Sentence Examples:
The coach had three rows of seats, each calculated to hold three persons, and as we were only six, we had, in the phrase of Milton, to "inhabit lax" this exalted abode, and, accordingly, we were for some miles tossed about like a few potatoes in a wheelbarrow.
They did not seek to prevent irreligion, luxury, slavery, and usury, the encroachments of the rich upon the poor, the tyranny of foolish fashions, demoralizing sports and pleasures, money-making, and all the follies which lax principles of morality allowed; they fed the rabble with corn, oil, and wine, and thus encouraged idleness and dissipation.
None indeed of the states founded by the successors of Alexander were free from such attempts, or from the other horrors which absolute monarchy in degenerate times brings in its train; but in the kingdom of Asia these evils were more injurious than elsewhere, because, from the lax composition of the empire, they usually led to the severance of particular portions from it for longer or shorter periods.
Let us refuse to accept as moral any political leader who should allow his conduct in relation to great issues to be determined by egoistic passion, and boldly say that he would be less immoral even though he were as lax in his personal habits as Sir Robert Walpole, if at the same time his sense of the public welfare were supreme in his mind, quelling all pettier impulses beneath a magnanimous impartiality.
It is no lax use of the word genius to apply it to such, for unless you profess the modern heresy that genius is but a multiplied talent, a coral-island growth, that earns its right to a new name only when it has lifted its head above the waters of oblivion, you must agree.
There is an amusing anecdote related of a country curate, who having published a volume of sermons, in which he more particularly pointed out the dangers of a lax morality, and the want of strict religious principles among the higher classes of society, wrote a few weeks afterwards to a friend in town, inquiring in his extreme simplicity, "whether he did not observe any signs of reformation in the fashionable world?"
The laws on the subject of matrimony, moreover, are so very lax, intercourse is so simple and has so many facilities, and the young of the two sexes are left so much to themselves, that it is no wonder children form that connection so often without reflection and contrary to the wishes of their friends.
He stood, not thrown back like Macbeth, but drawn forward, on tiptoe, with neck reached out, form erect, but lax, one arm extended, and one long diaphanous finger pointing over our heads at something he saw behind us, but towards which, in the extremity of our terror, we dared not turn our eyes.
"Let us refuse to accept as moral," says George Eliot, "any political leader who should allow his conduct in relation to great issues to be determined by egoistic passion, and boldly say that he would be less immoral even though he were as lax in his personal habits as Sir Robert Walpole, if at the same time his sense of the public welfare were supreme in his mind, quelling all pettier impulses beneath a magnanimous impartiality."
Let us add that in these times of lax morality they had no more delicacy with respect to the mistresses; and that the latter almost always left them valuable and durable remembrances, as if they essayed to conquer the fragility of their sentiments by the solidity of their gifts.
Puritanism, which has been so great a power in the English nation, and in the strongest part of the English nation, was originally the reaction in the seventeenth century of the conscience and moral sense of our race, against the moral indifference and lax rule of conduct which in the sixteenth century came in with the Renascence.
"The time was," he wrote, "when I was fool enough to believe that a man might be negligent of pecuniary obligations, and yet be a very good fellow; but long experience has convinced me that he who is lax in this respect is utterly unworthy of trust in any other."
However, either her opinions were being corrupted or enlightened, either she was growing lax in principle or she was learning the lesson of toleration, for she allowed the remarks of Lady Arthur to pass unnoticed, so that that lady did not need to advance the well-known opinion and practice of Sir Roger de Coverley to prop her own.
There was at least a fair hope that long before that time arrived one or both of the boys would have learned a trade and decided to live a respectable life in the future; for many lads who were deemed uncontrollable at home, under the lax training they received there, have been fashioned into splendid men because of the strict discipline at the Reform School.
A shaft of golden light from the low sun slanted into the place through the western window from which the Venetians had been pulled back, and fell across the face of the man who lay still and lax in his chair, eyes closed and chin dropped a little so that his mouth hung weakly open.
Beyond their own department, men of science are often as lax and illogical as any; but when scientific training is duly applied, it genders a habit of thorough accuracy, inasmuch as in scientific inquiry the slightest deviation from truth breeds endless mischief.
It became a regular thing with us to attend the early Mass in the little chapel of the Castle; and, instead of growing lax (as I had done before many times in my roving life), as to attending confession and receiving the Holy Sacrament, I now began to feel the need for both, as though I were preparing me for some great and solemn undertaking.
In connection with his personal indebtedness incidents and circumstances were brought to light which certainly indicated that he entertained very lax ideas of honest dealing and fairness and which developed a disregard of the obligations and requirements of his position as an officer in the Navy.
It is unnecessary to dwell at any length upon the work of reorganization which would confront a responsible state government in relation to the punishment and the prevention of crime, because public opinion is becoming aroused to the dangers which threaten American society from the escape of criminals and the lax and sluggish administration of the criminal laws.
Concurrent testimony proves that he remained a good husband and a constant friend throughout his life, that he controlled his natural quickness of temper, and subdued the sensual appetites which in that age of lax morality he might have indulged without reproach.
With little of an intellectual nature to divert them, with the temptations incident to slavery and mixed races on every hand, with a heritage of rather lax ideas concerning sexual morality, the men of the day too frequently found their chief pastimes in feeding the appetites of the flesh, and too often the women forgot and forgave.
Her acute hating glance recorded that whereas desire had used to make his face hard and splendid like a diamond, like a flashing sword, it now made it lax, and she realized with agony, though, of course, without surprise, that he had been unfaithful to their love times without number.
If he maintains the dignity and prestige of his Department by punishing any offenses against it, he endangers the very objects for the care of which he is responsible; and it is hard to say whether under a lax or a severe administration the more damage would be done.
They had a trivial object, and most severe sanctions; for, as they belonged immediately to the king's personal pleasures, by the lax interpretation of treason in those days, all considerable offenses against the Forest Law, such as killing the beasts of game, were considered as high treason, and punished, as high treason then was, by truncation of limbs and loss of eyes and testicles.
A thorough knowledge of them would only satisfy you that they are gross in language, particularly the Spaniards, indelicate in their habits, careless of propriety, lax in morals, and, with all their grace, vivacity, and elegance, very unfit companions for you.
The laced scarlet coat, and the other items of attire, were strictly in accordance with the somewhat lax regulations as to the dress of an officer of dragoons; but the lace cravat falling in front, and the dress lace ruffles of the wrists, were certainly more ample than the Duke of Marlborough might have considered fit for strict regimental attire.
The more severe forms are attended with extravasation, the extravasated blood being widely diffused through the cellular tissue of the part, especially where this is loose and lax, as in the region of the orbit, the scrotum and perineum, and on the chest wall.
They have justly been condemned on the score of immorality; but we must remember that the age in which they were written was one of lax notions, especially among men of rank, who regarded all women accessible, either from indiscretion or inferiority of rank, as fair game, and acted accordingly.
And so it was that the course of Gordon's whole career was suddenly changed into a different channel, at a moment when he was drifting placidly on the stream of a lax conventionality, and was frittering away all his opportunities for sheer lack of anything that would spur him on to a clearer conception of what life means.
The criticism by foreigners that Americans, both men and women, never appear really at home in evening clothes, that they look as if they felt dressed, is true of the average man and woman of our country and results from the lax standards of a new and composite social structure.
Whatever may be the right or wrong of these comparative methods of training, Germans trained in the investigation of such matters agree in telling me that the boys who come up to the universities, especially in the large cities and towns, are somewhat lax in their moral standards as regards matters upon which the puritan still lays great stress.
To his mind every object is endued with occult power, moved by a vague volition, actuated by shadowy motive ranging capriciously from malevolence to benevolence; in his lax estimation some objects are more potent or more mysterious than others, the strong, the sharp, the hard, and the swift-moving rising superior to the feeble, the dull, the soft, and the slow.
Without a word, the man slipped his hands under Caroline's shoulders, the boy lifted her dusty boots, and gently unloosing her arm from the dog, they carried her lax little body carefully to the wagon and laid her on the clean straw in the bottom, her head on a folded coat.
A better opinion on that company of poets is that they had a taste extraordinarily liberal, generous, and elastic, but not essentially lax: taste that gave now and then too much room to play, but anon closed with the purest and exactest laws of temperance and measure.
I will only remark here, that, as far as my observation extended, no one complained of Jackson, when it transpired that he had been resolutely in favor of refusing all quarter to Northern soldiers: a severity, not to say barbarism, which, be it right or wrong in itself, would undoubtedly have appeared to many atrocious enough, had it been the doctrine of any Northern general, and beside which the sternest measures of Butler look lax and conciliatory.
He had the reputation of being somewhat unscrupulous as to political methods, somewhat careless in personal conduct, somewhat lax in personal morals; but to the one great object of his life, the destruction of slavery and the elevation of the slave, he was supremely devoted.
It had been a vexatious circumstance, too, that not long before this time he had received a rebuke from the Massachusetts Assembly for having been lax, as they fancied, in notifying them of some legislation of an injurious character, which was in preparation.
Often before had he defrauded the revenue by knowingly purchasing smuggled brandy and tobacco, and by providing the funds to enable others to smuggle them; but then the morality of that day in regard to smuggling was very lax, and there were men who, although in all other matters truly honest and upright, could not be convinced of the sinfulness of smuggling, and smiled when they were charged with the practice, but who, nevertheless, would have scorned to steal or tell a downright lie.
And it is very interesting to find in the same year Superintendent Wood, who was in command of the Yukon country with headquarters at Dawson, standing up against reports in Eastern papers which stated that the enforcement of law is lax in that country and morals at a low ebb.
The consequence of leniency to the majority of book thieves would be not only an indirect encouragement to the culprits to continue their depredations, but it would also lead to a lax and dangerous notion of the obligations of readers, and the sacredness of such property, in the public mind.
There can be no doubt that many fishing captains were quite too lax in this, presuming on the power of their nation and remembering the liberties enjoyed under reciprocity, while too forgetful of the stern letter of the treaty which the Canadians were executing against them.
And when Apollo drove his chariot across the high heavens at noon, and all land and all sea were hot as molten gold, Proteus with his flocks returned to the shade of his great cave by the sobbing sea, and on its sandy floor he stretched himself, and soon lay, his limbs all lax and restful, in the exquisite joy of a dreamless sleep.
His notions of duty were, to be sure, somewhat lax, according to the strict rules of morality, and his only idea of pleasure was a drunken spree on shore when he could leave the craft without risk of her suffering damage either from wind and weather, or the officers of the law.
For it is impossible to check irresponsible power so as never to break out under the influence of passion, unless one wields power with much meekness, and refuses to listen to the frequent complaints of one's wife and friends charging one with being too easy and lax with one's servants.
He saw her, too, secretly and silently cherishing a new faith in her bosom, amid a throng, lax and infirm of purpose, and wonderment gave way to another emotion, as his mind leaped from that past, with its covert, inner life, to the untrammeled moment when she had thrown off the mask in the solitude of the forest.
Against doctrine of this sort none will protest but the politicians in power, under whose lax administration of a great trust there has arisen one of the saddest spectacles of human history, the decay of the great American principles of liberty and fair play.
With these exceptions the passing of the ligature is not so difficult as in some situations, the lax cellular tissue in which the vessel lies generally yielding much more easily than the tough sheath which elsewhere, as in the femoral, requires accurate dissection.
These two considerations, in the present lax tendencies of our divorce laws, constitute the chief bar against a wholesome "popular" adoption of the legal remedy for domestic troubles; while their potency has invoked a class of fraudulent practitioners whose insidious business it is to procure dissolution of marriage for any or no cause, "without publicity," and at a cost suited to the most limited means.
By their judicious and early use, the development of strength and flexibility in the tiny lax fingers may be assisted, and dormant thought may receive its first awakening call through the motions which interpret as well as illustrate the phase of life or activity presented by the words.
A beautiful mouth is one that is moderately small, and has a well-defined and graceful outline; and beautiful lips are gracefully molded, neither thick nor thin, nor compressed nor lax, and that are endowed with expression and are tinted with the hues of health.
We have seen an actual insurrection of the better elements of society provoked by the escape of murderers and other criminals through the hands of lax or corrupt juries, and of an administration whose use of the prerogative of mercy was imputed to partisanship or to bribery.
Penalties for lax discipline were severe; the guards were supposed to live on the alert both by day and by night, and the Emmerich commandant considered that the fewer distractions permitted to the sentries, the more likely they were to make their watch a thorough one.
With that consistency of mind and fixedness of purpose for which he was remarkable, our canine hero stubbornly persisted in making it manifest that he was not a dog to be whistled, rubbed, and patted into winking at a measure so lax as that of allowing a red "varmint" to run at large in their midst, without even so much as a block and chain to hamper the freedom of his movements, or some sign to bespeak his inferiority to men and dogs.
If in his youth he had been prone to gambling, and before his marriage with Theodora had been somewhat lax in his morals, when he became a man he put away childish things; his married life was a shining example to his people and he was abstemious both in food and drink, holding that "excess in either was an incentive to the worst of crimes."
An anonymous combatant lends force to his strictures by an arraignment of the lax morals of the women of their own time, while a fourth knight of song, evidently intending to conciliate the parties, begins his "New Song," only a fragment of which has reached us, with praise, and ends it with blame, of woman.
Finality in matters of momentous decision appears painful to him, and the standard of success which would fairly be applied to the policy of the ordinary statesman seems too lax for the man whose shoulders are pressed down with the weight of the kingdom as it is and the kingdom yet to come.
For an hour or two he hobbled about the yard and garden, taking a final look at the horses and dogs, and his face was very lax and gray and his voice broken as he talked with his men, who had learned of the doctor's orders, and were awkwardly silent with sympathy.
The fact could, unfortunately, not be cloaked over, that immorality was nursed in these communities, not alone by girls, who, as nurses in cities, had taken in the poison, or by fellows, who made its acquaintance in the military service, but that, sad to say, also the cultured classes, through the stewards of manorial estates, and through the officers on the occasions of field maneuvers, carried lax principles of morality into the country districts.
The evils of lax government, both central and state, under the Confederation caused, however, a marked anti-democratic reaction, and this united with the temperamental conservatism of the framers of the constitution of 1787 in the shaping of that conservative instrument.
Where there are some hundreds, perhaps thousands, of young uneducated girls, without work to occupy their time, there must of course exist a certain amount of lax conduct; but never, or extremely rarely, does a girl apply to the magistrates for an affiliation order, while from agricultural parishes such applications are common.
What honest indignation did he not vent upon English residents abroad, who, for sake of a mild climate and lax morality, could exchange their native country for the Continent; and at last, fairly worn out with his denunciations, he sat down on a bench, tired and exhausted.
Johnson, "this lax and lawless versification so much concealed the deficiencies of the barren, and flattered the laziness of the idle, that it immediately over-spread our books of poetry; all the boys and girls caught the pleasing fashion, and they who could do nothing else could write like Pindar."
Other important features of factory legislation relate to the fencing of dangerous machinery and its cleaning when in motion (the regulations being strictest in the case of children and most lax in the case of male adults), and conditions of health, including the amount of steaming allowed, which was first regulated by the Cotton Cloth Factories Act of 1889.
For, besides the fact that the general standard of morality is so lax that there is much more to censure than to praise, you are sure to be called niggardly if you praise and too censorious if you censure, though you may have been lavish of appreciation and scrupulously guarded in reproach.
And though the northern peasantry in young William's time were so untutored or morally lax, or both, that they were unacquainted with even their English Bible, it is not strange if these historical associations induced the more intelligent and refined yeomen to possess Latin books.
The lax state of morals which appears to have prevailed among the Arabs in the time of the writer or writers probably continued at least until the period when coffee became a common beverage, about the middle of the tenth century of the Flight (or near the middle of the sixteenth century of our era), and perhaps considerably later, until some years after the introduction of tobacco into the East.
Concerned about the sanctity of life, he banished meat (and wine) from the imperial table and became so lax about enforcing criminal statutes, particularly capital punishment, that critics credited his good nature with an increase in corruption and lawlessness.
These young men, pressed together at first, by external opposition, into a serried phalanx, gradually win their way, become themselves the delight and then the satisfaction of their contemporaries, and, falling apart as success is secured to them, come to seem lax, effete and obsolete to a new race of youths, who effect a fresh esthetic revolution.
And Papa, laxest, most tolerant of men, so lax that nothing seems to him altogether bad, so tolerant that nobody, however hard he tries, can pass, he thinks, beyond the reach of forgiveness and love, so humorous that he has to fight continually to suppress it, for humor lands one in odd morasses of dislike and misconception here, married her a year after my mother died, and did it wholly for my sake.
A girl upon the borders of her set at college was fond of the phrase "living for the moment," and Marjorie associated with it the speaker's lax mouth, sloe-like eyes, soft, quick-flushing, boneless face, and a habit of squawking and bouncing in a forced and graceless manner.
The cellular expansion, the general basis of the structure, appears then to be more abundant in woman, more lax and yielding, more dilated and fuller of liquids; and it is by yielding gradually, by decomposing and weakening shocks by means of the general suppleness of the different organs, thus procured, that nature seems, in woman, to avoid, or to destroy, every hurtful effort.
It was as a scene present before him: the falsely accused man borne away, crushed with shame, while the true criminal looked on with a lax conscience and an impersonal interest, and thriftily saved his observations to recount to his cronies at the mill.
Titans of monstrous form and yet more monstrous name obstruct the ways; sickness or sleep never formed such savage abstractions, such fierce vanities of vision as these: office and speech they seem at first to have none: but to strike or clutch at the void of air with feeble fingers, to babble with vast lax lips a dialect barren of all but noise, loud and loose as the wind.
Watson was a pious, sensible young man, of great integrity; the others were rather more lax in their principles of religion, particularly Ralph, who, as well as Collins, to quote the precise words of Franklin's confession, had been unsettled by him, "for which," he adds, "they both made me suffer."
With the result that girls all the world over have become increasingly lax and decadent in tone and manner, in dress and morale, from confusion of their young standards by social tolerance and recognition of such persons, as also from corruption by demoralizing contact with and observation of such.
Two singular features it unquestionably possesses: the intimate association between the parson and the pedagogue, and the striking picture which it presents to our view of the lax and profligate condition of the class which Cromwell and his advisers saw thus clothed with the twofold responsibility of mental and spiritual tuition.
The Dancing Class had its high social standard, it required grandfathers as credentials before admission could be granted, the archives of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania supplied no more authoritative assurance of Philadelphia respectability than its subscription list, but the Dancing Class was lax in its standard compared to the Assembly.
Presently there was a dull sound, and another, and still one more, and a blade flashing white and then red, and Edward Harris dropped down like some stuffed effigy of a man, that boys make for sport, with his limbs all crumpled and lax, on the stone floor of the Land Office.
At first sight you might have supposed him to be of a lax, careless disposition or character, but on studying him more closely you would have found that, on the contrary, the man was decidedly a stickler for the proprieties of this world, and withal brought up in the ways and graces of the very best society.
Loose, licentious, lax, debauched, wanton, lewd, corrupt, profligate, rakish, depraved, reprobate, abandoned, graceless, shameless, wild.
Simplicity, perspicuity, and copiousness, are the leading features of his style, often sententious without being abrupt, and decided without an air of dogma; that it should have been sometimes verbose, sometimes lax or minute, is less to be wondered at, than that it should never be disgraced by affectation or pretence of elegance.
The report of the vision and the miracle turned the hearts of the seamen and the passengers, for a time, to the good of their souls; but after Easter, as is usual among worldly people, they fell back into their lax way of living, and particularly into gambling, with all the evils that ordinarily accompany it.
The volunteer force, however, continued to grow stronger and stronger long after the alarm had died away; and even though recently the progress of improvement seems to have been somewhat checked, and the volunteer body to have become lax in its organization, it appears to me that in its intelligence, its earnestness, and its physical capacity there exists the material out of which might be molded a very valuable arm of the military service.
The building, however, was not completed for many years, transition work being abundant, and the lofty belfry tower at the extreme west plainly not older than the early part of the fifteenth century, by which time the primitive objection with the Cistercians to aspiring towers had become lax, if not surrendered altogether.
Nevertheless, so riotous were the habits of the day, encouraging to the utmost card-playing and the free use of wine, so lax was the administration of the law, and so stringent the code of public opinion, that scarcely a week passed without an encounter, more or less bloody, between men of education and intellect, who would have considered themselves dishonored had they not been ready at any moment to support a jest, an argument, or an insult, with naked steel.
In short, Hamilton took from recent years the lesson of the evils of lax government; whereas Jefferson clung to the other lesson, which crumbling colonial governments had illustrated, that governments derived their strength (and the Declaration had proclaimed that they derived their just rights) from the will of the governed.
One case was that of an ex-service officer on the Russian frontier, who, unfortunately for him, fell in love with a Russian lady, and found that his duty was not so strong as his love: it was ascertained that not only was he lax in his espionage, but that he was actually making his work of benefit to the Russian service rather than to his own people.
While the dispensation which would confine women to the nursery and kitchen, and exclude them from broader fields of action, is happily a dead letter, it is quite certain that no condition of civilization, however liberal, will ever justify loose principles or lax manners, or what is almost as reprehensible and much more despicable, the cynicism which sneers at virtue while it prudently keeps its own skirts unsoiled.
According to his will she is bond or free, educated or ignorant, lax or strict, housekeeping or roving; and though we advocate neither the bondage nor the ignorance, yet we do hold to the principle that, by the laws which regulate all human communities everywhere, she is bound to study the wishes of man and to mold her life in harmony with his liking.
The servitors did as they were told; they lifted Prince Louis and would have carried him to that grim couch, but, struck with some peculiarity, Alexis the Deacon suddenly bent over his lax body and thrust his hand into the bosom of his princely habit, now tarnished thick with wine stains and spilled meats.
In one small chamber there was cleared a frieze of cupids intermingled with foliage; but in this, after the first moments of illusion, it was only possible to acknowledge the hand of some unknown late and lax decorator of the school, influenced as much by Raphael as by Leonardo.
The doctrine of James was propounded at a later period, when men, presuming on free grace, were beginning to get lax in their practice, and it was necessary to insist that faith could not be true faith if it was not accompanied by corresponding works.
She was found lying on the bed very pale, with blue lips, and foaming a little at the mouth; the head was rigidly bent backwards, the extremities were lax, the eyes were turned upwards and inwards, the pupils dilated and inactive, the face and extremities were cold, the body somewhat warmer, there was no pulse at the wrist, the carotids beat feebly, the breathing was deep and rattling, and after five or six inspirations ceased.
Within the last three or four years, public attention has been much directed to the lax administration of the funds of the various charity schools in the county, and should the gentlemen who have taken the matter so zealously in hand be successful in bringing about the reforms which these institutions so imperatively need, the poor of many future generations will have reason to thank them for their labors.
Still more singular and proportionately admired were the decorum that marked her conduct in circumstances of singular difficulty and the virtue which maintained a spotless reputation amid temptations and lapses regarded as venial in the habits of a lax age.
It may be, and probably is, impossible to prevent bribery altogether, for there are scoundrels in all constituencies; and if a candidate with a long purse is so lax in his morals as to hint at the purchase of votes, he is tolerably certain to find a market in which these commodities are sold.
All believed in the miraculous efficacy of the wares in which even the lower order of the clergy dealt, and their rule in country places was so lax, their penances so easily performed or commuted, their relations with their people so friendly and on such equal terms, that in the rural districts the voice of complaint was either unheard or neglected.
From this time on, provincial governors not only continued to tread the old wonted paths, but their selfish arbitrariness became more unbridled in proportion as the prestige of the administration in the capital grew feebler and the official organization more lax.
Whether England has become morally more lax or merely less reticent about its laxity is a problem which no one can solve; but the greatest change that has overtaken literature and art in the last twenty years is in the new freedom to choose any theme and to treat it by any method.
It is a curious fact, however, that among men of this class, while they would use every care in accounting for money entrusted to them, there is no tendency to consider time in the same light; and in consequence the reports of time given are liable to be very lax.