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More "Procrastination" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his gait, as he ran and blundered, and he gasped with his beak open. When he rose, which he did without any sort of procrastination, he rocked worse than ever, and twice nearly fell, and once hit the water, before finally slowly dragging himself away upward, flapping low and heavily ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... Coleridge's mind, was procrastination. It is not to be supposed that he ever made a promise or entered on an engagement without intending to fulfil it, but none who knew him could deny that he wanted much of that steady, persevering determination ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... interesting, although painful, to wander amongst them. All, or nearly all, their occupants are held down by a heavy weight of ignorance, a sense of utter helplessness. And all are bound hand and foot with chains of lust, or passion, or procrastination, of their own forging. In the midst of these graves you live, and move, and ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... sanctity of my pleasure. I contented myself with thinking over my complacent feelings, and breathing forth solitary gratulations and thanksgivings, which I did in many a sweet and many a wild place, during my late Tour. In this shape, procrastination became irresistible to me; at last I said, I will write at home from my own fire-side, when I shall be at ease and in comfort. I have now been more than a fortnight at home, but the uneasiness in my chest has made me beat off the time when the pen was to be taken up. I do not know from what cause ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... pursued Llewellyn, pushed him, as it were, along the track of what he had to put up with, you would have come upon the further fact that as a woman of business Miss Howe had no parallel for procrastination. Next season was imminent in his arrangements, as Christmas numbers are imminent to publishers at midsummer, and here she was shying at a contract as if they had months for consideration. It wasn't, either, as if she complained ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... becomes unnecessary at least, if not an intrusion: and if the piece has been condemned in the performance, I fear an address to the closet, like an appeal to posterity, is constantly regarded as the procrastination of a suit, from a consciousness of the weakness of the cause. From these considerations, the following comedy would certainly have been submitted to the reader, without any farther introduction than what it had in the representation, but that its success has ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... opening for them by its treatment of von Jagow's renewed intimation that Germany would gladly accept American good offices in negotiations with this country as to the character and conditions of maritime war. The Wilhelmstrasse can discover in this and some other passages material for procrastination if ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the city, till they had driven all their adversaries out of it. They were unanimous upon the main point, but did not agree upon the time of carrying it into execution. It was in the month of April, in the year 1378, when Lapo, thinking delay inadvisable, expressed his opinion, that procrastination was in the highest degree perilous to themselves; as in the next Signory, Salvestro de' Medici would very probably be elected Gonfalonier, and they all knew he was opposed to their party. Piero degli Albizzi, on the other hand, thought ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... market-men not to sell us any food. Indeed, this action of the governor made him very unpopular with the Rhett faction. Rhett rushed over to inform him that the people demanded that Fort Sumter should be taken without any further procrastination or delay. The governor made a very shrewd reply. He said, "Certainly, Mr. Rhett; I have no objection! I will furnish you with some men, and you can storm the work yourself." Rhett drew back and ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... gained too firm a footing;—I will give you the treatment on the moment; of some of their more pressing illnesses—when medical aid cannot at once be procured, and where delay may be death;—I will instruct you, in case of accidents, on the immediate employment of remedies—where procrastination may be dangerous;—I will tell you how a sick child should be nursed, and how a sick-room ought to be managed;—I I will use my best energy to banish injurious practices from the nursery;—I will treat of the means to prevent disease where ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... other questions which thou wouldst ask?" inquired the Jinnee, with grim indulgence; "or wilt thou encounter thy doom without further procrastination?" ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... an old and very true saying that 'Procrastination is the thief of time.' The only way to accomplish much in this world is to have a time for each duty, and always attend to it ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... to-day that thou hast never waited upon the old. He that cannot control sudden accession of joy or grief, is lost even though he may have obtained prosperity, like an unburnt earthen vessel in water. That king who is entirely destitute of courage, who hath no spark of manliness, who is the slave of procrastination, who always acts with indiscretion, who is addicted to sensual pleasures, is seldom respected by his subjects. Benefited as thou has been, whence is this unreasonable grief of thine? Do not undo this graceful act done by the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... his old broad-brimmed hat, "you see, old boy, 'Procrastination is the thief of time;' the clouds gave you a hint of what was coming, but you seemed not to take it." "It is," replied he, eagerly. "Doctor Young is in the right. Procrastination has been my curse since I was in leading-strings. It has grown with my growth, and strengthened with my strength. It has ever been my besetting sin—my companion in prosperity and adversity; and I have slept upon it, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... sorry to see in you a sad habit of procrastination, and want of punctuality. I assure you, my dear boy, that, to a man of business, such a habit is more ruinous; and if not subdued in youth, will surely grow the more confirmed by age, and blight ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... his son was the offspring of the same illegal relations. It was signed and written by his wife. The wretched man debated whether he should send the infant to an asylum or keep it upon his premises. Through procrastination, continued for twenty years, the child had derived all the advantages of legitimacy, and still the demon of the husband's peace was the ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... full advantage of our generosity, and had not left Toledo till nine. Therefore, according to our contract, we were obliged to wait until eleven, surprising Ropes by our procrastination. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... my faults, but procrastination in the presence of rats is not one of them. I didn't hesitate for a second. Here was my chance. If there is one thing women hate, it is a rat. Mother always used to say, 'If you want to succeed in life, please the women. They are the real bosses. The men don't count.' ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... memories they are, these memories of rare books which we have found and failed to secure! Two prominent instances of our bookman's folly stand out with bitter clearness, ever fresh in his memory as a reminder of the criminal stupidity of procrastination. One was an exceedingly scarce work by Lawrence Humphrey, entitled 'Optimates sive De Nobilitate eiusque Antiqua Origine,' printed in small octavo at Basle in 1560, which he once saw in a catalogue for five shillings. ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... to the Envoys, directing them, if they are not actually engaged in negotiation with authorized persons, or if it is not conducted bona fide, and not merely for procrastination, to break up and come home, and at any rate ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... his usual indolence and procrastination, was for allowing things to remain as they were. "There is no use," he said, "now, that the matter is all over, of disturbing the body. I will have a handsome monument erected over her remains, and the place shall be nicely laid out with shrubs and flowers, and kept in good order while I ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... hunting ground Suma was not eager to depart. Day after day the journey was postponed, and the procrastination, as usual, brought ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... madness incited this mixture of wantonness and frenzy. Guests and strangers were proffered not shelter but revilings. All these maddening mockeries did this insolent and wanton crew devise, and thus under a boy-king freedom fostered licence. For nothing prolongs reckless sin like the procrastination of punishment and vengeance. This unbridled impudence of the soldiers ended by making the king detested, not only by foreigners, but even by his own people, for the Danes resented such an arrogant and cruel rule. But Grep was contented with no humble ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... rid, I would rather wait him out, and starve him out, than fight him out. Fabius fought Hannibal skeptically. Who was his Roman coadjutor, whom we read of in Plutarch when we were boys, who scoffed at the other's procrastination and doubted his courage, and engaged the enemy and ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... they would start at noon. Noon came, and they would start at night. But nothing is eternal in this world; not even the procrastination of an American skipper; and at night ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... "Goodness—Gracious—Agnes!" gasped Bess, mimicking Procrastination Boggs in her agitation. "You are actually making me nervous, Nan Sherwood. Lock the door, indeed! As if we were afraid of being murdered in our beds! Why, I sha'n't sleep a wink to-night. I never heard ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... to every question. If thou hast genius and poverty to thy lot, dwell on the foolish, perplexing, imprudent, dangerous, and even immoral, conduct of promise-breach in small things, of want of punctuality, of procrastination in all its shapes and disguises. Force men to reverence the dignity of thy moral strength in and for itself,—seeking no excuses or palliations from fortune, or sickness, or a too full mind that, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... acquired a headway that could not have been stopped, without a more terrible sacrifice of life and property—perhaps even of half the city. Comprehending intuitively the gravity of the situation, and the danger of procrastination or temporizing, he sprang at once for the enemy's throat, and never ceased his hold until he had strangled him to death. If he had waited to consult authorities about the legality of his action, or listened to the voice of pity, or yielded to the clamors of leading ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... he began to get in the way of the machine and obstruct the march of the self-elect. His confidences were not effusive, nor their subjects numerous. His deliberation was unfailing and sometimes it carried the idea of indecision, not to say actual love of procrastination. But in my experience with him I found that he usually ended where he began, and it was nowise difficult for those whom he trusted to divine the bias of his mind where he thought it best ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... shall devote to purposes of beneficence, may not be passed over; and the consecration, not to say the disbursement, should be made immediately, while the idea that our possession are from God is fresh in our minds, and before selfishness shall seize them as her own. Procrastination is often but giving heed to her treacherous voice, and ere we are aware, she carries us captive. As we receive our increase from the hand of God, like faithful stewards, we should set apart the portion ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... commonwealth as long as there would be competition with slave labor. It was soon apparent, however, that a State with such a diversity of interests, one-half slave and one-half free could not legislate on slavery. This compromising resolution of procrastination, therefore, was adopted as the best Virginia could under the circumstances be induced to do for the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... of the words timidity and procrastination. His plans were instantly laid. The time fixed for the conflagration was midnight. He gave orders that the hall in which the conspirators were assembled should be surrounded exactly at eleven. Soon after, thinking that the hour had come, he sought the place alone and ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... steady employment. Mr. Jocelyn was comparatively quiet and much at home. Often he was excessively irritable and exasperating in words and manner, but no longer violent from bestial excess. He put off the project of going to a curative institution, with the true opium inertia and procrastination, and all efforts to lead him to definite action proved fruitless. His presence, however, and his quiet, haughty ways, with Roger's frequent visits, did much for a time to restrain the ill-disposed people around them, but the inevitable contact with so much ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... could alone be saved from that anarchy and confusion into which Mexico and other South American States had fallen through individual rivalry and the ignorance of their popular assemblies. I further pointed out to him, that if, by procrastination I was compelled to bombard the city, the popular clamour against the insurgent authorities might be followed by melancholy proof to himself how quickly political adventurers may be abandoned or betrayed in the hour of danger, and that ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... humiliating international position, it is distinctly apparent that in everything which concerns Europe and the Western world the people and the officials as a whole are of one mind in the methods of procrastination which are so dear to the heart of the Celestial, and that peculiar opposition to Europeanism which has marked the real East since ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... accept of three hundred dollars. I may also state that when he retired from the bar, he had several thousand dollars on his books which could have been collected on application to the parties, but, whether from inadvertence or procrastination, or mere indisposition, he let ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... we perhaps say within ourselves, "Would that there had been but a little amendment of this blemish! A little more of strength and purpose against that fault! If only this besetting hardness had not been the spoiler of his life, that great heedlessness, that fatal procrastination, this too frequent sin! Oh! but for this or that which marred the fair and well rounded character! But for this we should have been full of hope: there was so much on the better side, that we should have been full ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... the colonel, and, breathing heavily, he cursed his procrastination heartily to himself, threw discretion to the winds and hurried down to the Boyden box just as Gresham returned. His greeting to the other occupants was but perfunctory, and then he turned to Gresham with: "You haven't sold your property adjoining ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... cannot but feel too much for your impatience to delay till Wednesday night the acknowledging your despatches, and the assuring you that there shall be no remissness whatever on my part to follow up this business as much as possible, and to press it forward in this strange scene of procrastination. Nothing can make me happier than your approbation of my conduct, and your kind disposition to trust so much to that most unfeigned affection with ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... wished more or earlier movement. Even the motor-car, whose appearance promised a hint, the merest far-off possibility, of farcical developments, shared in the general lethargy and refused to move from its ditch. In spite, however, of this procrastination I wish it to be understood that the story is in some ways one of unusual charm; it has style, atmosphere and a very sensible dignity. But, lacking the confidence that I fortunately had in my author, I question whether I should have survived to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... lads of talents would be highly advantageous to their advancement in life. All this my father felt, and, blaming himself for having encouraged me in the indolence of genius, he determined to counteract his former imprudence, and was resolved, he said, to cure me at once of my habit of procrastination. For this purpose he took down from his shelves Young's Night Thoughts; from which he remembered a line, which has become a stock ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... he with Lord Ostermore in the library ere he departed. His lordship it was who reopened again the question, to repeat much of what he had said in the arbor on the previous day, and Mr. Caryll replied with much the same arguments in favor of procrastination that he ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... poor man's foe, Mix'd ashes in his cup of sorrow; Nor thought the pauper's "lot of woe," Perchance might be their own to-morrow. The Tories said they were his friend, That they abhorr'd procrastination; So give—till next July shall end— Exchequer bills and ventilation. Oh! the artful Tories dear, Oh! the dear and artful Tories; They alone perceive, 'tis clear, Taxes tend ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various
... surprised to find me still guilty of procrastination, and to hear me describing French manners, instead of the mode in which I addressed a youth whom I have accused myself of having, in a certain sense, misled, and kept in suspense. I can only answer that my intentions have been frustrated; chiefly indeed by this country ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... make excellent lawyers, and know how to spin out a case or involve it in a labyrinth of figures of speech. Mungo Park, who frequently heard these special pleaders, says that in the forensic qualifications of procrastination and cavil, and the arts of confounding and perplexing a cause, they are not easily surpassed by the ablest pleaders in Europe. The following may serve as an example of their talent:—An ass had got loose ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... tendency to procrastination is shown in the progressive weakening of the various words in this group. Immediately primarily signifies without the intervention of anything as a medium, hence without the intervention of any, even the briefest, interval or lapse of time. By and by, which was ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... to "capture vessels or destroy" and the elimination of the sea power of Spain in the Orient. The battle of Manila Bay was a practical demonstration of the value of the "fighting edge," as exemplified in an Assistant Secretary who fought procrastination, timidity, and political expedience at home and in a naval officer who fought the enemy's ships on the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... Rogues, and Honest Men among Knavery, producing Repentance and Ruin; or, the Fatal Effects of Legal Rapacity,—wherein the highway of Law conducts to Ruin through a series of toll-gates labelled respectively, "Opinion of Counsel," "Injunction," "Filing the Bill," "Consultation," "Procrastination," etc. ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... also the mad desire to get away at last, to cease with this fateful procrastination and to fly from this country with the golden booty, which he had gained at such awful risks, these caused him finally to turn the mare's head towards home, leaving Editha to follow as best she might, in ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... upon his lieutenants, but jealously guarded his own opinions from the least question or discussion, and at every step he antagonized the easy-going people among whom he had come to work. He had no patience with their habits of procrastination, and he was continually offending their lazy good-nature and their pride. He treated the rich planters, who owned the land between the mines and the harbor over which the freight railroad must run, with as little consideration as he showed the regiment of soldiers which the Government ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... the physical, intellectual, and moral peculiarities which afterwards distinguished the man were plainly discernible; great muscular strength accompanied by much awkwardness and many infirmities; great quickness of parts, with a morbid propensity to sloth and procrastination; a kind and generous heart, with a gloomy and irritable temper. He had inherited from his ancestors a scrofulous taint, which it was beyond the power of medicine to remove. His parents were weak enough to believe ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... which the species is capable, but, at the same time, a constitution free from all taint, a frame that shall rapidly attain bulk and stature, and a disposition so kindly that every quantum of food it takes shall, without drawback or procrastination, be eliminated into fat and muscle. The breed, then, is of very considerable consequence in determining, not only the quality of the meat to the consumer, but its commercial value to the ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... vaguely aware of the fact, this philosophy of procrastination (but another form of selfishness) was the spawn of a supposition; the supposition that his love for Sue Desha was not returned; that it was hopeless, absurd. He was not injuring her. He was the moth, she the flame. He did not realize that the moth can extinguish ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... the retention of the old French custom of surveying the land along the river front in deep narrow strips, rather than according to the chessboard pattern taken over by Canada from the United States. Red tape, indifference, procrastination, rather than any illwill, delayed the redress of the grievances of the half-breeds. In despair they called Louis Riel back from his exile in Montana. With his arrival the agitation acquired a new and dangerous force. Claiming to be the prophet of a new religion, he put himself at the head of his ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... this endless procrastination. What is wanted is not reasons for the deed, but the deed itself.' ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... resolved that we should get into another house; but I could not bring myself to tell you the reason, and I somehow put it off from day to day, although my life was, during every hour of this procrastination, rendered as miserable as that of a felon with the constables on his track. I was growing absolutely ill from ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... the right, there could be no doubt, and nothing but a kind motive could have induced them to take this trouble; so I yielded with a good grace, and thanked the cabinet council for their timely warning, though fearing that, in this land of procrastination, it would be difficult to procure another dress for the ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... themselves privileged to disregard, if not to ridicule religion, by virtue of their age, rank, or talents; and living as though they held their present being by no precarious tenure, they trifle away their time in criminal indulgences, and "lose their own souls" by a guilty procrastination. To persons of this class, Solomon suggests a most important truth, in the form of a sarcastic appeal—"Rejoice, O young man in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth; and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes; but know ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... himself was not strong enough to dally within those walls and under the shadow of that bankruptcy; and presently the manager and the clerks would draw a long breath, and compose themselves for another day of procrastination. Raw Haste, on the authority of my Lord Tennyson, is half-sister to Delay; but the Business Habits are certainly her uncles. Meanwhile, the leather merchant would lead his living investment back to John Street like a puppy dog; and, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a general behave with greater incompetence than that manifested by General Burgoyne from the day of his leaving Ticonderoga, and the disaster which befell his army was entirely the result of mismanagement, procrastination, and ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... allow himself to believe that the young people could ever prevail; but nevertheless, as the idea of the thing had not alarmed Lady Cantrip as it had him, it was necessary that he should make some apology to Mrs. Finn. Each moment of procrastination was a prick to his conscience. He now therefore dragged out from the secrecy of some close drawer Mrs. Finn's letter and read it through to himself once again. Yes—it was true that he had condemned her, and ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... "The Brahmana then beheld many men living in this world, embracing lust, and wrath, and cupidity, and fear, and pride, and sleep and procrastination, and inactivity. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... about things; he never hurried himself, or allowed other people's impatience to get the better of him. 'There is a time for everything, as Solomon says,' was his favourite speech when any one reproached him with procrastination; 'depend upon it, the best work is done slowly. What is the use of so much hurry? When death comes we shall be ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... all he could do was to procrastinate, he thought of the old Italian proverb, "Gain time, and you will pull through," and he determined to profit by the wisdom of it. Even procrastination would not be without difficulty. But something might be done in that way,- -some time might be gained. And then there was always that never- failing resource and consolation of those who, in the words of Horace, limit their ambition to adapting themselves to circumstances instead ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... in the sick room, as I understood, in conference with the patient. It was well to have heard, without procrastination, what he had to say; for next morning, at a little past four o'clock, ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... government was making. Why waste time with ultimatums? he argued to himself. He had never done so. Experience had taught him that the way to win a battle was to beat the other fellow to the draw; hence this diplomatic procrastination filled him with impatience. It seemed almost treasonable to ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... Admirall", while several members of the Council and forty other gentlemen volunteered their services. Upon the shore were assembled four regiments of militia, ready to embark should they be needed. Yet the masters continued their procrastination day after ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... Guatemotzin and his nobles were preparing to escape with their effects in the periaguas and canoes which were moored on the margin of the lake. Convinced of the fruitlessness and impolicy of further procrastination, Cortes made his final dispositions for the attack, and took his own station on an azotea which ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... way connected with this habit of my feelings; or that it needed any other parents or fosterers than constitutional indolence, aggravated into languor by ill-health; the accumulating embarrassments of procrastination; the mental cowardice, which is the inseparable companion of procrastination, and which makes us anxious to think and converse on any thing rather than on what concerns ourselves; in fine, all ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... deciding, after characteristic procrastination, that he must really go to bed, he wound up his watch and put it on the dressing-table. His pockets had to be emptied and his clothes hung or folded. His fingers touched the notes in the left-hand outside pocket of his coat. Not for one instant had the problem of the ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... on before. On turning a corner of the road, the latter stumbled upon Wolston and Ernest, who, in the exuberance of their joy, had also come out to meet the hunters. They were, however, a little behind; but that was nothing new. These two members of the colony had become quite remarkable for procrastination and absence of mind. When Wolston the mechanician, and Ernest the philosopher, travelled in company, it was rare that some pebble or plant, or question in physics, did not induce them to deviate from their route or tarry on their way. One ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... The procrastination of which I am speaking was however productive of one advantage. It put off the evil day. She did not suspect the calamities that awaited her, till the close of the year. She gained an additional three months of comparative happiness. But she purchased it at a very dear rate. Perhaps no ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... madness to defer; Next day the fatal precedent will plead. Procrastination is the thief of time. At thirty, man suspects himself a fool; Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan; At fifty chides his infamous delay, Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve, In all the magnanimity of thought Resolves, and re-resolves; then ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... My Sleeping Mistress The Inconsistent The Capture of Jerusalem To a Lady An Epigram On a Little Man with a Very Large Beard Lamiat Alajem To Youth On Love A Remonstrance with a Drunkard Verses On Procrastination The Early Death of ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... allowed them to expatiate on the perils of procrastination in the treatment of rare old canvases and pigments, and then, having formulated my plans, blandly inquired what the cost would be. It appears that Herr Schwartzmuller had examined the frescoes no longer than ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... grow impatient under this continued procrastination and evasion, and he resolved to take such measures as would accomplish the object desired. He had found, during his connection with Bucholz, that he had not the slightest regard for the truth. He ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... freebooter, who well understood the value of a separate command, instead of joining, sent various apologies which the pressure of the times compelled Fergus to admit as current, though not without the internal resolution of being revenged on him for his procrastination, time and place convenient. However, as he could not amend the matter, he issued orders to Donald to descend into the Low Country, drive the soldiers from Tully-Veolan, and, paying all respect to the mansion of the Baron, to take his abode somewhere ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... not make hay at all in a land where the sun always shines. It is thought that unless people are spurred on incessantly by the exigencies of the changing seasons they will lose energy, and fall into an idle floating along with gracious nature. Will not one sink into a comfortable and easy procrastination if he has a whole year in which to perform the labor of three months? Will Southern California be an exception to those lands of equable climate and extraordinary fertility where every ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... loves by calculation, Tattiana's love was quite sincere, A love which knew no limitation, Even as the love of children dear. She did not think "procrastination Enhances love in estimation And thus secures the prey we seek. His vanity first let us pique With hope and then perplexity, Excruciate the heart and late With jealous fire resuscitate, Lest jaded with satiety, ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... the emotions that agitated my bosom. Though delivered from the terror of immediate death, there was nothing in the respite to give me any feeling of joy. It would be only a short procrastination of my doom, for certainly in the morning I must die. The slender chances of our seeing a sail were scarce worth contemplating; and I derived no consolation by dwelling upon ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... his power to evade. He loved her and had promised to wed her. He was a man who might be weak, but had never explicitly behaved in a manner to make her tremble for such a situation as the present. Procrastination ceased to be possible. What now had happened must demand instant recognition of her rights, and that given, she assured herself the future held no terrors. Now he must marry her, or contradict his own record as a gentleman and a man ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... would it be better to wait fourteen more Earth-days, till another lunar dawn? Hell no—that would be chickenish procrastination. Rodan and Dutch were a good ten feet away from him—he was ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... solemnly and severely.] My darling, remember what Pilcher said about procrastination. And remember our resolutions last night. If we break them on the first night of the year, where shall we be ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... home authorities and courts was unnecessary, as the managing director of the American branch and the directors of the German company had acted in perfect good faith in an attempt to advance the interests of the German cause. It was merely a question of the result. If their policy of procrastination had succeeded in delaying the contracts and had kept our enemies for a considerable time from building their own factory for fuses and aeroplane magnetoes, their action would have been justified; in the contrary event it would have been vain, but blameless from a moral and legal point ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... by ourselves,—a world which, as you have seen, was transformed into a sort of fairy-land by her love of beautiful things. After I lost her, it was my intention to send the children immediately to France to be educated. But procrastination is my besetting sin; and the idea of parting with them was so painful, that I have deferred and deferred it. The suffering I experience on their account is a just punishment for the wrong I did their ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... re-entered the Catholic Church. Soon afterward I heard that her father had extended his forgiveness, and that she had been welcomed back by her kinfolk in Ireland. Hearing nothing from her whatever, with the procrastination which was ever one of my great faults, I put off doing anything about the annulment of the marriage until the father of Quantrelle le Rouge wrote me that he had heard of her death as well as that of the child. But before my marriage to Mademoiselle D'Hauteville, I took the precaution to ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... indeed, as we have already described him, the spoiled child of society; a froward and petted darling, not always to be conciliated by kindness, but furious when neglected or controlled. He was habituated to triumph; it had been his lot to come, to see, and to conquer; even the procrastination of certain success was intolerable to him; his energetic volition could not endure a check. To Lady Annabel Herbert, indeed, he was not exactly what he was to others; there was a spell in old associations ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... honoured me by considering me as his rival. Though affairs remained in this unsatisfactory state so far as he was concerned, for certain very valid reasons he had not yet chosen to vent upon me any access of his spleen. But this procrastination of actual hostilities was terminated in the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Father in Heaven was perfect, but he believed it and acted flatly and fearlessly on the belief: this is the type of the higher visionary. But all the insidious dangers of the vision; the idleness, the procrastination, the mere mental aestheticism, come in when the vision is indulged, as half our Socialistic conceptions are, as a mere humour or fairy-tale, with a consciousness, half-confessed, that it is beyond practical politics, and that we need not be troubled with its immediate ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... yet to come, and more perplexing duties had yet to be discharged. The President was obliged to retire McClellan from his command when, in August, 1862, that general's procrastination could no longer be endured. McClellan had made no fatal blunders, was endeared to his men, and when it was obvious that he could not take Richmond, although within four miles of it at one time, he had made a successful and masterly retreat to Harrison's Landing; yet the campaign against ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... decision and despatch, he all the time in good humour with the people and they delighted with him, though he often rated them roundly when they stood before him perverse in litigation, helpless in procrastination, detected in cunning or convicted of falsehood. They saw into his character almost as soon as he ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... the other hand it may be asked, by those who carry the proper spirit of jealousy into their historical reading, was Cicero always right in these angry comments upon Pompey's strategies? Might it not be, that where Cicero saw nothing but groundless procrastination, in reality the obstacle lay in some overwhelming advantage of Caesar's? That, where his reports to Atticus read the signs of the time into the mere panic of a Pompey, some more impartial report would see nothing to wonder at but the overcharged expectations ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... stated to me that he had never professed to be a military man, or to know how campaigns should be conducted, and never wanted to interfere with them; but that procrastination on the part of his commanders, and the pressure of people at the North, and of Congress, had forced him into issuing the 'executive orders.' He did not know but that they were all wrong, and did not know ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... be a crime, Procrastination's worse; Now—now is the accepted time To eviscerate your purse! So buy what finds you find to-day— That is the safest plan; And if you find you cannot pay, Why, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... my suspicions were correct, those very suspicions formed the strongest reason for acquainting him with her duplicity; and, although I was always too ready to put off the evil day so long as doubt supplied excuse for procrastination, I could not have let so much time slip by and nothing said but for my absorption ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.—DE QUINCEY. ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... the continual contemplation of misery, hourly impaired; every submission to our fear enlarges its dominion; we not only waste that time in which the evil we dread might have been suffered and surmounted, but even where procrastination produces no absolute increase of our difficulties, make them less superable to ourselves by habitual terrours. When evils cannot be avoided, it is wise to contract the interval of expectation; to meet the mischiefs which will overtake us if we fly; and suffer only their real ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... irretrievable confusion. I shall not afterwards allude to this part of the case. It is one, however, which the opium-eater will find, in the end, as oppressive and tormenting as any other, from the sense of incapacity and feebleness, from the direct embarrassments incident to the neglect or procrastination of each day's appropriate duties, and from the remorse which must often exasperate the stings of these evils to a reflective and conscientious mind. The opium- eater loses none of his moral sensibilities or aspirations. He wishes and longs as earnestly as ever to realize what ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... as to encourage Congress to consummate this work without delay. Nothing can more promote the permanent welfare of the Union, and nothing would be more grateful to our constituents. Indeed, whatever is unfinished of our system of public credit cannot be benefited by procrastination, and, as far as may be practicable, we ought to place that credit on grounds which cannot be disturbed, and to prevent that progressive accumulation of debt which must ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... of intellectual power bestowed on me by nature or education was in any way connected with this habit of my feelings; or that it needed any other parents or fosterers than constitutional indolence, aggravated into languor by ill-health; the accumulating embarrassments of procrastination; the mental cowardice, which is the inseparable companion of procrastination, and which makes us anxious to think and converse on any thing rather than on what concerns ourselves; in fine, all those close vexations, whether chargeable ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... stopped by the almost invisible influence of its legal counsellors, who secretly oppose their aristocratic propensities to its democratic instincts, their superstitious attachment to what is antique to its love of novelty, their narrow views to its immense designs, and their habitual procrastination to its ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Adams was generally in his opposition to Jackson, yet once he deserves credit for the contrary course. This was in the matter of our relations with France. The treaty of 1831 secured to this country an indemnity of $5,000,000, which, however, it had never been possible to collect. This procrastination raised Jackson's ever ready ire, and casting to the winds any further dunning, he resolved either to have the money or to fight for it. He sent a message to Congress, recommending that if France should not promptly settle the account, letters ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... said. "When you have anything to do, let it be done firmly and well. Let there be no procrastination. Your father ought to be ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... of that letter to this day, the Minister has found it convenient to continue the system of delay mentioned in it. I have not been able to obtain anything more than excuses for procrastination, and these excuses are uniformly want of ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... Government passed an act authorizing the giving of scrip to the half-breeds of the North-West on the same terms as it had been given to those in Manitoba. So far so good. Then came year upon year of neglect, of clerkly procrastination, and of half-concessions. The French half-breeds passed resolution after resolution, sent to Ottawa petition after petition and delegation after delegation, but in vain. The Government {76} forgot the act which it had itself ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... rioters would have acquired a headway that could not have been stopped, without a more terrible sacrifice of life and property—perhaps even of half the city. Comprehending intuitively the gravity of the situation, and the danger of procrastination or temporizing, he sprang at once for the enemy's throat, and never ceased his hold until he had strangled him to death. If he had waited to consult authorities about the legality of his action, or listened to the voice of pity, or yielded to ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... so honorable, so superbly honorable, as love. Love is success. Love is happiness. Love is life." "Where love is, God is. He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God. God is love. Therefore love." "Without distinction, without calculation, without procrastination, love. Lavish it upon the poor, where it is very easy; especially upon the rich, who often need it most; most of all upon our equals, where it is very difficult, and for whom perhaps we each do least of all. There is a difference between trying to ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... After a month of procrastination and delay, the Rangoon Commissariat Department, under an energetic new official, decided to embark a collection of sixty elephants, which had long been awaiting transport from the neighbourhood of Rangoon, to India. Now a large sailing-ship ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... Redworth had in his memory, for a comment on procrastination and excessive scrupulousness in his calculating faculty, the blue back of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of security to their women and children, should they be sent out within the hour; but the infatuated chief, either from an idea that his fort on the hill was not to be reached by our shot, or with the vain hope to gain time by procrastination, returning no answer to our communication, while he detained our messenger; we opened our fire at half past eight in the morning, and such was the precision of the practice, that in two hours we perceived the breach would soon be practicable. ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... True Glory The Death of Nedham Almolk Lines to a Lover Verses to My Daughters Serenade to My Sleeping Mistress The Inconsistent The Capture of Jerusalem To a Lady An Epigram On a Little Man with a Very Large Beard Lamiat Alajem To Youth On Love A Remonstrance with a Drunkard Verses On Procrastination The Early Death of Abou Alhassan ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... pushed him, as it were, along the track of what he had to put up with, you would have come upon the further fact that as a woman of business Miss Howe had no parallel for procrastination. Next season was imminent in his arrangements, as Christmas numbers are imminent to publishers at midsummer, and here she was shying at a contract as if they had months for consideration. It wasn't, either, as if she complained of anything in the terms—that would ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... was a stroke of art, and that I was somehow fortifying Carthew. I told myself, I say; but I was no such fool as to believe it, even then. In these circumstances I displayed the two chief qualities of my character on the largest scale—my helplessness and my instinctive love of procrastination—and fell upon a course of action so ridiculous that I blush when I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... beamed with pleasure. He enjoyed the procrastination as much as she did. "But the month's only just begun! However! Yes, you shall have your way. I won't ask ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... the present situation might never have arisen if Servia had held out a hand after the murder of the Archduke. Servia had, however, shown no sign of sympathy or help, though some weeks had already elapsed since the murder; a time limit, said his Excellency, was essential, owing to the procrastination on ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... there few that be saved?" Jesus replied: "Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able."[944] The counsel was enlarged upon to show that neglect or procrastination in obeying the requirements for salvation may result in the soul's loss. When the door is shut in judgment many will come knocking, and some will plead that they had known the Lord, having eaten and drunk ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... our first duty to prepare in earnest for our recovery from the ever-increasing evils of an irredeemable currency without a sudden revulsion, and yet without untimely procrastination. For that end we must each, in our respective positions, prepare the way. I hold it the duty of the Executive to insist upon frugality in the expenditures, and a sparing economy is itself a great national resource. Of the banks to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... Commission fell to work. The results of that work did not show themselves quickly enough to satisfy the most practical, and, (to its credit be it spoken,) the most exacting of Governments; and Macaulay was under the necessity of explaining and excusing a procrastination, which was celerity itself as compared with any codifying that had been done ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... that I declined to see him,' replied the surgeon; 'but I warn you, that if you persist in this extraordinary procrastination, and the individual dies, a ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... to this, and arising out of his want of steady resolution and earnest will, there was a habit of putting off till to-morrow what should be done to-day, of which he was himself fully sensible, and which he speaks of in one of his letters, as that "fatal habit of delay and procrastination, for which ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... am sorry to see in you a sad habit of procrastination, and want of punctuality. I assure you, my dear boy, that, to a man of business, such a habit is more ruinous; and if not subdued in youth, will surely grow the more confirmed by age, and blight ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... treatment of von Jagow's renewed intimation that Germany would gladly accept American good offices in negotiations with this country as to the character and conditions of maritime war. The Wilhelmstrasse can discover in this and some other passages material for procrastination if it so desires. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... side. I was nervously susceptible to being convicted of a mistake; it upset me, as they say. Even where a man writes, this is a defect of a quality; in active life it entails slowness of decision and procrastination, failure "to get there." I have no doubt that much contemporary writing suffers delay from a like morbid dread as to possibility of error. The aim to be thus both accurate and clear often encumbered my sentences. My cautious mind strove ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... his theme fresh from the fire of his forge. He knew that to complete his "wailing Iliads" the strong hand of the reviser was necessary, and he also realized that nothing is more difficult for the genius than to retain his gift. Of all natures the most prone to pessimism, procrastination and vanity, the artist is most apt to become ennuied. It is not easy to flame always at the focus, to burn fiercely with the central fire. Chopin knew this and cultivated his ego. He saw too that the love of beauty for ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... had closed her eyes and made absolutely no sign. For some reason of her own she had elected that he should determine this vital point without the slightest assistance from her. And it must be determined at once; procrastination was impossible. For a moment he hesitated. On the one side was Barbara, on the other his conscience. After long doubts he had come to a certain conclusion which he quite understood to be inconvenient to his partners. Should he throw it over now? Should he even try to make a sure and ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... characteristic procrastination, that he must really go to bed, he wound up his watch and put it on the dressing-table. His pockets had to be emptied and his clothes hung or folded. His fingers touched the notes in the left-hand outside pocket of his coat. Not for one instant had the problem ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... was demanded and councilmen's official limousines were frequently overturned. Meetings denounced the inaction of the authorities; a gigantic parade bearing placards calling for an end to procrastination marched past the cityhall. Democrats blamed Republicans for inefficiency and Republicans retorted that Miss Francis had done her research during ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... eyes at each other in humorous despair. Here at the very beginning of the reconnaissance we had run against the stone wall of African indirectness and procrastination. And just as we thought we had at ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... of the machine and obstruct the march of the self-elect. His confidences were not effusive, nor their subjects numerous. His deliberation was unfailing and sometimes it carried the idea of indecision, not to say actual love of procrastination. But in my experience with him I found that he usually ended where he began, and it was nowise difficult for those whom he trusted to divine the bias of his mind where he thought it best to reserve ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... had never written home. Whether from diffidence or shame, or a touch of anger, or mere procrastination, or because (as we have seen) he had no skill in literary arts, or because (as I am sometimes tempted to suppose) there is a law in human nature that prevents young men - not otherwise beasts - from the performance of this simple act of piety - months and years ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... imagined herself suffering from various diseases, shut herself up in her house, and refused to see any one. She grew morbid and was sure that every person who approached her had some sneaking, personal, hostile motive. Though always busy, she accomplished little. Desultory work, procrastination, and self-indulgence destroyed her power of concentration. She could not think long enough on one subject to think it out straight, therefore she was constantly deceived in her friends and interests. She first trusted everybody, then mistrusted everybody. Infatuation with every new ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... making the necessary arrangements for the docking of the Thetis he at once found himself confronted with that adamantine procrastination which constitutes such a serious flaw in the Spanish character; manana (to-morrow) is the word that is most often in the Spaniard's mouth, and his invincible determination never to do to-day what can possibly be postponed until ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... transportation, and the stockade, by breakfast-time, had as completely vanished as though it had been bodily lifted away by some genius of the Wonderful Lamp. Everything was ready for a start, and we waited lazily for the flood-tide; but when it did make, the usual procrastination ensued, and there was no move till it was near done. Then, indeed, we proceeded up about two-thirds of the way, and brought up with two good hours' daylight, in spite of my remonstrances. No place could be better calculated than where we rested for an attack upon boats: high banks ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... their character and train their intellect. This good lady, in whose name Mary sermonizes, seizes upon every event of the day to teach her charges a moral lesson. The defects she attacks are those most common to childhood. Cruelty to animals, peevishness, lying, greediness, indolence, procrastination, are in turn censured, and their opposite virtues praised. Some of the definitions of the qualities commended are excellent. For example, Mrs. Mason says to ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... the procrastination that had kept him from applying for his discharge long since, when he might have procured it without any difficulty, and have placed her he loved beyond the power of any villain. Again, he was no longer free to search for her in the Province; for he was under the ban of military law there, and, ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... consecration, not to say the disbursement, should be made immediately, while the idea that our possession are from God is fresh in our minds, and before selfishness shall seize them as her own. Procrastination is often but giving heed to her treacherous voice, and ere we are aware, she carries us captive. As we receive our increase from the hand of God, like faithful stewards, we should set apart the portion belonging to others without delay. To indulge ourselves by holding them up before us, ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer, which were on the wall there. I was in a general state of mild but ever-increasing surprise, and endeavored to find some conceivable reason for such very curious procrastination. ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... never tell the truth about Tom Reed—but that is his defect, truth; he speaks the truth always. Tom Reed has a good heart, and he has a good intellect, but he hasn't any judgment. Why, when Tom Reed was invited to lecture to the Ladies' Society for the Procreation or Procrastination, or something, of morals, I don't know what it was —advancement, I suppose, of pure morals—he had the immortal indiscretion to begin by saying that some of us can't be optimists, but by judiciously utilizing the opportunities that Providence ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... listen, but never suppose that the truths must become embodied in actual life. They will wait until the chief becomes a Christian, and if he believes, then they refuse to follow,—as was the case among the Bakwains. Procrastination seems as powerful an instrument of ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... books of our youth, "Procrastination is the thief of time." Now, Brian found the truth of this. He had been in town almost a week, but he had not yet been to see Calton. Each morning—or something very near it—he set out, determined to go direct to Chancery ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... separate command, instead of joining, sent various apologies which the pressure of the times compelled Fergus to admit as current, though not without the internal resolution of being revenged on him for his procrastination, time and place convenient. However, as he could not amend the matter, he issued orders to Donald to descend into the Low Country, drive the soldiers from Tully-Veolan, and, paying all respect to the mansion of the Baron, to take his abode somewhere near it, for protection of his daughter ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... rendered indispensable to his safety. He appeared weak in intellect, when he was only so from circumstances. An overwrought anxiety to be just made him hesitate about the mode of overcoming the abuses, until its procrastination had destroyed the object of his wishes. He had courage sufficient, as well as decision, where others were not menaced and the danger was confined to himself; but, where his family or his people were involved, he was utterly unfit ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... about him? O Bharata, I hope, thy ministers are never won over by bribes, nor do they wrongly decide the disputes that arise between the rich and the poor. Dost thou keep thyself free from the fourteen vices of kings, viz., atheism, untruthfulness, anger, incautiousness, procrastination, non-visit to the wise, idleness, restlessness of mind, taking counsels with only one man, consultation with persons unacquainted with the science of profit, abandonment of a settled plan, divulgence of counsels, non-accomplishment of beneficial ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... of the realm," wrote the legates, "are storming in bitter wrath at our procrastination. Lords and commons alike complain that they are made to expect at the hands of strangers things of vital moment to themselves and their fortunes. And many persons here who would desire to see the pope's authority in this country diminished or ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... till they had driven all their adversaries out of it. They were unanimous upon the main point, but did not agree upon the time of carrying it into execution. It was in the month of April, in the year 1378, when Lapo, thinking delay inadvisable, expressed his opinion, that procrastination was in the highest degree perilous to themselves; as in the next Signory, Salvestro de' Medici would very probably be elected Gonfalonier, and they all knew he was opposed to their party. Piero degli Albizzi, on the other hand, ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... have to drive Marshire, in confusion, from the field, and bear away the prize himself. Pensee's observations with regard to Agnes had cleared away most, if not all, of his difficulties in that particular quarter. No one had ever accused him of cowardice. Whenever he took refuge in procrastination or deceit, it was never because he was afraid, but in order that nothing might interfere with the purpose he had in hand. The growing miseries of the situation which he saw, already in part, served ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... the mad desire to get away at last, to cease with this fateful procrastination and to fly from this country with the golden booty, which he had gained at such awful risks, these caused him finally to turn the mare's head towards home, leaving Editha to follow as best she might, in the company of one ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... saloon?" The points of the big moustaches twitched ironically. "I promise you there'll be no procrastination ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... the youth of its author. We learn what could not have been new even in 1579, that 'in misery it is a great comfort to have a companion;' that 'a new broom sweepeth clean;' that 'delays breed dangers;' that 'nothing is so perilous as procrastination;' that 'a burnt child dreadeth the fire;' that it is well not to make comparisons 'lest comparisons should seem odious;' that 'it is too late to shut the stable door when the steed is stolen;' that ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... the most part, been thought out for several years, and various portions of it reduced to writing. Though we have long cherished the design of preparing it for the press, yet other engagements, conspiring with a spirit of procrastination, have hitherto induced us to defer the execution of this design. Nor should we have prosecuted it, as we have done, during a large portion of our last summer vacation, and the leisure moments of the first two months of the present session of the University, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... easy prospect of indefinite procrastination was cut off the next morning by Grandcourt's ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... year and making them more powerful every hour. Publicity is the sustaining food of a powerful store and the only strengthening nourishment for a weak one. The retailer who delays his entry into advertising must pay the penalty of his procrastination by facing more giant competitors as each ...
— The Clock that Had no Hands - And Nineteen Other Essays About Advertising • Herbert Kaufman
... and three thousand a year. Not that either he or I care about the money,—there will be plenty for Alwyn, plenty. I was telling them both last night," he went on, "that there must be no delay and nonsense. In my state of health any procrastination would be foolish. I want to see him with a good wife. Crampton is all very well, but a wife will understand him better. The house will hold us all. With the exception of the library and my own bedroom, it will all belong to them. Alwyn can refurnish the drawing-room, if he likes; and there is ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... are three foes in the world. They are said to be ninefold, agreeably to their qualities. Exultation, satisfaction, and joy,—these three qualities appertain to Goodness.[84] Cupidity, wrath, and hatred, these three qualities are said to appertain to Passion. Lassitude, procrastination, and delusion, these three qualities appertain to darkness. Cutting these with showers of arrows, the man of intelligence, free from procrastination, possessed of a tranquil soul, and with his senses under subjection, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... to Mr. Hector, who acted as his amanuensis, to the moment he made me copy out those variations in Pope's "Homer" which are printed in the "Poets' Lives." "And now," said he, when I had finished it for him, "I fear not Mr. Nicholson of a pin." The fine 'Rambler,' on the subject of Procrastination, was hastily composed, as I have heard, in Sir Joshua Reynolds's parlour, while the boy waited to carry it to press; and numberless are the instances of his writing under immediate pressure of importunity or distress. He told me that the character of Sober in the 'Idler' was by ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... immediate attention which were deemed of immediate necessity; while the others, though often of the highest importance to the national welfare, were first postponed, then neglected, and ultimately forgotten. To this habit of procrastination was perhaps owing the extinction of its authority. It disappointed the hopes of the country, and supplied Cromwell with the most plausible argument ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... permanent. Actions, it is said, speak louder than words, and while the diplomats on both sides were still engaged in an apparent endeavour to settle matters amicably, the action of those on the Russian side was characterised by systematic procrastination and delay which admitted of but one interpretation, namely, that Russia had no intention to quit Manchuria until she was compelled to do so ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... never found the letter; one felt so scientific in explaining gas that one never found the leak; and one felt so judicial, so impartial, in weighing evidence that one had to be bribed to come to any conclusion at all. This was the last note of the Victorians: procrastination was ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... home at once to prepare for the morrow, for of course we meant to do it the very next day. Procrastination is you know what—and delays are dangerous. If we had waited long we might have happened to spend our ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... difficulty in finding them. But his mind was passing from him. The intention was unsound—a fantasy—a dream of bravery in old age—begotten of the erroneous supposition that the cabinets of Christendom would remain unconcerned spectators of the triumph of the Greeks, or even of any very long procrastination ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... they are sanguine; your wont is to attempt less than is justified by your power, to mistrust even what is sanctioned by your judgment, and to fancy that from danger there is no release. Further, there is promptitude on their side against procrastination on yours; they are never at home, you are never from it: for they hope by their absence to extend their acquisitions, you fear by your advance to endanger what you have left behind. They are swift to follow up a success, and slow to recoil from a reverse. Their bodies they ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... a well-stocked hunting ground Suma was not eager to depart. Day after day the journey was postponed, and the procrastination, ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... fact must terminate his wavering and establish her future. Here at least was an event beyond his power to evade. He loved her and had promised to wed her. He was a man who might be weak, but had never explicitly behaved in a manner to make her tremble for such a situation as the present. Procrastination ceased to be possible. What now had happened must demand instant recognition of her rights, and that given, she assured herself the future held no terrors. Now he must marry her, or contradict his own record as a gentleman ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... preventive measures, if taken, are in no true sense offensive but defensive. Decadent conditions, such as we observe in Turkey—and not in Turkey alone—cannot be indefinitely prolonged by opportunist counsels or timid procrastination. A time comes in human affairs, as in physical ailments, when heroic measures must be used to save the life of a patient or the welfare of a community; and if that time is allowed to pass, as many now think that ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... Roman fortress of Luceria towards Arpi, the Roman standards appeared on his right flank at Aeca. Their leader, however, pursued a course different from that of his predecessors. Quintus Fabius was a man advanced in years, of a deliberation and firmness, which to not a few seemed procrastination and obstinacy. Zealous in his reverence for the good old times, for the political omnipotence of the senate, and for the command of the burgomasters, he looked to a methodical prosecution of the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... considered, it was the promptest and most feasible process of re-establishing civil government in the insurrectionary States. Mr. Lincoln was especially anxious that neither the ruling power nor the conquered rebels should be needless procrastination become accustomed to military government—a form of administration which he regarded as very tempting, but very sure to undermine, and in time to destroy, the real spirit of independence and self-government. It was his belief, as he expressed ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... straight thinking and resolution, and so strongly confirmed by faith and hope that nothing can discourage it or make it let go. It is a bulwark against the faults which sink below the normal line of life, dullness, depression, timidity, procrastination, sloth and sadness, moodiness, unsociability—all these it tends to dispel, by its quiet and confident gift of encouragement. And though so contrary to the spirit of childhood, these faults are found in children—often in delicate children who have lost confidence in themselves ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... was the offspring of the same illegal relations. It was signed and written by his wife. The wretched man debated whether he should send the infant to an asylum or keep it upon his premises. Through procrastination, continued for twenty years, the child had derived all the advantages of legitimacy, and still the demon of the husband's peace was the test ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... know that languor and dejection will afflict the best, however excellent their principles. I am in possession of Lord Hailes's opinion in his own hand-writing, and have had it for some time. My excuse then for procrastination must be, that I wanted to have it copied; and I have now put that off so long, that it will be better to bring it with me than send it, as I shall probably get you to look at it sooner, when I solicit ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... trouble, a habit of not attending is formed in you; then a habit of deferring your attention. And continually from time to time you drive away by deferring it the happiness of life, proper behavior, the being and living conformably to nature. If then the procrastination of attention is profitable, the complete omission of attention is more profitable; but if it is not profitable, why do you not maintain your attention constant? Today I choose to play. Well then, ought ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... of this endless procrastination. What is wanted is not reasons for the deed, but the deed itself.' ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... trade, had been cut to the quick; even Morris's strong sense of duty to himself was not strong enough to dally within those walls and under the shadow of that bankruptcy; and presently the manager and the clerks would draw a long breath, and compose themselves for another day of procrastination. Raw Haste, on the authority of my Lord Tennyson, is half-sister to Delay; but the Business Habits are certainly her uncles. Meanwhile, the leather merchant would lead his living investment back to John Street like a puppy dog; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fear against the Borgia. But they were for the most part stained themselves with crime, and dared not trust each other, and could not gain the confidence of any respectable power in Italy except the exiled Duke of Urbino. Procrastination was the first weapon used by the wily Cesare, who trusted that time would sow among his rebel captains suspicion and dissension. He next made overtures to the leaders separately, and so far succeeded in his perfidious policy as to draw Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, Paolo Orsini, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... The consequence was that the books kept themselves, and confusion grew upon confusion until the partners were quite confounded. Garrison naively confesses this fault of the firm to his brother-in-law thus: "Brother Knapp, you know, resembles me very closely in his habits of procrastination. Indeed I think he is rather worse than I ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... dozen times, but courage failed her. When she heard his footsteps in the hallway she was ready to cry out the truth to him and end the suspense. As he opened the door to enter, the spirit of fairness turned frail and fled before the appeal of procrastination. Wait! Wait! Wait! cried the powerful weakness in her heart, and it conquered. She could not tell him then. To-morrow—the next day, yes, but not then. It was too much to ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... kind, amiable little girl, between ten and eleven years old; she was dutiful and obedient, but had an evil habit of procrastination, which her mother had tried in vain to overcome. It was always "time enough" with Emily to do everything, and consequently her lessons were frequently imperfect, and her wardrobe in a sad state, as Mrs. Manvers insisted upon her daughter sewing on strings, and hooks and eyes, when they were wanting, ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... not be brought to acknowledge that procrastination could ever be wise. If she had had her way, she would have been hard at work hacking out her blouse within ten minutes of its first suggestion; but fortunately for all concerned Arthur appeared upon the scene at this minute, and put down ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... of that," very gravely. "I confess that this procrastination has made me very uneasy; it was not treating you fairly, Margaret, to leave his father all these months in ignorance of ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... lady. By having the former under his roof, he conceived he might be able to quash all such hazardous and hostile proceedings as he might otherwise have been engaged in, under the patronage of the Marquis; and Lucy, he foresaw, would make, for his immediate purpose of delay and procrastination, a much better mistress of his family than her mother, who would, he was sure, in some shape or other, contrive to disconcert his political schemes by her proud and ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... did neither. Having promised overnight, they found reasons in the morning for breaking their promises. Nothing was done on the 1st of May, and Lord Cochrane, tired of their excuses for procrastination, paid a brief visit to the authorities at Poros. The result was, that he thought of going without the Greek leaders. "I have seen the Government," he wrote to Sir Richard Church on the 2nd, "and prepared them for the worst, should things go on as ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... clock is the last noteworthy object, and reminds us that Mark Tapley noticed the time there, on the occasion of his last meeting with Mary Graham in St. James's Park, before starting for America. It also reminds us of Mr. Micawber's maxim, "Procrastination is the thief of time—collar him;"—a few minutes afterwards we are comfortably seated in the train, and can defy the storm, which overtakes us precisely in the manner described in The Old ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... Pickle, and even engaged to second the remonstrances by which she had often endeavoured to persuade her husband to settle his affairs by a formal will; but that he had from time to time evaded their importunities with surprising excuses of procrastination, that plainly appeared to be the result of invention and design, far above the supposed pitch of his capacity; a circumstance from which Mr. Clover concluded, that the old gentleman imagined his life would not have been secure, had he once taken such a step as would have rendered it ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... impatient under this continued procrastination and evasion, and he resolved to take such measures as would accomplish the object desired. He had found, during his connection with Bucholz, that he had not the slightest regard for the truth. He would make the most astounding ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... employment. Mr. Jocelyn was comparatively quiet and much at home. Often he was excessively irritable and exasperating in words and manner, but no longer violent from bestial excess. He put off the project of going to a curative institution, with the true opium inertia and procrastination, and all efforts to lead him to definite action proved fruitless. His presence, however, and his quiet, haughty ways, with Roger's frequent visits, did much for a time to restrain the ill-disposed people around them, but the inevitable contact with so much ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... upon the Assembly while the debate went on. Lights were now brought in,—the tallow candles of our colonial forefathers,—and placed upon the table round which the members sat. By this time Sir Edmund's impatience at their procrastination had deepened into anger, and he demanded the charter in so decided tones that the reluctant governor gave orders that it should be produced. The box containing it was brought into the chamber and laid upon the table, the cover removed, and there before their eyes lay the precious ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... is the conservative hand shown at present in opposition to every proposition for confiscation or punishing the rebels. After having hurried us by their cowardice and Southern toad-eating into this war; after urging it by their contemptible procrastination to its present tremendous proportions, they cry out 'humanity!' for the men who have murdered our relatives, and shake the Constitution for protection over estates which have been directly used to contribute to Southern war! While every mail from the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... a request for a sum of about four thousand francs. Lord Byron having somewhat delayed answering him, Ashe reiterated his request, complaining of the procrastination; whereupon, "with a kindness which few," says Moore, "would imitate in a similar case," Byron wrote to him ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Whigs became the poor man's foe, Mix'd ashes in his cup of sorrow; Nor thought the pauper's "lot of woe," Perchance might be their own to-morrow. The Tories said they were his friend, That they abhorr'd procrastination; So give—till next July shall end— Exchequer bills and ventilation. Oh! the artful Tories dear, Oh! the dear and artful Tories; They alone perceive, 'tis clear, Taxes tend to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various
... she managed to stave off the evil day until lunch was half over; but procrastination was not nearly as wholesale a thief of time as they ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... admiration the queen's dignified and incomparable letter of September, 1796,"—two years before. That his views were not the simple outcome of his own unbiassed study of the situation is evident enough. "This country, by its system of procrastination, will ruin itself," he writes to St. Vincent, the very day after drawing up the letter in question; "the queen sees it and thinks"—not as I do, but—"as we do." That Lady Hamilton was one of the "we" ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... devising means to evade or nullify those which they deemed obnoxious or contrary to their interests, and constant practice soon perfected their perverted activities in this direction, until obstruction and procrastination were erected into a system, against which ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... citizen, protected by and subject to the laws of the republic. What is needed is that not only these schools should be more liberally supported, but that new ones should be opened without delay. The matter does not admit of procrastination. The work of education and civilization must be done. The money needed must be contributed with no sparing hand. The laudable example set by the Friends and the American Missionary Association should be followed by other sects and philanthropic societies. Christianity, patriotism, and enlightened ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... contaminate. And when De Berquin complained that his books and writing materials had been denied him, the extent of the parliament's generosity was to grant him "the epistles of St. Jerome and some other Catholic books." At length, the king's patience becoming exhausted by the court's procrastination and technical objections, he sent (November 21, 1526) the Provost of Paris forcibly to remove De Berquin from the conciergerie to the Louvre, where he was soon ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... a disease, and procrastination is its forerunner. There is only one known remedy for the victims of indecision, and that is promptness. Otherwise the disease is fatal to all success or achievement. He who hesitates is lost. General Putnam was plowing, ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... until thousands of opportunities are lost and gone for ever; if those who put their hands to a piece of work shall carry it out with vigour in their own lifetime; if those who counsel delay shall mean due time for full consideration by themselves, and shall not mean an extended procrastination which shall free themselves from worry, and leave their work to be handed down as a legacy to their children, who shall likewise hand it down to their children, and so on ad infinitum until "delay" shall become a synonym for death and destruction to tens of ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... Telegraph, I know not what to say. The delay in finishing the apparatus on the part of Prosch is exceedingly tantalizing and vexatious. He was to have finished them more than six months ago, and I have borne with his procrastination until I utterly despair of their being completed.... I suppose something might be done in Washington next session if I, or some of you, could go on, but I have expended so much time in vain, there and in Europe, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... keeping his attention fixed no less upon his own troops than on the enemy, first shows that his resolution was unconquered by the former. Though he well knew that his procrastination was disapproved, not only in his own camp, but by this time even at Rome, yet, inflexibly adhering to the same line of policy, he delayed through the remainder of the summer, in order that Hannibal, devoid of all hope of a battle, which he so earnestly desired, might now look out for a place for ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... this point: "In my first interview with Mr. Lincoln alone, he stated to me that he had never professed to be a military man, or to know how campaigns should be conducted, and never wanted to interfere in them; but that procrastination on the part of commanders, and the pressure of the people at the North and Congress, which was always with him, forced him into issuing his series of 'Military Orders'—one, two, three, etc. He did not know but they were all wrong, and ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... This fatal procrastination was perhaps not without excuse, in view of the critical situation of the Austrian monarchy during 1848. For months after the fall of Metternich Austria was practically without a central government. Vienna itself, where on the 14th of March the establishment of a National Guard was authorized ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... between the two crowns; and it was anticipated that he would abdicate the Portuguese crown in favour of his seven-year-old daughter, Maria da Gloria. The absolutists on the other hand hoped that the king might by procrastination avoid ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... Department of Defense's integration drive. This change in policy was substantive, but the traditionalists who feared the sudden intrusion of the services into local community affairs and the reformers who later charged McNamara with procrastination missed the point. More than a declaration of racial principles, the directive was a guideline for the progressive application of a series of administrative pressures. Endorsing the Gesell Committee's concept of command responsibility, McNamara ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... which thou wouldst ask?" inquired the Jinnee, with grim indulgence; "or wilt thou encounter thy doom without further procrastination?" ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... always held my people surpassed in procrastination, as yours in deceiving. However, their ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... of the Sirius to China was at an end; and nothing had yet arrived from England, though hourly expected. It was the natural and general opinion, that our present situation was to be attributed to accident rather than to procrastination. It was more probable, that the vessels which had been dispatched by the British government had met with some distress, that had either compelled them to return or had wholly prevented them from any further ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... the sick room, as I understood, in conference with the patient. It was well to have heard, without procrastination, what he had to say; for next morning, at a little past ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Broad's soul. She remembered some "procrastination"—to use her husband's favourite word—in settling a draper's bill, even when it was diminished by the pew rent, and she wondered if Mrs. Allen knew the facts. Of course she did; all Cowfold knew every fact connected with everybody in the ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... see no reason to doubt that he would have acted on it as decisively as Othello himself, though probably after a longer and more anxious deliberation. And therefore the Schlegel-Coleridge view (apart from its descriptive value) seems to me fatally untrue, for it implies that Hamlet's procrastination was the normal response of an over-speculative nature confronted with a difficult ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... gradually increasing his income, he lived until 1842, when he became engaged; and he was married on June 11, 1844. "I ought to name that happy day," he declares, "as the commencement of my better life." It was at about this date, also, that he began and finished, not without delay and procrastination, his first novel. Curiously enough, he affirms that he did not doubt his own intellectual sufficiency to write a readable novel: "What I did doubt was my own industry, and the chances of a market." Never, surely, was self-distrust more unfounded. ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... for which I have more ardently longed, than to clasp you once again in my arms. The additional procrastination which this new journey will create, cannot be more afflicting to you than it is to me. Abridge then, I intreat you, as much as possible, those delays which are in some degree inevitable, and let me have the agreeable surprize of holding my St. Julian to my breast before I imagined I had reason ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... order would be given to proceed against the heretics with fire and sword. He lamented, in bitter terms, the fact that the Emperor had not made use of stern measures as soon as he arrived in Germany. For now, said he, procrastination and the conciliatory demeanor of the Evangelicals, especially of Melanchthon and Brueck, had made it impossible to rouse the Emperor to such a degree as the exigency of the case demanded. (Plitt, 63.) Luther wrote: "For that ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... N. {ant. 132} lateness &c. adj.; tardiness &c. (slowness) 275. delay, delation; cunctation, procrastination; deferring, deferral &c. v.; postponement, adjournment, prorogation, retardation, respite, pause, reprieve, stay of execution; protraction, prolongation; Fabian policy, medecine expectante[Fr], chancery suit, federal case; leeway; high time; moratorium, holdover. V. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Procrastination was not one of Bell Cameron's faults, and for full half an hour before her mother and Juno came home, the stolen letter had been lying in the mail box where Bell herself deposited it, together with a few hurriedly written lines, telling how it came into her hands, but offering no explanation ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... and, in fact, as to their being in the right, there could be no doubt, and nothing but a kind motive could have induced them to take this trouble; so I yielded with a good grace, and thanked the cabinet council for their timely warning, though fearing, that in this land of procrastination, it would be difficult to procure another dress for the fancy ball; for you must know, that our luggage is still toiling its weary way, on the backs of mules, from Vera Cruz to the capital. They had scarcely gone, when Seor ——- brought a message from several of the principal ladies here, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... Majesty for Kaiser: is authorized to offer 60,000 men, with money corresponding, and no end of brilliant outlooks;—must keep back his offers, however, if he find the people indisposed. Which he did, to an extreme degree; nothing but vague talk, procrastination, hesitation on the part of Bruhl. This wretched little Bruhl has twelve tailors always sewing for him, and three hundred and sixty-five suits of clothes: so many suits, all pictured in a Book; a valet ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Philip's part to inform his sister that his object was to gain time. Procrastination was always his first refuge, as if the march of the world's events would pause indefinitely while he sat in his cabinet and pondered. It was, however, sufficiently puerile to recommend to his sister an ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... glories, but although the inventions be greate, the first and last I meane, yet when I survei your storehouse, I see they are the smallest things and such as in comparison of manie others are of smal or no value. Onlie let this remember you, that it is possible by to much procrastination to be prevented in the honor of some of your rarest inventions and speculations. Let your Countrie and frinds injoye the comforts they would have in the true and greate honor you would purchase your selfe by publishing ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... rivers. Anything was welcomed by Metternich that seemed likely to avert, or even to postpone, a struggle with Napoleon for life or death. Bluecher correctly judged the march through Switzerland to be mere procrastination. He was himself permitted to take the straight road into France, though his movements were retarded in order to keep pace with the cautious steps of Schwarzenberg. On the last day of the year 1813 the Prussian general crossed the Rhine near Coblentz; on the 18th of January, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... as long as there would be competition with slave labor. It was soon apparent, however, that a State with such a diversity of interests, one-half slave and one-half free could not legislate on slavery. This compromising resolution of procrastination, therefore, was adopted as the best Virginia could under the circumstances be induced to do for the extermination[34] ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... is only by the strongest effort of will he resists precipitate action, then, losing no pretext to find causes for its exercise, overpowering the dictates of his penetrative genius. It is not rashness in Hamlet on one occasion and procrastination on another, but a power of instantaneous action that could be controlled by the very briefest period of reflection, the great feature in his intellect being a preternaturally rapid reflective power, and men of genius almost invariably do meditate ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... from that moment he had no peace till he withdrew all semblance of dissent, and even of procrastination. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... it was and I would go with him. I thought it would appear rougher to him than he expected or could imagine. He said he would like to go back sometime and see the country once more. He kept putting it off from year to year. It is said, "Procrastination is the thief of time." He never went. He bought him eight acres more land joining his two places. He paid for it seventy dollars an acre and had ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... happened. Since his arrival from Egypt, O—— had never been able to make up his mind to pay any of his innumerable bills; the creditors, aware of the man's wealth and position, not pressing for a settlement. I rather think that this procrastination, this reluctance to disburse ready money, is a symptom of his particular state of ill-health; I have observed it with several heart-patients (and others as well); however that may be, it became a source of ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
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