Literary notes about indulge (AI summary)
Literary authors employ the term "indulge" in a variety of nuanced ways to convey a voluntary yielding to desires, emotions, or personal inclinations. At times, it captures grand, even mythical, self-permissions—gods or heroes engaging in their fated exploits [1, 2]—while in other contexts it signifies a more guarded, often cautionary act of permitting oneself to embrace a fleeting emotion or thought, such as false hopes or excessive sorrow [3, 4, 5]. It can also depict everyday pleasures, whether to savor a glass of champagne [6] or to revel in an idle moment [7, 8], and is occasionally used to describe the granting of small favors or allowances to others [9]. This rich, versatile term thus serves to underline both the exuberance and the restraint inherent in human nature, reflecting a spectrum of indulgences in thought, action, and sensation across diverse literary works [10, 11, 12, 13].
- The gods also indulge in amusements, marry, sin, are punished, die, are resurrected, or die and are transformed, or die finally.
— from Myths and Legends of China by E. T. C. Werner - And Hecaton, in the second book of his Apophthegms, says, that in entertainments of that kind, he used to indulge himself freely.
— from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius - Do not allow yourself to indulge in false hopes, Mr. Phelps.
— from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle - I hope I need not tell you, that I wish it success.—But do not indulge hope.—Tell nobody.'
— from Boswell's Life of Johnson by James Boswell - I dare not indulge in any hope, because I am unworthy of it.
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - He would drink the regiment's health; or, indeed, take any other excuse to indulge in a glass of champagne.
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray - The day was too busy to indulge regret and when evening came the house was stripped and bare.
— from Anne's House of Dreams by L. M. Montgomery - She was too busy and healthy to indulge in useless regrets.
— from The Gay Cockade by Temple Bailey - Dearest sir, said I, pray indulge me, and let me dine here by myself.
— from Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson - We had done this for three days, and were congratulating ourselves upon having found out so safe a place to indulge all our propensities in.
— from The Romance of Lust: A classic Victorian erotic novel by Anonymous - For Beth, I indulge no hopes except that she may be well.
— from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott - “I don’t understand why people in my position do not oftener indulge in such ideas—if only for a joke!
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - I may therefore indulge in language which may seem to others indirect and ambiguous, and yet be quite well understood by yourself.
— from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass
