"Languor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... take up his quarters at her hotel, and catch echoes of her and her people, to learn somehow if their attitude towards him as a lover were actually hostile, before formally encountering them. Under this crystalline light, full of gaieties, sentiment, languor, seductiveness, and ready-made romance, the memory of a solitary unimportant man in the lugubrious North might have faded from her mind. He was only her hired designer. He was an artist; but he had been engaged by her, ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... throne with womanhood enshrined upon it. While chivalry existed among men, it mattered little, he said, as to the decrees of courts, for in that higher tribunal, human hearts, woman would remain forever in control. At his conclusion, women were hysterical, and men were aroused from their usual languor by the eloquence of the speaker. Had the judge rendered an adverse decision at that moment, he would have needed protection; for to the men of the South it was innate to be chivalrous to womanhood. ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... lay in folds sharply cut out with black shadows, and they had a solid seeming, as the mort-cloth rendered in marble over the effigy. That suggested weight exaggerated the frailty of the body beneath the clothes. Exhausted by that burden, the old man lay in the arms of a deadly languor, so that there was a kinship of more than blood between him and Kate at this moment. She stepped to the side of the bed and stood staring down at him, and there was little gentleness in her expression. So cold was that settled gaze that her father stirred, ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... time that he had ever beheld her but in dreams. Radiant in all its girlish beauty, the angelic face smiled down upon him with life-like fidelity. The rose that decked her dark floating locks, less vividly bright than the glowing cheeks and lips of happy youth; the large black eyes, "half languor and half fire," that had wept tears of unmitigated anguish over his forlorn infancy—rested upon his own, as if they were conscious of his presence. Anthony continued to gaze upon the portrait till the blinding tears hid it ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... susceptibility to beauty, he could not invent an instrument better designed for that object than sex. Individuals that need not unite for the birth and rearing of each generation, might retain a savage independence. For them it would not be necessary that any vision should fascinate, or that any languor should soften, the prying cruelty of the eye. But sex endows the individual with a dumb and powerful instinct, which carries his body and soul continually towards another; makes it one of the dearest employments of his life to select ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... She told herself that this was the most transcendental of follies. Yet it seemed as though there were something electrical in the atmosphere, as though something had come into the room unaccountable, stimulating, terrifying. All the languor of the last ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of Titian has none of this Oriental languor, no memories of perfumed places where "the throne of Indian Cama slowly sails." One cannot help admiring the fancy which saw the conquering god still steeped in Asiatic ease, still unawakened to more ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... of spring mattress. There are many cases of Sleeping Sickness in the hospital exhibiting various symptoms. In the early stages the patient has many fits of emotional excitement and these alternate with periods of physical and mental languor. Afterwards he lies for weeks or months as if dead and can only be persuaded to eat with great difficulty. Ultimately complete coma supervenes. A motile bacillus has been discovered which is supposed to cause the ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... to the Persian capital—inns, that received the messengers, and couriers, that transmitted the commands of the king, brought the more distant provinces within the reach of ready intelligence and vigilant control. These latter improvements were well calculated to quicken the stagnant languor habitual to the overgrowth of eastern empire. Nor was the reign of Darius undistinguished by the cultivation of the more elegant arts—since to that period may be referred, if not the foundation, at least the embellishment and increase of Persepolis. The remains of the palace of Chil-Menar, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his long, translucent fingers seemed soft and sensitive as a girl's. He stepped with peculiar lightness, and the harmonious notes of his voice were in keeping with these other characteristics. Ten years had developed in him that graceful languor which at four-and-twenty was only beginning to get mastery over the energies of a ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... the dock, making for a lodging-house or for The Asiatics' Home. Some hurried into the dock, with that impassive swiftness which gives no impression of haste, but rather carries a touch of extreme languor. An old cargo tramp lay in a far berth, and one caught the sound of rushing blocks, and a monotonous voice wailing the Malayan chanty: "Love is kind to the least of men, EEEE-ah, EEEE-ah!" Boats were loading up. Others were unloading. Over all was the ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... almost entirely benumbed by indolence. No persuasion could bring him either to read or to work. On the contrary, he ran wild in the forest like one of the Aborigines of the country, and divided his life between the dissipation and uproar of the chase, and the languor of inaction. ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... most efficient instrument; and the Concordat negotiated by Bach with the Papacy in 1855 marked the definite submission of Austria to the ecclesiastical pretensions which in these years of political languor and discouragement gained increasing recognition throughout Central Europe. Ultramontanism had sought allies in many political camps since the revolution of 1848. It had dallied in some countries with Republicanism; but its truer ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... irritative reaction in the brain, and the effects of blind drunkenness come on after each debauch. The French Military call absinthe un perroquet. The daily taking even for a short while only of a watery infusion of Wormwood shows its bad effects by a general languor, with obscurities of the sight, giddiness, want of appetite, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... turns; the sort of afternoon that impels people to talk graciously of the rain as having done a lot of good, its chief merit in their eyes probably having been its recognition of the art of moderation. Also it was an afternoon that invited bodily activity after the convalescent languor of the earlier part of the day. Elaine had instinctively found her way into her riding-habit and sent an order down to the stables—a blessed oasis that still smelt sweetly of horse and hay and cleanliness ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... She seized her languor as it were a curling snake and cast it off. "But I understand that Mr. Whitford wants your assistance. Is he not—not rich? When he leaves the Hall to try his fortune in literature in London, he may not be so well able to support Crossjay and obtain the instruction necessary for the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... chronic languor seemed to have returned as, leaning back in the deep-cushioned chair, he regarded this youthful malefactor with sleepy eyes, yet eyes that missed nothing of the boy's quivering earnestness as he ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... weeps, Like the rain upon the town, What drowsy languor steeps In tears my heart ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons
... sweet spring morning came on apace, and from the fields and little gardens came the breath of flowers. The sky was blue. The languor of springtime pulsed through the veins of those young creatures, those engines of life, of passion and desire. Neither of the two women saw the torn garb of the man before them. They saw but the curve of the strong chest beneath. They heard, and the one heard ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... southern shore of the little river loomed spectrally, a faint etching upon the gray cloud-masses which were shifting with oily languor. A long row of guns upon the northern bank had been pitiless in their hatred, but a little battered belfry could be dimly seen still pointing with invincible resolution ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... near the ceiling, and even the electric light appeared to give out heat; no breeze stirred from the far-away river, no coolness came with the dark, no relief from the brooding, sultry heat. It was no hotter than many nights in any break in the rains, but the guests invited by Mrs. Wilder felt the languor of the air, and felt it more profoundly because their hostess ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... morning all was well with Christina, and she bustled about as of old. David was still, and hoped ever, with a tired content in what should happen, a languor that forbade him from railing on fate. Together they prepared matters as ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... which filled the fancies of the faithful were material and glowing, equally so were their conceptions of paradise. On this world of the blessed were lavished all the charms so fascinating to the Oriental luxuriousness of sensual languor, and which the poetic Oriental imagination knew so well how to depict. As soon as the righteous have passed Sirat, they obtain the first taste of their approaching felicity by a refreshing draught from "Mohammed's Pond." This is a square lake, a month's journey in circuit, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... which, when it strives for anything, strives to give an added atmosphere to the incontinence portrayed by the stage pictures, and proclaimed in the text. It is not dangerous music, however, for it is impotent, with all its blatant pretense. The composer seeks to fill the opening scene with languor and lassitude; he fills it with ennui instead. If De Lara's music were a hymning of anything, I should say it was a hymning of sensuality in its lowest terms; but there are neither eloquent melodies nor moving harmonies in the score. De Lara is a feeble distemper painter. The current of his ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Indulgence feeds the never-quench'd desire, That loaths the viand, and the goblet drains. Nor could exhausted floods the thirst subdue Till that dire Cause, which spreads the livid hue O'er the pale Form, with watry languor swell'd, From the polluted veins, by medicine, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... the son of another why he loves it," returned Lysander. "That which the Ionian calls pleasure is to me but tedious vanity; that which he calls grace, is to me but enervate levity. Me it pleases to find the day, from sunrise to night, full of occupations that leave no languor, that employ, but not excite. For the morning, our gymnasia, our military games, the chace—diversions that brace the limbs and leave us in peace fit for war—diversions, which, unlike the brawls of the wordy Agora, bless us with the calm mind and clear spirit resulting ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... scene progressed, Frank felt his eyes begin to grow dim and an unaccountable languor fill his limbs. His head swam round and he desired nothing so much as to lie down and sleep—-and yet a compelling power forced him to keep his eyes fixed on the column of smoke over which the aged Krooman was ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... to deny, that in the early part of the eighteenth century—amid the general coldness, languor, and want of enthusiasm which characterized that effete epoch—"the Church of England, as well as all the dissenting bodies, slumbered and slept." At this epoch, the Puritans were buried, and the Methodists were not born. The Bishop of Litchfield, in a ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various
... office long engage To rock the cradle of reposing age; With lenient arts extend a mother's breath, Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death; Explore the thought, explain the asking eye, And keep awhile one parent from ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... was seated in a low, easy chair, And with an air of languor upon every feature of her countenance was listening to Sir John de Lacey, who was reading to her out of Roger Ascham's treatise on Archery. As the knight stepped into the room the remembrance of the previous day's mishap was strongly brought back to ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... the 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 ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... through the long watches of the night. Loring's heart reproached him as he realized how selfishly he had been engrossed for weeks, how little he had thought for her, of her who must be so lonely and homesick in her new sphere. He was almost shocked now at the pallor of her face, the droop and languor of the slender figure that was so buoyant and elastic those bright days aboard ship just preceding the catastrophe. What friends and chums they had become! How famously he was getting on with his Spanish! What a charming teacher she was, with her lovely shining eyes, ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... disease produced upon him. At first he could not be persuaded to be quiet; the muscular energies were still unaffected, and, with continual hemorrhage from the lungs, he could not understand that work or exercise could hurt him. But as the disease gained ground, its characteristic languor unstrung his force; the hard and sinewy limbs became attenuated and relaxed; his breath labored; a hectic fever burnt in his veins like light flame every afternoon, and subsided into chilly languor toward morning; profuse ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... of the coast, or permit any of my people to land in any place that was under his jurisdiction." Before I made any reply to this letter, I shewed the gentlemen who brought it the number of my sick: At the sight of so many unhappy wretches, who were dying of languor and disease, they seemed to be much affected; and I then urged again the pressing necessity I was under of procuring refreshment, to which they had been witnesses, the cruelty and injustice of refusing to supply me, which was not only contrary to treaty, as we were in a king's ship, but to the laws ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... bewilderment, but I never have understood exactly how it happened. I remember Brutus' eyes on my father's hand, as it moved so gently over his coat. It must have been some gesture, smooth and imperceptible. For suddenly, my father's languor left him, suddenly his lips curled back in a smile devoid of humor, and he leapt at the lantern. He leapt, and at the same instant, as perfectly timed as though the whole matter had been carefully rehearsed, Brutus' great bulk had streaked across the deck, crashing towards Mr. Sims ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... an orchard, a nightingale was singing. A faint perfume of jasmine came through the open window. He brushed his brown curls back from his forehead, and taking up a lute, let his fingers stray across the cords. His heavy eyelids drooped, and a strange languor came over him. Never before had he felt so keenly, or with such exquisite joy, the magic and the ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... mischief came of course; 'I drove the nail awry and lam'd the Horse; 'The poor beast limp'd: I bore a Master's frown, 'A thousand times I wish'd the wound my own. 'When to these tangling thoughts I've been resign'd, 'Fury or languor ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield
... time. You may be sure the militia of New Jersey and this State were called upon to turn out, and defend their country in this hour of distress. Alas, our internal enemies had, by various arts and means, frightened many, disaffected others, and caused a general languor to prevail over the minds of almost all men, not before actually engaged in the war. Many are also exceedingly disaffected with the constitutions formed for their respective States, so that from one cause or other, no Jersey militia turned out to oppose the march of an enemy through ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... little Nina bore her hardships more bravely than any of them. Flitting about, coaxing one to eat, another to drink, rousing Pablo as often as he seemed yielding to the common languor, the child became the life of the party. Her merry prattle enlivened the gloom of the grim cavern like the sweet notes of a bird; her gay Italian songs broke the monotony of the depressing silence; and almost unconscious as the half-dormant population of Gallia were ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... languor of a mortal wound, Braddock showed unflinching resolution. His bearers stopped with him at a favorable spot beyond the Monongahela; and here he hoped to maintain his position till the arrival of Dunbar. By the efforts of the officers about a hundred men were collected around him; but to keep ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... proposed; but Anna had been indifferent to each. She had been to the Royal Academy more than once, and all the best concerts were over; the weather was too hot for sight-seeing, and in her present state of languor she dreaded fatigue and crowds. "What did the place matter after all," she said to herself, "as long as Malcolm was with her? Her rest and enjoyment were in his society—to sit beside him and listen to his dear voice, and tell him all her ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... a grim old bull, roaming the prairie by himself in misanthropic seclusion; but there might be more behind the hills. Dreading the monotony and languor of the camp, Shaw and I saddled our horses, buckled our holsters in their places, and set out with Henry Chatillon in search of the game. Henry, not intending to take part in the chase, but merely conducting us, carried his rifle with him, while we left ours behind as incumbrances. ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... to see him. My friend, I cannot tell you what terrible presentiments beset me; it seems as if I were threatened with some great misfortune; and just now, when you came in, I could think only of death. What is the cause of this languor and weakness? It is surely no temporary ailment. Tell me the truth: am I not dreadfully altered? and do you not think my husband will be shocked when he ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... as long—as long as you please," Bice answered, who was sitting up in her corner with more bloom than at the beginning of the evening, her eyes shining, a creature incapable of fatigue. The Contessa lay back in hers, with a languor which was rather adapted to her role as a chaperon than rendered necessary by the fatigue she felt. If she had not been amused, she was triumphant, and this supplied a still more intoxicating exhilaration than that of ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... you d——d psalm-singing cobbler, as sure as I'm a magistrate of this county I'll commit you!" The fellow shrunk back, and my lord retreated with all the honours of the day. But when the little flurry caused by the scene was over, and the flush passed off his face, he relapsed into his usual languor, trifled with his little dog, and yawned when my lady ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... own boat, and, looking into the face of the man in it, saw that he must be rowed to land as quickly as possible if he were to be saved. She saved him. When he regained consciousness he found himself propped up before the warm fire in the lighthouse kitchen, with the most delicious feeling of languor stealing through his whole frame, instead of the cruel numbness which had been the last sensation before he became unconscious. And it added materially to his enjoyment that a bright-eyed, dark-haired young woman hovered around ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... sister scarcely opened their mouths, except to complain of fatigue, and were evidently impatient to have the house to themselves. They repulsed every attempt of Mrs. Bennet at conversation, and by so doing threw a languor over the whole party, which was very little relieved by the long speeches of Mr. Collins, who was complimenting Mr. Bingley and his sisters on the elegance of their entertainment, and the hospitality and politeness which had marked their behaviour to their guests. Darcy said nothing ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Extremest languor was in every movement. She was dressed in dark, soft garments—very simple and graceful in effect, and her bearing was that of one accustomed to willing service from others. Her smile was as sad as her eyes which ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... of languor and exhaustion succeeded. The armies of the States had dwindled to an effective force of scarcely four or five thousand men, while the new levies came in but slowly. The taxation, on the other hand, was very severe. The quotas for the provinces had risen to the amount of five million ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in the strangeness of it all, restless under its exotic beauty, conscious of the languor stealing over him—the premonition of a physical relaxation that he had never before known—that he ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... in tweeds, of an incomparable languor of demeanour, and carrying a cane with genteel effort. From the name, I had looked to find a sort of Viking and young ruler of the battle and the tempest; and I was the more disappointed, and not a little alarmed, to come face to face ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... succumbed to her bodily fatigue, again her situation became unreal and wild. A heavy languor, like a blanket, began to steal upon her. She wavered and drifted. With the last half-conscious sense of a muffled throb at her ear, a something intangibly sweet, deep-toned, and strange, like a distant calling bell, she fell asleep with her head ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... campaign began. The country awoke to the true meaning of the Democratic platform; General Sherman's successes in the South excited the enthusiasm of the people; and when at last the Unionists, rousing from their midsummer languor, began to show their faith in the Republican candidate, the hopelessness of all efforts ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... seemed to be delighted about something. From somewhere, unseen, a blackbird was singing. She read over her report for Mrs. Denton. The blackbird seemed never to have heard of war. He sang as if the whole world were a garden of languor and love. Joan looked at her watch. The first gong would sound in a few minutes. She pictured the dreary, silent dining-room with its few scattered occupants, and her heart sank at the prospect. To her relief came remembrance of a cheerful but entirely respectable ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... caverns; while they left an impression upon the mind, of desolation and danger. We had not sailed more than one hundred miles on the Atlantic before it blew a strong head wind, and several on board with myself were greatly affected by the motion of the ship. It threw me into such a state of languor, that I felt as though I could have willingly yielded to have been cast overboard, and it was nearly a week before I was relieved from this painful sensation and nausea, ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... repeated the receding harmony, until at last they died away. A solemn silence succeeded. A languor like that of the lotus-eaters crept over the face of nature and softened the heart to unwonted tenderness. It was the hour of gentle thoughts, of low spoken confidences, and love between young and sympathizing souls, who alone with themselves and God confess their ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... bank. The majestic onrush of the steamer, the rhythmic drumbeat of the machinery, the alternating crash and pause of the great paddle-wheels, the unhasting backward sweep of the brown flood, all these were in harmony with the sensuous languor of ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... folk had gone. "And a guid riddance," said the woman. "The Blairs was aye a cauld and oppressive race, and they were black Prelatists forbye. But I whiles miss yon hellicat lassie. She had a cheery word for a'body, and she keepit the place frae languor." ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... brow, over which they fell in thin but graceful waves. Partly owing perhaps to the waning light of the single lamp and the lateness of the hour, his cheek seemed very pale, and the complete though contemplative rest of the features partook greatly of the quiet of habitual sadness, and a little of the languor of shaken health; yet the expression, despite the proud cast of the brow and profile, was rather benevolent than stern or dark in its pensiveness, and the lines spoke more of the wear and harrow of deep thought than ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... her educated after a fashion, and his love for her she did not doubt. But her mother's blood spoke more strongly than that part of her which was Chinese, and there was softness and a delicious languor in her nature which her father did not seem to understand, and of which he did not appear ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... tranquillity above a week, before my fears were roused afresh, hearing the same sound of voices twice the same night, but not many minutes at a time. What gave me most pain was that they were at such a distance, as I judged by the languor of the sound, that if I had opened my door I could not have seen the utterers through the trees, and I was resolved not to venture out; but then I determined, if they should come again anything near my grotto, to ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... beneath a summer breeze, so Mesa was stirred from its usual languor by the visit of Simon West. For the little Arizona town was dreaming dreams. Its imagination had been aroused; and it saw itself no longer a sleepy cow camp in the unfeatured desert, but a metropolis, ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... would close, And thy head was drooping, Then, like dew that steeps the rose, O'er thy languor stooping, I would, till I woke a sigh, Kiss thy ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... so had the aspects of the canyon undergone some illusive transformation. The beauty of green foliage and amber stream and brown tree trunks and gray rocks and red walls was there; and the summer drowsiness and languor lay as deep; and the loneliness and solitude brooded with its same eternal significance. But some nameless enchantment, perhaps of hope, seemed no longer to encompass her. A blow had fallen upon her, the nature of which only time ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... sable locks of night, but glittering out wherever a wandering ray glanced on its glossy surface like the bright tresses of Aurora. The broad and marble forehead, the pencilled brows, and the large liquid eyes fraught with a mild and lustrous languor; the cheeks, pale in their wonted mood as alabaster, yet eloquent at times with warm and passionate blushes. The lips, redder than aught on earth which shares both hue and softness; and, more than all, the deep and indescribable expression ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... The calm languor of her tone was almost fearful, and even as she spoke a shuddering seized her, making her tremble convulsively, her teeth knocking together, and the couch shaking ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... perseverance with which Archie and Little Bill did something like it—for the latter had quite recovered, and was fit to hold his own, almost, with any one; the charming confusion of mind with which Fred Jenkins intermingled the sailor's hornpipe with it; the inimitable languor with which La Certe condescended to go through it; the new-born energy with which Slowfoot footed it; the side-splitting shrieks with which Old Peg regarded it; the uproarious guffaws with which the delighted old Duncan hailed it; the sad smile with which that weak and ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... inch by inch, slowly. It seemed to him to carry with it a great silence. He had been so hot and tired there always in the mills! The years had been so fierce and cruel! There was coming now quiet and coolness and sleep. His tense limbs relaxed, and settled in a calm languor. The blood ran fainter and slow from his heart. He did not think now with a savage anger of what might be and was not; he was conscious only of deep stillness creeping over him. At first he saw a sea ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... sweet sound of melodious words and cadences; or as something abstract, pattern-like, imposed from without,—a Procrustes-bed of symmetry and proportion; or as a view of life Circe-like, insidious, a golden languor, made of "the selfish serenities of wild-wood and dream-palace." All these, apart or together, are thought of as the "beauty," at which the artist "for art's sake" aims, and to that is opposed ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... day (it is my belief she would have gone into a consumption and died of languor, if the event had been delayed a day longer,) a messenger, with a trumpet, brought a letter in haste to the Prince of Cleves, who was, as usual, taking refreshment. "To the High and Mighty Prince," &c. the letter ran. "The Champion who ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... from the all-important sense underlying the sound-symbols. But in works of imagination mar. wants a treatment totally different, a style which, by all or any means, little mattering what they be, can avoid the imminent deadly risk of languor and monotony and which adds to fluency the allurement of variety, of surprise and even of disappointment, when a musical ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Now, gracious damsel, I thank you then, That to give audience ye be so prest, With liberal readiness to me old woman, Which giveth me boldness to show what I can Of one that lieth in danger by sickness Remitting his languor to your gentleness. MEL. What meanest thou, I pray thee, gentle mother? Go forth with thy demand, as thou hast done. On the one part thou provokest me to anger, And on the other side to compassion: ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... twilight, looking down on thousands of people in the orchestra below, up at a vast golden dome lighted by glowing spheres hung with diamonds, forward at a towering proscenic arch above which slim, nude goddesses in bas-relief floated in a languor which obsessed her, set free the bare brown laughing nymph that hides in ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... ill, it was with the certainty that her languor would be admired: if she boasted she was well, it was that the spectator might admire her glowing health: if she laughed, it was because she thought it made her look pretty: if she cried, it was because she thought it made her look prettier still. If she scolded ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... are addicted. The preparation of the liquor of life is their philosopher's stone; and, in all probability, is composed of opium and other drugs which, by encreasing the stimulus, gives a momentary exhilaration to the spirits; and the succeeding languor requiring another and another draught till at length, the excitability being entirely exhausted, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... fell. The Wairoa man was regarding him in blank astonishment. Clearly, Dandy Jack was an entirely new species of the genus homo to him. Thus spake the bull-fighter, with elaborate affectation of languor and softness— ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... the Ducal Palace but can show a canvas of Veronese or the assistants by whom he was now surrounded. From time to time he resumed the decorations of S. Sebastiano, and his incessant production betrays no trace of fatigue or languor. The martyrdom of the saint is a triumph of the beauty of the silhouette against a radiant sky. He goes back to Verona and paints the "Martyrdom of St. George." He pours light into it. The saints open a shining path, down which a flower-crowned Love flutters with the ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... cooling for his heated blood in the garden, and in fact the fragrance of the flowers and the rustling of the leaves so soothed his excited mind that gradually the sense of a pleasant languor came over him. In a half unconsciousness he went upstairs again and back to bed. He was just falling asleep when he saw a white form enter, whose features he could not make out because of his shortsightedness. As it disrobed and came toward him, he ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... viper, and who have nevertheless recovered by the application of timely remedies, are never again the same in health as they were before. At times they are swollen, or feel acute pains, or have a morbid and depraved appetite for what they should not eat. At other times they feel a general languor, which takes away all their energy, so that whatever they do requires a most painful effort. Evidently, some of the poison is still lurking in their system, and so long as it remains there these infirmities ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... kindly-mannered man, talking in a soft low voice in the most affectionate and considerate manner, and with good taste and judgment that exceedingly struck and pleased the new curate. It was the more surprise to him to find the congregations thin, and a general languor and indifference about the people who attended the church. There was also a good deal of opposition in the parish, some old sullen seceders who went to a neighbouring proprietary chapel, many more of ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... instinct of what was impending, sought shelter in the deepest recesses of the forest, while the Indians, unable or unwilling to labour in the enervating heat, and also knowing from past experience what was coming, retired to their huts and resigned themselves to the overpowering languor which oppressed them. Of all the inhabitants of the village, Dick and Phil were the only two who resisted the enervating influence of the hour, for Dick was away hunting, as usual, while Phil, having set himself a certain task to perform, was not the sort of man who would allow himself to ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... length, And ever chants a wild monotony, A change between a low cry and a moan. The earth is glad, The sea alone is sad; Its swelling surge it rolls against the shore In mammoth anger; Or, in weary languor, Beaten, it whines that it can rage no more, And sinks to treacherous rest, While from the happy west The sun is glad; The sea alone is sad. Its voice has messages nor words for me, All, all is pitched in ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... matters, and to particularize too minutely all their wondrous ingenuity. But her contrivance and dispensation of milk alone is sufficient to prove nature's wonderful care and forethought. For all the superfluous blood in women, that owing to their languor and thinness of spirit floats about on the surface and oppresses them, has a safety-valve provided by nature in the menses, which relieve and cleanse the rest of the body, and fit the womb for conception in due ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... street gave a view far up the street, becoming a post of observation for the gallant young officers within, who invariably arranged themselves here "for inspection," at the usual hour for the ladies' promenade, looking as became interesting invalids, returning with becoming languor the glances of bright eyes in which shone the pity which we are told is "akin to love." Later these knights being permitted to join in the promenade, made the very most of their helplessness, enjoying hugely the necessary ministrations ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... again when Natalya came into the garden. It was full of sweetness and peace—that soothing, blissful peace in which the heart of man is stirred by a sweet languor of ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... same defect in the cultivated roses. While the odours are rich, often of cloying sweetness, or even, as in certain white roses, having a languor as of death, they never for me equal the fragrance of the wild sweet rose that grows all about these hills, in old tangled fence rows, in the lee of meadow boulders, or by some unfrequented roadside. No other odour I know awakens quite such a feeling—light ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... glittering flight. The air was warm, fragrant, and delicious, and the larboard watch of the tired crew of the Gentile, after a boisterous passage of forty days from Gibralter, yielded to its somnolent influence, and lay stretched about the forecastle and waists, enjoying the voluptuous languor which overcomes men suddenly emerging from a cold into a ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... she lay for an hour in a half-conscious state; but later in the day she began to recover, and moved to the couch near the fire, while Fan sat beside her on the carpet, watching the face that looked so strange in its whiteness and languor, and keeping the firelight ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... servitor To Cornwall's queen forthwith. "Take this," he said, "and show to her How great my languor, sith This signet's round will not be found To bear ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... successors of Shalmaneser the Assyrian prestige was maintained at a high level by dint of the same lavish bloodshed and truculent energy; but towards the eighth century it began to decline. There was then a period of languor and decadence, some echo of which, and of its accompanying disasters, seems to have been embodied by the Greeks in the romantic tale of Sardanapalus. No shadow of confirmation for the story of a first destruction of Nineveh is to be found in the inscriptions, and, ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... our lot and that gives thee altogether to us at its close, gentle, refined, affectionate, soothing, bland, and unreserved? The hour that precedes retirement for the night, when the early luxury of languor begins to take possession of the senses? When the eyes are not heavy, but threaten to become so, and long silken lashes first make love to each other? When it is time to confine part of that rich hair en papilotte and fold the whole into that pretty cap; to ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... when Mrs. Makebelieve came home she was very low-spirited indeed. She complained once more of a headache and of a languor which she could not account for. She said it gave her all the trouble in the world to lift a bucket. It was not exactly that she could not lift a bucket, but that she could scarcely close her mind ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... his fair companion to take his arm. She did so, readily; for she needed it, not so much because the long gnarled roots of the trees crossed the path from time to time, and offered slight impediments, for usually her foot was light as air, but because she felt an unaccountable languor upon her, a tremulous, agitated sort of unknown happiness unlike any thing else she had ever ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... desire shocked her; what she needed was a veiled love, support mingled with tenderness,—that, in short, which she gave to others. Then, need I tell you, who are so truly feminine? this situation brought with it hours of delightful languor, moments of divine sweetness and content which followed by secret immolation. Her conscience was, if I may call it so, contagious; her self-devotion without earthly recompense awed me by its persistence; the living, inward piety ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... other time, I am too much exhausted now," murmured Sybilla, with an air of languor, half real, half feigned, lest perchance she should lose what she had gained. In the sweetness of this reconciled "lovers' quarrel," she had almost forgotten its hapless cause. But Angus, after a pause of deep and evidently conflicting ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... much he might like it—and in his own mind he felt that he really needed just such a complete rest and change of scene, soft climate, and freedom from all care and anxiety, to enable him to shake himself free from a strange feeling of dulness and languor that had been stealing over him lately, and a sort of mental depression that was harder to bear than actual illness. But three months away from his pupils and work seemed absolutely out of the question to Mr. Clair, therefore he did ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... my poor admirer," said the lady, in a tone of languor and condescension that was unusual to her. Breaking from his captives, Helwyse ran back and begged her to cast her mantle into the fire. She replied by throwing a fold of it above her head and smiling as she said, "Farewell. Remember me as you see ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... Every man parts from that contemplation with the feeling that it rather belongs to ages than to mortal life. The least activity of the intellectual powers redeems us in a degree from the conditions of time. In sickness, in languor, give us a strain of poetry or a profound sentence, and we are refreshed; or produce a volume of Plato or Shakspeare, or remind us of their names, and instantly we come into a feeling of longevity. See how the deep divine thought reduces centuries and millenniums ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... been willing to concur in preventing the execution of a project so dangerous in the example, even exhausted as France then was by the preceding war, and under a lazy and unenterprising prince, she would have at every risk taken an active part in this business. But a languor with regard to so remote an interest, and the principles and passions which were then strongly at work at home, were the causes why Great Britain would not give France any encouragement in such an enterprise. At that time, however, and with regard to that object, in my ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... shortly be nothing but a solid block of ice, like my companions. My legs, my arms were already congealed. Horror-stricken as I was at the approach of such a hopeless, ghastly death, my sensations were accompanied by a languor and lassitude indescribable but far from unpleasant. To some extent thought or wonderment was still alive. Should I dwindle painlessly away, preferring rest and peace to effort, or should I make a last struggle to save myself? The ice seemed to close in more and more every moment. ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... is as varied as the nature of the injuries, and these are past counting up. But there is nothing singular in the dying sensations, though Lord Byron remarked the physiological peculiarity, that the expression is invariably that of languor, while in death from a stab the countenance reflects the traits of natural character—of gentleness or ferocity—to the last breath. Some of these cases are of interest, to show with what slight disturbance ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... chair, thanked her for her proposal, said that he would come without fail ... without fail! and went away, bearing in his soul an impression of a quiet voice, of gentle and sorrowful eyes—and burning with the languor ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... as autumnal the admirable large water-color of a part of a garden at Shiplake, with the second bloom of the roses and a glimpse of a turn of the Thames. This exquisite picture expresses to perfection the beginning of the languor of the completed season—with its look of warm rest, of doing nothing, in the cloudless sky. To the same or a later moment belongs the straight walk at Fladbury—the old rectory garden by the Avon, with its Irish yews and the red ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... not hold us free: she insists on our returning to hear what we no longer understand. Thenceforth a mighty fog, a fog heavy and dun as lead, enwraps the world. For how long? For a whole millennium of horror. Throughout ten centuries, a languor unknown to all former times seizes upon the Middle Ages, even in part on those latter days that come midway betwixt sleep and waking, and holds them under the sway of a visitation most irksome, most unbearable; that convulsion, namely, of mental weariness, which men ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... about the solemn little settlements, and, no doubt, but poorly succeeded in disguising the superior air which distinguishes the new arrival in a strange land. It is but a step from a state of absolute greenness on one's arrival at a new port to a blase languor, wherein nothing can touch one further; and the step is easily and usually taken inside of a week. May the old settlers ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... people on their grievances, increased their irritation against the causes of their disgust, and ascribed the evils with which they thought themselves oppressed to those who governed them, while he professed no other object than their good. He declaimed particularly against the languor with which the Indian war had been prosecuted; and, striking the note to which their feelings were most responsive, declared that, by proper exertions, it might ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... general sense, is but another word for weakness. Let one generation disappear; and a people over whom such rule has been extended, if it have not virtue to free itself, is condemned to embarrassment in the operations of its government, and to perpetual languor; with no better hope than that which may spring from the diseased activity of some particular Prince on whom the authority may happen to devolve. This, if it takes a regular hereditary course: but,—if the succession be interrupted, and the supreme power frequently usurped ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... and that are not particularly worth doing; but for her, time and the world hold only this brief moment of contentment. Slowly the eyes close, gently the little body is relaxed. Oh, you who strive to relieve your overwrought nerves and cultivate power through repose, watch the exquisite languor of a drowsy cat, and despair of imitating such perfect and restful grace. There is a gradual yielding of every muscle to the soft persuasiveness of slumber: the flexible frame is curved into tender lines, the head nestles ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... was appalled. All she could do was to betake herself to 'the little weapon called All-Prayer,' and therewith to use all vigilance and all her arts of coaxing and cheering away weariness and languor, beguiling sleeplessness, soothing pain by any other means. She had just enough success to prevent her from utterly despairing, and to keep her always on the strain, and at her own cost, for Mr. Egremont was far ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... then certainly dignified, ardent, and emphatic; but it is apt, I should think, to impress those who hear him, for the first time, with an idea that he is a very supercilious personage, and this unfavourable impression is liable to be strengthened by the elegant aristocratic languor of his appearance. ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... entire season with Desgenais, and learned that my mistress had left France; that news left in my heart a feeling of languor which I ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... any kind whatever—when I speak, when I lift my hand, when I run, when I think-there is waste of muscular tissue. Some of my strength goes in the act, and thus every effort means expenditure and diminution of force. Hence weariness that needs sleep, waste that needs food, languor that needs rest. We belong to an order of being in which work is death, in regard to our physical nature; but our spirits may lay hold of God, and enter into an order of things in which work ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... that he had slept long, deeply and exhaustively. He felt now a little emaciated mentally and somewhat absent-bodied—so he put it to himself. A numb languor, not unpleasant, held him passively supine, the while he gave himself over ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... note of exclamation, set ironically, Mahony felt constrained to second Turnham's enthusiasm. And it was indeed a lovely picture: the gracious, golden-haired woman, whose figure had the amplitude, her gestures the almost sensual languor of the young nursing mother; the two children fawning at her knee, both ash-blond, with vivid scarlet lips.—"It helps one," thought Mahony, "to understand ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... genius imparted it to others. He was like Ulysses listening to the song of the sirens. It seemed to him as though all nature there joined in that marvelous strain. It was to him as though the very winds were lulled into calm, and a delicious languor stole upon ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... door, and hinted darkly that I had to thank a certain tyrant for my abandonment. I called to him, but he paid no heed, and I heard him chuckling as he retreated along the gallery. The journey, the excitement into which I had been plunged by the news I had heard, brought on a languor, and I was between sleeping and waking half the night. I slept to dream of her, of the Vicomte, her husband, walking in his park or playing cards amidst a brilliant company in a great candle-lit room like the drawing-room ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... shake hands all round, and greet each other with cheerful and pleasant looks. Remembering that we assemble not only for the promotion of our happiness, but with the view of adding something to the common stock, an air of languor or indifference in any member of our body would be regarded by the others as a kind of treason. We have never had an offender in this respect; but if we had, there is no doubt that he would be taken ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... this mocking bird beguiling my tried temper into smiling By the lank lopsided languor of the countenance it wore. "Though you look storm-tost, unshaven, you," I said, "have found a haven, Daw as roupy as a raven! Was it you yapped at my door? Tell me your confounded name, O bird in beak so like BALFOUR!" Quoth the bird, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... 2569. Symptoms.—Languor and restlessness, hoarseness, wheezing, and short, dry cough, with occasional rattling in the throat during sleep, the child often plucking at its throat with its fingers; difficulty of breathing, which ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... long hot afternoon nap, his amends for the vigils of the previous night. Grace was enchanting in her light clinging draperies, which made her lovely form tenfold more beautiful, because clothed in perfect taste. The heat had deepened the flush upon her cheeks, and brought a soft languor into her eyes, and as she stood under an arch of the American woodbine, that mantled the supports of the piazza roof, she might easily have fulfilled an artist's dream of summer. Hilland's eyes kindled as he looked upon her, as she stood with averted ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... to the embrace of warm Tropical earth. With an insensibility to these influences, there can be but little sympathy or appreciation of the works of Mr. Gottschalk; for all that is born of the Tropics partakes of its beauties and its defects, its passionate languor, its useless profusion and its poetic tenderness. And where else in the United States, can we look for a spontaneous gush of melody? Plymouth Rock and its surroundings have not hitherto seemed favorable ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... is a country of the greatest religious freedom, they were not better satisfied there than in England. They were tolerated, indeed, but watched. Their zeal began to have dangerous languor for want of opposition, and being without power and influence, they grew tired of the indolent security of their sanctuary. They were desirous of removing to a country where they should see no superior."—Russell's Modern Europe, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... of goodness and charity, passed undisturbed another week of the life of Cecilia: but when the fervour of self- approbation lost its novelty, the pleasure with which her new plan was begun first subsided into tranquillity, and then sunk into languor. To a heart formed for friendship and affection the charms of solitude are very short-lived; and though she had sickened of the turbulence of perpetual company, she now wearied of passing all her time by herself, and sighed for the comfort ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... physician and scientist, asserts that the misery of the women of the poorer classes of the population in England is more than doubled by the use of tea, which only soothes or stimulates to intensify the after-coming depression and languor. ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... bath, whose frothy margin was the threshold of their dwellings. Others still, like birds, built their nests among the sylvan nooks of the elevated interior; whence all below, and hazy green, lay steeped in languor the island's throbbing heart. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... withered sward of winter into emerald. The sun shone through a slight haze, but shone warmly. The birds had opened the day with full orchestra, but at noon there was little more than chirp and twitter, they seeming to feel something of Edith's languor, as she leaned on the railing of the porch, and watched for the coming of Malcom. She sighed as she looked at the bare brown earth of the large space that she purposed for strawberries, and work there and everywhere seemed repulsive. The sudden heat was enervating and gave her the feeling of luxurious ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... you in its arms and embrace you; when the minutest flowers, the humble daisy, the blue forget-me-not, the convolvulus in the hedgerows raise their heads and follow you with a longing look—does it not happen to you to experience an inexpressible sensation of languor, to sigh for no apparent reason, and even to feel inclined to shed tears, and to ask yourselves, 'Why does this feeling of love oppress me? why do my knees bend ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... when I can without danger; but the light from this lamp hurts my eyes, a soft languor weighs down my eyelids. I do not know what emotion agitates me; a demi-obscurity will please me more; one would say I am in ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... Love-guided, to her home in a far land, Now waited death at the great Shah's command. Shapely as that dark princess for whose smile A world was bartered, daughter of the Nile Herself, and veiling in her large, soft eyes The passion and the languor of her skies, The Abyssinian knelt low at the feet Of her stern lord: "O king, if it be meet, And for thy honor's sake," she said, "that I, Who am the humblest of thy slaves, should die, I will not tax thy mercy to forgive. Easier ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... splendour. She felt the security of an Olympian, who knew that she was daughter of the depths, and might say to the ocean, "Father!" And she exposed herself, unattainable and proud, to everything that should pass—to looks, to desires, to ravings, to dreams; as proud in her languor, on her boudoir couch, as Venus in ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... its sister capitals, it is with Melbourne rather than with Sydney. Adelaide is a thoroughly modern town, with all the merits and all the defects attaching to novelty. It does not possess the spirit of enterprise to so adventurous a degree as Melbourne, but neither does it approach to the languor of Sydney. In this respect it has discovered a very happy middle course. There is certainly something very provincial about the attitude of the town towards the rest of the world, but this helps to make it the more distinctive, and conduces largely to its progress. It 'goes without ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... smallest attack on Soltikof, but merely keep observing him;—the end of which, what can the end of it be? urges Friedrich always: "Condense yourselves; go in upon the Russians, while they are in separate corps;"—and is very ill-satisfied with the languor of procedures there. As is the Prince with such reproaches, or implied reproaches, on said languor. Nor is his humor cheered, when the King's bad predictions prove true. What has it come to? These ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... it was every woman's right . . . even if it could not last for ever. . . . But while it lasted! After all, imagination had its uses. It helped to prolong as well as create. . . . She sank back and closed her eyes, succumbing to an ineffable languor. ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... reaches 125 deg., and is then fearfully oppressive. Fierce gusts laden with sand sweep over the plain, causing vegetation to droop or disappear, and the animal world to hide itself. Man with difficulty retains life at these trying times, feeling a languor and a depression of spirits which are barely supportable.10 All who can do so quit the plains and betake themselves to the upland region till the great heats are past, and the advance of autumn brings at any rate cool nights and mornings. The climate of the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... much about the run into Antwerp. No doubt it was a thrilling performance—through all the languor of malaria it thrills me now when I think of it—but it wasn't much to offer a War Correspondent, since it took us nowhere near the bombardment. It had nothing for the psychologist or for the amateur of strange sensations, and nothing for the pure and ardent Spirit of Adventure, and nothing for ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... also a daughter, who is living, and who would not disgrace the fashionable circles of Europe. Her face and person are fine and graceful: she speaks English, not only correctly, but elegantly; and, both in her speech and manners, she has a softness approaching oriental languor. She retains so much of her national dress as to identify her with her people; over whom she affects no superiority, but with whom she seems pleased to preserve all the ties and duties of relationship. She held the infant of one of her relations at the font, on the Sunday ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... impressions, I should have no other desire than to find myself again in my little chamber in that beautiful country, where it seems to me that I ought to be so happy. Alas! when one has a soul which feels deeply, one is destined to pass his days in the languor of inaction or in the ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... was unjust, an outrage. Mexico Mullins's warning recurred to him. And yet—. He shifted slowly as he talked till his back was to the door of the big tent. They were watching him carefully, for all their apparent languor and looseness in saddle; then as he started to leap within and rally his henchmen, his mind went back to the words of Judge Stillman and his niece. Surely that old man was on the square. He couldn't be otherwise ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... eyes met his in a long gaze. The languor of the music was still in them, but he saw another expression growing there, a grave and womanly sweetness. "I wonder—" The hand under his turned so that the ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... was a crime, but Browning's contention is that a crime may serve for a test as well as a virtue; in that test the Duke and the lady had alike failed through mere languor of soul: ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... happiness was to vanish; that her lips burning for kisses yet unborn, might soon unbend and voice deepest anguish and piteous appeal; that those eyes which betokened unsolved depths of fondest affection, of laughter, love and life, might soon lose their lustre and dreamy languor, in an ocean of tears..... There two people drifted silently along, conscious only of the fact that they were supremely happy in each other's company .... But lo! out of the quiet a storm is born: why had they not noticed that the moon had hidden her silvery face behind a black cloud? ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... still and quiet through the long first day. She was languid and weary from her journey; she was uncertain what help she might offer to give in the household duties, and what she might not. And, in her languor and in her uncertainty, it was pleasant to watch the new ways of the people among whom she was placed. After breakfast, Mr Benson withdrew to his study, Miss Benson took away the cups and saucers, and, leaving the kitchen door open, talked sometimes to Ruth, ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... viewed the scene, Divined the giants' languor by their mien, And with hospitable care Tackled at once an Atlantean chair. Her pigmy stature scarce attained the seat - She dragged it where she would, and with her feet Surmounted; thence, a Phaeton launched, she crowned ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at a loftier ideal than that of his everyday associates, and characterized by the devout and ardent temperament essential to the religious reformer. It was in the year 1206 that he became a changed man. He fell ill—he lay at Death's door. From the languor and delirium he recovered but slowly—when he did recover old things had passed away; behold! all things had become new. From this time Giovanni Bernardone passes out of sight, and from the ashes of a dead past, from the seed which has withered that the new ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... for his cigarette from the cabman and smoked in silence. Gradually the languor of the night again stole over her senses, and she forgot his existence. The carriage had turned homeward, and at a bend of the road, high up above the sea, Monte Carlo came into view, gleaming white far away below, like a group of fairy palaces lit by fairy ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... him from time to time, to chat with him and cheer him, talking with him of his father, the great chemist, of whom he recounted many a charming anecdote, many a particular, still glowing with the flame of ardent friendship. Little by little, amidst the weak languor of convalescence, the son had thus beheld an embodiment of charming simplicity, affection, and good nature rising up before him. It was his father such as he had really been, not the man of stern science whom he had pictured whilst listening to his mother. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... for four days. I felt something of the old pleasant languor of Rio stealing over me again as I lounged about the handsome streets, gazed on the ancient churches and convent, and its world-renowned University, or climbed its barranca, or wandered by the Rio Balmeiro, and ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... superlative Genius) and now and then penning a Catch or a Ditty, instead of inditing Odes, and Sonnets, the Gentlemen of the Bon Goust in the Pit would never have been put to all that Grimace in damning the Frippery of State, the Poverty and Languor of Thought, the unnatural Wit, and inartificial Structure of his Dramas. I am, SIR, Your very humble ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... candle-light, as she turned her head hither and thither, searching with an easy grace for the things she wanted in the tray. Exercise had heightened the brilliancy of her complexion, and had quickened the rapid alternations of expression in her eyes—the delicious languor that stole over them when she was listening or thinking, the bright intelligence that flashed from them softly when she spoke. In the lightest word she said, in the least thing she did, there was something that gently solicited the ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... lot; and it is reasonable to suppose that, notwithstanding all his fortitude, the spirits of the youth were depressed, and his faculties chilled by such humiliating neglect, and such reiterated disappointments. Who is he that would not, under such circumstances, sink into languor? It cannot be doubted that dejection every day detracted from his powers, and that by a kind of irresistible gravitation, he descended like a falling body in the physical world, with accelerated velocity, till at last he reached the very ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... stretched in the deck-chair, her fine white hands and arms that hung there, slender, inert and frail. He admired these things so much that he failed to see that they expressed not only beauty but a certain delicacy of physique, and that her languor which appealed to him was the ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... herself so far as to nod quite approvingly, when the rustle of female garments aroused her, and in a moment Eugenia and Alice swept into the room. Both were tastefully dressed, while about Eugenia there was an air of languor befitting the severe headache, of which Mrs. Hastings was ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes |
