"Languor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tomb of transparent ice. It was easy to realise that I too would shortly be nothing but a solid block of ice, like my companions. My legs, my arms were already congealed. Horror-stricken as I was at the approach of such a hopeless, ghastly death, my sensations were accompanied by a languor and lassitude indescribable but far from unpleasant. To some extent thought or wonderment was still alive. Should I dwindle painlessly away, preferring rest and peace to effort, or should I make a last struggle to save myself? The ice seemed to close ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... of comeliness is cut nor low nor high But just enough of both to show a bright imported tie: Bound neatly with the choicest silks its lappets wave-like roll, While a watch-chain dangles sprucely from the proper buttonhole And a certain sensuous languor is ineffably expressed In the contour and the mise en scene of the Will J. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... where we are until morning," said Grandma Padgett. "The night's pleasant and warm, and there are just as few mosquitoes here as in the tavern. I didn't sleep last night." She felt stimulated by the tea, and sufficiently recovered from the languor which follows extreme anxiety, to linger up watching the fire, allowing the children to linger also, while J. D. Matthews put his cupboard to ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... measures to be ready for an early and decisive campaign the next year. My greatest fear is, that viewing this stroke in a point of light which may too much magnify its importance, they may think our work too nearly closed, and fall into a state of languor and relaxation. To prevent this error, I shall employ every means in my power, and, if unhappily we sink into this fatal mistake, no part of the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... sound of melodious words and cadences; or as something abstract, pattern-like, imposed from without,—a Procrustes-bed of symmetry and proportion; or as a view of life Circe-like, insidious, a golden languor, made of "the selfish serenities of wild-wood and dream-palace." All these, apart or together, are thought of as the "beauty," at which the artist "for art's sake" aims, and to that is opposed the nobler informing purpose. But the truer view of beauty makes it simply ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... although it partakes of what is called the scrofulous diathesis. In the negro constitution, as the Frenchman would say, "l'arbre arteriel cede sa prominance a l'arbre veineuse," spreading coldness, languor and want of energy over the entire system. The white fluids, or lymphatic temperament, predominating, they are not so liable as the fair race, to inflammatory diseases of the lungs, or any other organ; but from the superabundant viscidities and mucosities of their mucous surfaces, they are ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... arches of an amphitheatre, seem but its darker cells. It is, in truth, a wild impressive place, full of beauty and terror, and with none of the squalidness of the mere dungeon about it. There is a puny littleness in our brick and lime receptacles of misery and languor which speaks as audibly of the feebleness of man, as of his crimes or his inhumanity; but here all is great and magnificent—and there is much, too, that is pleasing. Many of the higher cliffs, which rise beyond the influence of the spray, are tapestried with ivy; we may see the heron watching ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... lay motionless, with not even the movement of an eye-lash to indicate consciousness, wrapped in a delicious languor. Gradually this passed and the feeble flutter of his heart grew into a steady, rhythmic beat. The keen brain was awakening; he was beginning to remember. What had happened? He knew only that in some manner a drug had been administered to him, a bitter dose tasting of opium; that speechlessly, ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... embarrassing nature of this factor in the campaign are hard to overestimate. The insufficient number of horses and their debility have doubtless accounted {p.098} for much of the delay and seeming languor of action, which has appeared otherwise inexplicable; the utter weakness of the poor beasts having indeed been expressly alleged as the reason for failure of cavalry or of artillery in more than one critical moment. That the supply forwarded has been large, if nevertheless falling ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... cultivation, but impoverished by the wasteful methods of slavery; land that had never been regenerated, and was now no longer tilled. Negroes were working in the fields, birds were singing in the trees. Buzzards circled lazily against the distant sky. Although it was only early summer, a languor in the air possessed the colonel's senses, and suggested a certain charity toward those of his neighbours—and they were most of them—who showed ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Piet of Christian art, the Virgin with the dead body of her divine Son in her lap, of which the most celebrated example is the one by Michael Angelo in St. Peters. That noble group, in which the living sorrow of the mother contrasts so wonderfully with the languor of death in the son, is one of the finest compositions in marble. Ancient Greek art has bequeathed to us few works so beautiful, and none ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... that in the dull languor of our summer collapse we felt none of your fierce Northern excitements, I should have excepted the Anthony suffrage case. That touched nearly if not deeply. The ark of the holy political covenant resting here—the sacred mules ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... bath, whose frothy margin was the threshold of their dwellings. Others still, like birds, built their nests among the sylvan nooks of the elevated interior; whence all below, and hazy green, lay steeped in languor ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... wind. An idea was slowly forming and growing in his brain, an idea that gained strength every time that he looked across at the man who was fighting so grimly against pain and exhaustion. In the pain and languor that Ulrich himself was feeling the old fierce hatred seemed to be ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... spending a year in the peaceful solitudes of Africa, to find himself amid the cries of street-sellers, the rolling of carriages, and the incessant movement of the great city, was too great a contrast to him. Pierre was overcome by languor; his head seemed too heavy for his body to carry; he mechanically entered a cab which conveyed him to the Hotel du Louvre. Through the window, against the glass of which he tried to cool his heated forehead, he saw pass in procession before his eyes, the Column of July, the church ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... this school of Physicians relied with an unalterable confidence. For a delicate child, a glass of port wine at 11 was the inevitable prescription, and a tea-spoonful of bark was often added to this generous tonic. In all forms of languor and debility and enfeebled circulation, brandy-and-water was "exhibited," as the phrase went; and, if the dose was not immediately successful, the brandy was increased. I myself, when a sickly boy of twelve, was ordered by a well-known practitioner, called ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... seen nothing but victory, and had been flattered by personal distinction. But then came the reverse of the medal. I remembered the opinion of the most sagacious and penetrating spirit which it had been my lot ever to know; and I felt that the Continent was to be our field of battle no longer. The languor of home service, to one who had seen war in its stateliest shape, and in its most powerful activity, rose before my mind with an inexpressible sense of weariness. On the other hand, supposing that I possessed the faculties for political life, was I possessed of the temper, the endurance of toil, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... the spirit of prayer! Let any man compare in his mind how many times he has prayed when in trouble, with how seldom he has returned thanks when his prayers have been granted; or the earnestness with which he prays against expected suffering, with the languor and unconcern of his thanksgivings afterwards, and he will soon see how little he has of the real habit of prayer, and how much his religion depends on accidental excitement, which is no test of a religious heart. Or supposing he has to repeat the same prayer for a month or two, the cause of using ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... lay sick in my languor In an abbey here by west; This book I made with great dolour, When I might not sleep nor rest. Oft with my prayers my soul I blest, And said aloud to Heaven's King, 'I know, O Lord, it is the best Meekly to take thy visiting. Else well I wot that I were lorn (High above all ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... but the other two, both married, were both more handsome than the average of women. And Clarisse? What shall I say of Clarisse? She waited the table with a heavy placable nonchalance, like a performing cow; her great grey eyes were steeped in amorous languor; her features, although fleshy, were of an original and accurate design; her mouth had a curl; her nostril spoke of dainty pride; her cheek fell into strange and interesting lines. It was a face capable of strong emotion, and, with training, it offered the promise of delicate sentiment. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lost a quantity of blood, which loss has decreased the heart's action sufficiently to produce the languor under which she now ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... enclosure, where the steps were formed for mounting the boundary bank, she sprang up with a lightness which seemed strange after her listless movement towards the well. It incidentally showed that her apparent languor did not arise from ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... and down, across from one rush-lined lily-padded shore to the other, for miles and miles with never a strike. But I was content, for over me had been cast the dreamy, care-dispelling languor of ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... in the heart of two lovers, the roses of pleasure multiply within them in a manner which causes them to be astonished that so much joy can be contained, without anything bursting. Bertha and Jehan would have wished in this night to have finished their days, and thought, from the excessive languor which flowed in their veins, that love had resolved to bear them away on his wings with the kiss of death; but they held out in ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... testified his pleasure at the visit. Aminta's presence always produced a strange effect on Scorpione, which his inability to speak enhanced. His eyes, of pale green, became suddenly lighted up with a peculiar and gentle languor, which was so tender that they seemed almost attractive. This singular magnetism had a novel effect on the invalid. But his brow soon became contracted; a violent storm seemed to agitate his heart; and the hissing ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... that could be wished for a number of days after steaming out of the Golden Gate. It was in the month of September, when a mild, dreamy languor seemed to rest upon everything, and the passage across the Pacific was like one long-continued dream of the Orient—excepting, perhaps, when the cyclone or hurricane, roused from its sleep, swept over the deep with ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... her motor-veil, revealing a face Orientally dark and perfectly oval, with a clustering mass of dull gold hair, small, aquiline nose and full, red lips. Her weird eyes met mine for an instant, and then the long lashes drooped quickly, as she leant back against the cushions, with a graceful languor suggestive of the East rather ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... The calm languor of her tone was almost fearful, and even as she spoke a shuddering seized her, making her tremble convulsively, her teeth knocking together, and ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... brain; darkness, pierced by a thousand gleaming, twinkling lights, brilliant as stars, then came a void and nothingness. Slowly at last he felt himself struggling up out of the void, battling, fighting for consciousness, then came a delicious sort of languor. If this was dying, it was very pleasant. Forms seemed to be flitting before his half-opened eyelids and the hum of voices seemed to float in his ears. One voice irritated him greatly; it was faintly familiar in its loud ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... the tropics, perhaps, inclines to indolence and languor, particularly if the atmosphere is humid, but in a dry climate like that of Arizona the heat, although sometimes great, is never oppressive or debilitating. It has its lazy people like any other country and for the same reason that there are always some who were ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... neglected, than prayer. Most people consider this exercise a wearisome ceremony, which they are justified in abridging as much as possible. Even those whose profession or fears lead them to pray, do it with such languor and wanderings of mind that their prayers, far from drawing down blessings, only increase their condemnation. I wish to demonstrate, in this discourse, first, the general necessity of prayer; secondly, its peculiar duty; thirdly, the manner in ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... There is a languor and a lack of power to lift a hand toward the light, too much a trusting of the shadow. "I have flung roses, roses riotously with the throng, to put those pale lost lilies out of mind." Always verging on a poetic feeling ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... nature in decline, And languor in my thoughts; To soften censure, and abate Its rigour ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... ironically, Mahony felt constrained to second Turnham's enthusiasm. And it was indeed a lovely picture: the gracious, golden-haired woman, whose figure had the amplitude, her gestures the almost sensual languor of the young nursing mother; the two children fawning at her knee, both ash-blond, with vivid scarlet lips.—"It helps one," thought Mahony, "to understand the mother-worship ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... mind he felt that he really needed just such a complete rest and change of scene, soft climate, and freedom from all care and anxiety, to enable him to shake himself free from a strange feeling of dulness and languor that had been stealing over him lately, and a sort of mental depression that was harder to bear than actual illness. But three months away from his pupils and work seemed absolutely out of the question to Mr. Clair, therefore he did not let his mind dwell on it, ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... results experienced from the presence of malaria are confined bowels and an oppressive languor, excessive drowsiness, and a constant disposition to yawn. The tongue assumes a yellowish, sickly hue, coloured almost to blackness; even the teeth become yellow, and are coated with an offensive matter. The eyes of the patient sparkle lustrously, and become suffused ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... go after him," muttered Joe Emson; and, casting off the feeling of languor which had impelled him to call others instead of acting himself, he braced himself up, left the scorching iron house behind, and trotted after Dyke, scaring a group of stupid-looking young ostriches into a run behind the ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... little abstinence now and then, he can subdue head-aches, catarrhs and digestive troubles, and by exercising an intelligent will, can generally prevent their recurrence. If one finds himself in the morning in a state of languor and lassitude, be sure he has abused some physical function, and apply a remedy. An invalid will make a poorly equipped librarian. How can a dyspeptic who dwells in the darkness of a disease, be a guiding light ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... the elegance of his clothes, and the modish languor of his lounging figure, Barnabas at once recognized him as a gentleman par excellence, and immediately the memory of his own country-made habiliments and clumsy boots arose and smote him. The solitary prisoner seemed in no whit cast ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... certainly would never have occurred to him to represent him as a pygmy monster. No, no! Alexander's artistic eye knew the difference well between the beautiful and the ugly—and the exhausted man lying on the divan, was no hideous dwarf. A dreamy languor spread over his nobly chiselled features An expression of pain but rarely passed over them, and Caesar's whole appearance reminded the painter of the fine Ephesian gladiator hallistos as he lay on the sand, severely wounded after his last fight, awaiting the death-stroke. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... letters," said Constantia, lifting her head from Mrs. Mellicent's bosom, where she had sunk, from the extreme languor that succeeded the violent hysterics into which the terrors of this alarming night had thrown her. A more lovely or interesting object could scarcely be conceived than this charming girl, just ripening into woman, her mind mature beyond her years, and her heart agitated by the ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... I am to write a story—but of what, and where? Shall it be radiant with the sky of Italy? or eloquent with the beau ideal of Greece? Shall it breathe odor and languor from the orient, or chivalry from the occident? or gayety from France? or vigor from England? No, no; these are all too old—too romance-like—too obviously picturesque for me. No; let me turn to my own land—my own New England; the land of bright fires and strong hearts; ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... smile like the splendor Of the sun in the middle-day skies— That one with a spell that is tender— That one with a dream in her eyes— Cometh close, in her rare Southern beauty, Her languor, her indolent grace; And my soul turns its back on its duty, To live in the light of ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... of the Liberalism of the professional classes in Vienna absolutism had now its most efficient instrument; and the Concordat negotiated by Bach with the Papacy in 1855 marked the definite submission of Austria to the ecclesiastical pretensions which in these years of political languor and discouragement gained increasing recognition throughout Central Europe. Ultramontanism had sought allies in many political camps since the revolution of 1848. It had dallied in some countries with Republicanism; but its truer instincts divined in the victory of absolutist systems its own ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... exceedingly courteous, kindly-mannered man, talking in a soft low voice in the most affectionate and considerate manner, and with good taste and judgment that exceedingly struck and pleased the new curate. It was the more surprise to him to find the congregations thin, and a general languor and indifference about the people who attended the church. There was also a good deal of opposition in the parish, some old sullen seceders who went to a neighbouring proprietary chapel, many more of erratic tastes haunted the places of worship of the numerous sects, who swarmed in the ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... but a grim old bull, roaming the prairie by himself in misanthropic seclusion; but there might be more behind the hills. Dreading the monotony and languor of the camp, Shaw and I saddled our horses, buckled our holsters in their places, and set out with Henry Chatillon in search of the game. Henry, not intending to take part in the chase, but merely conducting us, carried his rifle with him, while we left ours behind as incumbrances. ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... light. It was built without windows, but ventilation was well provided for, and the poor sightless patients were domiciled in the house. But things did not go well: one after another began to sicken, and great languor fell upon them; they felt distressed and restless, craving something, they hardly knew what. After two had died and all were ill, the committee decided to have windows. The sunlight poured in, and the white faces recovered their color; their flagging ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... been in New York about ten days when he awoke one morning near noon. An immense languor possessed him. He had been with Julia the night before and never had she been more charming, more abandoned.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} He ordered his breakfast to be sent up, and then stretched out in bed ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... presently he, too, fell silent, throwing uneasy glances at her from time to time. Her black hair and eyes were more than usually striking, by contrast with a very simple and unadorned white dress; but for beauty, her face required animation; it could be all but plain in moments of languor or abstraction; and Sir Wilfrid marveled that a girl's secret instinct did not save her from presenting herself so ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... square-sail ready for hoisting. The cat's-paws came thicker and thicker, the dark blue line increasing in width, till in a short time we were staggering away before as brisk a breeze as the little craft could desire. All languor quickly vanished, and we served out an additional supply of water to our poor sheep. My anxiety, however, did not cease, for just afterwards, as I was sweeping the horizon with my telescope, I saw, rising above it, ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston
... weary, and full of the languor of the summer night, they retraced their steps and took the ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... to lead a more indolent life; and its place is supplied by a plumpness and smoothness of the skin, which, though perhaps more consonant with our ideas of beauty, is no real advantage, as it seems attended with a kind of languor in all their motions, not observable in the others. This observation is fully verified in their boxing and wrestling, which may be called little better than the feeble efforts of children, if compared to the vigour with which these exercises ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... my stead, yet still with me didst bide, Thou wast removed from mine eye, yet still wast by my side. Thou left'st unto me, after thee, languor and carefulness; I lived a life wherein no jot of sweetness I espied. For thy sweet sake, as 'twere, indeed, an exile I had been, Lone and deserted I became, lamenting, weeping-eyed. Alack, my grief! Thou wast, indeed, grown absent ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... these painful sensations subsided—his nerves became more braced, his breath came more freely, a pleasing languor crept over his limbs, and he fell into a peaceful sleep. When he awoke it was already broad daylight; his sleep toward the end of the night had been quiet and refreshing. He felt strong and well, but as soon as the recollection of his ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... cool wind went this way and that through Mrs. Rosewarne's room, stirring the curtains. There was an odor of the sea in the air. It was a day for dreaming perhaps, but not for the gloom begotten of languor ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... for the play everything that ability and zeal could do, and who, from selfish motives, would, of course, have been well pleased if Virginia had been as successful as the Beggar's Opera. Nay, Crisp complained of the languor of the friends whose partiality had given him three benefit nights to which he had no claim. He complained of the injustice of the spectators, when, in truth, he ought to have been grateful for their unexampled patience. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I was tired and hot—it really called for a grimmer resolve than mine to shovel sand through the languor of a Leeward Island afternoon. Instead, I slept in my hammock, and dreamed that I was queen of a cannibal island, draped in necklaces made of the doubloons now hidden under the sand in the ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... it all the tropic languor and sweetness of the life he had conjured up, so remote, so utterly different from the rough-hewn ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... swear, it angers me to see How this fool passion gulls deg. men potently; deg.134 Being, in truth, but a diseased unrest, 135 And an unnatural overheat at best. How they are full of languor and distress Not having it; which when they do possess, They straightway are burnt up with fume and care, And spend their lives in posting here and there deg. deg.140 Where this plague drives them; and have little ease, Are furious with themselves, and hard to please. ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... witch-like loveliness, as though borrowing its pallor and beauty from the moon, source of all magic and necromancy. Her eyes shone with such luster that, seeking their hue, they held the observer's gaze in mocking languor, and cheated the inquisitive coxcomb of his quest, the while the disdainful lips curved laughingly and so bewildered him, he forgot the customary phrases and stood staring like a nonny. Her footstep fell so light, she was so agile and quick, the superstitious dwarf swore she was ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... she did, and then let herself subside into a dreamy state, principally taken up by thoughts of the change, the preparations for that change, and visions of the glorious country—all sunshine, languor, and delights—which Barron never seemed to ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... satisfied with anything long, begins to wonder what the world is like beyond the enclosing cliffs, and the desire to climb them and to look forth under a wider range of sky grows stronger. Such change is needed, for when there is languor within, the impressions from without are dull. The country through which I now passed was very beautiful with its multitude of chestnut-trees, the pale yellow plumes of the male blossom still clinging to them and hiding half their leaves; but here again was the sad spectacle of abandoned, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... decoration that placed her more definitely for Imogen's eye than she had ever been placed before. The Pottses were middle-class with a vengeance. Imogen's irritation grew as she watched these limpet-like friends, one sprawling and ill-at-ease for all his careful languor, the other quite dreadfully well-mannered, sipping her tea, arching her brows and assuming all sorts of perilous elegancies of pronunciation that Imogen had never before heard her attempt. It was an additional vexation to have them display toward ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... in the beauty of the scene. The languor of summer breathed in the gentle, pine-scented air and rose from the warm earth of the garden. Voluptuously she stretched her arms and yawned; then straightening to her customary erectness she went into the house, ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... complained she was ill, it was with the certainty that her languor would be admired: if she boasted she was well, it was that the spectator might admire her glowing health: if she laughed, it was because she thought it made her look pretty: if she cried, it was because she thought it made her look prettier still. If she scolded her servants, ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... and over again, rather than make the smallest concession to the spirit of religious innovation. Sigismund of Sweden lost a crown which he might have preserved if he would have renounced the Catholic faith. In short, everywhere on the Protestant side we see languor; everywhere on the Catholic side we see ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 'ee knows what's what—never fear!" he exclaimed now and then, flourishing a hand hard and fleshless like the claw of a snipe. Jimmy, on his back, smiled with reserve and without moving a limb. He affected the languor of extreme weakness, so as to make it manifest to us that our delay in hauling him out from his horrible confinement, and then that night spent on the poop among our selfish neglect of his needs, had "done for him." He rather liked to talk about it, ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... in its childhood; all poets play with images not understood; they touch on emotions sharply, at random, as in a dream; they suffer each successive vision, each poignant sentiment, to evaporate into nothing, or to leave behind only a heart vaguely softened and fatigued, a gentle languor, or a tearful hope. Every modern school of poets, once out of fashion, proves itself to have been sadly romantic and sentimental. None has done better than to spangle a confused sensuous pageant with some sparks of truth, ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... may genius be educated; but there are others which are entirely the result of native sensibility, which often secretly torment the possessor, and which may even be lost from the want of development, dissolved into a state of languor from which many have not recovered. Clairon, before she saw the young actress, and having yet no conception of a theatre—for she had never entered one—had in her soul that latent faculty which creates a dramatic genius. "Had I not felt like Dido," she once exclaimed, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... with a discipline for his entry into life, and a satisfying vision of the universe. And if secularists have not always grasped this necessity, we may perhaps find therein one main reason why secularism has not met with so enormous and enthusiastic a reception as the languor and formalism of the churches ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... drolly said, indeed, though with his usual languor, and no other intervention would have stopped the exit. She graciously consented to return to her seat, and Colonel Manners immediately and absurdly fell on his knees before her, offering to kiss her shoe like the Pope's, if she would ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... and the wall, a deserted strip of verdure whence only small patches of sky can be seen. The vigorous vegetation and the quivering, deathlike stillness of the old cemetery still reign in this path. In all the country round Plassans there is no spot more instinct with languor, solitude, and love. It is a most delightful place for love-making. When the cemetery was being cleared the bones must have been heaped up in this corner; for even to-day it frequently happens that one's foot comes across some fragment of ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... bravely dealt with. Among the former he counted foul smells, disgusting habitations, bad workshops and workshop-customs, scarcity of light, air, and water, in short the absence of all easy means of decency and health; and among the latter, the mental weariness and languor so induced, the desire of wholesome relaxation, the craving for some stimulus and excitement, not less needful than the sun itself to lives so passed, and last, and inclusive of all the rest, ignorance, and the want of rational mental training, generally ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... the tropics come days of languor and nights of inactivity so delicious it seems profanation to move. More than one thousand men, who boarded the Massachusetts with the vigor of the North in their veins, have succumbed, one by one, to the lethargy of the soft ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... Everywhere, some fragment of ruin suggesting the magnificence of a former epoch; everywhere, moreover, a Cross,—and nastiness at the foot of it. As the sum of all, there are recollections that kindle the soul, and a gloom and languor that depress it beyond any depth of melancholic sentiment ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... famous woman, had become only lately conscious of a certain jaded weariness in her outlook upon life. Even the best had begun to pall, the sameness of it had commenced its fatal work. More than once lately a touch of that heart languor, which is the fruit of surfeit, had startled her by its numbing and depressing effect. Here at last was a new type—a man with clean pages before him—young, emotional, without a doubt intellectual. But for ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... overnight, and I should have liked to drop down on one of the benches there, to look upward through the branches into the clouds and forget the enclosing wall of buildings and the tumultuous streets. But I was late, and I had no mind to hurry on such a day. The languor of the spring was in my veins, and I strolled on, almost unconscious of the life about me. Ahead, at the crest of Murray Hill, the city seemed to end, and I to look through a great gate-way into the blue sky, and I fancied myself standing there in that gate-way, with the valley ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye," in chapters which justify to the full Mr. Birrell's enthusiastic admiration when he wrote: "The delightful, the bewitching, the never sufficiently to be praised George Borrow—Borrow, the Friend of Man, at whose bidding lassitude and languor strike their tents and flee; and health and spirits, adventure and human comradeship, take up the reins of life, whistle to the horses and ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... in the most general sense, is meant the intellectual awakening of Europe after the languor and depression of the first mediaeval centuries. In a narrower sense, however, the phrase is used to designate that wonderful renewal of interest in the old Greek and Latin authors which sprung up in Italy about the ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... wretchedly. Sometimes my pulse beat so quickly and hardly that I felt the palpitation of every artery; at others, I nearly sank to the ground through languor and extreme weakness. Mingled with this horror, I felt the bitterness of disappointment; dreams that had been my food and pleasant rest for so long a space were now become a hell to me; and the change was so rapid, the ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... of light flew across the grass plots. A sudden burst of music issued from the ark, the prelude of a waltz: and when the side door closed again the listener could hear the faint rhythm of the music. The sentiment of the opening bars, their languor and supple movement, evoked the incommunicable emotion which had been the cause of all his day's unrest and of his impatient movement of a moment before. His unrest issued from him like a wave of sound: and on the tide of flowing music the ark was journeying, ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... perfect sweet Suppleness and languor meet,— Arms that move like lapsing billows, Breasts that Love would make his pillows, Eyes where vision melts in bliss, Lips that ripen to ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... have been possible to Lady Holme to believe that the mere sound of a word could inflict such torment upon a heart as the sound of the word amore, coming from the boatman's lips, now inflicted upon hers. Each time it came, with its soft beauty, its languor of sweetness—like a word reclining—it flayed her soul alive, and showed ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... "Come with me," and preceded him down the dim corridor. His heart beat thickly; the incense of this sacred inner life, with its faint suggestion of dead rose-leaves, filled him with a voluptuous languor; his breath was lost, as if a soft kiss had taken it away; his senses swam in the light mist that seemed to suffuse everything. His step trembled as she suddenly turned aside, and, opening a door, ushered him ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... up.] And you, when have you two dissuaded him? Or when forbidden? Do you teach him shun Languor or luxury? ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... weaving variations on these words, and the evening was far advanced before my mirth ceased. Then a drowsy quiet overcame me; a pleasant languor which I did not attempt to resist. The darkness had intensified, and a slight breeze furrowed the pearl-blue sea. The ships, the masts of which I could see outlined against the sky, looked with their black hulls like voiceless monsters that bristled and ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... middle of his sentence. Simultaneously he abandoned his carefully chosen attitude of studied languor. He was leaning forward in his chair watching a carriage which had just come into sight along the straight wide road which led from the ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... source of salutary discipline. The moment for such a lesson might strike him as strange, in view of the quite special and independent opportunity for exercise that his spirit had during the last three days enjoyed there in his hotel bedroom; but evidently his languor of charity needed some admonition finer than any it might trust to chance for, and by the time he at last, Winch's residence recognised, was duly elevated to his level and had pressed the electric button at his door, he felt himself acting indeed as under ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... an Olympian, who knew that she was daughter of the depths, and might say to the ocean, "Father!" And she exposed herself, unattainable and proud, to everything that should pass—to looks, to desires, to ravings, to dreams; as proud in her languor, on her boudoir couch, as Venus in the immensity ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... to invert the common order of things: by day he read, refreshed himself with the aspect of nature, conversed or corresponded with his friends; but he wrote and studied in the night. And as his bodily feelings were too often those of languor and exhaustion, he adopted, in impatience of such mean impediments, the pernicious expedient of stimulants, which yield a momentary strength, only to waste our remaining fund of it more ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... own great powers—raises him above that willful dallying with trivialties which repels us in some of his other works. And there is real vitality in the theme, both from our anxiety to know the course of such a mind, and from the effect of an absorbing interest in himself excluding that languor which sometimes seized him in his efforts to impart or attribute interest to themes possessing little or none in themselves. Its mere narrative, though often very homely, and dealing in too many words, is often characterized ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... part,) to toy with my breasts, and kiss me again and again, all of which he did under cover of his holy privileges as a father! The moment had then arrived for me to play my part; and though the old rascal's conduct and person were loathsome to me in the extreme, I affected all the languor, flutter, and ardor of passionate longings; which he perceived with the most extravagant demonstrations ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... lack, want languor, lassitude later, latter lawful, legal lax, slack leave, let lend, loan liable, likely libel, slander lie, lay like, love linger, loiter look, see loose, lose ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... rich lips disclosed teeth that might have shamed the pearl. But the chief charm of that exquisite countenance was in an expression of softness and purity, and intellectual sentiment, that seldom accompanies that cast of loveliness, and was wholly foreign to the voluptuous and dreamy languor of Moorish maidens; Leila had been educated, and the statue ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... impossible to deny, that in the early part of the eighteenth century—amid the general coldness, languor, and want of enthusiasm which characterized that effete epoch—"the Church of England, as well as all the dissenting bodies, slumbered and slept." At this epoch, the Puritans were buried, and the Methodists ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various
... in the world's battle and hurt by its hardness travel to these places of beauty and drown themselves in the utter joy of life? I asked this once sitting in a Southern home. Outside the spring of a Georgia February was luring gold to the bushes and languor to the soft air. Around me sat color in human flesh—brown that crimsoned readily; dim soft-yellow that escaped description; cream-like duskiness that shadowed to rich tints of autumn leaves. And yet a suggested journey in the world brought ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the sickness and death in the village had crept in to him through Noll's and Hagar's talk, and a sudden fear chilled him lest his nephew, too, was to be stricken down with the lingering fever. What if it should be so? What if even now the boy was oppressed with the languor and depression which precedes illness? With this thought torturing him, he called to Noll one afternoon from the library window, as the boy was idly walking up and down the frozen sand. After a few minutes of waiting, Noll made his appearance at the library door, looking a ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... eyes had the brightness and fulness of the antelope's, but, owing to their long silken lashes, were yet more expressive of softness than of spirit; and at this time they evinced more than usual languor. She was in a rich undress, and was apparently an invalid. Her long raven locks hung with careless grace, partly behind, and partly over, a neck that might have served as a model for the sculptor. She ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... silhouette like a forced effect, and Truda, remarking it, frowned, for of late she found herself impatient of forced effects. She was a pale, slender, brown-haired woman, with a small clear, pliant face, and some manner of languor in all her attitudes that lent them a slow grace of their own and did not at all impair the startling energy she could command for her work. While she looked out at the city there came a tap at the door of ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... the water's edge that we could almost step from the steamer into its streets. Meantime, the long, bright afternoon, so rich in manifold impressions, draws on; cypresses and mulberry-trees announce the approach to Avignon. A golden softness in the evening sky, a heavy warmth and languor in the air, proclaim the South. Every inch of the way is varied and rememberable. Feudal walls still crest the distant heights, as we glide slowly between reedy banks and low sandy ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... put the thought into O'Grady's mind that the letter was to Nora. And so he came forward faintly embarrassed to meet a small pale man, whom he judged to be seventy or thereabouts, coming forward nimbly, bent a little, with a long, thin arm and bony hand extended in a formal languor of welcome. A little disappointing was the first moment, but it passed away quickly, and when his visitor was seated Father Oliver noticed a large nose rising out of the pallor and on either side of it dim blue eyes and ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... habituated to opium, a dram is but a moderate dose: Garcias relates, that he knew one who every day took ten drams. Those who have been long accustomed to its use, upon leaving it off, are seized with great lowness, languor, and anxiety; which are relieved by having again recourse to opium, and, in some measure, by ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... the same strain. A Scotch lady, who had seen Justina Chopin in her old age, and conversed with her in French, told me that she was then "a neat, quiet, intelligent old lady, whose activeness contrasted strongly with the languor of her son, who had not a shadow of energy in him." With regard to the latter part of this account, we must not overlook the fact that my informant knew Chopin only in the last year of his life—i.e., when ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... presidential campaign began. The country awoke to the true meaning of the Democratic platform; General Sherman's successes in the South excited the enthusiasm of the people; and when at last the Unionists, rousing from their midsummer languor, began to show their faith in the Republican candidate, the hopelessness of all efforts to ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... my poor admirer," said the lady, in a tone of languor and condescension that was unusual to her. Breaking from his captives, Helwyse ran back and begged her to cast her mantle into the fire. She replied by throwing a fold of it above her head and smiling as she said, "Farewell. Remember me as ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... her tone indifferent to the point of languor, but she could not keep the gleam of jealousy out of her eyes. "Gordon is a fortunate man to have such an ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... delightful languor took possession of Maximilian. All the scenes of his childhood came back to him, only the form of his darling was missing. Suddenly the back part of the room appeared to open and a female form strode ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... see the man tipping the hot water into the bath and flinging his great body back to avoid the steam that made his grey flannel shirt-sleeves cling to his hairy arms. Most of the boys added a lot of cold water, but I liked to boil myself because the subsequent languor was so pleasant. The matron would bring our own bath towels warm from the fire, and I would press mine against my face because it smelt of childhood and of home. I always thought my body looked pretty ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... for the imagery attendant on a word is essential to all writing, whether prose or poetry, that attempts the heart, so languor of the visual faculty can work disaster even in the calm periods of philosophic expatiation. "It cannot be doubted," says one whose daily meditations enrich The People's Post-Bag, "that Fear is, to a great extent, the mother of ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... Chinkies, Japs, Malays, East Indians. Talk in every lingo was on the air. Some hurried from the dock, making for a lodging-house or for The Asiatics' Home. Some hurried into the dock, with that impassive swiftness which gives no impression of haste, but rather carries a touch of extreme languor. An old cargo tramp lay in a far berth, and one caught the sound of rushing blocks, and a monotonous voice wailing the Malayan chanty: "Love is kind to the least of men, EEEE-ah, EEEE-ah!" Boats were loading up. Others were ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... led a mournful existence at the French court, where she felt herself a desolate alien. Her death at the age of twenty was possibly due to slander. "Fie upon life," she said on her deathbed, when urged to rouse herself to resist the languor into which she was sinking. "Talk to me no ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... have said the Chinese are addicted. The preparation of the liquor of life is their philosopher's stone; and, in all probability, is composed of opium and other drugs which, by encreasing the stimulus, gives a momentary exhilaration to the spirits; and the succeeding languor requiring another and another draught till at length, the excitability being entirely exhausted, the patient ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... short: he had not meant to speak of his love for her, only to urge her to make that effort over her languor and her indifference which the great physician said she must make before her health could be restored. Nan lay looking at him, the tears drying on her pale cheeks, her lips parted, her eyes unusually bright; ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... be flying in the face of providence; her spirits struggled up to their normal high level, and once more she was the happiest of women. It was another fortnight before she could leave the house, but the languor was a new and pleasant sensation and not unbecoming the weather. Warner read aloud instead of to himself, and they wondered that they had never discovered this firm subtle link in comradeship before. The rainy summer is the winter of the ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... in a city building lot; and it is reasonable to suppose that, notwithstanding all his fortitude, the spirits of the youth were depressed, and his faculties chilled by such humiliating neglect, and such reiterated disappointments. Who is he that would not, under such circumstances, sink into languor? It cannot be doubted that dejection every day detracted from his powers, and that by a kind of irresistible gravitation, he descended like a falling body in the physical world, with accelerated velocity, till at last he reached the very bottom of the profession. Reader, behold—and ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... veneration. Yet I could not but observe the difference between the zeal with which I snatched at a volume of Carlyle or Ruskin—since these magicians were now first revealing themselves to me—and the increasing languor with which I took up Alford for my daily 'passage'. Of course, although I did not know it, and believed my reluctance to be sinful, the real reason why I now found the Bible so difficult to read was my familiarity with its contents. These had the colourless ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... on the sofa, wrapped in shawls, her hair smoothed back under a cap; her shady, dark eyes still softer from languor, and the exquisite outline of her fair, pallid features looking as if it was cut out in ivory against the white pillows. She welcomed him with a pleased smile; but he started back, and flushed as if from pain, and his hand ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the same month, was interred in general Monk's vault in Westminster-Abbey: leaving no issue, his titles devolved on his nephew, George late earl of Hallifax.—Considered as a poet, his lordship makes a less considerable figure than the earl of Dorset; there is a languor in his verses, which seems to indicate that he was not born with a poetical genius. That he was a lover of the muses, there is not the lead doubt, as we find him patronizing the poets so warmly; but there is some difference between a propensity ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... that all these arts are necessary; the epicure must have his palate tickled, or he will sink into apathy; but have women so little ambition as to be satisfied with such a condition? Can they supinely dream life away in the lap of pleasure, or in the languor of weariness, rather than assert their claim to pursue reasonable pleasures, and render themselves conspicuous, by practising the virtues which dignify mankind? Surely she has not an immortal soul who can loiter life away, merely employed to adorn her person, ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... poultry-yards; in late summer there is the cutting and garnering of golden grain. The stone hedges that divide the fields are generally broad enough to walk on with comfort; very often, indeed, they are the best and quickest of footpaths. Or one can lie on them in delightful languor, after scrambling about the cliffs and towans, basking in the mellow sunlight, laying in a store of warmth and beauty and fragrance as reserve for dreary months of wet and fog. Centuries old, some of these massive ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... polish the mind, to improve the style, to give variety to conversation, and to lend a grace to more important accomplishments. He who can effect this has surely done something. Is no useful end served by that writer whose works have soothed weeks of languor and sickness, have relieved the mind exhausted from the pressure of employment by an amusement which delights without enervating, which relaxes the tension of the powers without rendering them unfit for ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... maidens approached, I saw the glowing cheeks of Margaret pale a little, her lips press together, and her chin become a little proud, but her eyes never wavered; but Mistress Helen beats me to be describing. There was an elegance about her and an air of languor, maybe from her sombre dark eyes, yet her every movement was graceful, and her smile a thing to be looking for, and she was slender as the stalk of a bluebell. The Laird of Scaurdale was in great humour, well on to seventy, his teeth still strong and ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... best because he was a true sportsman, and he had entered the game, but he did not like it, and the slow, sleepy monotony of the office, with its trivial tasks which he did not understand, filled him with an immense and cloying languor. The firm seemed to be dying of the sleeping sickness. Nothing ever happened. They filed their interminable statistics, and consulted their interminable books, and marked squares off their interminable maps, and droned along their monotonous, unimportant life ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White |
