel that those faces did hide living souls; formerly he had half believed—he had tried, but from laziness, to make himself wholly believe—that they were all empty masks, phantasies, without interest or significance for him. But, somehow, in the light of his new love for Argemone, the whole human race seemed ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... lions, and two flat pilasters upheld in the same fashion by winged griffins, may readily be distinguished. That these griffins are not repeated on the left of the relief, is due perhaps to the haste or laziness of the sculptor. He may have thought he had done enough when he had shown once for all how these pedestals were composed. However this may have been, the lions in this relief play exactly the same role as that attributed by us to the little model found by George Smith, and to the winged sphinx ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... and wrong; which some, wanting skill and leisure, and others the inclination, and some being taught that they ought not to examine, there are few to be found who are not exposed by their ignorance, laziness, education, or precipitancy, to TAKE ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke

... of the other's being taken from him. So there he lay, with his paws upon both, growling instead of enjoying himself. He was a larger dog than I, but not nearly so strong, being grown helpless and unwieldly through long habits of greediness and laziness. I saw that I could easily master him and take one of his bones by brute force, and at first I felt inclined to help myself by this means. I thought I had a good right so to do. I actually wanted the necessaries of ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland

... to the brain, the patient grows nervous and irritable or becomes dull and apathetic. How often is a child reprimanded or even punished for laziness and inattention when it cannot help itself? In many instances the morbid matter affects certain centers in the brain and causes nervous conditions, hysteria, St. Vitus' dance, epilepsy, etc. In children the impurities frequently find an outlet through the eardrums in the form of pus-like ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... cold and rain congregate homogenes, for they gather together you and your crew, at whist, punch, and claret. Happy weather for Mrs. Maul, Betty, and Stopford, and all true lovers of cards and laziness. ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... Livingstone came down the Zambesi in 1856, Colonel Nunez was the chief of the only four honourable, trustworthy men in the country. But while he has risen a whole herd has sunk, making loud lamentations, through puffs of cigar-smoke, over negro laziness; they ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... of his, Carl Sudsberger, who had long been a teacher like himself. He was a gentle old soul who loved children and understood them, and a more motherly creature than his wife could not well be imagined. Everything throve under her thrifty management, and she had no patience with laziness or waste. Any boy in whose bringing up she had a hand would be able to make his way in the world when the time ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston

... find the wonderful things, Daisy," he remarked, throwing himself back upon the moss with his hands under his head. His cap fell off; his blue eyes looked at her with a sort of contented laziness; never sleepily. Daisy ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner

... indeed an old maid—one of those old maids with a harsh voice and angular motions, whose very soul seems to be hard. She never would stand contradiction, argument, hesitation, indifference, laziness nor fatigue. She had never been heard to complain, to regret anything, to envy anyone. She would say: "Everyone has his share," with the conviction of a fatalist. She did not go to church, she ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... the native in blue trousers, worn out and exhausted, staggering with laziness and repletion, crosses the street to his own house and sinks feebly on to his bench. He is struggling with drowsiness and the gnats, and is looking about him as dejectedly as though he were every minute expecting his end. His helpless air drives Lyashkevsky out of all patience. The ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... the world. Our hearts and spirits would rise above the false shows of things, to God who has made all things; above fear and melancholy; above laziness and despair; above selfishness and covetousness, above custom and fashion; up to the everlasting truth and order, which is the mind of God; that so we might live joyfully and freely in the faith and trust that Christ is our king, Christ is our Saviour, Christ is ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... Consequently his presence embarrassed me not a little. He was a handsome boy, with blue eyes, long lashes, fair hair, and a gentle habit of speech. When I came to know him better, I learnt the quick wit and subtle power that lay beneath his laziness of manner; but at present the soul of Thomas ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... my rambling disposition, to the sun. Sincerely, I can't help finding a likeness myself, for they say the sun sends down much the same influences whenever he comes into the same signs. Now I am influenced to shake off my laziness, and write to you at the same time of the year, and from the same west country I wrote my last in. Since I had your letter I have often shifted the scene. I spent part of the winter, that is the term time, in London, and part in Croydon in Surrey. About the beginning ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... and I did not see her, either in the garden or at the window. The gardener scolded me for laziness; I was out of humor, tired of myself and ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... friend, Since I am now at leisure, And in the country taking pleasure, It may be worth your while to hear A silly footman's business there; I'll try to tell in easy rhyme How I in London spent my time. And first, As soon as laziness would let me I rise from bed, and down I sit me To cleaning glasses, knives, and plate, And such like dirty work as that, Which (by the bye) is what I hate! This done, with expeditious care To dress myself I straight prepare, I ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... had found in the Georgia "cracker" the lowest substratum of human society, but he was bright intelligence compared to the South Carolina "clay-eater" and "sand-hiller." The "cracker" always gave hopes to one that if he had the advantage of common schools, and could be made to understand that laziness was dishonorable, he might develop into something. There was little foundation for such hope in the average low South Carolinian. His mind was a shaking quagmire, which did not admit of the erection of any superstructure of education upon it. The South Carolina guards about ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... true in connection with our minds. We all see the fallacy of the old-fashioned hustlers' cry, "Make your work your hobby; think of nothing else; let every moment be subordinated to the dominating idea of your career; put aside all sentimentalism, all laziness and self-will, all enthusiasm about things not in your ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... The women, loaded with children and baskets, sit in the shade of the knobby trees which stretch their trunk-like branches horizontally over the beach, forming a natural roof against sun and rain. The half-grown boys are too lively to enjoy contemplative laziness; gossip and important deliberations about pigs and sacrifices do not interest them, and they play about between the canoes, wade in the water, look for shells on the sand, or hunt crabs or fish in the reef. Thus an hour passes. The sun ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... the isolation of Alaric's hut and his laziness saved the wanderer from this. Now, as he obeyed the boy's summons, he was brooding over his misfortunes and was more grim ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond

... I discoursed the business well, and thinks I shall get off well enough; but I do by Sir W. Coventry's silence conclude that he is not satisfied in my management of my place and the charge it puts the King to, which I confess I am not in present condition through my late laziness to give any good answer to. But here do D. Gawden give me a good cordiall this morning, by telling me that he do give me five of the eight hundred pounds on his account remaining in my hands to myself, for the service I do him in my victualling ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... rule, boys and girls choose to grow bush beans rather than pole beans. I cannot make up my mind whether or not this is from sheer laziness. In a city backyard the tall varieties might perhaps be a problem since it would be difficult to get poles. But these running beans can be trained along old fences and with little urging will run up the stalks of the tallest sunflowers. So that settles the pole question. There ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw

... at once ask permission to address Barbara. He entered with that good-natured air of easy laziness which was rather attractive in him, and without looking in the least troubled announced that what he had come ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris

... the two servants of the place, had taken care of him, and would continue to do so even after his father's death, or, if they did not, his uncle, the Hon. John McPherson, in London, would never see him want, he thought; so, with no bad habits except his extreme indolence, which amounted to absolute laziness, the boy's days passed on, until the hot summer morning in June, when he lay asleep on a broad bench under the shade of a yew tree, with his face upturned to the sunlight which penetrated through the overchanging ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes

... conjugality, slowly descended the hill. In that brief time, failing to get at any further facts regarding Jeff's life, or perhaps reading the story quite plainly, Miss Mayfield had twittered prettily about herself. She painted her tropic life in the Sandwich Islands—her delicious "laziness," as she called it; "for, you know," she added, "although I had the excuse of being an invalid, and of living in the laziest climate in the world, and of having money, I think, Mr. Jeff, that I'm naturally lazy. Perhaps if I lived here long enough, and got well ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte

... then, should not a broom, made of a shrub, which grew most likely in the vicinity of the building where the lazy novice lived, a shrub, perhaps, repeatedly touched by him while in a state of anger provoked by his laziness and distaste for his duty—why should not a quantity of his life-atoms have passed into the materials of the future besom, and therein have been recognized by Buddha, owing to his superhuman (not supernatural) powers? The processes of Nature are acts ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... of beggars throughout this kingdom, in proportion to so small a number of people, is owing to many reasons: to the laziness of the natives; the want of work to employ them; the enormous rents paid by cottagers for their miserable cabins and potatoe-plots; their early marriages, without the least prospect of establishment; the ruin of agriculture, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... The laziness of the workpeople, and the great number of holidays in which they indulge, early decided Bougainville to part for a time from his convoy, and on December 12th he set sail for Cochin-China. Before following the French to the little-frequented shores of that ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... despicable figure, and descends from a mean original. 'Tis the offspring of fear, of laziness and impatience; it argues a defect of spirit and resolution, and oftentimes of honesty too. I would not despair, unless I saw misfortune recorded in the book of fate, and signed and ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various

... take the laziness out of him. What do you suppose he was made for, if it was not to work? As if he was goin' to be took care of, and have me delve away all of my life, washin' and makin' over clothes for him, and he not work and pay for it. There's the ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock

... on one side of me, and my pupil (in the sulks) on the other. Out comes Mr. Midwinter to join us, though he had work to do in the steward's office, which he had never been known to neglect on any other occasion. Laziness, possibly? or an attachment to Miss Milroy? I can't say; we will lay it on Miss Milroy, if you like; I only know he did nothing but look at me. The third time was at the private interview in the park, which I have told you of already. I never saw a man so agitated at putting ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... that so much ingenuity should be all in vain! Chickens are often sleepy, and wish to retire sometime before the bees feel that they have completed their full day's work, and some of them are so much opposed to early rising, either from ill-health, or downright laziness, that they sit moping on their roost, long after the cheerful sun has purpled the glowing East. Even if this device were perfectly successful, it could not save from ruin, a colony which has lost its queen. ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... or how to discriminate. When such a person falls on honest slang, it is usually a relief, for then he uses language which is fresh and real to him; whereas such phrases in a cultivated person usually indicate mere laziness and mental undress. Indeed, almost all slang is like parched corn, and should be served up hot, or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... full length on the upward sloping, sun-warmed bank of sand and shingle. Only to youth is given enjoyment of perfect laziness joined with perfect physical vigour. Just because he felt equal to vaulting the moon or long-jumping an entire continent, should such prodigious feats be required of him, could he lie thus in glorious ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... that, when even the bees were diving deep down into the cups of flowers and stopping there, as if they had made up their minds to retire from business and be manufacturers of honey no more. The day was made for laziness, and lying on one's back in green places, and staring at the sky till its brightness forced one to shut one's eyes and go to sleep; and was this a time to be poring over musty books in a dark room, slighted by the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... I have been thinking of clearing out my drawers; for, for the last thirty years, I have been throwing my letters and bills pell-mell into the same desk, and this confusion has often caused me considerable trouble. But I feel such moral and physical laziness at the sole idea of putting anything in order that I have never had the courage to begin ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... will bear thee safe, O impetuous Achilles: but the fatal day draws nigh to thee; nor are we to blame, but a mighty deity and violent destiny. For not by our laziness, or sloth, have the Trojans stripped the armour from the shoulders of Patroclus; but the bravest of the gods, whom fair-haired Latona brought forth, slew him among the front ranks, and gave glory to Hector. And [though] we can run even with the blast ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... that had been enforced on the colonists, by which all their labor was to be devoted to the common stock. He gave out land in severalty, and the laborer enjoyed the fruits of his own industry and thrift, or suffered the consequences of his laziness. The culture of tobacco gave the colony a currency ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... you are right, Elizabeth Dering, and I like you better for it, though,—God bless my soul!—to think of you and the little girls working for bread and butter, while I count my hundreds of thousands and lay up in ease and laziness. Why, it makes me feel as I never supposed I could feel over any sorrow or privation that might come to Daniel Lathrop's daughter. But you're not like your father, no, you're not, and I'm glad of it, and if I had it to do over again, I would ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving

... mistake. He felt the difference in the touch instantly. Also he smelled the salt in my hand, for a taste of which Unk Wunk will put aside all his laziness and walk a mile, if need be. He tried to grasp the hand, first with his paws, then with his mouth; but I had too much fear of his great cutting teeth to let him succeed. Instead I touched him behind the ears, feeling ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long

... call an active friend. Admirable at giving counsel, no man saw his way so clearly; but he would not stir a finger for the assistance of those to whom he was willing enough to give advice: besides that, he had principles of laziness, and could be indolent by rule. To hinder your death, or procure you a dinner, I mean if really in want of one; his earnestness, his exertions could not be prevented, though health and purse and ease were all destroyed ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... venomous performance rather than for his lies, impudence, and laziness that his uncle used to knock him down. It must not be imagined that it was anything in the nature of a brutal assault. Dominic's brawny arm would be seen describing deliberately an ample horizontal gesture, a dignified sweep, and Cesar would go over suddenly like a ninepin—which was funny to see. ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... in God, which was founded upon such wonderful experience as I had had of His goodness; as if He that had fed me by miracle hitherto could not preserve, by His power, the provision which He had made for me by His goodness. I reproached myself with my laziness, that would not sow any more corn one year than would just serve me till the next season, as if no accident could intervene to prevent my enjoying the crop that was upon the ground; and this I thought so just a reproof, that I resolved for the ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... mother. She could be seen going to church of a Sabbath with the Bible under one arm and a small boy under the other, and her mind equally harassed by the tortures of maternity and eternity. When her offspring were found suffering from spring fever and the laziness which accompanies it, she braced them up with a heroic dose of brimstone and molasses. The brimstone given here was a reminder of the discipline hereafter; the molasses has doubtless been chiefly ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... with a gratified nod; "that's Abbie. She hates dirt worse than she does laziness, and that ain't sayin' a little. I tell her she'd sand-soap the weather vane if she could climb up to it; as 'tis, she stays below and superintends Dan while he does it. If godliness wants to stay next to cleanliness when she's around it has to keep ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln

... detained by the laziness of his ftagazis, who, when getting into a rich country, preferred eating the meat, eggs, and vegetables they ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... bought a ha'porth of milk, a ha'porth of sugar, and a ha'porth of rice. When the Parrot came there was nothing but this stingy fare. Moreover, the Cat was so inhospitable, that she actually made the Parrot cook the food himself! Perhaps that was her way of rebuking her friend for his laziness. ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke

... satisfaction at least, that such success does not mean a return to a lower standard of living but only a return to a simpler standard of living. With soap at five cents a cake it isn't poverty that breeds filth, but ignorance and laziness. When an able-bodied man can earn at the very bottom of the ladder a dollar and a half a day and a boy can earn from three to five dollars a week and still go to school, it isn't a lack of money that makes the bread line; it's a lack of horse sense. We found ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton

... had energy enough to tell me that much," remarked Bart, as he moved off. "Just like him, to lie here and wait for a chance ball to bring me in his direction. Jim certainly is the limit when it comes to laziness." ...
— Frank Roscoe's Secret • Allen Chapman

... of Thibet, the skins of which are highly valued in India. The poorest, i.e., those who have not the means to purchase arms for hunting, hire themselves as coolies. This is also an occupation of women, who are very capable of enduring arduous toil. They are healthier than their husbands, whose laziness goes so far that, careless of cold or heat, they are capable of spending a whole night in the open air on a bed of stones rather than take the trouble to go ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch

... his energy she had discerned in her husband a love of bodily ease, and a capacity for laziness, undeveloped because perpetually frustrated. Insidiously she had set herself to undermine his energy while she devised ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair

... with the other. Then lifting it suddenly above his head, he would extend his broad, left palm, and give himself a blow that would make them all start from their seats. Of all crimes or vices, none excited his indignation so much as laziness. It was with him the unpardonable sin. There was toleration, forgiveness for every one but the sluggard. He said Solomon's description of the slothful should be written in letters of gold on the walls of the understanding. He explained it to them as a metaphor, and made them to ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... they had carried on their heads, and Abu al-Muzaffar gave me the keys saying, 'Go before the slaves to thy house; for in sooth all this wealth is thine.' So I returned to my mother, who rejoiced in this and said to me, 'O my son, Allah hath blessed thee with all these riches; so put off thy laziness and go down to the bazar and sell and buy.' At once I shook off my dull sloth, and opened a shop in the bazar, where the ape used to sit on the same divan with me eating with me when I ate and drinking when I drank. But, every day, he was absent from dawn till ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... here, but they will not remain long, it is too quiet, too lonely, and the nights are too mysterious and uncanny, strange noises to disturb the slumbers of the timid. And besides there is nothing to do, no hurry or bustle or activity. The spirit of repose, of rest, of sweet laziness broods over this spot, inviting us to dream away the hours among the spicy pine trees. And for two such active ladies it is very dull here. Even when they go to town they return disgusted and weary in spirit because of the slowness of the natives, who are half Spanish, half Mexican. ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... teach children when they are teachable, and to instruct them to come to Christ in their childhood, when they can come in faith, is a great and grievous wrong. Will not all our brethren speak out upon this subject? Brethren, let us have no laziness here! Where a soul finds condemnation there the gospel ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various

... Carvil inside. "Bessie!—my pipe!" That fat blind man had given himself up to a very lust of laziness. He would not lift his hand to reach for the things she took care to leave at his very elbow. He would not move a limb; he would not rise from his chair, he would not put one foot before another, in that parlour (where he knew his way as well as if ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad

... have a king, she had slaves; oh, dozens and dozens of error-fairies, to do her will. Creepin' shadders they was, too, till somebody listened to 'em and give 'em a backbone. There's—let me see"—the apple woman looked off to jog her memory—"there's Laziness, Selfishness, Backbitin', Cruelty—oh, I ain't got time to tell 'em all; an' not one mite o' harm in one of 'em, only for some silly mortal that listens and gives the creetur a backbone. They jest lop over an' melt away, the whole batch of 'em, when Love comes near. She knows what no-account ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham

... What chiefly concerns us here is to note Schiller's awakening interest in historical studies. In the spring of 1786, during an absence of the Koerners which deprived him of his wonted inspiration, he found himself unable to work. Letter after letter tells of laziness and mental vacuity. As he could do nothing else he took to desultory reading, and this did not satisfy him. 'Really', he wrote on the 15th ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... a faithful member of the Little Fire order (Ma-ke-tsa-na-kwe), but he grew careless, neglected his sacrifices, and resigned his rank as "Keeper of the Medicines," from mere laziness. In vain his fathers warned him. He only grew hot with anger. One day Mi-tsi went up on the mesas to cut corral posts. He sat down to eat his dinner. A great black bear walked out of the thicket near at hand and leisurely approached him. Mi-tsi dropped his dinner and climbed a neighboring ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing

... book there will be no scenery. This is not laziness on my part; it is self-control. Nothing is easier to write than scenery; nothing more difficult and unnecessary to read. When Gibbon had to trust to travellers' tales for a description of the Hellespont, ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome

... considers pusillanimity as proceeding from a cause in the intellect. Yet it cannot be said properly that it is opposed to prudence, even in respect of its cause: because ignorance of this kind does not proceed from indiscretion but from laziness in considering one's own ability, according to Ethic. iv, 3, or in accomplishing what is ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... walk across the room and take a book off the table as if her life depended upon it, racing and pushing over the floor, grabbing the book and clutching it until she got back to her seat, or, how she might move with exaggerated laziness take the book up loosely, and drag herself back again. This illustration represents two extremes, and one, in itself, is as bad as the other; but, when the habit has been one of unnecessary strain and effort, the lazy way, practised for a time, will not only be very restful, ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call

... of owls! I never saw any one stare like you. This, my young friend, is a cup of tea, and this is a hard-boiled egg—the best choti haziri our chaps can manage—and the animal beside you, looking astonished at your laziness, is your horse, vulgarly termed a quad. But give me your hand, old boy, and let me haul you up to take part in ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... talk, Dunham. They know. J. B. says it's laziness. Let it go at that. Well, take it from me, it's contagious. You'll soon ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall

... my children! Let's enter into this thing in earnest and have a high old time. Bruce, you ought to be ashamed of your laziness." ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish

... habits of life of those who thus pretend to cultivate the earth? What shall bring them to a clearer realization of their position, their duties, their opportunities, their prospects? This lethargy of ignorance, indifference, and laziness must be shaken off and laid aside in the immediate future, by study and education, by active interest and participation in every discovery or invention which benefits agriculture; by the exercise of sound judgment in the choice of stock or crops for the farm; by economy in the disposition ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... get. Have you satisfied Irishmen yet? No, and you never will. The more you give, the more they ask. They never will be content. ''Tis not their nature to.' England now suffers for her own weak good nature. The true curse of Ireland is laziness. I left Belfast at twenty, but I am well acquainted with Ireland. In the North they work and prosper. In the South they do nothing but nurse their grievances. Twenty years' firm government, as Lord Salisbury said, would enrich the country. Do the right thing by them—put ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... that happy people are the busy people, and they return home cured of their discontent and laziness. ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston

... and Englishmen, who are fast filling up the principal towns, and getting the trade into their hands, are indeed more industrious and effective than the Mexicans; yet their children are brought up Mexicans in most respects, and if the "California fever'' (laziness) spares the first generation, it is likely to ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... baronet. "But," he continued, "I will not attempt to constrain you in any way. If you cannot find exactly what you want here, import men from abroad, by all means. I have a great deal of sympathy for want and suffering when they are the result of misfortune; but when they are brought on by a man's own laziness or perversity he must go elsewhere for sympathy and help; I have none to spare for ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... suppose that a man happy enough to wear Lady Guenevere's colors could lose? An embroidered scarf given by such hands has been a gage of victory ever since the days of tournaments!" murmured Cecil with the softest tenderness, but just enough laziness in the tone and laughter in the eye to make it highly doubtful whether he was not laughing both at her and at himself, and was wondering why the deuce a fellow had to talk such nonsense. Yet she was Lady ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... very lively and bossed the island like it belonged to him. If the natives could play all they wanted, now that David was deposed, they had bumped into something they had never known before and that was—work. The Commissioner couldn't abide laziness in a Kanaka, and went at them terrific, building a fine road around the island and another across it, with bridges and culverts, where he used to ride of a sundown in a buggy he had bought off Captain Sachs of the H. L. Tiernan, with men ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... want of the proper warrant; archbishoprics there are to be filled; and, because they are not filled, the whole nation is running helter skelter into heresy—and all in consequence of your majesty's sacred laziness." Our governments were less remissly administered; since each of us, by continued reports of improvements and gracious concessions to the folly or the weakness of our subjects, stimulated the zeal of his rival. And here, at ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... while passing from one method of work to another, from marble to bronze, and from bronze to clay, did this not by reason of laziness or because he was, as many are, capricious, unstable, and discontented with his art, but because he felt himself drawn by nature to new things and by necessity to an exercise according to his taste, both less fatiguing and more profitable. ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari

... natural wages of your laziness; if any one offers you a victim or a garland nowadays, it is only at Olympia as a perfunctory accompaniment of the games; he does it not because he thinks it is any good, but because he may as well keep up an old custom. It will not be long, most glorious ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... through which I travelled, less than 10 per cent. of the land seemed to be under cultivation, and statistics show that this is the general condition. A small area has sufficed to produce a living for the tao, or peasant, and he has not cultivated more—a fact due in part to laziness and in part to poor means of transportation. What need to produce what cannot be taken to market? This fact, in my opinion, goes far to account ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... and who says beggar evokes the completest type of filth and laziness. But with what an extraordinary combination of gestures, with what attitudes in the management of the long-stringed guitar, with what acrobatic swingings of the body do they accompany their singing of their legends and poetry which could not be more profane. The instinct of the old actor was ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne

... is what the workers said. But, as a matter of fact, each of them had reasons of her own for wanting to scare Buster. Indeed, there wasn't a worker in the house that was not disgusted with his laziness. And if he hadn't been the son of the Queen they would certainly have driven him out into the wide ...
— The Tale of Buster Bumblebee • Arthur Scott Bailey

... being married to him should make her feel secure enough of him to let herself go, although her instinct is warning her all the time that she isn't in the least sure of him. Her laziness must be stronger than her ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... of vice and misery, crime and disorder, laziness and rapine, the stranger confidently expected to see a commander appear whose flashing, fearless eye, and upright, powerful frame, would account for the awe in which ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... general view of the national utility resulting from this modern amusement, it appears admirably well calculated for the exercise of the legs of our nobility, gentry, and merchants, and may operate as an efficacious remedy for indolence, alias laziness. It will also be conducive to the benefit of those ingenious individuals who devote their talents to the fabrication of ornaments; and we may soon expect to see, in the advertisements of mantuamakers, milliners, hosiers, and tailors, a list of patent bounding ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various

... in your life so good a reason for not writing, either to me or to anybody else, as your sore finger lately furnished you. I believe it was painful, and I am glad it is cured; but a sore finger, however painful, is a much less evil than laziness, of either body or mind, and attended ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... is highest in the world hereafter. Freedom from the idea of meum, freedom from egoism, freedom from expectations, looking on all with an equal eye, and freedom from desire,—these constitute the eternal religion of the good. Confidence, modesty, forgiveness, renunciation, purity, absence of laziness, absence of cruelty, absence of delusion, compassion to all creatures, absence of the disposition to calumniate, exultation, satisfaction, rapture, humility, good behaviour, purity in all acts having for their object the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... then should not a broom, made of a shrub, which grew most likely in the vicinity of the building where the lazy novice lived—a shrub, perhaps, repeatedly touched by him while in a state of anger, provoked by his laziness and distaste of his duty—why should not a quantity of his life atoms have passed into the materials of the future broom, and therein have been recognised by Buddha owing to ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... talked against it. He began to be pointed out as the man who was against the mill. Ominous rumors had come to his ears, and threats. It was whispered to him that he had better be silent, and some of the people he preached to—some of those who had children in the mill and were supported in their laziness by the life blood of their little ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... mainly by hunting and fishing. Jo was a sharp-witted rascal, without a single scruple between, himself and fortune. With a tithe of Hans's industry he might have been almost anything; but his dense laziness always rose up like a stone wall about him, shutting him in like a toad in a rock. The exact opposite of Hans in almost every respect, he was notably similar in one: he had a hobby. Jo's hobby was the selling ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)

... no hope for him. Where could my salvation come from? How can I save myself? I cannot drink, because it makes my head ache. I never could write bad poetry. I cannot pray for strength and see anything lofty in the languor of my soul. Laziness is laziness and weakness weakness. I can find no other names for them. I am lost, I am lost; there is no doubt of that. [Looking around] Some one might come in; listen, Sasha, if you love me you must help me. Renounce me ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov

... quite well. The hot weather makes one feel rather limp, I suppose. At any rate, there is nothing else the matter with me but a fit of laziness." ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... mantelpiece. It was probably this fact that decided Ashe. If he had been compelled to postpone his visit to the offices of Messrs. Mainprice, Mainprice & Boole until the afternoon, it is possible that barriers of laziness might have reared themselves in the path of adventure; for Ashe, an adventurer at heart, was also uncommonly lazy. As it was, however, he could make an ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... of the vessel. Next day we bought horses and bent our way over the summer-clad mountain-terraces, toward the great volcano of Kilauea (Ke-low-way-ah). We made nearly a two days' journey of it, but that was on account of laziness. Toward sunset on the second day, we reached an elevation of some four thousand feet above sea level, and as we picked our careful way through billowy wastes of lava long generations ago stricken dead and cold in the climax of its tossing fury, we began ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... enjoyments so exquisitely exhilarating that, by Sydney's own confession, she became quite light headed with pleasure. She ran races with Kitty—and nobody reproved her. She rested, out of breath, while the stronger child was ready to run on—and no merciless voice cried "None of your laziness; time's up!" Wild flowers that she had never yet seen might be gathered, and no offense was committed. Kitty told her the names of the flowers, and the names of the summer insects that flashed and hummed in the hillside breezes; and was so elated ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins

... repletion and old age cannot dampen that passion. After a full meal an elephant will stand for hours in a sort of piggish torpor; a gorged bird seeks the tree-shade; an overfed dog and nearly every old dog becomes a picture of laziness. Monkeys rest only during sleep. Old age does not affect their nimbleness; they can be fattened, for I have seen baboons as sleek as seals, but, like Gibbon, Henry Buckle, and Marshal Vendome, they prove that the energy of a strong will ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... occasion. One wonders if the young men ever longed for the sport they used to have on Christmas morning when they seized any cook who had neglected to boil the hackin[5] and running her round the market-place at full speed attempted to shame her of her laziness. ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann

... unfortunately on the wrong side; and backed by the collective ignorance, pride, laziness, and superstition of Aberalva, showed to his new assailant that terrible front of stupidity, against which, says Schiller, "the ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... chance to see the world on a big scale. You know already what work and saving and steady habits and sense will bring a man, to; you don't want to go round among the rich; you want to go among the poor, and see what laziness and drink and dishonesty and foolishness will bring men to. And I guess he knows, about as well as anybody; and if he ever goes to preaching he'll know what he's preaching about." The old man smiled his fierce, simple smile, and in his sharp eyes March fancied contempt of the ambition he had balked ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... admitted that in this affair an officer was wounded near him, at which he was by no means surprised; but that he nevertheless caused the sorcerer who accompanied him to be flogged before all his cossacks, loudly charging him with laziness for neglecting to turn aside the balls by his conjurations, as he had been expressly directed ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... Marshal was, and indeed, if he had known, he would scarcely have drawn such a lightning-quick inference as that the missing Marshal and the missing murderer were one and the same. So Mr. Gaspard's absence was passed over with a few curses on his laziness, or, from the more charitable, a surmise that there had been a misunderstanding, and Company B, having appointed a new Marshal, went on ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope

... our laziness is disturbed by orders to take three days' rations; our knapsacks are to be sent to Harrisburg; we are to pack up everything, to be ready to move, Nobody knows, of course, what it means; but a decided conviction prevails that 'something heavy is up.' Presently ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... silence. Sloat turned and looked at the two men in utter surprise. Up to this time he had considered Jerrold's absence from reveille as a mere dereliction of duty which was ascribable to the laziness and indifference of the young officer. So far as lay in his power, he meant to make him attend more strictly to business, and had therefore come to his quarters and stirred him up. But there was no thought of any serious trouble in his mind. His talk had all been roughly good-humored ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King

... thy work." "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." "If any man will not work, neither let him eat." It is also a sin against our nature; causing a slow movement, which is a serious disappointment; tardiness, which is like a dead fly in precious ointment; and, that loathsome disease, laziness. Like drunkenness it is an inexcusable shame, that dooms one to poverty and clothes him with rags. Shun idleness as you do the sting of a hornet, or the ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... [Laughter.] You can see, upon close inspection, the mark of the planer on his well-turned sentences. Now, the competition with gentlemen who are so cultivated is severe upon one who must speak absolutely upon the impulse of the occasion. It is either incapacity or downright laziness that has kept me from competing in the field ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... rebelled against a vacation on a farm, but his carriage was better and his figure sturdier, and his hands weren't half so white and gentlemanlike. Underneath his lazy ease was a hint of something to depend on in an emergency. Perhaps even his laziness wasn't so ingrained ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist

... tragedy, and cannot tell how far the conjunction of the borrowed plate—if it were after all borrowed —and the astute painter, contributed to the downfall of the Chronique. Werdet, however, attributes the disaster to the laziness of the talented staff, who could not be induced to work together. However that may be, the result was a terrible blow to Balzac; who was now, in addition to all his other liabilities, in debt for forty thousand francs ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... unity beneath our lives, if there be One who is educating us when we are most wayward, we shall eventually be led by, it may be, very different paths to a single goal. Meanwhile each failure to be earnest, each relapse into sentimentality, unmanliness, morbidness, despair, unreality, laziness, passiveness, may itself be a discipline, making us utterly mistrust ourselves, whether at our worst or at our best, and forcing us to inquire whether there be any help elsewhere, any power that can sweep through our lives and force ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson

... maeurs." You are a very odd mixture. You will go to the ends of the earth on the scent of big game; but you shirk all social exertion with a cynical laziness. You will come from Damascus at a stretch without sleeping, and think nothing of it; but you find it a wretched thing to have to exert yourself to be courteous ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... scene was ceaseless activity, but Tressa had long since learned the skill with which the bohunk conceals his laziness. A dozen civilised workmen would accomplish as much as three times their number of foreigners. But this was a bohunk's job; civilised workmen treated ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan

... walk,' said Mr Prosser, pushing his head through the open window. 'Laziness—slackness—that's the curse of the modern young man. Where shall I tell him to ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... bold by how much the passengers were the more afraid; I say, I have seen them run needless hazards, and go, as it were, within an inch of death, when they have been under no necessity of it, and, if not in contempt of the passengers, it has been in meer laziness to avoid their rowing; and I have been sometimes oblig'd, especially when there has been more men in the boat of the same mind, so that we have been strong enough for them, to threaten to cut their throats to make them hand their ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 44, Saturday, August 31, 1850 • Various

... could get a rag-baby, with drops of ink for eyes, and its cheeks reddened with a little pokeberry juice; but the dolls they sell here are such beauties!—yellow hair, frizzed around the face like thistle-down; rosy cheeks, and eyes that shut with such sweet laziness if you lay the little things down. I declare, it's enough to make one long to be a child again, to take one of these dainty creatures ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... Discourses No. I (On Commerce). While in hot countries "the sun does more work for man, it diminishes human strength itself." (M. Wirth.) That, however, such people, to their surplus of the natural means of enjoyment and the consequent laziness and absence of care, add the bright side of a joyous disposition, is well shown by Goethe, Werke (16 ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... the many years she had been in England had not made good old Anna think better of English people, and, as was natural, her prejudices had lately become much intensified. She lived in a chronic state of wonder over the laziness, the thriftlessness, and the dirt of Englishwomen. She had described those among whom she dwelt to her niece Minna in the following words: "They wash themselves from head to foot each day, but more never. Their houses are dreadful, and ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... depravations, appear here very plainly. The man who (in a native word of praise) is mata-ainga, a race-regarder, has his hand always open to his kindred; the man who is not (in a native term of contempt) noa, knows always where to turn in any pinch of want or extremity of laziness. Beggary within the family—and by the less self-respecting, without it—has thus grown into a custom and a scourge, and the dictionary teems with evidence of its abuse. Special words signify the begging ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 17,091,000 bales, being $1. If Dr. Tucker will glance at the great increase of the cotton, tobacco, and sugar crops South, as shown in Agricultural Reports from 1865 to 1882, and reflect that NEGROES have been the producers of these crops, he will understand their indignation at his outrageous charges of "laziness and vagabondage:" and perhaps he will listen to their demand that he shall take back the unjust and injurious imputations which, without knowledge and discrimination, he makes against ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... several disputes between him and the party whom he had hired to attend him as a guard. These men were Saxons, and not free by any means from the national love of ease and good living which the Normans stigmatized as laziness and gluttony. Reversing Shylock's position, they had accepted the employment in hopes of feeding upon the wealthy Jew, and were very much displeased when they found themselves disappointed, by the rapidity with which he insisted on their proceeding. They remonstrated also ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... would prove that he's my own boy. Could I ever forget marking that shirt in cross-stitch, and making such a bungle over the A, and thinking I'd put Mainwaring in full, and then getting lazy, and only making the mark A.M.? Well, I was served out for that piece of laziness, for my boy might have been brought back to his mother but for it. Dear, dear! Well, there's no mistaking my own A.M., and when I peered close with my glasses on I could even see where I unpicked the A. and did it over again. Dear, dear, shall I ever forgive myself for not doing the ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade

... habit; on so much foundation of nature is based the Scythian fable—the negroes of the South, immediately succeeding the surrender, used the new greatness thrust upon them with surprising innocence. Laziness, liquor and loud asseverations of freedom and equality were its only blessings claimed; and the commission of overt acts, beyond those named, were rare enough to prove the rule of force of habit. Lured from old service for a time, most of them ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... would send deliverance, she endeavored to perform, uncomplainingly, her allotted tasks. Wholly unaccustomed to such work, weary in body and sick at heart, she dragged herself about from day to day, till at last Mrs. Preston, disgusted with her 'laziness,' as she termed it, directed her to be taken to the quarters ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... parish, and has a strong objection to people who insist on making long confessions; the important young curate fresh from Maynooth, who gives himself more airs than a bishop, and has to be kept in order; the professional beggars, with their devout faith, their grotesque humour, and their incorrigible laziness; the shrewd shopkeeper, who imports arms in flour-barrels for the use of the Moonlighters and, as soon as he has got rid of them, gives information of their whereabouts to the police; the young men who go out at night to be ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... credit, or even a share in the credit, of all the splendid achievements in politics, science, art, and literature is sheer intellectual laziness. It is the curse of the age that few people will trouble to question the existing order of things, and that nobody—except those who make the manufacture of opinions their profession—can be found to express an independent opinion on any subject ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst

... care for you and yours. I know your excuse is, that having procured for him the accustomed services of the Church, you need do no more for him; for you verily believe he is already in a blessed state. But this is rather a poor shift to excuse your own sloth and laziness, than that you believe it to be so in good earnest. For there is no man, says Origen, but the Son of God, can guess how long, or how many ages, a soul may stand in need of the purgation of fire. Mark the word ages; he seems to believe that a soul may, for whole ages—that is, for ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... on the path by which we had come, we announced our readiness to start as soon as it might suit his convenience. Being sufficiently rested, Susquesus, who did everything on system, manifesting neither impatience nor laziness, arose and quietly led the way. Our course was just the reverse of that on which we had travelled when we left Mooseridge; and I did not fail to observe that, so accurate was the knowledge of our guide, we passed many of the same objects as we had previously gone near. There ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... subjugation. Strong in her power and salient with fascination, she leaned gently over the fence, and with the fan raised to her delicate ear, made him repeat his question under the soft fire of her fringed eyes. He did so, but incompletely, and with querulous laziness. ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte

... me to town, but undutiful laziness, and being much out of order keep me in the country: however, if alive, I must make my appearance at ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the devotees of the circulating libraries, I dare not compliment their pass-time, or rather kill-time, with the name of reading. Call it rather a sort of beggarly day-dreaming, during which the mind of the dreamer furnishes for itself nothing but laziness, and a little mawkish sensibility; while the whole materiel and imagery of the doze is supplied ab extra by a sort of mental camera obscura manufactured at the printing office, which pro tempore fixes, reflects, and transmits the moving phantasms of one ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... His Cross. It tells him that better men than he have had to suffer; that The Son of God Himself had to suffer. And he does not like suffering; he prefers comfort. The lazy, selfish man shrinks from the sight of Christ on His Cross; for it rebukes his laziness and selfishness. Christ's Cross says to him—Thou art ignoble and base, as long as thou art lazy and selfish. Rise up, do something, dare something, suffer something, if need be, for the sake of thy fellow- creatures. ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley

... more in a few years to undermine the old system than all that he had written and spoken before. He could not get it printed for two years after he had written it, and then only got consent through a piece of carelessness or laziness on the part of the ecclesiastical censor through whose hands the manuscript passed—for which he ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... signboard that was missing below here," muttered Shep. "Ham and his crowd were too lazy to cut firewood, so they used the board. If that isn't the height of laziness and meanness!" ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill

... quays at Dublin, he never knew what the London beggars did with their old clothes. One should go to Missouri to see what the New-York beggars do with their old clothes. But it is not the dress alone. Such vacant, listless faces, with laziness written in every line, and ignorance seated upon every feature! Is it for these that the descendants of New England and the thrifty Germans are going forth to battle? If Missouri depended upon the Missourians, there would be little chance ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... don't. Your Paw give that to me." Caleb's tone said plainly that Guy's laziness had made a bad impression, so he had to stand aside while Yan was measured. Caleb had saved a part of the hide untanned though thoroughly cleaned. This was soaked in warm water till soft. Yan's foot was placed ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... one. If blame attaches to the husband, he must complete any part of the marriage price still due; but if the woman is guilty, her parents and relatives must return the gifts distributed at the time of the engagement. The chief causes for divorce are cruelty or laziness on the part of the man, or unfaithfulness of ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole

... and the spirit of the sea all lay in that luminous haze, that warm light filled with the laziness of June; and, for one delightful moment, it seemed to Phyl that summer days long forgotten, rapturous mornings half remembered ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... Californians." [316] "At a lunar eclipse the Orinoko Indians seized their hoes and laboured with exemplary vigour on their growing corn, saying the moon was veiling herself in anger at their habitual laziness." [317] The umbrated moon did good in this way: as many of us remember the beautiful comet of 1858 did good, when it frightened some trembling Londoners into a speedy settlement of old debts, in anticipation of the final account. ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... preceding the night of the ceremony are days of abstinence; only such foods as mush and bread made from corn-meal may be eaten, nor may they contain any salt. To indulge in viands of a richer nature would be to invite laziness and an ugly form at a comparatively early age. The girl must also refrain from scratching her head or body, for marks made by her nails during this period would surely become ill-looking scars. All the women folk in ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis

... get to their bed, however in the poem, quite so easily as we have carried them. They first cross the moat, and Lady C. 'took the key that fitted well,' and opened a little door, 'all in the middle of the gate.' Lady G. then sinks down 'belike through pain;' but it should seem more probably from laziness; for her fair companion having lifted her up, and carried her a little way, she then walks on 'as she were not in pain.' Then they cross the court—but we must give this in the poet's words, for he seems so pleased with them, that ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... agreeable to communicate our opinions to him. But the king we have now got allows no man to presume to talk with him, unless it be what he desires to hear. On this alone he applies all his power, while he allows his scat-lands in other countries to go from him through laziness and weakness. He wants to have the Norway kingdom laid under him, which no Swedish king before him ever desired, and therewith brings war and distress on many a man. Now it is our will, we bondes, that thou King Olaf make peace with the Norway king, ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... out into the world he could neither read or write. However, they bound him apprentice to a baker, and his master took so much care of him that he was in a fair way of doing well if he would have been industrious; but instead of that he quitted his employment to fall into that sink of vice and laziness, the entering into a regiment as a common soldier. However, it were, he behaved himself in this state so well that he became a corporal and serjeant, which last, though a preferment of small value, is seldom ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... what the workers said. But, as a matter of fact, each of them had reasons of her own for wanting to scare Buster. Indeed, there wasn't a worker in the house that was not disgusted with his laziness. And if he hadn't been the son of the Queen they would certainly have driven him out into the ...
— The Tale of Buster Bumblebee • Arthur Scott Bailey

... reasons for his actions. W. F. Apthorp gives us an ingenious explanation in "The Opera Past and Present." He says that after Tell Rossini's pride would not allow him to return to his earlier Italian manner, while the hard work needed to produce more Tells was more than his laziness could stomach.... Perhaps, but it must be remembered that Rossini did not retire to his library or his music room, but to his kitchen. The simple explanation is that he preferred cooking to composing, a fact easy ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... prefiero generos ingleses: If I have to pay a dear price, I prefer English goods. Por si o por no: In any case, should it be so or not. Ir (venir) por: To go (come) for. Enviar por el medico: To send for the doctor. Por holgazan perdio el empleo: He lost his employment through laziness. Por bien o por mal: Willy-nilly. Vendre por la Navidad: I shall come by Christmas. Por ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano

... was missing below here," muttered Shep. "Ham and his crowd were too lazy to cut firewood, so they used the board. If that isn't the height of laziness and meanness!" ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill

... harshly, seeing that he set himself against what was best for his welfare. Still, one cannot expect men's heads on boys' shoulders, and he writes dutifully and properly. I believe it is the fault of Andrew Carson, who was forever edging me on by reports of the boy's laziness and carelessness. He certainly has a grudge against him, and he assuredly exceeded his place and authority when he lifted his hand against my wife's cousin. It seems to me truly that I have acted somewhat hastily and wrong headedly in the matter. ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty

... the pendulum; "it is vastly easy for you, Mistress Dial, who have always, as everybody knows, set yourself up above me,—it is vastly easy for you, I say, to accuse other people of laziness! You, who have had nothing to do, all the days of your life, but to stare people in the face, and to amuse yourself with watching all that goes on in ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker

... evil premiss of the right of the strong to possess himself of the weak and the conquered, and enslave him for his own use, shunting the toil and burden of life upon his bowed shoulders. Through long ages he had to work out this wrong premiss in disaster to empires through the laziness and worthlessness of their ruling classes engendered by slave labor, in the dumb suffering and bitter wrongs of millions of enslaved men and women. Through centuries the Church protested against these wrongs in vain, since the evil root, in the face of all protests, ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... galling to some Englishmen. The sort of faults which the average Englishman is least willing to condone are unpunctuality, untidiness, promises not kept, inexact answers and false excuses, forgetfulness of favours received but fresh favours asked for, slovenly work, laziness, and obstinacy. When the missionary first meets his flock he sees pleasant and courteous manners, and readiness to please and to obey, a certain aptitude and handiness in work, a real spirit of devotion, and many such-like qualities. The dark skin, the picturesque dress or ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin

... the avenue alone. I knocked gently and rang as quietly as possible, for I feared to disturb Lucy or her mother, and hoped to only bring a servant to the door. After a while, finding no response, I knocked and rang again, still no answer. I cursed the laziness of the servants that they should lie abed at such an hour, for it was now ten o'clock, and so rang and knocked again, but more impatiently, but still without response. Hitherto I had blamed only the servants, but ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... animals. For ages men have been taught what is good for their bodies and their minds and their souls. There has been no question about the wisdom of being temperate and industrious and honest and kind; and the folly of immoderation and laziness and chicanery and meanness is so well known that a geometrical proposition has not been more definitely proved. Yet only a few people in any community observe the rules of life, and of these few no one observes them all; and so misery and ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... merchants' shops, and resemble the cloisters of religious houses. The air of Spain is pure and dry, but very hot; the soil is sandy, and mostly barren, though where fertile not well cultivated, through the pride and laziness of the people, to which they are much addicted; though what they want in corn is made up in a variety of excellent fruits and wines, of which they have great plenty. Their chief commodities are wine, oil, fruits of various sorts, wool, lamb-skins, honey, cork, &c. The people are grave and ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown

... seem'd to me much wearied, sat him down, And with his arms did fold his knees about, Holding his face between them downward bent. "Sweet Sir!" I cry'd, "behold that man, who shows Himself more idle, than if laziness Were sister to him." Straight he turn'd to us, And, o'er the thigh lifting his face, observ'd, Then in these accents spake: "Up then, proceed Thou valiant one." Straight who it was I knew; Nor could the pain ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... I assure you, my dearest John, Willis is entirely wrong. I examined the bushes myself; I went quite through them, and found them quite—entirely ripe. That was just Willis's laziness, depend upon it. These old servants" (Elizabeth had gone to get more cream, the lady having emptied the jug on her despised strawberries) "are too lazy to be of much use. Depend upon it, John, you will know no peace until you get rid of them all, and start afresh; ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards

... "sandalwooder," and the captain, Fordham, was, if possible, a greater rascal than any one else on board. He had bargained with the chief of the island for leave to send his crew ashore and cut sandalwood, and on the first day four boatloads were brought off, whereupon Fordham cursed their laziness. One, an ex-Hobart Town convict, having "talked back," Fordham and the mate tied him up to the pumps and gave him ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke

... the most shiftless thing that a man ever put on his foot. It is simply a leather sole and toe. These represent the triumph of laziness. The Soudan citizen simply walks into his slipper in the morning and then in the evening he backs out. Every time he takes a step he lifts his heel away from the sole and it seems morally certain that he will lose the slipper, but in some way he manages to hold it. It is said this trick ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... the Spits were sparkling the Hackin must be boiled by Daybreak or else two young Men took the Maiden by the Arms and run her round the Market Place till she was ashamed of her laziness.—Round about our Coal Fire or Christmas Entertainments ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... al-Muzaffar gave me the keys saying, 'Go before the slaves to thy house; for in sooth all this wealth is thine.' So I returned to my mother, who rejoiced in this and said to me, 'O my son, Allah hath blessed thee with all these riches; so put off thy laziness and go down to the bazar and sell and buy.' At once I shook off my dull sloth, and opened a shop in the bazar, where the ape used to sit on the same divan with me eating with me when I ate and drinking when I drank. But, every day, he was ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... delighted to be released from this place. Giving lessons is no joke here, and unless you wear yourself out by taking a number of pupils, not much money can be made. You must not think that this proceeds from laziness. No! it is only quite opposed to my genius and my habits. You know that I am, so to speak, plunged into music,—that I am occupied with it the whole day,—that I like to speculate, to study, and to reflect. Now my present mode ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

... them who, in her mistress's frequent fits of laziness, acted as housekeeper, had known David Barclay from his boyhood, and understood his real intimacy with her late master: it was not surprising, therefore, that she should open her mind to him, while keeping toward everyone ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald

... idleness of the Turk is excessive, so as to be detrimental to completeness of living, it is unfit to supply us with the hints we need concerning the causes, character, and effects of our over-activity. A sermon of leisure, if it is to be of practical use to us, must not be a sermon of laziness. The Oriental state of mind is incompatible with progressive improvement of any sort, physical, intellectual, or moral. It is one of the phenomena attendant upon the arrival of a community at a stationary condition before it has acquired ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... satisfied Irishmen yet? No, and you never will. The more you give, the more they ask. They never will be content. ''Tis not their nature to.' England now suffers for her own weak good nature. The true curse of Ireland is laziness. I left Belfast at twenty, but I am well acquainted with Ireland. In the North they work and prosper. In the South they do nothing but nurse their grievances. Twenty years' firm government, as Lord Salisbury ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... opposition from the public, because it conflicts with the rights of the joint family, and is a serious blow to all the old Hindu family privileges. The Hindu joint family system, while it has been a source of some blessing to the land, has also been a serious curse in that it has fostered laziness, dissension and improvidence, and has put a ban ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... be poor. When wealth is obtained under the proper conditions it broadens the life. Everything has its value. Everything has a good use and a bad use. The forces of mind like wealth can be directed either for good or evil. A little rest will re-create forces. Too much rest degenerates into laziness, and ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont

... impulses, ill-controlled indeed, but directed to the acquisition of knowledge for the benefit of the world, such a student would nowadays be a marked man, applauded and restrained. But the Oxford of that day was a home of "chartered laziness." An academic circle absorbed in intrigues for preferment, and enlivened only by drunkenness and immorality, could offer nothing but what was repugnant to Shelley. He remained a solitary until the hand of authority fell and ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow

... thing we are after, and which we are eager to spread abroad; and never in any age has every type of literature been so cheap and accessible, or the average of culture so high as now. If a person is ignorant to-day it is his own fault. Nothing stands between him and the stars but his own laziness and indifference." ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett

... he judgeth of truth and falsehood, right and wrong; which some, wanting skill and leisure, and others the inclination, and some being taught that they ought not to examine, there are few to be found who are not exposed by their ignorance, laziness, education, or precipitancy, to TAKE ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke

... of the man to whom Mortimer had sold his daughter—such was the man whom Hesper, entirely aware that none could compel her to marry against her will, had, partly from fear of her father, partly from moral laziness, partly from reverence for the Moloch of society, whose priestess was her mother, vowed to love, honor, and obey! In justice to her, it must be remembered, however, that she did not and could not know of him what ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... her beaver join the workers and scold them for laziness while he was absent visiting ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... across, and at the winding up of the year scarcely have bread to eat. To speak the truth, tis a thorough aversion to labor that makes people file off to North Carolina, where plenty and a warm sun confirm them in their disposition to laziness for their whole lives."[189] The gangs of outlaws that infested North Carolina during the early years of the 18th century and defied the authority of the governors, were composed largely of runaway servants from Virginia. ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... and prided themselves upon their capacity to do it well. They had none of that feeling which makes slave-owners look upon manual labor as a badge of servitude. They were often lazy and shiftless, but they never deified laziness and shiftlessness or made them into a cult. The one thing they prized beyond all others was their personal freedom, the right of the individual to do whatsoever he saw fit. Indeed they often carried this ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt

... pointed out as the man who was against the mill. Ominous rumors had come to his ears, and threats. It was whispered to him that he had better be silent, and some of the people he preached to—some of those who had children in the mill and were supported in their laziness by the life blood of their little ones—these were his ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... what I came for." Muriel sat down and handed her sister a parcel. "I think that ought to match. Has Harry been lounging there since supper? Isn't he the picture of comfortable laziness?" ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss

... and baskets, sit in the shade of the knobby trees which stretch their trunk-like branches horizontally over the beach, forming a natural roof against sun and rain. The half-grown boys are too lively to enjoy contemplative laziness; gossip and important deliberations about pigs and sacrifices do not interest them, and they play about between the canoes, wade in the water, look for shells on the sand, or hunt crabs or fish in the reef. ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... and between them the job was soon finished. The little man, who was a confectioner, explained that he had an assistant who came from a distance, and whose laziness was most phenomenal. After this morning, however, his services would be dispensed with. For once he had gone a little too far. Eight o'clock and no sign of him. It was monstrous! The little man produced a few coppers and glanced ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim

... be upward, to the brain, the patient grows nervous and irritable or becomes dull and apathetic. How often is a child reprimanded or even punished for laziness and inattention when it cannot help itself? In many instances the morbid matter affects certain centers in the brain and causes nervous conditions, hysteria, St. Vitus' dance, epilepsy, etc. In children the impurities frequently ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... anything, it would only make me fret, and I am glad I am too stupid still to begin vexing myself over it. I suppose energy and power of considering will come when my heart does not flutter so. In the meantime, I only want to keep quiet, and I hope that's not all laziness, but some trust in Him who has helped me all ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... generally true, but admits of quite exceptions enough to throw doubt upon its being natural supineness in the race rather than the inevitable consequence of denying them the entire right to labour for their own profit. Their laziness seems to me the necessary result of their primary wants being supplied, and all progress denied them. Of course, if the natural spur to exertion, necessity, is removed, you do away with the will to work ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... has a natural aptitude for docility even as for other things connected with prudence. Yet his own efforts count for much towards the attainment of perfect docility: and he must carefully, frequently and reverently apply his mind to the teachings of the learned, neither neglecting them through laziness, nor despising ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... not merely a message of deliverance, it is also a rule of conduct. It is not merely theology, it is also ethics. Like some of the ancient municipal charters, the grant of privileges and proclamation of freedom is also the sovereign code which imposes duties and shapes life. A gospel of laziness and mere exemption from hell was not Paul's gospel. A gospel of doctrines, to be investigated, spun into a system of theology, and accepted by the understanding, and there an end, was not Paul's gospel. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... behind him. These moved on gracefully and lightly in the manner of the unburdened plains horse, half decided to follow Tom's guidance, half inclined to break to right or left. Homer and Jim Lester flanked them, also riding in a slouch of apparent laziness, but every once in a while darting forward like bullets to turn back into the main herd certain individuals whom the early morning of the unwearied day had inspired to make a dash for liberty. The rear was brought up by Jerky Jones, the fourth cow-puncher, ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... the title. But Samuel, in hope of inducing some gullible purchaser to run the risk, had the Field carefully fenced and put signs upon it. For he needed the money, and needed it more as the years went by and John's invalidism turned into chronic laziness and incapacity for earning a livelihood. Everitt Adams moved away after a time and his successors who leased the Field were never satisfactory. There were taxes and assessments to be met, which grew all the time with the rising value of adjacent land, as well as lawyer's fees. The income ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... to such as live at ease, Pingui otio desidiose agentes, a life out of action, and have no calling or ordinary employment to busy themselves about, that have small occasions; and though they have, such is their laziness, dullness, they will not compose themselves to do aught; they cannot abide work, though it be necessary; easy as to dress themselves, write a letter, or the like; yet as he that is benumbed with ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... had built themselves huts here: some lived in the caves. A few poor and vicious whites had joined them, intermarried with them, and from these had gradually grown up a band of as mongrel, miserable vagabonds as is often seen. They were the terror of the neighborhood. Except for their supreme laziness, they would have been as dangerous as brigands; for they were utter outlaws. No man cared for them; and they cared for no man. Parson Dorrance's heart yearned over these poor Ishmaelites; and he determined to see if they were irreclaimable. The first thing that his townsmen ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson

... indifference to society, his neglect of his dress, and general indifference to everything but study and reading, tastes which, she added, he might as well have cultivated at Geneva as in the new world; and he himself, in the letter to Badollet just mentioned, considers that his habits and his laziness would prove insuperable bars to his success in any profession in Europe. In estimation of this self-condemnation, it must be borne in mind that the Genevans were intellectual Spartans. Gallatin must be measured by that high standard. But if the ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... and temper, it does not very greatly go beyond the impishness of a naughty boy. But when, being promoted to mind the horses, and having a grudge against a certain "wise" mare named Keingala, because she stays out at graze longer than suits his laziness, he flays the unhappy beast alive in a broad strip from shoulder to tail, the thing goes beyond a joke. Also he is represented, throughout the saga, as invariably capping his pranks or crimes with one of the jeering enigmatic epigrams in which one finds considerable excuse for ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... both remembered me, so inherent it is in your family not to forget an old servant. It looks rather like ingratitude on my part, that where I have been so often obliged, I have appeared so seldom to return my thanks, and where I was also so sure of being well received. Somewhat of laziness was in the case, and somewhat too of modesty; but nothing of disrespect or of unthankfulness. I will not say that your lordship has encouraged me to this presumption, lest, if my labours meet with no success in public, I may expose ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden

... had worn off, Percy was not so "finicky" in her tastes, Bessie was more careful of other people's feelings, Grace really seemed almost cured of laziness, Frank was by no means so hoydenish as she once was, and as for Wynifred, she was just as hearty and happy as it seemed a girl could be. Their independent, busy life on Green Knoll was doing them all a ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe

... the mild venom, and the little jokes of Government offices. "If I had had a decent brother-in-law," Carlier would remark, "a fellow with a heart, I would not be here." He had left the army and had made himself so obnoxious to his family by his laziness and impudence, that an exasperated brother-in-law had made superhuman efforts to procure him an appointment in the Company as a second-class agent. Having not a penny in the world he was compelled to accept this means of livelihood as soon as it became ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... traditions were already centuries old! Is all this properly understood? Every essential to the beginning of the work was ready:—and the most essential, it cannot be said too often, are methods, and also the most difficult to develop, and the longest opposed by habit and laziness. What we have today reconquered, with unspeakable self-discipline, for ourselves—for certain bad instincts, certain Christian instincts, still lurk in our bodies—that is to say, the keen eye for reality, ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche

... his grapes and his wine before he will use his wits for the benefit of his employers. The Winkelried would weary of doing nothing, with this fresh western breeze humming between her masts, while the poor gentleman was swearing before the town-house gate at the laziness of the officers. I know the rogues better than your Excellency, and ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... Aschaffenburg. At the age of six he was put to school and already began to learn Latin; one of his nightly exercises that he brought home with him being to get by heart a number of Latin words for vocabulary. After a few years he came into trouble with his master for laziness and truancy, and received a severe beating; his mother intervened and got the master dismissed from his post, and Butzbach ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... ten, these evil influences continue to torment them, and then fever becomes the only evil spirit that afflicts sentient beings. These evil spirits always avoid those who have subdued their senses, who are self-restrained, of cleanly habits, god-fearing and free from laziness and contamination. I have thus described to thee, O king, the evil spirits that mould the destinies of men. Thou who art devoted to Maheswara art never ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... told Sir Charles that "Harcourt, through laziness, wanted to get out of the Government of London Bill." But the truth was, says the Memoir, 'that he could think of nothing but the dynamite conspiracy.' A Bill to meet this was being rushed through Parliament, with an almost grotesque haste, that was as grotesquely ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... composer, and was the means of procuring me many an enlivening talk with that peculiarly good- hearted and really unassuming man, whose talent, alas, declined all too soon. Schlesinger, in fact, was exasperated at his incorrigible laziness. Halevy, who had looked through my piano score, contemplated several changes with a view to making it easier, but he did not proceed with them: Schlesinger could not get the proof-sheets back; the publication was consequently delayed, and he feared that the popularity of the opera would ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... shown on Calvary: "The fruit of the Spirit is love;" "By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another." And if the Spirit is within us, He is eager to work through us. We may be quenching Him by laziness, by timidity, by preoccupation. We are of the Body of Christ only as we are ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin

... those of my profession who have a credulity about the action of drugs, a belief in their supreme control and exactness of effect which amounts to superstition, and fills many of us with amazement. This form of idolatry is at times the dull-witted child of laziness, or it is a queer form of self-esteem, which sets the idol of self-made opinion on too firm a base to be easily shaken by the rudeness of facts. But, if you watched these men, you would find them changing ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell

... twelve years of age seem to be affected more frequently than girls. It is wrong to assume that it is caused by negligence or laziness, as some parents do. It has generally a special cause, and the cause usually can be found if it is carefully sought for. It may be the result of bad habits: exposure to cold in the night; lying on the back; drinking too much liquid in the afternoon or at bedtime. It may be due to too much acid in ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague

... well and then rolling on the grass—ask him if there were ever such a day as that, when even the bees were diving deep down into the cups of flowers and stopping there, as if they had made up their minds to retire from business and be manufacturers of honey no more. The day was made for laziness, and lying on one's back in green places, and staring at the sky till its brightness forced one to shut one's eyes and go to sleep; and was this a time to be poring over musty books in a dark room, slighted by the very sun ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... prefer to live within doors, and are fond of keeping about the great hearths, and basking, at night, after the family have gone to bed, by the glowing embers. When put in particular good-humour by the warmth of their lodgings, and the tidiness of the house-maids, they will overcome their natural laziness, and do a vast deal of household work before morning; churning the cream, brewing the beer, or spinning all the good dame's flax. All this is precisely the conduct of Robin Goodfellow, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... entirely incapable of earning a living and had been successively an actor, a lecturer, a preacher, and a pedagogue. He was a fine scholar of Latin and could quote Terence, Horace, and Plautus in a way that could stir the somnolent soul even of a school-boy. His chief enemy, next to laziness, was drink. He would disappear for days at a time into his study, and afterward explain that he had been engaged in the preparation of his magnum opus, which periodically was just on the point ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train

... Fairy, "people who speak as you do usually end their days either in a prison or in a hospital. A man, remember, whether rich or poor, should do something in this world. No one can find happiness without work. Woe betide the lazy fellow! Laziness is a serious illness and one must cure it immediately; yes, even from early childhood. If not, it will kill you in ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini

... country nor perhaps the pleasantest recollections of it; and to that extent at least appeared to be comparatively satisfied, even under ill treatment. Ill fed as they were, they used frequently to fall out at their work from sheer exhaustion, which the Germans said was only laziness and malingering and for which they would be returned to a point near the laager, where we were, for their punishment. By the Commandant's orders this consisted of forcing them to run the gauntlet of two lines of ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson

... Unquestionably the great mass of the people are underfed. This is largely due to the poor quality of the rice which they consume, and to the fact that rice forms too large a part of their diet. I am firmly convinced that much of the so-called laziness of the Filipinos is the direct result of physical weakness due ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... the Dutchwoman; "I would have been a rich woman this day if it had not been for your laziness. Praying with the Kaffers behind the kraal walls. Go, ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner

... "It's not laziness, Hugh," replied the girl. "The maid was so late with my tea—and—well, to tell the truth, I upset a whole new box of powder on my dressing-table and had to clean ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux

... but of this untractable sort is a lifeless handsome fellow that visits us, whom I have dressed at this twelvemonth; but he is as insensible of all the arts I use, as if he conversed all that time with his nurse. He outdoes our whole sex in all the faults our enemies impute to us; he has brought laziness into an opinion, and makes his indolence his philosophy: insomuch, that no longer ago than yesterday in the evening he gave me this account of himself: "I am, madam, perfectly unmoved at all that passes among men, and ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... him, Now here's your chance to see the world on a big scale. You know already what work and saving and steady habits and sense will bring a man, to; you don't want to go round among the rich; you want to go among the poor, and see what laziness and drink and dishonesty and foolishness will bring men to. And I guess he knows, about as well as anybody; and if he ever goes to preaching he'll know what he's preaching about." The old man smiled his fierce, simple smile, and in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... he encouraged his hearers by the following arguments to support hunger and thirst, to resist the temptations of love, to fly from laziness, and inure themselves to all manner of fatigues. For, being told that one of them lived too luxuriously, he asked him this question: "If you were entrusted, Aristippus, with the education of two young men, one to be a prince and the other a private ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon

... 30th—I am very sorry that I did not contrive to meet you while in England.... I am almost equally sorry—in fact, am equally sorry—that my laziness and procrastination in sending you my notes prevented their being of any use in the revision of the seventh volume [of the Greville Memoirs]. I am the more sorry because I confess I greatly regret that the mare's-nest of the Russian Memorandum of 1844 should remain ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... Testament. Turn the screw, crush the texts in, and the rogue's vices out! Conversion made easy! What a wonder he opposes cunning cloaked with religion to brutality cloaked under religion. Ay, brutality, and laziness, and selfishness, all these are the true foundation of that system. Selfishness—for such a man won't do anything he does not like. No! "Why should I make myself 'all things to all men' to save a soul? I ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... Nature tickle us to our own undoing morning, noon, and night? Ain't she always at it—always tempting us to go too far along the road of our particular weakness? And ain't laziness the particular weakness of all women and most men? 'Tis pandering to laziness, these machines, and for my part I wish Ironsyde would get a machine to hackle once and for all. Then I'd leave him and go where they still put ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... sure whether this is not an encouragement to laziness on the part of the reader. In most respects he is as well able to picture the future of Jeffreys, and Raby, and Percy, ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed

... those from the United States are called) and Englishmen, who are fast filling up the principal towns, and getting the trade into their hands, are indeed more industrious and effective than the Mexicans; yet their children are brought up Mexicans in most respects, and if the "California fever'' (laziness) spares the first generation, it is ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... been left to pass unnoticed. Not least among the blessings is a shattering of the good-and-bad-man theory: the assassination of tyrants or the adoration of saviors. A shallow and specious other-worldliness has been driven out: an other-worldliness which is really nothing but laziness about this one. And if from a speculative angle the Marxian tradition has shaded too heavily the economic facts, it was at least a plausible and ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... can take revenge for his pretensions by commanding him to give us the beat when it suits us," etc. Although perhaps not all singers are conscious of this privilege of their genius, they, as a rule, involuntarily adopt this free-and-easy method, which confirms them in a certain natural laziness and flabbiness. A composer writing for German singers has therefore to take every care in opposing an artistic necessity to this lazy thoughtlessness. Nowhere in the score of my "Lohengrin" have I written above a vocal phrase ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... every Christian duty, you will often have to go contrary to your feelings. How often the enemy of your soul will, if he can, cast indifferent feelings over you concerning prayer. That is the time to show your Christian fortitude and steadfastness. It is weakness and laziness to neglect prayer simply because we do not feel inclined to pray. To yield to indifferent feelings is to encourage them, and they will grow stronger and stronger, so that we shall feel less and less inclined to pray. The more we pray, the more prayerful we feel; likewise, the less we ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr

... tribes, when they saw that Moses was angry with them, and when they could not deny but he had a just cause to be displeased at their petition, made an apology for themselves; and said, that it was not on account of their fear of dangers, nor on account of their laziness, that they made this request to him, but that they might leave the prey they had gotten in places of safety, and thereby might be more expedite, and ready to undergo difficulties, and to fight battles. They added this ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... down by the back-door, the whole complex machinery of life begin anew! Gissing was amazed now, looking back upon his previous existence, to see himself so busy, so active. Few people are really lazy, he thought: what we call laziness is merely maladjustment. For in any department of life where one is genuinely interested, he will be zealous beyond belief. Certainly he had not dreamed, until he became (in a manner of speaking) a parent, that he had in him ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley

... means, obtained the consulship, and the Carbos and the Norbani and Scipios were unsuccessfully contending against Sulla on his march to Rome, and affairs were being ruined, partly through the cowardice and laziness of the commanders, and partly through treachery; and there was no use in his staying to see things still go on badly, owing to the want of judgment in those who had more power than himself; and finally, when Sulla, after encamping near ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... the diligent shall bear rule, but the slothful shall be under tribute.' And again of the lazy hand, he says, 'How long wilt thou sleep? When wilt thou rise out of thy sleep? Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep.' What a picture of laziness! ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold

... are lashed in vigorous language for their secularity, covetousness, and other faults; but perhaps his sharpest castigation is reserved for the false mystics. There are some, he says, who mistake mere laziness for holy abstraction; others give the rein to "spiritual self-indulgence"; others neglect all religious exercises; others fall into antinomianism, and "think that nothing is forbidden to them"—"they will gratify any appetite which interrupts their contemplation": these are "by far the worst ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... my walks, objects which move both my spleen and laughter so effectually as those young fellows at the Greecian, Squire's, Searle's, and all other coffee-houses adjacent to the law, who rise early for no other purpose but to publish their laziness. One would think these young virtuosos take a gay cap and slippers, with a scarf and party-coloured gown, to be ensigns of dignity; for the vain things approach each other with an air which shews they ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... if a pupil needs to sit and rest a bit occasionally it is permitted. But do not let our consideration for your comfort become an excuse for mere laziness! There are lazy girls as well as lazy men in the world, I have heard, and it is barely possible that one or two might decide to take my courses sometime. If they do, our required work will give them inspiration, as well as perspiration, and enable them to overcome an inclination to indolence ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... will suffice to earn their wages. Nothing attaches them to their work, because nothing elevates, honors, glorifies it in their eyes. They have no defence against the reductions of indolence; and if, by some chance, they find means of living awhile in repose, they give way by degrees to habits of laziness and debauchery, and sometimes the worst passions soil forever natures originally willing, healthy and honest—and all for want of that protecting and equitable superintendence which should have sustained, encouraged, and recompensed their ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... of those dear people," she told him, "who seem to try to make up for their own incorrigible laziness by going out of their way to put some one else in the way ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... circles of habit, based upon convictions which we no longer hold. Thus our estimate of the effect of environment and social conditions has doubtless shifted faster than our methods of administrating charity have changed. Formerly when it was believed that poverty was synonymous with vice and laziness, and that the prosperous man was the righteous man, charity was administered harshly with a good conscience; for the charitable agent really blamed the individual for his poverty, and the very fact of his own superior prosperity gave him a certain consciousness ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams

... feasting her eyes with its glory. She turned from the vision, therefore, with a sigh of utter bliss, and with soft quiet steps and groping hands stole back into the darkness of the rock. What was darkness or the laziness of Time's feet to one who had seen what she had that night seen? She was lifted above ...
— Harper's Young People, December 9, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... Capital and Labor have taken out all the things that bothered them, their laziness in understanding one another, their moral garbage, their moral clinkers, tin cans and ashes, and dumped them in what seems to them apparently to be a great backyard on this nation—called The Public. And we have carted it all away and paid for carting ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee

... a certain extent brought to an end by the greed or laziness of the colliers, who have for a time destroyed the prosperity of the iron trade. Messrs. Greening and Co. started with great enthusiasm; and the results were very successful as regards the workpeople. Nothing ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... have somewhat belied half the dear old lady's prophecy. Heaven help me! I have done a good many things that I ought not to have done, in spite of my laziness. But I have fully confirmed the accuracy of her judgment so far as neglecting much that I ought not to have neglected is concerned. Idling always has been my strong point. I take no credit to myself in the matter—it is a gift. Few possess it. ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... of accomplishing anything often paralyzes our zeal. This sometimes takes the form of a more or less honest conviction that poverty, unemployment, and other maladjustments are simply the result of moral degeneration-of the laziness, extravagance, drinking, or other wrongdoing of the poor; their suffering is their own fault, and they must be left to endure it. Of course such factors often-though by no means always-enter in. One may well say, "Who are we of the upper classes to throw ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... process of thought—concept—cogitation, from which Keats prayed with so great an ardour to escape, when he exclaimed in words which will seem to you, according to the temper of your mind, either an invitation to the higher laziness or one of the most profound aspirations of the soul, "O for a life of sensations rather than thoughts!" He felt—as all the poets have felt with him—that another, lovelier world, tinted with unimaginable wonders, alive with ultimate music, awaited those ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill

... "repression" undoubtedly occurs and is important, it is not the usual reason for unconsciousness of our wishes. The usual reason is merely that wishes are all, to begin with, unconscious, and only become known when they are actively noticed. Usually, from laziness, people do not notice, but accept the theory of human nature which they find current, and attribute to themselves whatever wishes this theory would lead them to expect. We used to be full of virtuous wishes, but since Freud our wishes have become, in ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell

... nobody dares to cut them, for want of the proper warrant; archbishoprics there are to be filled; and, because they are not filled, the whole nation is running helter skelter into heresy—and all in consequence of your majesty's sacred laziness." Our governments were less remissly administered; since each of us, by continued reports of improvements and gracious concessions to the folly or the weakness of our subjects, stimulated the zeal of his rival. And here, at least, there ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... and I wanted a rest. The Cotills being near the awful crater-like mouth of La Creux Derrible, I thought I would go and explore it, and find out in my own way, all about it; so, dropping my occupation, I wandered slowly down the zig-zag, bracken-hemmed path, lit my pipe, and prepared myself for laziness for an hour. ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling

... was dropped from college for laziness and for gambling. Bismarck failed to get a University degree, because he lacked power to study and because he preferred midnight beer to midnight oil. George Washington, in student days, could never grasp the simplest rules of spelling. The young Lincoln loved to sprawl in the ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune

... content. He did not like the laziness and the disinclination for sober, legitimate work of this prospective son-in-law of his, for whose ideas he had no respect and of whose nature he had no understanding. So he turned the conversation to Herbert ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... actions of our bodily life by an irresistible power. Were then the sensations of our animal loss or well-being to become spiritual perceptions, and had they to be created by thought, how often would the soul be obscured by the overwhelming blaze of passion; how often stifled by laziness and stupidity; how often overlooked in the absorptions and distractions of business! Further, would not, in this case, the most perfect knowledge of his economy be demanded of the animal man—would not the child need to be a master in a branch of knowledge in which, after ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... Let's enter into this thing in earnest and have a high old time. Bruce, you ought to be ashamed of your laziness." ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish

... hold of this as a pretext for delay, that it might be better done, and let Dodsley have his desire. I said to my friend, Dr. Bathurst, "Now if any good comes of my addressing to Lord Chesterfield, it will be ascribed to deep policy, when, in fact, it was only a casual excuse for laziness."' ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... Whencever coming, there it was. One marine private, in the ship to which I belonged, returning from liberty on shore, was heard saying to another with drunken impressiveness, "Remember, our motto is, 'Patriotism and laziness.'" Of course, this went round the ship, greatly delighting on both counts our marine officers, and became embodied in the chaff that passed to and fro between the two corps; of which one saying, "The two most useless things in a ship were the captain of marines and the mizzen-royal," deserves for ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... of him, and begun to lay down new and more conventional planking on the fundamental Amory. But both St. Regis' and Amory were unconscious of the fact that this fundamental Amory had not in himself changed. Those qualities for which he had suffered, his moodiness, his tendency to pose, his laziness, and his love of playing the fool, were now taken as a matter of course, recognized eccentricities in a star quarter-back, a clever actor, and the editor of the St. Regis Tattler: it puzzled him to see impressionable small boys imitating ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... the most remarkable pages in the whole history of the Church of Christ. Her difficulties with Rome, with the Inquisition, with her more immediate superiors, confessors, and censors, and, most of all, with the ignorance, the stupidity, the laziness, the malice, and the lies of those monks and nuns whose reformation she was determined on: her endless journeys: her negotiations with church-leaders, landowners, and tradesmen in selecting and securing sites, and in erecting new religious houses: the ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte

... self-defence compelled the Bolsheviks to send their best workmen to the front, because they were the most reliable Communists, and the loss of them rendered their factories even more inefficient than they were under Kerensky. In this respect, and in the laziness and incapacity of the Russian workman, the Bolsheviks have had to face special difficulties which would be less in other countries. On the other hand, they have had special advantages in the fact that Russia is self-supporting in the matter of food; no other ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell

... unto all good men, the members whereof became insufferable in their pride, covetousness, self-ends, laziness, minding nothing but how to enrich themselves. Much heart-burning now arose betwixt the Presbyterian and Independant, the latter siding with the army, betwixt whose two judgments there was no medium. Now came up, or first appeared, that ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly

... was an idle life; and if I myself were not inclined to sloth and laziness, I would never ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... word that has been much abused and vulgarised of late, but something like its true Platonic sense must have been realised by the company at Lord Falkland's, as they "examined and refined those grosser propositions which laziness and consent made current in vulgar conversation":[Q] for a more Platonic programme it would be difficult to conceive. The pattern of the ideal republic is, we know, laid up somewhere in the heavens; but the republic of letters so ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... in anything for the profession at large, but my own private judgement is that any man is a scoundrel who robs others of anything that is of value to them, and he is none the less so when he makes his aches and pains, mostly incurred by his gluttony, passions or laziness, the means of plundering others of the comforts and pleasures ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy

... are just and logical," said the deacon. "But my laziness finds an excuse in the circumstances of my present life. You know yourself that an uncertain position has a great tendency to make people apathetic. God only knows whether I have been sent here for a time or permanently. I am living here in uncertainty, while my wife is vegetating at her father's ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... but she thought there was use in keeping on outwardly good terms; and she had no suspicion of his shameless conduct the night before. Ayre directed their walk to the very same seat on which she and Haddington had sat. As they passed, either romance or laziness suggested to Kate that they should sit down. Ayre accepted her proposal without demur, asked and obtained leave for a cigarette, and sat for a few moments in apparent ease and vacancy of mind. He ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope

... alarm, to meet every emergence in a country, which is engaged, every year, either in foreign wars or intestine commotions. Aethiopia produces very near the same kinds of provision as Portugal, though, by the extreme laziness of the inhabitants, in a much less quantity. What the ancients imagined of the torrid zone being a part of the world uninhabitable, is so far from being true, that the climate is very temperate. The blacks have better features than in other countries, and are not without wit and ingenuity. ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... would have an opportunity to leave the island where Robinson Crusoe had spent so many lonely years. During his stay there Jack explored every part of the island. He noticed that the soil had every promise of great fertility, but that even his friend had so far taken on the laziness of the Chilians that he cultivated as little as possible. This island had become a sort of rendezvous for the ships rounding Cape Horn, and many of them had contributed to its natural and animal ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood

... not work, neither let him eat." It is also a sin against our nature; causing a slow movement, which is a serious disappointment; tardiness, which is like a dead fly in precious ointment; and, that loathsome disease, laziness. Like drunkenness it is an inexcusable shame, that dooms one to poverty and clothes him with rags. Shun idleness as you do the sting of a hornet, or the bite ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... she replied. "It is a fit of sheer laziness. I ought to be elsewhere, but I was born without a conscience. If I had one I should try to quiet it by reminding it that I am fulfilling a long-delayed promise—I am making a garden for Mrs. Larrabbee. You know her, of course, since she is a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... would happen at the close of the year, and looked forward to seeing, at least during the interim, their friend in clean clothes, and reading "his copy" in the best journals. But the luxury of having a fixed place to sleep in, stimulated, not industry, but vicious laziness of the most ineradicable kind. Henceforth Sands abandoned all effort to help himself. Uncombed, unwashed, in dirty clothes, he lay in an arm-chair through all the morning, rising from time to time to mess some paint into the appearance of some incoherent landscape, ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... vagrancy. Men, a good bishop said, will do what you pay them to do: if to work, they will work; if you make it pay them to beg, they will beg; if to maim helpless children makes begging pay better, they will do that too. See what it is to encourage laziness in man whose ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... thousand more, or the evidences of them. Downstream come the scents of the flowers in bloom above. Just a week or two ago the dominant odor among these was the sticky sweetness of the azalea. It is an odor that breathes of laziness. Only the hot, damp breath of the swamp carries it and lulls to languor and to sensuous dreams. Mid-August is near and though here and there a belated azalea bloom still glows white in the dusk of the swamp its odor seems to have no power to ride the wind. ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... it is true, he became convinced, even in the chill dwellings of real poverty, that this was hardly ever entirely unmerited. Where it had not been brought about by laziness, frivolity, or drink, its source was to be found in ignorance or incapacity, in other words, in an inefficient equipment for the battle of life. He judged all these circumstances, however, to be the outward and visible signs of obscure natural ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... brush, and on dark days he couldn't see to paint (so he said). In truth, he was not well, and his slender store of strength did not permit him to do as he would. To cover the real seriousness of his case he loudly admitted his laziness ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... and in many instances young people who fall victims to the demon of dyspepsia owe their sorrows, if not to madness, at any rate to ignorance and want of consideration. The defective teeth, septic tonsils, discharging adenoids, poverty of their parents and their own laziness, all conspire to cause digestive troubles which bear a fruitful crop of further evils, for thus are caused such illnesses as ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly









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