FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • More 'Languid' Quotes from Famous Books

... through the meadows of brit, the Pequod still held on her way north-eastward towards the island of Java; a gentle air impelling her keel, so that in the surrounding serenity her three tall tapering masts mildly waved to that languid breeze, as three mild palms on a plain. And still, at wide intervals in the silvery night, the lonely, alluring jet would ...

— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... the trouble to help you and the young un?" she asked, sitting on Susannah's doorstep, languid with the heat. "When I was going along the lane last night I met a spirit, so I held out my hand according to Joe's latest. You've not heard! My! it's in the Millenial Star that if any sort of a voice or dream comes to you, the way to know, whether it's ...

— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... letter for you!" She infused a lot of Glad into her voice. But Chet only cast a languid eye upon ...

— Half Portions • Edna Ferber

... felt so exceedingly tired and sleepy, a most unusual thing for me, that I found it absolutely impossible to keep awake, and consequently asked my host and hostess to excuse me. I woke next morning feeling languid and giddy, and, while shaving, I noticed a curious red mark at the base of my neck. I imagined I must have cut myself shaving hurriedly the evening before, and thought nothing ...

— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell

... life at Geneva was put an end to by a severe illness, which is partly a blank to me, partly a time of dimly-remembered suffering, with the presence of my father by my bed from time to time. Then came the languid monotony of convalescence, the days gradually breaking into variety and distinctness as my strength enabled me to take longer and longer drives. On one of these more vividly remembered days, my father said to me, as ...

— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot

... sauntered into the room and took it from her. He was young, English, immaculately dressed, except for a rather baggy Burberry, worn loosely over his tweed suit, and he carried a pair of very smart motoring gloves, which he cast upon the table. His manner was at once hard and immature, languid and curiously restless. A second glance assured Esther that her first suspicion was correct. Undoubtedly he was the young man she had seen on several occasions, notably with the Frenchwoman ...

— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... spreading; the Crimean war was the one engrossing subject, to be followed by the Indian Mutiny and the Franco-Austrian war. These great events turned men's minds from speculative subjects, and there was no enemy to the faith which could arouse even a languid interest. At no time probably since the beginning of the century could an ordinary observer have detected less sign of coming disturbance than at that of which I ...

— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... bit as the day advanced, until it finally rose clearly into view, as fair in appearance as the fairest of the gems of creation. It appeared low, but not flat; there were gentle elevations cropping hither and yon above the languid but graceful tops of the cocoa-trees that lined the margin of the island, and there were depressions visible at agreeable intervals, to indicate where a cool gloom might be found by those who sought ...

— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... I walked along their inner base, to the Church of St. John Lateran, into which I went, and sat down to rest myself, being languid and weary, and hot with the sun, though afraid to trust the coolness of the shade. I hate the Roman atmosphere; indeed, all my pleasure in getting back—all my home-feeling—has already evaporated, and what now impresses me, as before, is the languor of Rome,—its ...

— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... luffed his little craft across the frigate's bow, and the moment he was hidden beyond her, bore broad away, passing close along the opposite side of the warship, from which hundreds of eyes watched his movements with languid curiosity. ...

— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe

... as on this night, they were composed of people who interested her. She stole a glance at Burnaby. How clean and brown and alert he was! The white table-cloth accentuated his look of fitness and muscular control. What an amusing contrast he presented to the rather languid, gesturing Pollen, who sat opposite him! And yet Pollen was considerable of a man in his own way; very conquering in the affairs of life; immensely clever in his profession of architecture. ...

— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... slowly on. Oliver lay awake for some time, counting the little circles of light which the reflection of the rushlight-shade threw upon the ceiling; or tracing with his languid eyes the intricate pattern of the paper on the wall. The darkness and the deep stillness of the room were very solemn; as they brought into the boy's mind the thought that death had been hovering there, for many days and nights, and might yet fill it with the gloom and dread ...

— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... occasion arrives. Planted at the top of her staircase, under the wing of her fashionable allies, the nominal giver of the entertainment is duly stared at and glared at by a supercilious crowd, who examine her with the same sort of languid interest which they devote to a new animal at the Zoological. The greater number are "going on" to another party. But the next morning brings balm for every mortification. Her ball is blazoned in the fashionable journals, and the well-bred ...

— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... full of a vigorous Substance, which gives Spirit, and supports the brightness and colour of the Feather; and as this is more or less in quantity, the bright Colour of the Feather is increased, or turns languid and pale. ...

— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe

... had hoped to be invested as Emperor of the West were not unpacked from the camp chests. The pompous ceremonies of military occupation were scrupulously performed; drills, parades, and concerts followed in due succession; but the Emperor's interest was languid. At last the dreary waiting became intolerable, the season, although neither early nor severe, was rapidly advancing, the predatory excursions of the soldiers into the surrounding country were growing ...

— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... bright that day, unseen forces were gathering in the sky above town, mesa and mountains, not of weather but of fate, to loose their lightnings. Sunday peace seemed to reign, the languid summer Sunday peace of tranquil nature. Yet even through this there was a faint breath of impending events, a quiver or excitement in the air, an increasing expectation on the part of men, who sensed but did not realize what was ...

— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... train of ills That flesh inherits; till at length worn out, This is his consummation!—think again! What, Maiden, canst thou hope from lengthen'd life But lengthen'd sorrow? If protracted long, Till on the bed of death thy feeble limbs Outstretch their languid length, oh think what thoughts, What agonizing woes, in that dread hour, Assail the sinking heart! slow beats the pulse, Dim grows the eye, and clammy drops bedew The shuddering frame; then in its mightiest force, Mightiest in impotence, the ...

— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey

... pacha!" she cried in the delirium of joy. "My son is pacha! and my nephews will die of envy!" But her triumph was not to be of long duration. A few days after his installation, Elmas began to feel strangely languid. Continual lethargy, convulsive sneezing, feverish eyes, soon betokened a serious illness. Ali's gift had accomplished its purpose. The pelisse, carefully impregnated with smallpox germs taken from a young girl suffering from this malady, had conveyed the dreaded disease to the new pacha, who, not ...

— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... faithfully complied with, he seemed to care for nothing more. Even when they proposed, in the hope of rousing him to an exhibition of something like pleasure, that the girl should read to him for an hour every day out of one of his favorite books, he only showed a languid satisfaction. Weeks passed away, and still, do what they would, they could not make ...

— After Dark • Wilkie Collins

... tried her; she felt listless and unwell; and her finances could not support the dress expenses, but when she tried to excuse herself, she found Arthur determined on taking her out, though he had previously grumbled, and declared he only went for her sake. When she looked pale and languid he seemed annoyed, in a way that gave her the impression that he valued nothing but her beauty. She believed he found home dull, and her ...

— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... darkly muttered there; "Brahma," the jewelled Indies of the East Sighed through their spices with a languid prayer; "Christ?" faintly questioned many a ...

— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... but he was eager to get to his work, a curious and intricate piece of analysis. So the battered bureau, the litter of papers, and the thick fume of his pipe, engulfed him and absorbed him for the rest of the morning. Outside were the dim October mists, the dreary and languid life of a side street, and beyond, on the main road, the hum and jangle of the gliding trains. But he heard none of the uneasy noises of the quarter, not even the shriek of the garden gates nor the yelp of the butcher on his round, for delight in his great task made ...

— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... I believe, in the fullest measure That ever a strong man's heart could hold, In all the tales of heavenly pleasure By poets sung or by prophets told; For in the joy of your shy, sweet kisses, Your pulsing touch and your languid sigh I am filled and thrilled with better blisses Than ever were ...

— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... of his own thoughts or beliefs in any sort of disguise. He took up Shakespeare at Macugnaga, in 1840, and he asks why the loveliest of Shakespeare's plays should be "all mixed and encumbered with languid and common work—to one's best hope spurious certainly, so far as original, idle and disgraceful—and all so inextricably and mysteriously that the writer himself is not only unknowable, but inconceivable; and his wisdom so useless, that at this time of being and speaking, ...

— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... the inartistic prospect she sauntered out and downstairs to see what her maid might be about. Bowles was sewing; Sybilla looked on for a while with languid interest, then, realizing that a long day of punishment was before her, that she deserved it, and that she ought to perform some act of penance, started contritely for the library with resolute intentions ...

— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers

... point which he was accustomed to pass in his canoe. They waited a long time, making merry upon these rocks, for it was a highly romantic spot. At last the wished-for object appeared; Kwasind came floating calmly down the stream, on the afternoon of a summer's day, languid with the heat of the weather, and almost asleep. When his canoe came directly beneath the cliff, the tallest and stoutest fairy began the attack. Others followed his example. It was a long time before they could hit the vulnerable part, but success at length ...

— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... the flower of my days, So prematurely fading; often, too, At late hours sitting on my conscious bed, Composing, by the dim light of the lamp, I with the silence and the night would moan O'er my departing soul, and to myself In languid tones would sing ...

— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi

... arose with languid grace and crossed over. Her husband seated her beside him with a loving smile. Her back was partly turned to the American, whom she had met without the faintest ...

— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming

... Miss Millikin anxiously to her niece one afternoon, 'do you think poor Don is quite the thing? He has seemed so very languid these last few days, and he is certainly losing ...

— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey

... on the couch. For a moment they neither of them spoke. She, too, had been suffering, then, he thought, recognising the signs of ill-health in her colorless cheeks and languid pose. ...

— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... fermentation; but facilitate our progress to still greater improvements in the doctrine of fermentation. Therefore, the rule of our conduct, in these pursuits, should be to watch the operations of nature with the closest attention, and assist her when languid, and control her when too violent; that is, by spurring in one instance, and bridling in the other, and accurately and undeviatingly apply the means proposed in the manner recommended, until experience enables us to improve it; otherwise, ...

— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger

... Lillie was beginning to show her "engagement bones." In the midst of these preoccupations, a letter was handed to her by the giggling chambermaid. It was a thick letter, directed in a bold honest hand. Miss Lillie took it with a languid little yawn, finished the last sentences in a chapter of the novel she was reading, and then leisurely broke the seal and glanced it over. It was the one that the enraptured John had ...

— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... opened the door and came in in a very leisurely, not to say languid, manner. He took in the situation at a glance without asking a question. "But," said he, "are we not to wait for the intelligent young lady? Female intelligence ...

— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... explorers. The blackfellow of Australia seemed to partake largely of the country he lived in. His whole life was one fight for existence, and not even the sudden advent of a strange race could do more than stir him to a languid curiosity. Bounded, as he always had been, by his surroundings, and never venturing beyond tribal limits, what information he was able to impart was, as a rule, meagre and misleading, and without any ...

— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... gold-rimmed quizzing-glass, and directed through that powerful weapon of offence an eye of supreme displeasure upon the singer. He could not contain his rage, yet from his languid tone none would have suspected it. "Sir," said he, "ye've a singular ...

— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini

... dressed too soon, waiting in awful idleness with strained smiles and ghastly cheer. I petted and patted them all round and cast an agitated eye over the set. A grimy young stagehand made a minor change for me with a languid, not unkind contempt. "What's the big idea?" he wanted to know. "Goner slip 'em some high-brow stuff? Say, this is the wrong pew, sister. They won't stand for nothing like that here. Up in the Bronx, ...

— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... nights, she slept in the forest; and when at length she came out upon the plain beyond, she was pale and wan, her dark eyes drooped, her slender figure was bowed and languid, and only the mark upon her brow, where the coronet had fretted its whiteness, betrayed that ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... loss to determine what is meant by disgust at sin, or deadness to sin. On the other hand, consider how pleasant a meal is to the hungry, or some enlivening odour to the faint, how refreshing the air is to the languid, or the brook to the weary and thirsty,—and you will understand the sort of feeling which is implied in being alive with Christ, alive to religion, alive to the thought of heaven. Our animal powers cannot exist in all atmospheres; certain airs are poisonous, others life-giving. ...

— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman

... net and box lay there beside him, and his hunt had been without profit, for both were apparently empty. Possibly he had devoted but little time to netting insects. Possibly he had thought to encounter bigger game. If so his zest in the sport must have been but languid, since he had so soon yielded to the drowsy influences of the day. There was resentment in the heart of the girl as this occurred to her, even though it would have angered her the more had anyone suggested she had come in hope of seeing or ...

— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... Castile had never been countenanced by legislative sanction; it was chiefly resorted to as a measure of police, and was directed more frequently against the disorders of the nobility, than of the sovereign; it was organized with difficulty, and, compared with the union of Aragon, was cumbrous and languid in its operations. While these privileges continued in force, the nation was delivered over to the most frightful anarchy. The least offensive movement on the part of the monarch, the slightest encroachment on personal right or privilege, was the signal for a general revolt. At the cry of ...

— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... of a supernatural light; and there was nothing which the orthodox Puritan so steadfastly abhorred as the anarchical pretence of living by the aid of a supernatural light. In a strong and complex society the teachings of Mrs. Hutchinson would have awakened but a languid speculative interest, or perhaps would have passed by unheeded. In the simple society of Massachusetts in 1636, physically weak and as yet struggling for very existence, the practical effect of such teachings may well have been deemed politically dangerous. When things came to such a pass that the ...

— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske

... thou languid, Art thou sore distressed? "Come to Me," saith One, "and coming, Be ...

— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... take you in my dreams to a far-off land I used to know, Back in the ages long ago; a land of palms and languid streams. ...

— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson

... badly that I have seen a round dozen since we started out taking advantage of their liberty to have a sleigh-ride with livery teams at a good round price," Lloyd replied, with languid emphasis. He never spoke with any force of argument to his wife, nor indeed to any one else, in justification of his actions. His reasons for action were in most cases self-evolved and entirely self-regulated. ...

— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... with me, taste From unrinsed barrel the diluted wine Of a low vineyard or a plant illpruned, But such as anciently the Aegean Isles Poured in libation at their solemn feasts: And the same goblets shall ye grasp embost With no vile figures of loose languid boors, But such as Gods have lived ...

— Certain Noble Plays of Japan • Ezra Pound

... languid eye, Flushed his pale cheek, with bright, tho' fleeting flame; Leap'd forth his voice with energetic cry, And thus, to me express'd, his thoughts ...

— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young

... delighted them afresh, its expression ever varying. In the early morning it was pale as a maiden just risen from her slumber; at noon, it was flushed, radiant as with a longing for fruitfulness, and in the evening it became languid and breathless, as after keen enjoyment. Its countenance was constantly changing. Particularly in the evenings, at the hour of parting, did it delight them. The sun, hastening towards the horizon, ...

— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... Feet languished a long time afterwards. These Pains of the Feet and Toes, and the Mortifications which followed, were for the most part owing to the Patients being exposed to too much Cold while they were very weak, the Circulation languid, and the Juices vitiated by a putrid Distemper; by which means the Vessels were rendered incapable of carrying on the Circulation in their ...

— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro

... behind him, the woman at that moment uppermost in his thoughts came down the dusky silence from the further end of the hall. She turned her inscrutable eyes upon him in passing, and flitted noiselessly and with languid grace up the stairway, the faint swish of her gown vanishing with her. He hesitated a moment, overpowered by conflicting emotion; then he sprang ...

— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... turf of a beautiful seclusion. A seclusion, but seldom a solitude; for priest, noble, and populace, stranger and native, all who breathe Roman air, find free admission, and come hither to taste the languid enjoyment of the day-dream that they ...

— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... mine, then, and not Bourne's. I took Titbottom's arm, and we sauntered toward the ferry. What sumptuous sultan was I, with this sad vizier? My languid odalisque, the sea, lay at my feet as we advanced, and sparkled all over with a sunset smile. Had I trusted myself to her arms, to be borne to the realms that I shall never see, or sailed long voyages towards Cathay, I am not sure I should have brought a ...

— Prue and I • George William Curtis

... as the middle of June. To their being marooned thus in a desert of boarded-up doors and shuttered windows, due, as Eunice had frankly and charmingly let him know, to their being poor among their kind, he doubtless owed it that no other callers came to disturb the languid afternoon. Seen against her proper background of things precious but worn, and in the style of a preceding generation, the girl showed even lovelier than before, with the rich, perfumed quality of a flower held in a chipped porcelain vase, a flower moreover ...

— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin

... journey advanced and the train swept farther west she became dull, languid, almost inert. Lack of food and the previous night's exposure induced in her a feeling of giddiness which at times had in it something of the nature of delirium. In this state her mind turned persistently to Thalassa, ...

— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... a man ought to read as he would grasp a nettle: do it lightly, and you get molested; grasp it with all your strength, and you feel none of its asperities. There is nothing so horrible as languid study, when you sit looking at the clock, wishing the time was over, or that somebody would call on you and put you out of your misery. The only way to read with any efficacy is to read so heartily that dinner-time comes two hours before you ...

— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson

... were soon busy as usual, and as opportunity offered, she told her fellow-worker of the events of the evening. Mara, with a languid interest, inquired about those whom she knew, and how they appeared, and she sometimes laughed aloud at Ella's droll descriptions. She was even more emphatic in her disapproval of young Houghton's presence than the captain or Mrs. ...

— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe

... a tall, fine-looking woman, though her complexion was spoiled already by pimples due to liver complaint, on which grounds she was said to be exacting. With a slender figure and delicate proportions, she could afford to indulge in languid manners, savoring somewhat of affectation, but revealing passion and the consciousness that every least caprice will be ...

— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... than a few yards from the ship. The Aurora was still rolling sluggishly on the sleepy swell; her dazzling white canvas flapping and the slings and trusses of the yards creaking with the roll; the men, rendered languid by the heat, were making such show as they were able of being busy on various odd jobs about the decks or aloft; and the man at the wheel had lashed it and was leaning upon it more than half-asleep. Ritson, ...

— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood

... than Priest,—with a head of heavy black hair reaching his shoulders, while his dress was largely of buckskin, profusely ornamented with beadwork and fringes. He was armed, as was every one else, and from his languid demeanor as well as from his smart appearance, one would classify him at a passing glance as a frontier gambler. As we turned away from the bar to an unoccupied table, Priest waited for his change, when the stranger accosted him with an inquiry as to where ...

— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams

... up at me blankly. Her beautiful face carried no expression of satisfaction or surprise. Her transparent complexion was neither paled by fear nor flushed by pleasure. Her great dreamy eyes, of a deep liquid blue, wandered unfixedly in their languid gaze. Still holding her soft hand, which was far warmer than my own, I opened her fingers with my other hand and pointed at her pink extended palm as if to inquire what she wished. I watched her closely, but she made no sign, said nothing, ...

— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass

... describes them as "the race of strong, hardy, cheerful girls that used to grow up in country places, and made the bright, neat New England kitchens of olden times;" and adds, "This race of women, pride of olden time, is daily lessening; and in their stead come the fragile, easily fatigued, languid girls of a modern age, drilled in book-learning, ...

— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... of unadulterated air, The glimpse of a green pasture, how they cheer The citizen, and brace his languid frame. Even in the stifling bosom of the town; A garden, in which nothing thrives, has charms That soothe the rich possessor. And are these not all proofs that man immured In cities, still retains his inborn inextinguishable Thirst of rural scenes, ...

— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... fav'rite Cow Expects me near the barley-mow, And when a lady's in the case You know all other things give place. To leave you thus might seem unkind; But see, the Goat is just behind." The Goat remarked her pulse was high, Her languid head, her heavy eye. "My back," says she, "may do you harm. The Sheep's at hand, and wool is warm." The Sheep was feeble, and complained His sides a load of wool sustained: Said he was slow, confessed his fears; For Hounds eat Sheep as well as Hares. She now the trotting Calf addressed To save ...

— The Talking Beasts • Various

... Rougierre seemed rather curious. She sat down on the little bank opposite, in her most languid pose—her head leaned upon the tips of ...

— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... Captain, with a languid yawn; again he shifted his straw till the bulk of it was under his right shoulder, and he lay on an incline that sloped down to the left. "And you 'll kill me and take my papers, eh?" he inquired, ...

— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope

... cries, he stretched out his arm and stroked its trembling sides, and then stooped to examine the wounded limb. And, stranger still, he tore off a portion of the woollen scarf that circled his waist and proceeded to bandage up the shattered member. The dog submitted to the operation with languid resignation. The foot of one hind leg had been entirely torn away by a revolver shot, and only the stump of the leg was left. The poor beast would go on three legs for the ...

— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... it is a matter for serious question," I replied. "For, as soon as we grow out of our languid and feeble maladies, we grow into the violent inflammatory disorders which troubled our forefathers. The doctors will tell you that this is true of our bodies; and surely the soul's physician may pursue ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... question; while it vilified Bute, it animadverted on Pitt's pensions and honours. At the same time the people were only partially in the favour of the ex-minister. The progress of addresses, resolutions, and condolences was languid, and in some instances the people were disposed to cast odium upon, and to blacken the character of, the retired secretary. The popularity of Pitt was, in truth, obscured with mists and clouds for a time, and it was not till after he had raised a few thunder-storms of opposition, ...

— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... dragged slowly along the heat seemed steadily to grow more oppressive, and the difficulty of obtaining a full breath greater; the perspiration was streaming from every pore of my body, and I felt almost too languid to drag one foot after the other as I moved about the deck. That the sick man also was affected unfavourably was evident, for his shouts came up through the after skylight with positively startling distinctness as his delirium ...

— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood

... grape, both red and white, Grape inspiring just delight; All are ripe, and courting sue, To be pluck'd and press'd by you. Pinks have lost their blooming red, Mourning hang their drooping head, Every flower languid seems, Wants the colour of thy beams, Beams of wondrous force and power, Beams reviving every flower. Come, Cadenus, bless once more, Bless again thy native shore, Bless again this drooping isle, Make its weeping beauties smile, Beauties that thine absence mourn, Beauties wishing thy return: ...

— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... strange! Like a spell does the evening bind me! And a deep languid charm I feel without alarm With its melody enwind me And all my ...

— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux

... any other young girl might have grown languid and sorrowful, Sybil became excitable and violent. She had always had the fiery temper of her race, but it had very seldom been kindled by a breath of provocation. Now, however, it frequently broke out without the slightest apparent cause. No one in the house could account for this accession of ill-temper—not ...

— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... her apron to catch what came rattling and ringing and racing and jingling, as they tumbled down together into it, and danced a measure over the floor with the naughty nuns of the broken rosary-beads that they surprised in their mad escape from the bondage of a hundred years. The pale and languid mother started up, resting eagerly on her elbow; Margaret fell upon the floor, catching up the guineas and doubloons as if she were crazy, and kissing them in a transport; Tommy began to discover what his pockets were made for, straightway. Meanwhile Frederick sprung upon ...

— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... in bear's grease were made by the Russian merchants on 'Change yesterday for the German markets. A consequent rise in this species of manure took place; this will, it is feared, have a bad effect upon the British crops, which have already assumed a dry and languid appearance. ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... a languid foreign accent, and with an emphatic and bountiful use of adjectives, that gave to our severer generation an impression of insincerity. Yet it was said with truth that Giulia Petrucci had never forgotten a ...

— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various

... exasperating, Aunt Honor," retorted Constance, re-entering the window with a slow, languid movement, as if the events of the morning had wearied her vastly. "Everybody has outdone themselves in the disagreeable line, myself included. I wish the burglars had carried me off along with my jewels. I am going up-stairs and try another dose of burglarious chloroform. But, ...

— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... admitted to see her. One fine March morning, when the wind was blowing freshly and tossing the big, bare branches, I was taken to her room. I should not have known her; a pale, languid lady lay there in the place of my laughing, beautiful mother; two large blue eyes full of tears looked at me; two thin, white arms clasped me, and then I was lying on my mother's heart. Oh, my darling, if we ...

— My Mother's Rival - Everyday Life Library No. 4 • Charlotte M. Braeme

... ways of the wood, and the murmurous dream of genial insects now was beginning to drowse upon the air, and the heat of the sun could almost be seen thrilling through the alleys like a cicale's drum—here, in the middle of the languid peace, I waited for the terror ...

— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... hearts of a Protestant nation, and then we realize that Drake's methods were the "invention" of an inevitable alternative either to fight this hideous despotism with more desperate weapons and greater vigour than the languid, luxury-loving Spaniards had taken the trouble to create or succumb to their tremendous power of wealth and wickedness. Drake was the chosen instrument of an inscrutable destiny, and we owe it to him that the divided England ...

— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... Calcutta mail-steamer. There were some from China among them, but I could gather from them nothing of any interest. It was a curious scene, by the way, that meeting: 260 first-class passengers, including children, pale and languid-looking, thrown into a great barn-like refectory, in which were already assembled our voyage companions (we ourselves had a separate room), jovial-looking, and with roses in their cheeks, which they are doubtless hastening to ...

— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... very sweet and potent saint, and therefore hast good eyes—which is well; so canst thou see him for thyself, how weak he is and languid, that was a mighty man and lusty. Cherish him, I pray thee! A goodly youth thou dost know him, thou didst see him burn a gibbet, moreover I have told thee—and eke a knight of high degree. Yet doth he lie here direly sick of body. Cherish him, I pray! Moreover, sick is he ...

— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... was impossible to refuse the Count and his lady, from whom she had received great kindness. She went. When in their saloons, filled with all the fashion and aristocracy in Vienna, the name of Giovanna was announced, a general murmur was heard. She entered, pale and languid, and proceeded between the two rows made for her by the admiring assembly, to the seat of honor beside the ...

— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various

... am bored to death, and there's nothing to do. Where are you going?" asked Yourii, in a languid, patronizing tone. He always spoke thus to Schafroff, because, as a former member of the revolutionary committee he looked upon the lad as just an amateur revolutionist. Schafroff smiled as one thoroughly ...

— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef

... well known, not to render him very disagreeable to that crafty and tyrannical prince, whom God had so long suffered to be the disgrace of monarchy, and the scourge of Europe. He at first appeared very languid, as indeed he was; but on casting his eye upon the Earl of Stair, he affected to appear before him in a much better state of health than he really was; and therefore, as if he had been awakened on a sudden from some ...

— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge

... EGERTON (with a languid smile).—"Yes, you see I do not flatter. But he is born and reared a gentleman; as such he would scarcely do anything mean. And, after all, it is with me that he must rise or fall. His very intellect must tell him that. But again I ask, do not strive to ...

— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... gives but a languid reception unless roused by something either horrible or sensational, but her bizarre appearance had the effect which the ...

— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward

... with languid moving wrist In puissance may with any of the gods compare; No marvel thou must stay and list, For 'tis the Song of Love breathes ...

— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park

... that army's gentle might Unfelt amid the deadly fight; It nerves the son's, the husband's hand, It points the lover's fearless brand; It thrills the languid, warms the cold, Gives even new courage to the bold; And sometimes lifts the veriest clod To its own lofty trust ...

— War Poetry of the South • Various

... by servile conditions. Even in the king's absence, even when they were alone, I have seen Apemama women work with constancy. But the outside to be hoped for in a man is that he may attack his task in little languid fits, and lounge between-whiles. So I have seen a painter, with his pipe going, and a friend by the studio fireside. You might suppose the race to lack civility, even vitality, until you saw them in the dance. Night after ...

— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... think it is very selfish in him,' said Alda, 'when every one of us wants change! I'm as languid as possible; and look ...

— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... thousand bosoms round Inhale thee in the fulness of delight; And languid forms rise up, and pulses bound Livelier at coming of the wind of night; And languishing to hear thy grateful sound, Lies the vast inland stretch'd beyond the sight. Go forth into the gathering shade; go forth, God's blessing ...

— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... riches, would almost of itself have told that the usurer was not well. That he laboured under some mental or bodily indisposition, and that it was one of no slight kind so to affect a man like him, was sufficiently shown by his haggard face, jaded air, and hollow languid eyes: which he raised at last with a start and a hasty glance around him, as one who suddenly awakes from sleep, and cannot immediately recognise the place in which ...

— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... passed to the course, Crane, who had followed The Dutchman to the gate, raised his eyes from scanning Lauzanne to the rider on his back. It was just a look of languid interest in the apprentice boy Dixon had put up instead of such a good jockey as Redpath. The face rivetted his attention; something in the line of the cheek recalled a face he had constantly ...

— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... permanence of the ideas which inspired their action. At the same time they showed their want of confidence in the republican feeling of the country, and both exasperated the royalists and gave them courage to act for themselves. On September 23 the country accepted the scheme, by a languid vote, but ...

— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... fling themselves prostrate beside the corpse and sob as if their very hearts would break. They take the dead man by the hand, they stroke him, they straighten out the poor feet which are already growing cold. They coo to him softly, they lift up the languid head, and then lay it gently down. Then in a frenzy of grief one of them will leap to his feet, shriek, bellow, stamp on the floor, grapple with the roof beams, shake the walls, as if he would pull the house down, and finally hurl himself on the ground and roll over and over howling as if his ...

— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... utter indifference as to what she said or whom she addressed, used to bring choice bits of this gossip to Mrs. Lee. She always affected a little stammer when she said anything uncommonly impudent, and put on a manner of languid simplicity. She felt keenly the satisfaction of seeing Madeleine charged with her own besetting sins. For years all Washington had agreed that Victoria was little better than one of the wicked; ...

— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams

... to the fountains lead! Propitious maids! the task remains to sing Your gifts (so Paeon, so the powers of Health Command), to praise your crystal element. O comfortable streams! with eager lips And trembling hands the languid thirsty quaff New life in you; fresh vigor fills their veins. No warmer cups the rural ages knew, None warmer sought the sires of humankind; Happy in temperate peace their equal days Felt not the alternate fits of feverish mirth And sick dejection; still serene and pleased, ...

— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... sense of buoyancy and youthfulness. The road lay straight and smooth before her. The little car, obedient to her strong capable hand, spun along the shining track, counterfeiting by the swiftness of its motion the breeze lacking in the languid spring day. Persis had laid aside her hat, and the rush of air ruffled her abundant hair and rouged her cheeks. As a matter of fact, Persis was not so near flying as she thought. In the most conservative community, there would have been little danger of her arrest for exceeding the speed ...

— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith

... that it had brought me a degree of physical vigour such as I had never yet enjoyed. How different were my sensations when I woke in the morning now from those which I had known in London! In London the hour of rising had invariably found me languid and reluctant. I woke with the sense of a load upon me, and I dreaded the long grey day. I see now that these sensations were not so much mental as physical. I had not mental buoyancy simply because I was deficient in physical vitality. But at Thornthwaite ...

— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson

... massive brick pile, situate in one of the public thoroughfares, four stories high, with bold Doric windows, set off with brown fluted freestone, and revealing faded red curtains, overlain with mysterious lace, and from between the folds of which, at certain hours of the day, languid and more mysterious eyes may be seen peering cautiously. Madame Flamingo says (the city fathers all know it) she has a scrupulous regard to taste, and develops it in the construction of her front door, ...

— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... "Wuz he?" The languid form became instantly alert, the tired face took on a look of eager expectancy. "Heah, gi'm'y shut quick. I knowed it. Wait; go over dyah, son, and git me dat money. He'll be heah torectly." They thought his mind wandered, and merely ...

— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... I meet a maid or butler at the door. I see conventional furniture, conventional rooms. I am shown into a conventional waiting room, and I wait conventionally for the hostess to come forward with a stiff backbone, a forced smile, and a languid hand shake. ...

— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter

... came back, bringing her mistress with her. Ts'ui, this time, was languid and flushed, yielding and wanton in her air, as though her strength could scarcely support her limbs. Her ...

— More Translations from the Chinese • Various

... and stopping before the large, grey-stone house opposite—the rest of the houses are brick—which was unoccupied until two days ago, when it was rented furnished. I live just across the street and hence I notice these things—casually of course, as one does. I watched the cab with languid interest; saw the driver descend from the box, which seemed a bit peculiar; but when, instead of going to the door of the cab, he went up the front steps and into the house—the door of which he opened with a key that he took ...

— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott

... driven into his back yard, and pointed out where it had stretched along the ridge of hills for five miles. He politely but unmistakably showed that he thought I was a liar. From the Venus Hotel there were two guides, old Casanova and Jean Casanova, his languid and good-natured son, a youth of sixteen years. Old Casanova, like most Cubans, is not inclined to give much credit for what they did in Cuba to the Americans. After all, he says, they came only just ...

— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis

... factory towns. It is the strangest place to come to for the pleasures of the sea, of which we scarcely have a glimpse from month's end to mouth's end, nor any fresh, exhilarating breath from it, but a lazy, languid atmosphere, brooding over the waste of sands; or even if there be a sulky and bitter wind blowing along the promenade, it still brings no salt elixir. I never was more weary of a place in all my ...

— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... old shoes, and orange blossoms when you interrupted," the languid Mr. Rilleau continued. "Frankly, speaking as a friend, I don't see anything in your conversation so far to interest a sick lady. Why don't you talk to the ...

— The Net • Rex Beach

... not as yet begun to gather. The most authoritative, who was tall and portly, had the manner of swiftly disposing of the incident by asking in a peremptory voice what he could do for them. The other, lean and languid, looked up from a newspaper, in which he had been scanning a flaming circus advertisement, as he stood smoking a cigar. He said nothing, but concentrated an intent speculative gaze on the face of Valeria, who had pulled off her faint green sunbonnet and in a flush of eager ...

— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... its whole length may, in every sense, be well considered the dividing-line between northern and southern influences. The romance and sentiment which cradled itself here could only have emanated from the more languid south, and from vastly differing conditions to those of the colder north. The admiration usually bestowed upon the attractions of its domestic architectural forms is, no doubt, fully merited; albeit that the cathedrals of these wealthy and powerful communities are, ...

— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... in its great operations the march of the mind appears regular, and requires preparation. The intellectual faculties are not always co-existent, or do not always act simultaneously. Whenever any particular faculty is highly active, while the others are languid, the work, as a work of genius, may be very deficient. Hence the faculties, in whatever degree they exist, are unquestionably enlarged by meditation. It seems trivial to observe that meditation should precede composition, but we are not always aware of its importance; ...

— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... blaming fortune, and the cruel sky, Can only utter fond complaints and vain. "Why sank I not in ocean," (was her cry), "When first I reared my sail upon the main?" Zerbino, who on her his languid eye Had fixt, as she bemoaned her, felt more pain Than that enduring and strong anguish bred, Through which the suffering ...

— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... her. Not a word could I get, but she looked me in the face beseechingly, begging me to go. I had no such intention, my prick was again stiffened, I pulled it out, the sight of her cunt had stimulated me, she looked with languid eyes at me, her cap was off, her hair hanging about her head, her ...

— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... leave it to another & wiser Generation. But it may be worth Consideration that the work is more likely to be well done, at a time when the Ideas of Liberty & its Importance are strong in Mens Minds. There is Danger that these Ideas will hereafter grow faint & languid. Our Posterity may be accustomd to bear the Yoke & being inured to Servility they may even bow the Shoulder to the Burden. It can never be expected that a people, however NUMEROUS, will form & execute a wise plan to perpetuate ...

— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams

... drive, but Nelly would not hear of that. She was going to save up her pleasure, she said, for Sussex and Saturday. She consented to walk in the Square, where she had not been for quite a long time. He noticed that she looked delicate and languid and his manner to her was very tender. In fact, a new under-gardener in the Square, who was very susceptible to romance, put quite an erroneous interpretation on Robin's manner to his cousin, and hovered in their vicinity ...

— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan

... children's own, leading the way, in shirt-sleeves, at leap-frog and obstacle-race. In doctrine he struck a happy mean between low-church practices and ritualism, preaching short, spirited sermons to which even languid Christians could listen without tedium; and on a week-day evening he would take a hand at a rubber of whist or ecarte—and not for love—or play a sound game of chess. A man, too, who, refusing to be bound by the letter of the Thirty-nine Articles, extended ...

— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... bright afternoon sunshine we hurried over the Channel, empty of any sign of war, unless war showed in its very emptiness. Next to me sat a young Frenchman, different from those we had met before hurrying home to fight. Good-looking, tall, and rather languid in manner, he spoke English with an English accent, and you would have taken him for an Englishman. A big canvas bag full of golf-clubs leaned against the wall behind him, and he had been trying to play golf at one of the east-coast seaside places in England. But one couldn't play in a time ...

— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... the mind from one thing to another, except for relaxation, and that when it is necessary and the time suitable, and not otherwise. For he that relaxes out of season wearies, and he who wearies us out of season makes us languid, since we turn quite away. So much does our perverse lust like to do the contrary of what those wish to obtain from us without giving us pleasure, the coin for which we will do ...

— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal

... older than I thought," Mr. Raymond said to me, regarding me for the first time with languid curiosity. "I expected to see a velvet-coated little fellow of Helen's size. What is ...

— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... said Clarence, affectionately, "your hand is feverish and dry, and of late you have seemed more languid than you were wont,—come, Warner, you want exercise: it is a beautiful evening, and you shall explain your picture still further ...

— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... of Lucia, had been for a year or more the betrothed of Maurice Laborie. He found her lying pale and languid upon ...

— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley

... expense of the war of 1756 restored the equilibrium of the ratio, as fully as if it had not been impeded. A circumstance that serves to prove the truth of the ratio more folly than if the interruption had not taken place. The war of 1739 *** languid; the efforts were below the value of money et that time; for the ratio is the measure of the depreciation of money in consequence of the funding system; or what comes to the same end, it is the measure of the increase of paper. Every additional quantity of it, whether in bank notes ...

— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... weak, exhausted, feeble, languid, wearied, faded, half-hearted, listless, worn, faint-hearted, ill-defined, purposeless, worn down, ...

— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... overlooking the harbour. After a pleasant drive along shady fragrant roads, we returned to Emma Square, to hear the excellent performance of the Saturday afternoon band. There was a good assemblage of people, on horseback, in carriages, and on foot, and crowds of children, all more or less white, languid, and sickly-looking. Poor mites! I suppose the climate is too hot for European constitutions. Still, they abound among the foreigners, while the natives are gradually, but surely, dying out. Among the whole royal family there is only one child, a dear little girl ...

— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... prostrate beside the corpse and sob as if their very hearts would break. They take the dead man by the hand, they stroke him, they straighten out the poor feet which are already growing cold. They coo to him softly, they lift up the languid head, and then lay it gently down. Then in a frenzy of grief one of them will leap to his feet, shriek, bellow, stamp on the floor, grapple with the roof beams, shake the walls, as if he would pull the house down, and finally ...

— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... imagination too free, the rational and appreciative litterateur will delight in the vigour of imagination and delicacy of fancy displayed. The metrical structure is beyond reproach in taste and fluency, the regular and spirited heroic couplets affording a refreshing contrast to the harsh and languid measures of the day. Mr. Cole's poetical future is bright indeed, for he possesses an innate conception of fitness and poetic values which too few of his contemporaries can boast. We wish to emphasize to those readers who are familiar with The Conservative's ...

— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... Languid, and sad, and slow, from day to day I journey on, yet pensive turn to view, Where the rich landscape gleams with softer hue, The streams, and vales, and hills, that steal away. So fares it with the children of the earth: For when life's goodly ...

— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... was degraded by pieces which were very unworthy of him, such as 'O Darling Room' and the verses 'To Christopher North', and affectations of the worst kind deformed many, nay, perhaps the majority of the poems. But the capital defect lay in the workmanship. The diction is often languid and slipshod, sometimes quaintly affected, and we can never go far without encountering lines, stanzas, whole poems which cry aloud for the file. The power and charm of Tennyson's poetry, even at its ripest, depend very largely, ...

— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... staring at the old gentleman, out of a pair of very dim and languid eyes, and working his right arm vehemently up and down, 'you—you ought to ...

— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... dessert." A languid, teasing voice came from behind her. "Welcome to our city, my dear cousin! Hope you won't find us too peaceable ...

— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... its rewards consisted in the consciousness of work well done. Instead, idleness became the badge of gentility, and trade a slur upon a man's reputation. No city can long survive so listless and languid an ideal. The Archbishop, therefore, denounced this new method of usurious traffic, and hinted further that to it was due the fierce rebellion which had for a while plunged Florence into the horrors of the Jacquerie. Wealth, ...

— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett

... as warm as this languid, creamy beach, the day I clambered, none too agile, over the thwarts of Caliban's boat and made my way up the sandy path ...

— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell

... bluebird feather; her fingers rose to it reminiscently. A faint, dying breeze just barely stirred the drooping branches of the willow; in one place the graceful pendant leaves merged with their own reflections below, faintly blurring them with the slightest of ripples. Here, in the sunlight, was a languid place of dreams; by mellow, magic moonlight what wonder if there came hither certain of the last remnants and relics of an old superstitious people, seeking visions? And an old saw hath it, 'What ye seek for ...

— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory

... his urn, And all the virtues bending mourn; Humanity, with languid eye, Melting for others' misery; Prudence, whose hands a measure hold, And Temperance, with a chain of gold; Fidelity's triumphant vest, And Fortitude in armor drest; Wisdom's grey locks, and Freedom, join The moral train to bless his ...

— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris

... up to the old farmhouse that lay a little farther in at the top of the hill, to ask. A little while after he came back accompanied by the farmer himself, a pale, languid, youngish man, who wore a stand-up collar and was smoking ...

— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... in the misty morn Stand shadowless like Silence, listening To silence, for no lonely bird would sing Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn, Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn; Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright With tangled gossamer that fell by night, Pearling his ...

— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... attention; they were all a little tired and languid and disinclined for their usual amusements after the excitement of last night's dance and the exertion of their morning on the ice. Even Deleah, the reader of the family, neglected her book to lie back in her chair and gaze into the fire, the music of galop, and rattle of her father's ...

— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann

... Now fragments weighed up from th' uneven streets Leave the ground black beneath; again the sun Shines into what were porches, and on steps Once warm with frequentation—clients, friends, All morning, satchelled idlers all mid-day, Lying half-up and languid though at games. Some raise the painted pavement, some on wheels Draw slow its laminous length, some intersperse Salt waters through the sordid heaps, and seize The flowers and figures starting fresh to view. Others rub hard large masses, and essay ...

— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor

... Andrew. He dismounts from Billy the pig, and, insolent brat, screws an imaginary eyeglass into his eye, which he contrives to keep contorted, and assuming a supercilious expression and a languid manner, struts leisurely towards us, with his hands in his pockets, thereby giving what I am forced to admit is an imitation of myself perfect in its burlesque. Ben Flint roars with laughter. I clutch the imp and throw him across knee ...

— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

... joys, see only the happy lovers immersed in pleasure, your picture is very imperfect; you have only its grosser part, the sweetest charms of pleasure are not there. Which of you has seen a young couple, happily married, on the morrow of their marriage? their chaste yet languid looks betray the intoxication of the bliss they have enjoyed, the blessed security of innocence, and the delightful certainty that they will spend the rest of their life together. The heart of man can behold no more rapturous sight; this is the real picture of happiness; you have beheld it ...

— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... study struck three, in the darkness three strokes, remote and deep, answered. In the air the volatile and languid odor of syringas was overcome by the narcotic and stronger odor of hyacinths. The increasing cold flowed around them with painful contrast. In the door, beyond which she had vanished, Irene appeared again, just as silently as before. She passed through the room and placed a ...

— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)

... and the other in Lancashire. The system of Presbyteries or Classes, with half-yearly Provincial Assemblies, which had been set up by the Long Parliament in these two districts, remained undisturbed. Both in London and in Lancashire, however, the system was in a languid state; and for the rest of the country, and indeed for non-Presbyterians in London and Lancashire too, the Church or Public Ministry was practically on the principle of the Independency of Congregations. Each parish had, or was to have, its regular minister, recognised by the State, and the association ...

— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... that his greatest happiness was to lie all day basking in the sun or dawdling through his father's park with his dog at his heels, the heels themselves in a very down-trodden state of humility, watching with languid gaze the movements of ...

— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays

... with an explanation of facts which were so extraordinary that they could only be credited on the oath of a person who, though present, would not be called. At this reference Hugh Ritson raised his languid eyes, and ...

— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... jolly enough for both of them. He's funnier than you, Basil, and he hasn't any of your little languid airs and affectations. I don't know but I'm a bit disappointed in my choice, darling; but I dare say I shall work out of it. In fact, I don't know but the Colonel is a little too jolly. This drolling everything is rather fatiguing." And having begun, they did not stop till they had taken their ...

— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... apparently completely satisfied for the moment. As time passed, however, these painful seizures grew gradually less frequent, and his friends strove to divert his mind into fresh channels. But his interest in other matters did not seem to revive, and he grew apparently languid ...

— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... rising above all adversity, was bowed by a sorrow resulting from affection, she declared she could not survive Brunoro. She caused a tomb to be made, in which their remains could be united; and, after seeing the work completed, she gradually sank into a languid state, which terminated in ...

— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... occasions, that Miss Sally, sitting before the piano, alternately striking a few notes with three pink fingers and glancing at her reflection in the polished rosewood surface of the lifted keyboard case, was heard to utter this languid protest:— ...

— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... very nearly pinked me when I was in the rigging; for the ball passed between my arm and my side, and took out a piece of the former, Captain Rombold," replied Christy, who was beginning to feel languid from the loss of blood, for the drops of red fluid were dropping from the ends of his fingers. "But you exaggerate the service I rendered; for Captain Breaker, suspecting something from the position ...

— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... few days after calving, the cow is noticed hanging back in the stall, dull, languid, with an unsteady movement of the hind legs. If the cow is made to walk, she steps unsteadily or staggers, pays no attention to her calf; she finally becomes so paralyzed that she falls and is unable to rise. The pupils of the eyes ...

— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek

... Her well-known haunts, where once she ranged secure, With love and plenty bless'd. See! there she goes, She reels along, and by her gait betrays Her inward weakness. See, how black she looks! The sweat that clogs the obstructed pores, scarce leaves A languid scent. And now in open view See, see, she flies! each eager hound exerts His utmost speed, and stretches every nerve. How quick she turns! their gaping jaws eludes, And yet a moment lives; till round inclosed 270 By all the greedy ...

— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... horses were even worse off than themselves. Worn with privation to skeletons, they were drooping and spiritless; and had not the wanderers used great exertion to collect the young grass for them, they would have perished, for they were too languid to crop it themselves. ...

— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle

... with rebukes,"—says the Psalmist,—"dost correct man for his iniquity, Thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth." One great reason why the feeling which the moralist has towards sin is so tame and languid, when compared with the holy abhorrence of the regenerate mind, lies in the fact that he has not contemplated human depravity in company with a sin-hating Jehovah. At the very utmost, he has been shut up merely ...

— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... melancholy one. They had gone through so much already, that change and travel had no power to stimulate their overstrained nerves to any further excitement; the time of reaction had begun, and a sort of languid indifference, which was in itself a misery, seemed to have taken possession of them. Even Lucia's spirits, generally strong both for enjoyment or for suffering, were completely subdued; she sat by the window of the car looking ...

— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill

... of the West Indian strains. There was a minor monotonous theme in them which fascinated the listeners. They heard the beat of the tambourine, and saw the movement of the dance, and with them all the characteristic scenery and association of the tropics filled their imaginations. The languid grace, the rich indolence, the gay profusion of the lands where the banana grows, ...

— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis

... home to him. The old familiar trees, the sward, the birds, these told him of the advancing or receding sun. As he reclined in the corner of the broad window-seat, his feet up, and drowsy, of a summer afternoon, he heard the languid cawing of an occasional rook, for rooks are idle in the heated hours of the day. He was aware, without conscious observation, of the swift, straight line drawn across the sky by a wood-pigeon. The pigeons were continually to and fro the cornfields outside the wall to ...

— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... Honners, age 31, occupation verbalizer. A slim, languid man with an earnest, boyish face and ...

— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley

... weally, this ith verwy impudent, don't yer know!" drawled a languid voice. "What wight have you to cwout yourthelf into a theat bethide ...

— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish

... on a chair, a man of thirty sat reading or chatting in a subdued voice with the young woman. He was short, delicate, and in manner languid. With his fair hair devoid of lustre, his sparse beard, his face covered with red blotches, he resembled a sickly, spoilt child arrived ...

— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola

... despair of forming any systematic mode of search—fever began rapidly to burn through his veins. His temples felt oppressed as with the weight of a mountain; his lips parched with intolerable thirst; his strength seemed suddenly to desert him; and it was with pain and labour that he dragged one languid limb after the other. ...

— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... sat on the battlement, gazing far out over the waters, with eyes of the same tint as the hair. Even the sea-breeze failed to give more than a slight touch of colour to her somewhat freckled complexion; and the limbs that rested in a careless attitude on the stone bench were long and languid, though with years and favourable circumstances there might be a development of beauty and dignity. Her lips were crooning at intervals a mournful old Scottish tune, sometimes only humming, sometimes uttering its melancholy burthen, and she now and then touched a small ...

— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge

... with a dim lustre, which quietly penetrated everything in this serene night. Slowly they walked along on the borders of the Chevrotte, which crossed the park; but it was no longer the rapid rivulet rushing over a pebbly descent—it was a quiet, languid brook, gliding along through clumps of trees. Under this mass of luminous vapour, between the bushes which seemed to bathe and float therein, it was like an Elysian stream which unfolded itself ...

— The Dream • Emile Zola

... lay across the velvet arm of the sofa; I took it and raised it to my lips, and she smiled approval, then drew a languid little sigh, fanned, and vowed I was the boldest man she had ...

— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... could see nothing. The sky was dark with unmoving clouds, but the fresh air blew gratefully against his face, laden with the scent of the vernal country; a light rain was falling noiselessly, and the earth seemed languid and weary, accepting the moisture with ...

— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham

... young, and fair apparelled, Makes sunrise jealous of her rosy red, When dawn upon the dew of dawning glows; Graces and Loves within her breast repose, The woods are faint with the sweet odour shed, Till rains and heavy suns have smitten dead The languid flower, and ...

— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang

... veiled, turbaned mob shrieking, bargaining, fist-shaking, call on Allah to witness the monstrous villanies of the misbegotten miscreants they are trading with, and then, struck with the mysterious Eastern apathy, sinking down in languid heaps of muslin among the black figs, purple onions and rosy melons, the fluttering hens, the tethered goats, the whinnying foals, that are all enclosed in an outer circle of folded-up camels and of mules dozing ...

— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... mean so ingenuous," assented a languid lady from San Francisco. "But we must stand up; toute le monde is standing ...

— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field

... poor ninds. In vain shall we be free from sanguinary Mars, and the broken billows of the hoarse Adriatic; in vain shall we be apprehensive for ourselves of the noxious South, in the time of autumn. The black Cocytus wandering with languid current, and the infamous race of Danaus, and Sisyphus, the son of the Aeolus, doomed to eternal toil, must be visited; your land and house and pleasing wife must be left, nor shall any of those trees, which you are nursing, follow you, their master for a brief space, except ...

— The Works of Horace • Horace

... send up wistful glances to the windows—she had learned that all this was the happy quarter—of the enviable but unapproachable colonists. She saw these privileged mortals, as she supposed, in almost every victoria that made a languid lady with a pretty head dash past her, and she had no idea how little honour this theory sometimes did her expatriated countrywomen. Her plan was already made to be on the field again the next winter and take it up seriously, this question ...

— The Reverberator • Henry James

... tweeds was shaking hands heartily with Hannah Ann, while an esthetically dressed, rather languid young lady in pastel green was trying to introduce a pretty, smiling blond girl in black furs whom Patricia easily recognized as the original of the photograph that had stood on Mr. Lindley's desk at Greycroft, and the Haldens were explaining ...

— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther

... Paris and again at Plassans. Yet his image, refined, elegant, and vivacious, had remained engraven on her mind; his face had grown hollow, his hair was streaked with silver threads. But notwithstanding, she found in him still, with his delicately handsome head, a languid grace, like that of a girl, even ...

— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... in the wealth of the great west, but how many give one languid thought to the years of bloody deeds by which ...

— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... They are evidently extremely languid and indolent, and wanting in strength and agility. Looking at them squatting down, standing or walking, with their long hair flowing down their backs, one would take them for the women of a harem rather than savages used to enduring the inclemency of the weather and ...

— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... chair for her on the loggia, which faced westward, and was still pleasant and cool. There she sat, with twenty miles of view behind her, and he placed the dripping baby on her knee. It shone now with health and beauty: it seemed to reflect light, like a copper vessel. Just such a baby Bellini sets languid on his mother's lap, or Signorelli flings wriggling on pavements of marble, or Lorenzo di Credi, more reverent but less divine, lays carefully among flowers, with his head upon a wisp of golden straw. For a time Gino contemplated them standing. Then, to get a better ...

— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster

... on her part for the salt sufficed to open a conversation between them; but as it was in German, I could not follow its meaning. I observed, however, that it by and by waxed rather more warm than is customary in the languid hour of a table-d'hote; and, what was more, a silence ensued amongst a considerable number of those within hearing, as if the subject of their conversation were of an interesting character. A ...

— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various

... most dreadful of all diseases. The first symptoms are attended by thirst, fever, and languor. The dog starts convulsively in his sleep, and when awake, though restless, is languid. When a dog is suspected, he should he firmly chained in a place where neither children nor dogs nor cats can get near him. Any one going to attend him should wear thick leather gloves, and proceed with great caution. When a dog snaps savagely at ...

— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... bowed with a deep and courtly reverence. Her face brightened—she adored her own loveliness, and the desire of conquest awoke in her immediately. She took a glass of wine from my hand with a languid grace, and fixed her glorious eyes full ...

— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... tea a servant came up to tell father that Will and Mr Carstairs had called to see him. They had too much good feeling to join us where we were, but Vere lifted her languid eyes and said "Stupid men! What are they afraid of? Tell them to come here at once." And no one dared to ...

— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... seated, they formed a striking assembly of distinctly marked personalities. There were very few mean types among them, and the stupid, half-vague and languid expression of the modern loafer or 'do nothing' creature, who just for lack of useful work plots mischief, was not to be seen on any of their countenances. A certain moroseness and melancholy seemed to brood like a delayed storm among ...

— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... occurrences. The footsteps are obliterated now; the face of the country may be changed; but the pillar is still there, to remind me how all things were when it was reared. Lest the reader should be curious to see any of these effusions, I will favour him with one short specimen: cold and languid as the lines may seem, it was almost a passion of grief to which they owed ...

— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte

... last. Some difficulty in crossing the horses delayed us till then. We reached Charleston on the second day, and I found Natalie delighted to see me, and still pretty. She has grown thinner, much thinner; but her complexion is still good, though more languid. The loss of her hair is, however, an alteration much for the worse. Her crop is pretty, but not half so much so as her fine brown hair. I write you all these foolish little particulars because you enter into them all, or, rather, are sensible of all their importance ...

— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... again thine eyes! Turn again thine eyes, love's true mercy learn. Breathe, O! breathe to me, as these love-languid skies To yon twilight star breathe, Return, return! Turn again thine eyes, maiden passing fair. O maiden passing ...

— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable

... and park of Les Aigues seem as luxuriantly beautiful as it did just then. The first autumn days were beginning, when the earth, languid from her procreations and delivered of her products, exhales the delightful odors of vegetation. At this time the woods, especially, are delicious; they begin to take the russet warmth of Sienna earth, and the green-bronze tones which form ...

— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... power; and he was enjoined (as an uncertain rumour whispered, for no certain authority for the statement could be produced) to be guided by the course of events, and if he should find the republic in a languid state, and in need of further aid, to cause himself without delay to ...

— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... enough of itself to make him rank as a great painter. The picture is full of magic; and the colour is truly a spirit dwelling on things and making them expressive to the spirit, for the delicate tones of grey, and green, and violet seem to convey to us the idea of languid sleep, and even the hawthorn-blossoms have lost their wonted brightness, and are more like the pale moonlight to which Shelley compared them, than the sheet of summer snow we see ...

— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... proportion which the night bears to the day, the winter to the summer, thought to experience. There will be so much the more air and sunshine in our thoughts. The callous palms of the laborer are conversant with finer tissues of self-respect and heroism, whose touch thrills the heart, than the languid fingers of idleness. That is mere sentimentality that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from the tan and ...

— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... spring of 1681. Father Xavier had been absent nearly two years. Father Ignatius missed him sadly—all the life and fire seemed have gone out of the mission. Even Marie moved about her work in a listless, languid way, which contrasted markedly with her once lithe and rapid movements. They had not once heard from the explorers, and Father Ignatius shook his head sadly, and feared that he would never see his energetic colleague again. The Black Beaver had slept through the last months of ...

— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various

... was a slim and elegant gentleman, dressed with elaborate care, who appeared profoundly bored with life in general and our society in particular. He sported one of Hephzibah's detestations, a monocle, and spoke, when he spoke at all, with a languid drawl and what I learned later was a Piccadilly accent. He favored us with his company during our first day afloat; after that we saw him amid the select group at that much sought—by some—center of shipboard ...

— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln

... last session it was anticipated that the progressive diminution of the public revenue in 1819 and 1820, which had been the result of the languid state of our foreign commerce in those years, had in the latter year reached its extreme point of depression. It has, however, been ascertained that that point was reached only at the termination of the first quarter of the present year. From that ...

— State of the Union Addresses of James Monroe • James Monroe

... Cocytus, wandering to the world below, That languid river to behold we of this earth must go; To see the grim Danaides, that miserable race, And Sisyphus of ...

— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field

... are just, Thou virtuous maid; I'll hasten to my troops, And fire their languid souls with Cato's virtue. If e'er I lead them to the field, when all The war shall stand ranged in its just array, And dreadful pomp, then will I think on thee; Oh, lovely maid! then will I think on ...

— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison

... dreadfully jejune and destitute of imagination: his contemptuous and over-wise mode of treating religious matters is altogether offensive. The narrative, preserving throughout an intentional contrast to the usual Greek historiography with its artistic style, is doubtless correct and clear, but flat and languid, digressing with undue frequency into polemical discussions or into biographical, not seldom very self- sufficient, description of his own experiences. A controversial vein pervades the whole work; the author destined his treatise primarily for the Romans, and yet found ...

— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... at Rio—by which alone vessels may emerge from the bay—is ever languid and faint. It comes from gardens of citrons and cloves, spiced with all the spices of the Tropic of Capricorn. And, like that old exquisite, Mohammed, who so much loved to snuff perfumes and essences, ...

— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... at the lady which was meant to be lovelorn, but which must have been extremely languid in my ...

— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... subtle, and flexible. At the approach of danger he could dissemble; and, whenever it suited his views, could change his measures without changing his object. At the beginning of January the fate with which Charles was menaced revived the languid affection of the Scots. A cry of indignation burst from every part of the country: he was their native king—would they suffer him to be arraigned as a criminal before a foreign tribunal? By delivering him to his enemies, they had sullied ...

— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc

... is of the passive type and is characterized by a full lymphatic habit, pale or delicate complexion, blue eyes, straight fine hair, small hands, tapering fingers, cold and fleshy to the touch; usually a thin or high voice and languid manner. ...

— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial

... had watched them awhile she started up, spread her skirts in a sweeping courtesy, and began to dance a gavotte. The fiddler changed his tune, and the girls rested and watched her. Alternately swift and languid, with the changes of the movement, she saluted backward to the floor, or spun on the tips of rapid feet. I had seen her dance many times, but never with such ...

— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... winter's cold, from wind and wet at all points, as you should be? Can you breathe freely and easily the proper amount of air to oxygenate your blood and give you health and strength? If so, what mean the languid faces, the sallow countenances, the pale cheeks, the wasp-like forms, the rounded shoulders, the bent spines, the feeble lungs, the short breathings, the cold feet, the hampered step, the neuralgic pains, the hysteric ...

— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver

... The lost look was in her eyes no more, her voice had a new tone. The exhaustion of the night before seemed mysteriously to have disappeared. Her voice was not tired and she herself was curiously less languid. Dowie could scarcely believe the evidence of her ears when, in the course of the morning, she suggested that ...

— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... the biographer of Milton Samson Agonistes is charged with a pathos, which as the expression of real suffering no fictive tragedy can equal, it must be felt that as a composition the drama is languid, nerveless, occasionally halting, never brilliant. If the date of the composition of the Samson be 1663, this may have been the result of weariness after the effort of Paradise Lost. If this drama were composed ...

— Milton • Mark Pattison

... was so far advanced, that candles already twinkled from the upper windows of the building, while the fires of the kitchens checkered the shrubs and gravel with patches of glaring light. Through the flowerbeds, and along the intricate paths of the shrubbery, the Alchemist strolled at a languid pace, musing upon the things he had already witnessed, when his vigilant ears caught the tones of a musical instrument. Although it was scarcely audible from the distance, Cagliostro was struck by the extreme beauty and espieglerie of the performance. He hurried forward in ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... light upon the vapour of this liquid is, at first, more languid than upon iodide of allyl; indeed many beautiful reactions may be overlooked, in consequence of this languor at the commencement. After some minutes' exposure, however, clouds begin to form, which grow in density and in beauty as the light ...

— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... the clap-trap arrangement. He had the native ear for music, and he recognized that he was in the presence of a born musician. Ray crept near, and listened with open mouth to this display of musical fireworks. When she had finished, Clara turned to Jonah with a languid smile, the look of the ...

— Jonah • Louis Stone

... Both got the better of the Fever, tho' the Man who lost both Feet languished a long time afterwards. These Pains of the Feet and Toes, and the Mortifications which followed, were for the most part owing to the Patients being exposed to too much Cold while they were very weak, the Circulation languid, and the Juices vitiated by a putrid Distemper; by which means the Vessels were rendered incapable of carrying on the Circulation in ...

— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro

... settled her mind ceased to race. She grew languid and sleepy. The warmth of the blankets stole over her. She had no idea of sleeping, yet she found sleep more and more difficult to resist. Time that must have been hours passed. The fire died down and then brightened; the shadows darkened and then ...

— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... there, propped against a tree trunk in the heated shade, cotton bodice open, sleeves rolled to the shoulders, the Special Messenger mended her linen with languid fingers. Perspiration powdered her silky skin from brow to breast, from finger to elbow, shimmering like dew when she moved. Her dark hair fell, unbound; glossy tendrils of it curled on her shoulders, framing a face in which nothing ...

— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers

... every particular," as is said of hotels. They have electric motors and lights, paved broadways and boulevards, substantial business blocks, schools, churches, factories, and foundries. The lusty, titanic clang of boiler making may be heard there, and plenty of the languid music of pianos mingling with the babel noises of commerce carried on in a hundred tongues. The main streets are crowded with bright, wide-awake lawyers, ministers, merchants, agents for everything under the sun; ox drivers and loggers in stiff, gummy overalls; back-slanting dudes, well-tailored ...

— Steep Trails • John Muir

... his little court grouped about him, and Flora began to dance. It was such a dance as only a Spaniard trained in the gypsy school could dance—a dance whose traditions go back to days when the Roman Empire was old, to days when the Roman Empire was young. Now active, now languid, by turns passionate, daring, defiant, alluring, a wonderful medley of exquisite contradictions, the girl leaped hither and thither, clicking her castanets and sending her bright glances like arrows towards the admiring spectators. She moved like a flame fluttered by the wind, like a butterfly, ...

— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... lit his cigar, and looked round him at his brethren in social conclave assembled. The room was well filled; but the flow of talk was still languid. The Doctor innocently applied the stimulant that was wanted. When he inquired if anybody knew the Countess Narona, he was answered by something like a shout of astonishment. Never (the conclave agreed) ...

— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins

... the azure bell Nods o'er loquacious brook, or silent well.— Thus woo'd her inspirations, their rapt aid Liberal she gave; nor only thro' thy strain Breath'd their pure spirit, while her charms beguil'd The languid hours of Sorrow, and of Pain, But when Youth's tide ran high, and tempting smil'd Circean Pleasure, rescuing did she stand, Broke the Enchantress' cup ...

— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... which ran for three nights. Imeneo is a work of little importance; Deidamia, on the other hand, contains several very beautiful songs. But Dr. Burney, notwithstanding his admiration of it, has to admit that much of it was old-fashioned, in the style of Handel's youth, and sometimes "languid and antique." To Handel's admirers to-day such criticism may seem ridiculous, but to his audiences of 1741 these reversions to an earlier style would ...

— Handel • Edward J. Dent

... as he was called, looked his character to the life. Slender, swarthy, melancholy eyed, and darkly bearded; with feminine features, mellow voice and, alternately languid or vivacious manners. A child of the South in nature as in aspect, ardent, impressible, and proud; fitfully aspiring and despairing; without the native energy which moulds character and ennobles ...

— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott

... mountain and main,— And where there was life, there, there are the slain! No valley so deep, no islet so lone, But his shadow is cast, and his victims are known. He paused not, though years rolled weary and slow, And Time's hoary pinion drooped languid and low: He paused not till Man from his birth-place was swept, And the sea and the ...

— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich

... event, delegates were in the mean time to be chosen by the people; and thus, for the intervening months, the fight was to be transferred to the arena of popular debate. In such a contest Patrick Henry, being once aroused, was not likely to take a languid or a hesitating part; and of the importance then attached to the part which he did take, we catch frequent glimpses in the correspondence of the period. Thus, on the 19th of February, 1788, Madison, still at New York, sent this word to Jefferson: "The ...

— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler

... and became capable of loving, not a mere phantom of her own imagination, but a living man, struggling with the hatreds and rivalries of the political arena; she espoused his quarrels, she made herself, her fortune, and her influence, the stepping-stones of his ambition; and the languid beauty, who had formerly seemed ready to "die of a rose," was seen to become the heroine of an insurrection. The vivid interest in affairs which was thus excited in woman must obviously have tended to quicken her intellect, and give it a practical ...

— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... but I, who imagine I know several things, and amongst others the workings of your mind at this moment, have an idea that you are anxious to learn a little, a very little, more about Ab Gwilym than I have hitherto told you, the two or three words that I have dropped having awakened within you a languid kind of curiosity. I have no hesitation in saying that he makes one of the some half-dozen really great poets whose verses, in whatever language they wrote, exist at the present day, and are more or less known. It matters little how I first became acquainted with the writings ...

— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... his guests. What was the gallant grace of the Lynns, the languid elegance of Lord Ingram,—even the military distinction of Colonel Dent, contrasted with his look of native pith and genuine power? I had no sympathy in their appearance, their expression: yet I could imagine that most ...

— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... implicated in the rebellion beyond hope of pardon, had fought under the English banner against his countrymen, with the wish to dismember the principality. The Welsh cannot be accused of fickleness if they became languid in a struggle against overwhelming power and a king who had shown them more tenderness than their leader for the time. David's one castle of Bere was starved into surrender by the Earl of Pembroke, and David himself ...

— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... dark, but when he entered in obedience to her languid "Come in," the fire light made a rosy glow and filled the quiet space ...

— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... disciples came; To learn sage Liberty's unlesson'd lore, To brave the tempest on her war-beat shore, Prometheus like, to snatch a beam of day, And homeward bear the unscintillating ray, To pour new life on Europe's languid horde, Where millions crouch beneath one stupid lord. Tho Austria's keiser and the Russian czar To dungeons doom them, and with fetters mar, Fayette o'er Gaul's vast realm some light shall spread, ...

— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... two travellers encountered a flood of Indians on their return home. The boat from Calcutta came in while they were there, and suddenly all the cells were tenanted, and the cave was full of spoiled children, tawny nurses, pale languid mothers, and dyspeptic fathers. These were to be fellow-travellers ...

— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... the goddess, this time—but the River flows between the Temple and the Mosque. In the city, life is one such picturesque languid stream. The shop-keepers sit on their rugs in their stalls, counting their beads, smoking their narghilahs, waiting indifferently for Allah's bounties. And the hawkers shuffle along crying their wares in beautiful poetic illusions,—the flower-seller singing, "Reconcile ...

— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... off in a state of intoxication he finds awful to contemplate. Early in 1795 the end is announced by Temple's son writing to his father—'a few nights ago Mr Boswell returned from the Literary Club, quite weak and languid;' and the last letter to Temple from his correspondent of thirty-seven years is dated 8th April: 'I would fain write to you in my own hand, but really cannot.' His son James finishes the letter, to tell that ...

— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask

... through the Hatchard gate, and she had the street to herself. North Dormer is at all times an empty place, and at three o'clock on a June afternoon its few able-bodied men are off in the fields or woods, and the women indoors, engaged in languid household drudgery. ...

— Summer • Edith Wharton

... Duchesse de Chastellux begs that you will join her at a table of whist." He paused a moment, and then, with a languid shrug of his shoulders and a whimsical smile, "Your Grace was speaking of the discontent of the lower orders? They are very unreasonable—these lower orders—they ...

— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe

... enthusiastic, and inspiring. Avoid that which is timid, familiar, violent, cold, indifferent, unreal, artificial, dull, sing-song, hesitating, feeble, unconvincing, apathetic, monotonous, pompous, formal, arbitrary, flippant, ostentatious, drawling, or languid. ...

— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser

... strolled down a deserted St. James's Street, passed the door of his club with no temptation to go in, and climbed the stairs slowly to his rooms. His body was languid though his mind alert. He sank into an arm-chair beside the open window. 'I must do something to-night,' he thought eagerly; 'mere reading at the club is out of the question. I'll go to a theatre or—or—.' He considered various alternatives, deciding finally upon Richmond Park. He ...

— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... Music, from hidden sources, beat the air With wings of melody that flew abroad Beyond th' enchanted sense, and darting back Swept with a sweet vibration near her face. Thrice o'er her brow she drew her languid hand, That, if it were a dream, she might dispel The gay enchantment; and thrice murmured o'er The spells learned of her nurse in infancy, Which would all witchcraft render innocent; But that great cavern of the northern world Was not ...

— The Arctic Queen • Unknown

... the waxed floor. To right and left, between columns of variegated imitation marble, women were sitting on benches covered with red velvet and viewing the passing movement of the crowd with an air of fatigue as though the heat had rendered them languid. In the lofty mirrors behind them one saw the reflection of their chignons. At the end of the room, in front of the bar, a man with a huge corporation was drinking a ...

— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... Alexandria and Cairo, the passengers by the last Calcutta mail-steamer. There were some from China among them, but I could gather from them nothing of any interest. It was a curious scene, by the way, that meeting: 260 first-class passengers, including children, pale and languid-looking, thrown into a great barn-like refectory, in which were already assembled our voyage companions (we ourselves had a separate room), jovial-looking, and with roses in their cheeks, which they are doubtless hastening to offer at the shrine of the sun. These two opposing currents, ...

— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... and the great outbreaks of cholera and yellow fever were yet to come, I spent four or five weeks in the city, greatly enjoying the novel scenes and new life. After about ten or twelve days I began to feel tired and languid, and this feeling grew on me day by day until it became almost painful to exert myself to visit even my most favoured haunts—the great South Market, where cage-birds were to be seen in hundreds, ...

— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson

... composedly it might seem as if a terrible Yankee, never seen before, was not over her head, and a band of Confederates who would have made him a prisoner and punished her were only a few rods away. A close observer, however, might have noticed that she was not enjoying languid whiffs, as had been the case in the afternoon. The old woman had put guile into her pipe as well as tobacco, and she hoped its smoke would blind suspicious eyes if any were hunting for a stray Yankee. Chunk's pone and bacon had been put near the fire to keep warm, and ...

— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... plutocrat is idly lounging, reading, dictating to his shorthand amanuensis, or playing dice with a friend; a dashing youth driving his own chariot in professional style to the disgust of the sober-minded; a languid matron lolling in a litter carried by six tall, bright-liveried Cappadocians; a peasant on his way to town with his waggon-load of produce and cruelly belabouring his mule. If you are very fortunate you may meet Nero himself on one of his imperial progresses. If so, you had better stand aside ...

— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... the two authors in their host, till then languid, increased with a jerk. "Has he? By Jove!" they cried. "We must get together ...

— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill

... meadows of brit, the Pequod still held on her way north-eastward towards the island of Java; a gentle air impelling her keel, so that in the surrounding serenity her three tall tapering masts mildly waved to that languid breeze, as three mild palms on a plain. And still, at wide intervals in the silvery night, the lonely, alluring jet would be seen. But one transparent blue morning, when a stillness almost preternatural spread over the sea, however unattended with any stagnant calm; when ...

— Moby-Dick • Melville

... Autumn in the misty morn Stand shadowless like Silence, listening To silence, for no lonely bird would sing Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn, Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;— Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright With tangled gossamer that fell by night, Pearling ...

— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... Daniel had just finished the mass, and his flock still knelt at their devotions. It was but the day before that he had returned to them, warmed with new fervor, from his meditations in retreat at Sainte Marie. Suddenly an uproar of voices, shrill with terror, burst upon the languid silence of the town. "The Iroquois! the Iroquois!" A crowd of hostile warriors had issued from the forest, and were rushing across the clearing, towards the opening in the palisade. Daniel ran out of the church, ...

— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... own ancient trees, where wild deer drifted away from them like shadows through the evening: for the bowmen had driven in deer for miles through the forest. They passed a pool where water-lilies lay in languid beauty for hundreds of summers, but as yet no flower peeped into the water, for the pond was ...

— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany

... we attacked the Shrr in a general direction from north to south, where the ascent looked easy enough. On the left bank a porphyritic block, up whose side a mule can be ridden, is disposed in a slope of the palest and most languid of greens, broken by piles of black rock so regular as to appear artificial. This step leads to a horizontal crest, a broken wall forming its summit: it is evidently an outlier; and experience ...

— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton

... less exuberant walker across China that presently arose from his flea-ridden bed of sickness, and began to make a languid personal introspection. I had developed a new sensitiveness, the sensitiveness of an alien in an alien land, in the hands of new-made, faithful friends. Without them I should have been a waif of all the world, helpless in the midst of unconquerable surroundings, leading to an inevitable ...

— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... have imparted a sensation of superstitious awe. More faintly now gleamed the expiring light of the lamp, which looked a cold unearthly beam, colourless and fixed, save when the chilling draft of nightly air found its way through a crevice of the ponderous casement, and animated the languid flame with a ...

— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... him attentively with hard and passionately interested eyes, in which there was never one trace of pity. It cannot be said with precision that he writhed; his movement was more a slow, continuous squirm, effected with a ghastly assumption of languid indifference; while his gaze, in the effort to escape the marble-hearted glare of his schoolmates, affixed itself with apparent permanence to the waistcoat button of James Russell Lowell just above the ...

— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... might and vigour. For a man, unrefreshed by food, would not be able to fight against [the enemy] all day to the setting sun; for although he might desire in his mind to fight, yet his limbs gradually grow languid, and thirst and hunger come upon him, and his knees fail him as he goes. The man, on the other hand, who is satiated with wine and food, fights all day with hostile men, the heart within his breast is daring, nor are his limbs at all fatigued before that all retire ...

— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... been classifying MSS.... The sun came in through the loft uncurtained windows; and, during my reading, often very interesting, I could hear the languid bumblebees bump heavily against the windows, and the flies intoxicated with light and heat, making their wings hum in circles around my head. So loud became their humming about three o'clock that I looked up from the document I was reading—a ...

— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... made languid puffs of his cigarette, and said, in a tearful drawl: "My dear Drake, of course it is exactly as you say. Who doesn't know it is so? It has always been so and always will be. But what refuge is there for the poor leisured people but ...

— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... survivors claimed quarter. "Quarter, you rogues!" cried he. "Kindly lend me one of your staves for the purpose." He gave them a drubbing as one horsed his brother in turn, and dropped them, a chapfallen trio, beside their dead. "Now," said he, "take that languid gentleman with you, and be so good for the rest of your journey as to imitate his indifference to strangers. Thus you will have a prosperous passage. ...

— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... Chief's lips, the laughter died out of his eyes. Desmond was amazed at the change in the man. The languid interest he had taken in the different details of the crime vanished. Something seemed to tighten up suddenly ...

— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... watched the motion of the crew, when the frigate's boat had first been launched. We rapidly drew near, so that at length the number and forms of those within could be discerned; its dark sides grew big, and the splash of its oars became audible: I could distinguish the languid form of my friend, as he half raised ...

— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... (who had been watching them languidly through the glass he carried at the end of a broad ribbon) stepped forward, though languidly, and laid a white and languid hand ...

— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... next afternoon, looking pale, and rather sick, but quite himself, even to his languid irony. "I guess I'd better tell you, Editha, that I consecrated myself to your god of battles last night by pouring too many libations to him down my own throat. But I'm all right, now. One has to carry off ...

— Different Girls • Various

... weather go for nothing, and that it is infinitely more likely to veer right round to the east than to shift back again. It was in those conditions that, at seven on the morning of the 21st, the signal for the fleet to bear up and steer east was made. Holding a clear recollection of these languid easterly sighs rippling unexpectedly against the run of the smooth swell, with no other warning than a ten-minutes' calm and a queer darkening of the coast-line, I cannot think, without a gasp of professional awe, of that fateful moment. Perhaps personal ...

— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... fresh and proud, and starched up, and kitteny, and full of life, and as sassy as a girl starting out for a picnic. To-day it has got back from the picnic, and, like the girl, the starch is all taken out, and it is limber, and languid, and tired, and can't stand up alone, and it looks as though it wanted to be laid at rest beside the rotten apples in the alley, rather than be set out in front of a store to be sold to honest people, and give them the gangrene of the liver," and the boy put on a health ...

— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck

... physical science—heat, light, electricity, gravitation. Of either, we may be quite certain that such phenomena exist, and utterly ignorant of the mode of their operation. It were as utterly unphilosophical to deny that Almighty God could impart nervous energy to the languid limbs of your sick neighbor, because you are ignorant of its origin and means of transmission, as to deny that God could impart spiritual electricity to his paralyzed soul, because you are ignorant ...

— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... and languid powers Come not where devotion kneels; Let the soul expand her stores, Glowing with ...

— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams

... is longer, but we are persuaded the reader will not be displeased that we do not take the trouble to transcribe the whole, as it does not improve, but rather grows more languid. How strangely are people deceived in their own productions! In the language of sincerity we cannot discover a poetical conception, one striking image, or one animated line in the above, and yet Mr. Dennis observes to Sir Richard Steele, that these are ...

— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... with their fellows of the Benefit Club; here the pale, eager faces of handloom weavers, men and women, haggard from sitting up late at night to finish the week's work, hardly begun till the Wednesday. Everywhere the cottages and the small children were dirty, for the languid mothers gave their ...

— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton

... a young sprig, stylishly and somewhat foppishly dressed. "Oui—oui—oui," he continued with a languid drawl, as he drew tighter his lavender gloves, and twirled his tiny cane. ...

— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... stirless surface of the ground The hot air trembles. In pale glittering haze Wavers the sky. Along the horizon's rim, Breaking its mist, are peaks of coppery clouds. Keen darts of light are shot from every leaf, And the whole landscape droops in sultriness. With languid tread, I drag myself along Across the wilting fields. Around my steps Spring myriad grasshoppers, their cheerful notes Loud in my ear. The ground bird whirs away, Then drops again, and groups of butterflies Spotting the path, upflicker as I come. At length I catch the sparkles ...

— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... diminished,—in fact, it is scarcely audible. This condition is rapidly followed by effusion, which may be detected from the dullness of the sounds, on applying the ear to the lower part of the lungs. The febrile symptoms disappear; the animal for a few days appears to improve, but soon becomes weak, languid, and often exhausted ...

— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings

... preserver or the destroyer. He looks up to them, and they are; he out-grows them, and they are not. For the barbarian and Triballian gods there is no return; but the Olympians, if dead as deities, survive as impersonations of Man's highest conceptions of the beautiful. Languid and spectral indeed must be their existence in this barbarian age; but better days ...

— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... summer's burning heat, When the flowers were blooming sweet, I had chosen, as 'twas meet, 'Neath an olive bough my seat; Languid with the glowing day, Lazy, ...

— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... along the waking face; peeping from out the languid lids; then shining forth in longer glances; till, like the sun, up comes the soul, and ...

— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... longer to watch Amy as she ran down the road, with a step tenfold more light and elastic than the weary, languid one with which ...

— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt

... illumined Percy Darrow's usually languid countenance. He stepped quickly to the wall, and turned the button of the incandescent globe. The light instantly glowed. At this he nodded twice more. From his pocket he drew a note-book and pencil, wrote in it a few words, and handed it to the ...

— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White

... dowry, he obtained no worldly advantage with the lady of his mercenary choice. Mrs. Beaufort was a woman whom a word or two will describe. She was thoroughly commonplace—neither bad nor good, neither clever nor silly. She was what is called well-bred; that is, languid, silent, perfectly dressed, and insipid. Of her two children, Arthur was almost the exclusive favourite, especially after he became the heir to such brilliant fortunes. For she was so much the mechanical creature ...

— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... "Charlotte!" came in Nickols' languid, fascinating voice that always draws me to the edge of his world. "And Greg Goodloe, by all that is good ...

— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess