Indolent

It seemed to the gunslinger that, if he closed his eyes he would be able to hear the croaking of the first spring peepers, smell the green and almost-summer smell of the court lawns after their first cutting (and hear, perhaps, the indolent click of croquet balls as the ladies of the East Wing, attired only in their shifts as dusk glimmered toward dark, played at Points), could almost see Aileen as she came through the break in the hedges —It was not like him to think so much of the past.

He asked, in a plausibly indolent and absent way: “Which one do you consider to be the true Pope?” The house took an attitude of deep attention, and so waited to hear the answer and see the prey walk into the trap.

Miss Bingley was engrossed by Mr. Darcy, her sister scarcely less so; and as for Mr. Hurst, by whom Elizabeth sat, he was an indolent man, who lived only to eat, drink, and play at cards, who when he found her prefer a plain dish to a ragout, had nothing to say to her.

All records, saving thine, come cool, and calm, And shadowy, through the mist of passed years: For others, good or bad, hatred and tears Have become indolent; but touching thine, One sigh doth echo, one poor sob doth pine, One kiss brings honey-dew from buried days.

Telyánin was sitting in the same indolent pose in which Rostóv had left him, rubbing his small white hands.

His brother is a cautious man, a reasoned man, subtle, deliberate, even indolent to a degree.

It was the sort of day when people like to get their chores and errands done early so they can spend the afternoon as quietly as possible, but to Nick, Shoyo's main street looked strangely indolent this forenoon, more like a Sunday than a workday.

To which, the butcher’s boy: who appeared of a lounging, not to say indolent disposition: replied, that he thought not.

This schoolmaster married a sweet, indolent half-Chinese girl for whom the fatigue of bearing a son was too much.

As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under indolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands among those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost within the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all their opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma—literally and truly, like the smell of spring violets; I declare to you, that for the time I lived as in a musky meadow; I forgot all about our horrible oath; in that inexpressible sperm, I washed my hands and my heart of it; I almost began to credit the old Paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare virtue in allaying the heat of anger; while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely free from all ill-will, or petulance, or malice, of any sort whatsoever.

There were not lacking, however, evidences of what we may call the intelligent egoism of a youth who is charmed with the indolent, careless life of an only son, and who lives as it were in a gilded cage.

Never having known mother or sisters, he was quick to feel the influences they brought about him; and their busy, lively ways made him ashamed of the indolent life he led.

They are as heedless and as indolent as cats.

Her long, slender body reposed in an attitude of listless and indolent grace.

The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies, It wrenches such ardors from me I did not know I possess’d them, It sails me, I dab with bare feet, they are lick’d by the indolent waves, I am cut by bitter and angry hail, I lose my breath, Steep’d amid honey’d morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death, At length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles, And that we call Being.

XXVII The Virtuous With thunder and heavenly fireworks must one speak to indolent and somnolent senses.

III Camma To Ellen Terry As one who poring on a Grecian urn Scans the fair shapes some Attic hand hath made, God with slim goddess, goodly man with maid, And for their beauty’s sake is loth to turn And face the obvious day, must I not yearn For many a secret moon of indolent bliss, When in midmost shrine of Artemis I see thee standing, antique-limbed, and stern?

Most of them just look like indolent Third World militia the world over.

Though now in her old age, in her young age She had been beautiful in that old way That’s all but gone; for the proud heart is gone, And the fool heart of the counting-house fears all But soft beauty and indolent desire.

For during many successive generations each individual beetle which flew least, either from its wings having been ever so little less perfectly developed or from indolent habit, will have had the best chance of surviving from not being blown out to sea; and, on the other hand, those beetles which most readily took to flight would oftenest have been blown to sea, and thus destroyed.

This goitred creature of papery antiquity had been supremely indolent and useless all her life; but while I was still recovering from sunstroke she created the first furore of our stay—a sort of trailer for the “revolution of the pepperpots.” General Zulfikar had taken her one day to a military training-camp, where he was to watch a team of mine-detectors at work in a specially-prepared minefield.

(he said) Ill fits a chief who mighty nations guides, Directs in council, and in war presides; To whom its safety a whole people owes, To waste long nights in indolent repose.

The meeting was over, the crowd dispersed, and now that the speeches had been read, each one fell back into his place again, and everything into the old grooves; the masters bullied the servants, and these struck the animals, indolent victors, going back to the stalls, a green-crown on their horns.

I say so, because your excellence has been barely six days in this castle, and already the unhappy and the afflicted come in quest of you from lands far distant and remote, and not in coaches or on dromedaries, but on foot and fasting, confident that in that mighty arm they will find a cure for their sorrows and troubles; thanks to your great achievements, which are circulated all over the known earth.” “I wish, señor duke,” replied Don Quixote, “that blessed ecclesiastic, who at table the other day showed such ill-will and bitter spite against knights-errant, were here now to see with his own eyes whether knights of the sort are needed in the world; he would at any rate learn by experience that those suffering any extraordinary affliction or sorrow, in extreme cases and unusual misfortunes do not go to look for a remedy to the houses of jurists or village sacristans, or to the knight who has never attempted to pass the bounds of his own town, or to the indolent courtier who only seeks for news to repeat and talk of, instead of striving to do deeds and exploits for others to relate and record.

Four more girls passed through the room in an indolent group, engrossed in conversation; three were barefoot and one wobbled perilously on a pair of unbuckled silver dancing shoes that did not seem to be her own.

Mandeville is very much less favourable to the claims of the philosophers: “They are very seldom the same sort of people, those that invent arts and improvements in them and those that inquire into the reason of things: this latter is most commonly practised by such as are idle and indolent, that are fond of retirement, hate business and take delight in speculation; whereas none succeed oftener in the first than active, stirring and laborious men, such as will put their hand to the plough, try experiments and give all their attention to what they are about.” —Fable of the Bees, pt.