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Examples

  • Their ruinous vice, if we are to trust the records of the time, was what the old monks called accidia -- [Greek text] -- and ranked it as one of the seven deadly sins: a general careless, sleepy, comfortable habit of mind, which lets all go its way for good or evil -- a habit of mind too often accompanied, as in the case of the Angle-Danes, with self-indulgence, often coarse enough.

    Historical Lectures and Essays Charles Kingsley 1847

  • The former leaves to the latter to discover for itself the three carnal sins, avarice, gluttony and libidinousness; having already declared the nature of the spiritual sins, pride, envy, anger, and indifference, or lukewarmness in piety, which the Italians call accidia, from the Greek word.

    Divine Comedy, Cary's Translation, Complete 1265-1321 Dante Alighieri 1293

  • The accidia had turned him into a recluse, accessible only to his intimate friends.

    V. S. Naipaul – Excerpt from The Enigma of Arrival 2001

  • Certain physical disabilities had now been added to the malaise which had befallen him years before, a malaise of which I had no precise knowledge, but interpreted as something like accidia, the monk's torpor or disease of the Middle Ages – which was how his great security, his excessive worldly blessings, had taken him.

    V. S. Naipaul – Excerpt from The Enigma of Arrival 2001

  • The great perils in the life of man, which endangered him in this world and the next, were the superficial elation of superbia, when by whatever acci - dent Fortune favored him, and the ruinous desperation of accidia and dolor, when Fortune frowned.

    Dictionary of the History of Ideas CHARLES TRINKAUS 1968

  • The first four books of the "Institutes" treat of the rules governing the monastic life, illustrated by examples from the author's personal observation in Egypt and Palestine; the eight remaining books are devoted to the eight principal obstacles to perfection encountered by monks: gluttony, impurity, covetousness, anger, dejection, accidia

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 3: Brownson-Clairvaux 1840-1916 1913

  • I knew the church condemned _accidia_, but the whole idea seemed to me quite fantastic, just the sort of sin, I fancied, a priest who knew nothing about real life would invent.

    De Profundis Oscar Wilde 1877

  • _accidia_ [29] of his kind is not only a fault in the individual, but a positive ill omen and nuisance [30] to others.

    A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 To the Close of the 19th Century George Saintsbury 1889

  • It is the _accidia_ of the cloister; a trace of sourness, of ferment engendered by the enforced stagnation of youthful energies, a vague, obscure melancholy. "

    A Prince of Bohemia Honor�� de Balzac 1824

  • Quid ego dicam de correctione fraterna f Quid de peccatis diicac opposi*» tis Charitati) 6t odio Dei, atque accidia?

    Tractatus theologicus de charitate, in quo expenditur systema J.V. Bolgenj de amore Dei. Accedit ... Joseph Chantre Herrera, Giovanni Vincenzo Bolgeni 1792

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  • "To Constantine the African (more on him in comment on the page electuary), the top hot-and-wet sperm and libido boosters were pepper, pine nuts, egg yolks, warm meats, brain, and arugula.* Chickpeas were another perennial favorite.

    *John Davenport (1789-1877) relates the salutary tale of an abbot whose monks suffered from that bane of medieval monastic life known as accidia, a combination of boredom, lassitude, and laziness conventionally but inadequately translated as 'sloth.' Hoping to stir them from their idleness, he fed them arugula, succeeding so well that they promptly abandoned the cloister for the brothel."

    --Jack Turner, _Spice: The History of a Temptation_ (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 192

    December 2, 2016