indolence

IN AUTUMN, I write of days smoldering like embers to ash, grass, stiff, green-weary, waiting for somnolent winter, everywhere, gathered birds stuck in spindly branches and gardens done with giving. . . of air, over-ripe, indolent, like the last great cluster of grapes on the vine, which winds its way across the wall, tendrils turned to wood.

The secret of the whole matter is that a habit is not the mere tendency to repeat a certain act, nor is it established by the mere repetition of the act. Habit is a fixed tendency to react or respond in a certain way to a given stimulus; and the formation of habit always involves the two elements, the stimulus and the response or reaction. The indolent lad goes to school not in response to any stimulus in the school itself, but to the pressure of his father's will; when that stimulus is absent, the reaction as a matter of course does not occur.

An intelligent class can scarce ever be, as a class, vicious, and never, as a class, indolent. The excited mental activity operates as a counterpoise to the stimulus of sense and appetite.

Indolence and timidity often keep us to our duty, while our virtue carries off all the credit of doing so.

No man deserves to be praised for his goodness unless he has strength of character to be wicked. All other goodness is generally nothing but indolence or impotence of will.

I like the word 'indolence'. It makes my laziness seem classy.

RICH, adj. Holding in trust and subject to an accounting the property of the indolent, the incompetent, the unthrifty, the envious and the luckless.

R.I.P. A careless abbreviation of "requiescat in pace", attesting to indolent goodwill to the dead. According to the learned Dr. Drigge, however, the letters originally meant nothing more than "reductus in pulvis".