"Languor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lyre, And join to calm the guardian's sleepless ire. Soon from the tepid ground blue vapors rise, And sounds melodious move along the skies; A settling tremor thro his folds extends, His crest contracts, his rainbow heck unbends, O'er all his hundred hoops the languor crawls, Each curve develops, every volute falls, His broad back flattens as he spreads the plain, And sleep consigns him to his lifeless reign. Flusht at the sight the pirates seize the spoil, And ravaged Colchis rues the ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... obedient parent disappeared in the darkness. With him also disappeared Miss Amy's singular alacrity. Sitting down carefully again on the edge of the bunk, she leaned against the post with a certain indefinable languor that was as touching as it was graceful. I need not tell any feminine readers that there was no dissimulation in all this,—no coquetry, no ostentation,—and that the young girl was perfectly sincere! But the masculine ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... of patients recover completely. A number complain for a time of headache, languor, muscular weakness, and incapacity for sustained effort—traumatic neurasthenia. Sometimes there is a condition of mental instability, the patient is easily excited, and is unduly affected by alcohol or other stimulants. ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... untoward time for the setting on foot of a religious enterprise could hardly have been chosen. It was a time of prevailing languor in the churches, in the reaction from the Great Awakening; it was also a time of intense political agitation. The year before the Stamp Act had been passed, and the whole chain of colonies, from New Hampshire to Georgia, had been stirred up to resist the ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... bright black eyes danced with fun or languished with sullen scorn. The younger ones were bright and happy in their expression, but the older ones seemed already to realize the curse that rests upon their decaying race, and to move with melancholy languor, as if brooding over it in stifled rebellion or resigned apathy. Some would be called beautiful anywhere: they were graceful in form, had fine regular features and lovely, expressive eyes; others were attractive only on account of their animation; while one comical ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... all Gerald's dreams that night, and was in part responsible next day for his thoughts, as he passed from languor to restlessness, and from impatience back to the peace of the certain knowledge that before evening he ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... a long while on his bed, a music-book on his knees. He felt as though sweet, unheard melody was haunting him; already he was all aglow and astir, already he felt the languor and sweetness of its presence.. but ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... yielded to her power in Paris (for she had specialised in travelling Englishmen) could not re-establish her conviction as to the sameness of men. The presence of her professed rivals of various nationalities in the Promenade could not restore it either. The Promenade in its cold, prim languor was the very negation of desire. She was afraid. She foresaw ruin for herself in this ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... her face, nevertheless, there is an expression of thoughtfulness, perhaps melancholy, to which her large, earnest black eyes, and finely-arched brows, fringed with dark lashes, lend a peculiar charm. While over all there plays a shadow of languor, increased perhaps by the tinge of age, or a mind and heart overtaxed ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... seldom had any—no special care of us, and no "policing" or keeping clean. Symptoms of typhoid fever soon appeared; forty of our hundred were more or less ill. My brother and I knew very well that the only way to avert this was to exercise vigorously. On waking in the morning we all experienced languor and lassitude. Those who yielded to it fell ill. Henry was always so ready to work, that once our sergeant, Mr. Bullard, interposed and gave the duty to another, saying it was not fair. I always remembered it with gratitude. But this ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... art moulded in marble impassive, False goddess, fair statue of strife, Yet standest on pedestal massive, A symbol and token of life. Thou art still, not with stillness of languor, And calm, not with calm boding rest; For thine is all wrath and all anger That throbs far and near in the breast Of ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... a peacetime year, was here at hand, an ever-ministering angel to them and to their hero; yet they never included him and Flora in one thought together but to banish it, though with tender reverence. Behind a labored disguise of inattention they jealously watched lest the faintest blight or languor should mar, in him, the perfect bloom of that invincible faith to, and faith in, the faithless Anna, which alone could satisfy their worship of him. Care for these watchers brought the two much together, and in every private moment they talked of the third ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... she visited Italy with Alfred de Musset. The fever seized on her at Genoa, and she saw the wonders of the fair land through half-shut eyes, alternately shivering and burning. In the languor of disease, she allowed the tossing of a coin to decide whether she should visit Rome or Venice. Venice came uppermost ten times, and she chose to consider it an affair of destiny. Her long stay in this city suggested ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... wild, glassy, cannibalish. The different parts of the system now war with each other. The stomach calls upon the legs to go with it in quest of food: the legs, from very weakness, refuse. The sixth day brings with it increased suffering, although the pangs of hunger are lost in an overpowering languor and sickness. The head becomes giddy; the ghosts of well-remembered dinners pass in hideous procession through the mind. The seventh day comes, bringing increased lassitude and farther prostration of strength. The arms hang listlessly, the legs ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... of custom; all that passes in regulating the superficial decorations of life, or is given up in the reciprocations of civility to the disposal of others; all that is torn from us by the violence of disease, or stolen imperceptibly away by lassitude and languor; we shall find that part of our duration very small of which we can truly call ourselves masters, or which we can spend wholly at our own choice. Many of our hours are lost in a rotation of petty cares, in ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... Lane, the Fifth Avenue, of Capitol City, that smoky illuminant of our great central levels, but although it esteems itself an established cosmopolitan thoroughfare, it is still provincial enough to be watchful; and even in its torrid languor took some note ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... ripples 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
... past I had been violently afflicted with a slow nervous fever attended by a continual head-ache, a total loss of appetite, and a very bad digestion, by which I was reduced to a deplorable state of languor and dejection of spirits. After being attended by many Doctors, and taking a variety of Medicines, my husband, Mr. JOHN TOD, hearing from several persons with whom he was acquainted, of the wonderful effects your excellent Tea had done in nervous disorders, ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... that was ever brought upon any stage, but then the rest of them do not correspond to the dignity of it, and this dramatic piece, so excellently well writ, is disfigured by a dull love plot, which spreads a certain languor over the ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... her ears at this. She could not conceal her interest in what Rotha had said, and throwing aside her languor, she asked, in anything but a melancholy tone, "So he's left all ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... although I was racked with pain, was a positive relief to me, as it compelled me to live in the present suffering, and not in the visionary researches I had been continually making before. My kind uncle came to nurse me; and after the immediate danger was over, my life seemed to slip away in delicious languor for two or three months. I did not ask—so much did I dread falling into the old channel of thought—whether any reply had been received to my letter to Sir Philip. I turned my whole imagination right away from all that subject. My uncle remained with me until nigh summer, ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... her niece's comment; but there was a languor and indifference in the voice, that might have sent the thermometer of the architect's affection from boiling-point to below blood-heat, if he could have ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... With his usual dainty care he was ridding himself of the dust and dirt that had soiled him when he 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
... had died down into a dull, red glow, but she prodded the embers into a flame, adding fresh coal, and as the pleasant warmth of it lapped her round, a feeling of gentle languor gradually stole over her, and at length ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... Dick lazily. "No, it isn't. I know what it is," he cried excitedly, forgetting the heat and his idle languor. ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... was not tanned by the sun; but the heat, from which she could not shield herself, spread a slight flush over her cheeks and ears, and, shedding a soft indolence over her whole body, was reflected in a dreamy languor in her pretty eyes. She was almost unable to work; her hands seem to fall naturally into her lap. She scarcely walked at all, and was constantly sighing ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... down by the plebeian aristocracy of Mr Pitt as an adventurer, had shaken parties to their centre. His rapid disappearance from the scene left both whigs and tories in a state of disorganization. The distinctive principles of these connexions were now difficult to trace. That period of public languor which intervenes between the breaking up of parties and the formation of factions now transpired in England. An exhausted sensualist on the throne, who only demanded from his ministers repose, a voluptuous aristocracy, and a listless people, were content, in the absence ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... intrusted, had inconceivable difficulty in preserving me. However, she succeeded, and my robust constitution at length got the better of all my weakness, and my health became so well established that except the illness from languor, of which I have given an account, and frequent heats in the bladder which the least heating of the blood rendered troublesome, I arrived at the age of thirty almost without feeling my original infirmity. ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... early and decisive campaign the next year. My greatest fear is that Congress, viewing this stroke in too important a point of light, may think our work too nearly closed, and will fall into a state of languor and relaxation. To prevent the error, I shall employ every means in my power; and if, unhappily, we sink into that fatal mistake, no part of the ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... slipper, that Cinderella might have worn, seemed a world too wide for the tiny foot which it scarcely covered. It might be the heat of the day that deepened the soft bloom of the cheeks, and gave an unwonted languor to the large, dark eyes. In all the pomp of her stage attire,—in all the flush of excitement before the intoxicating lamps,—never had Viola looked ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... he entered the little room reserved for him, and barely restrained himself from flinging his hat into a corner and breaking a chair on the table. His languor had vanished. ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... his cause, at this moment of calamity to both. Yet such was the harassed, or rather broken state of his health, that his mental strength and unconquerable courage alone preserved the poor shattered frame from sinking into languor and inertion. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... these woods, for I have seen him scores of times, but whether he builds high or low, on the ground or in the trees, is all unknown to me. That is his song now,—"twe-twea-twe-e-e-a," with a peculiar summer languor and plaintiveness, and issuing from the lower branches and growths. Presently we—for I have been joined by a companion—discover the bird, a male, insecting in the top of a newly fallen hemlock. The black, white, and blue of his uniform are seen at a glance. His movements are quite slow compared ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... 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
... just idea of the winter of Southern California. Accustomed to extremes, he may expect too much. He wants a violent change. If he quits the snow, the slush, the leaden skies, the alternate sleet and cold rain of New England, he would like the tropical heat, the languor, the color of Martinique. He will not find them here. He comes instead into a strictly temperate region; and even when he arrives, his eyes deceive him. He sees the orange ripening in its dark foliage, the ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... careful regimen; if it continues to a protracted period, its consequences are often fatal. In my own case, a dysentery followed the fever, and reduced me to a mere skeleton. The dry belly-ache is another dangerous disease, accompanied by general languor, a decrease of appetite, a viscous expectoration, and fixed pain in the stomach. Opium is considered an efficacious medicine in this disease, and is administered with great perseverance, accompanied by frequent fomentations. An infusion of ginger drank in the morning has frequently good effects. ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... the balmy breeze, Invited languor and voluptuous ease, 25 While am'rous lays in dulcet note proclaim The lovers triumph, and the fair one's shame. There to the laughing god in flow'rs array'd, The graceful throng their daily homage ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... withstanding this reproach, the senate proceeded to decorate Justinian with the royal epithet of nobilissimus; and their decree was ratified by the affection or the fears of his uncle. After some time the languor of mind and body, to which he was reduced by an incurable wound in his thigh, indispensably required the aid of a guardian. He summoned the patriarch and senators; and in their presence solemnly placed the diadem on the head of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... cheap wines take the place of whisky, we will have a return to temperate habits among the lower classes, and not, I am satisfied, before. There is, and always has been, a craving in the human system for some kind of stimulus. After prolonged effort there is exhaustion and nervous languor that cannot always wait upon the restorative work of nutrition; indeed, the nutritive organs themselves often need stimulation before they can act with due vigor. ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... were unusual, were such as to set the man who was involved in them apart from his fellows. The foreign element in him woke up, called, perhaps, from repose by the unusually languid air, and London seemed meaningless to him, a city where a man of his type could neither dream, nor act, with all the languor, or all the energy, that was within him. And he imagined, as sometimes clever children do, a distant country where all romances unwind their shining coils, where he would find the incentive which he needed to call all his secret powers—the ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... sometimes difficult to find the right news for people who have been for some years out of England, and Milly, in the languor of her melancholy, had relaxed the excellent habit formed under Aunt Beatrice of always keeping her mind to the subject in hand. She sat at the table with one hand propping her chin, gazing dreamily at the bright flower-beds ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... languor, I proffered a chair near at hand; She looked back a mild sort of anger— Posed anew, ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... onward still, Far past the weary town, Till languor doth seize on her feeble knees, And ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... at last to see what manner of man they had to do with. He was a huge fellow, six feet four in height, and of a build proportionately strong, but his sinews seemed to be dissolved in a listlessness that was more than languor. It was only the eye that corrected this impression; an eye of an unusual mingled brilliancy and softness, sombre as coal and with lights that outshone the topaz; an eye of unimpaired health and virility; an eye that bid you beware of the man's devastating anger. A complexion, naturally dark, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 herself was affected ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... 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
... down the "arched aisles," as she was wont to term them. It was a genuine October afternoon, cool and sunny. The delicious haze of Indian summer wrapped every distant object in its soft, purple veil; the dim vistas of the forest ended in misty depths; the very air, in its dreamy languor, resembled the ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... expressions of extasy: his joys were more silent: but soon broken murmurs, sighs heart-fetched, and at length a dispatching thrust, as if he would have forced himself up her body, and then the motionless languor of all his limbs, all shewed that the die-away moment was come upon him; which she gave signs of joining with by, the wild throwing of her hands about, closing her eyes, and giving a deep sob, in which she seemed to expire ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... when the sea breeze sets in. The leaves of the trees seem as if afraid to move, and the sea, without a wave or ruffle on its vast expanse, appears like an immense mirror. Man partakes in the general languor as well as the vegetable ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... feeling? Books of amusement tend to polish the mind, to improve the style, to give variety to conversation, and to lend a grace to more important accomplishments. He who can effect this has surely done something. Is no useful end served by that writer whose works have soothed weeks of languor and sickness, have relieved the mind exhausted from the pressure of employment by an amusement which delights without enervating, which relaxes the tension of the powers without rendering them unfit for future exercise? ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... of her fine blue eyes; and had given a pensive timidity to her manner. But, if her eye were less bright, it was still full of spirit and intelligence: and, if the roses were stolen from her cheek, her paleness was rather the paleness of thought than of constitutional languor; or to express it in the exquisite lines of a modern poet, if she wore 'a pale face' it ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... very greatly, and he slept as he had not slept for years, but his progress was slow, sometimes imperceptible. The languor of intense weakness hung like a leaden weight upon him. The old brave cheeriness had given place to a certain curious wistfulness. He seemed too weary for effort, content at all times to sleep the ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... for him to do but to go on down until he reaches the bottom—there is no hope for him. Where could my salvation come from? How can I save myself? I cannot drink, because it makes my head ache. I never could write bad poetry. I cannot pray for strength and see anything lofty in the languor of my soul. Laziness is laziness and weakness weakness. I can find no other names for them. I am lost, I am lost; there is no doubt of that. [Looking around] Some one might come in; listen, Sasha, if you love me you must help me. ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... the blue sky under which they lived. Life did not hang heavy on the lovers' hands. Theodore lavished on every day inexhaustible fioriture of enjoyment, and he delighted to vary the transports of passion by the soft languor of those hours of repose when souls soar so high that they seem to have forgotten all bodily union. Augustine was too happy for reflection; she floated on an undulating tide of rapture; she thought she could not do enough by abandoning herself to sanctioned and sacred married love; simple ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... different Diggle from the man Desmond had known hitherto. His smile was gone; all languor and indolence was lost; his eyes flashed, his lips met in a hard cruel line; his voice rang out strong and metallic. That he was no coward Desmond already knew. He put himself in the forefront of the line, and, as always happens, a ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... hour of need Of your fainting, dispirited race, Ye, like angels, appear, Radiant with ardor divine. Beacons of hope, ye appear! Languor is not in your heart, Weakness is not in your word, Weariness not on your brow. Ye alight in our van! at your voice, Panic, despair, flee away. Ye move through the ranks, recall The stragglers, refresh ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... strange business—while I was travelling to Sahalin and back I felt perfectly well, but now, at home, the devil knows what is happening to me. My head is continually aching, I have a feeling of languor all over, I am quickly exhausted, apathetic, and worst of all, my heart is not beating regularly. My heart is continually ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... own pleasure. Waltzing, and Burgundy, and Love, and Woodcock are here combined into a dramatic poem, in which we are all star performers, and sure of applause. These hours cannot last forever, and the first daybeams that tell of morning, are accompanied by those vague feelings of languor that hint to us that we are mortal. Then we pause, and separate before these faint hints of our imperfection deepen into distasteful monitions, and before our fulness of enjoyment degenerates into satiety. Antiquity has conferred an immortal blessing upon us in bequeathing ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... And just at that time, king Yayati, the son of Nahusha, again came there tired and thirsty, in course of his wanderings, in search of deer. And the king saw Devayani and Sarmishtha, and those other maidens also, all decked with celestial ornaments and full of voluptuous languor in consequence of the flower-honey they drank. And Devayani of sweet smiles, unrivalled for beauty and possessed of the fairest complexion amongst them all, was reclining at her ease. And she was waited upon by Sarmishtha who was gently kneading ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... is the business of the day, and that the exercises and strength of any past day, are but as nothing for the day that is passing over us; and many of these days have been passed in much mental conflict, and much bodily weakness and languor." ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous
... 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 sees me ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... enough; and that polished periods and glittering sentences flew over the heads of the common people, without any impression upon their hearts. Something might be necessary, he observed, to excite the affections of the common people, who were sunk in languor and lethargy, and therefore he supposed that the new concomitants of methodism might probably produce so desirable an effect. The mind, like the body, he observed, delighted in change and novelty, and even ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... long, lean leg over the other, and punched down the ashes in his pipe-bowl with the square tip of his middle finger. The thermometer on the shady veranda marked eighty-seven degrees of heat, and nature wooed the soul to languor and revery; but nothing could abate the energy ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... was made for such a game. There was no wind. The glare of the sun was tempered by a gray mist creeping up the afternoon skies. The air was crisp enough to prevent languor. The crowded bleachers were inspiring; the season was rounding out in a blaze of glory for Sunrise. The two teams were evenly matched, And the stern joy that warriors feel In foemen worthy of their steel, ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... same; and you know that time flies swiftly on the wings of harmony. She has an uncommonly sweet voice, and a taste which I never heard paralleled. By the way, you cannot imagine anything more beautiful than the Polish music. It partakes of that delicious languor so distinguished in the Turkish airs, with a mingling of those wandering melodies which the now- forgotten composers must have caught from the Tartars. In short, whilst the countess is singing, I hardly suffer myself to breathe; and I feel just what our poetical ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... really come to take care of her, as he did before, and that wonderful happiness of being with him had begun again for her. Her hunger was soon appeased, all the sooner for the new stimulus of happiness that had roused her from her languor, and, as they turned away from the stall, she said nothing about going into the church again, but looked round as if the sights in the piazza were not without attraction to her now she was ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... must be beautiful accounts for the popularity of face-washes, and beauty parlors, and the languor of university extension lectures. Women cannot be blamed for this. All our civilization has been to the end that women make themselves attractive to men. The attractive woman has hitherto been the successful woman. The pretty girl marries a millionaire, ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... Wopper, bringing his hand down on his thigh with a slap that did more to arouse Mrs Stoutley out of her languor than the Professor's lecture on glacier ice, "I've sailed round the world, I have, an' seen many a strange sight, and what I've got to say is that I'll believe that ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... knowing it Christophe fell in love with her: it gave him pleasure to go to the house again: he took pains with his dress: and a feeling, which he well knew, began to tinge all his ideas with its tender smiling languor. Olivier was in love with her too, and had been from their first meeting: he thought she had no regard for him, and suffered in silence. Christophe made his state even worse by telling him joyously, as they left the Langeais' house, what he had said to Jacqueline and what ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... with the conditions under which it lived—the flourish of that triumph which began the last great peace. This has ever been the fate of energy in security; it takes to art and to eroticism, and then come languor and decay. ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... yet in the future. As Vychan and his wife stood on that high plateau overlooking the fair valley of the Derwent, it seemed to Gertrude as though during the past three days her husband had undergone some subtle change. There was a new light in his eyes; his frame had lost its drooping air of languor; he had stood the long days of rough riding without the smallest fatigue. It really seemed as if the old Wendot had come back again, and she smilingly asked him how it was that he had gained such strength ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... is the love of the universal and eternal beauty. 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 and ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... time in this pitiable condition, and he nursed her: but at last her convulsion ceased, and her head rested on her son's shoulder in a pitiable languor. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... feed upon the minutest circumstances of detail, and remotest traces of intention. So that what would at other times be felt as more or less mean or extraneous in a work of sculpture, and which would assuredly be offensive to the perfect taste in its moments of languor, or of critical judgment, will be grateful, and even sublime, when it meets this frightened inquisitiveness, this fascinated watchfulness, of the roused imagination. And this is all for your advantage; for, in the beginnings ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... of her among themselves as "the old girl" and "Joanna God-dam." But none of them thought of turning from Ellen to her sister—she was too weather-beaten for them, too big and bouncing—over-ripe. Ellen, pale as a flower, with wide lips like rose-leaves and narrow, brooding eyes, with her languor, and faint suggestions of the exotic, all the mystery with which fate had chosen to veil the common secret which was Ellen Alce.... She could now have the luxury of pitying her sister, of seeing herself possessed of what her tyrant Joanna had not, and longed for.... Slowly she was ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... operations in progress, the quartette gradually acquired the habit of lingering somewhat over their luncheon, and especially over the final coffee and cigar, the inevitable result of which was that, for the next hour or two, they experienced a feeling of delicious languor and drowsiness, and an almost unconquerable disinclination to exchange the grateful shade of the tent for the scorching heat of the afternoon sun. At first they struggled resolutely and manfully against this overpowering temptation to idleness; ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... 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 have ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... perturbation, till Julian happened to turn towards them. Then Valentine's fingers relaxed their grasp quietly, and slipped away. At the same time he moved with an air of energy, and broke into gay conversation. His languor vanished. His blue eyes sparkled. Julian was astonished at his intense vivacity. He laughed, made jokes, became ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... country, would not break down coming home. But, as she got into the carriage, she was very tired. She could almost have cried with fatigue;—and yet she told herself that now,— now,—must the work be done. She would perhaps tell him that she was tired. She might even assist her cause by her languor; but, though she should die for it, she would not waste her precious moments by absolute rest. "May I light a cigar?" he said as he ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... 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 ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... nucleus of the legend? ... a name that he in very truth was all unconscious of having chosen, but which occurred frequently with musical persistence throughout the entire poem. "NOURHALMA!" ... it had a soft sound ... it seemed to breathe of Eastern languor and love-singing,—it was surely the best title he could have. Straightway deciding thereon, he wrote it clearly at the top of the first page, thus: "Nourhalma; A Love Legend of the Past," ... ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Gerald's languor had vanished, and a glint had appeared in his eye that would have reminded Orde of Miss Bishop's most mischievous mood could he ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... wonderful in the breath of this early Southern spring. The first week in February and flowers were blooming on every lawn of every embowered cottage and every stately house! The song of birds, the hum of bees, the sweet languor of the perfumed air found his inmost soul. The snows lay cold and still and deathlike ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... without fearing and without braving them. Her children cluster about her, full of health, turbulence, and energy; they are true children of the wilderness: their mother watches them, from time to time, with mingled melancholy and joy. To look at their strength, and her languor, one might imagine that the life she had given them had exhausted her own; and still she regrets not what they have cost her. The house, inhabited by these emigrants, has no internal partition or loft. In the one chamber of which it consists, the whole family is gathered for the night. The ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... and gift the new princess. The Queen had written notes to them on spicy magnolia-petals, and now the head-nurse and the grand-equerry wheeled her couch of state into the Hall of Amethyst, that she might receive the tender wishes of the good fairies, while yet the sweet languor of her motherhood kept her from the fresh wind and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... The languor was gone. She shivered and sat erect, he watching her in an agony of apprehension. She looked ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Omnis aegritudo cedit, languor omnis pellitur, lingua fatur, quam veterna vinxerant silentia, gestat et suum per urbem ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... two now and then. What he said was much in the spirit of his former mind as far as the matter and meaning went, but the tone of strength and elasticity was wanting. The appearance was that of a placid languor, sometimes approaching to torpor, but not otherwise than cheerful. He is thin and shrunk in person, and that extraordinary face of his has no longer the fire and strength it used to have, though the singular ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... you as if it sought to take 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 under ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... was, when the pale shadow spake; For there was striving, in its piteous tongue, To speak as when on earth it was awake, And Isabella on its music hung: Languor there was in it, and tremulous shake, As in a palsied Druid's harp unstrung; And through it moan'd a ghostly under-song, Like hoarse night-gusts sepulchral ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... very pleased with the suggestion, however 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 not let his mind dwell ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... of events in the sick chamber for the first ten days of Eveline's illness; then there was a change; the violent symptoms of disease were reduced, and a state of dreamy languor succeeded, with rare intervals of excitement, and those of the mildest type; but consciousness did not return, and the father had the satisfaction of knowing that the secrets of the place were his own. He had now but little ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... not enjoyed my 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
... people he had known (the whole world was like a sick-house, and there was no rhyme or reason in it), he saw a long procession, deformed in body and warped in mind, some with illness of the flesh, weak hearts or weak lungs, and some with illness of the spirit, languor of will, or a craving for liquor. At this moment he could feel a holy compassion for them all. They were the helpless instruments of blind chance. He could pardon Griffiths for his treachery and Mildred for the pain she had caused him. They could not help themselves. The only reasonable thing ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... speaking Katherine straightened herself up, and moved a little from him though still holding his hand. Her languor passed, and her eyes grew ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... hazy day, and we were troubled with considerable languor. I have slept but little these three nights, and feel somewhat indisposed for want of rest. I read a good deal of Clapperton's "Journey to Sakkatou," besides beginning a vocabulary of the Kailouee language, with the assistance of ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... After all, I was very little the worse, and everybody said I had "gone like a bird." As we returned to London by the fast train, and I sat in that comfortable, well-cushioned carriage, enjoying the delightful languor of rest after fatigue, I half resolved to devote my whole life to a sport which was capable of affording such thrilling excitement as that which I had so recently enjoyed. I had never been so happy, I thought, ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... was just stopping. There was a rush for the horses. Gordon leapt on one, and leaning down caught Emmie up and sat her in front of him; she lay back in his arms in a languor of satisfied excitement. Her hair blew across his face, stifling him; on every side couples were hugging and squeezing. The sensuous whirl of the machine was acting as a narcotic, numbing thought. He caught her flushed, tired face in his hands and kissed her ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... starry heavens Shines her face among her people, And her form hath all the languor, Grace ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... debutante was exhibiting herself to her friends. She stood in the centre, a figure from a Twelfth-Night cake, amidst a babble of congratulations, and was plainly occupied in a perpetual struggle to conceal her moments of enthusiasm beneath a crust of deprecatory languor. ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... weird and dismal. The small clearing, densely walled in by the forest where the trees sprang nearly two hundred feet in the air, seemed to be stifling under the compression, though the feeling was but the resulting languor of a tropic night without a breeze. Sundry strange and melancholy calls issued in varying cadences from the wilderness, and an occasional splash from the river denoted the passage of some huge marine animal. Crocodiles were bellowing sullenly up stream, and from ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... she was ill, it was with the certainty that her languor would be admired: if she boasted she was well, it was that the spectator might admire her glowing health: if she laughed, it was because she thought it made her look pretty: if she cried, it was because she thought it made her look prettier ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... while stating the universal practice, and preparing him for a display of more general acquaintance with this fascinating department of literature, than at first sight may seem consistent with the graver studies to which we are compelled by duty: but in truth, when we consider how many hours of languor and anxiety, of deserted age and solitary celibacy, of pain even and poverty, are beguiled by the perusal of these light volumes, we cannot austerely condemn the source from which is drawn the alleviation of such a portion ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... back in front of the door to his room, with the tremor he would have felt on the threshold of a place of horror. He could not endure the thought of the night that awaited him. The whole city seemed to have sunk into languor, in that atmosphere so heavily charged with perfume. The lash of spring was stirring all the impulses of life with its exciting caress, and goading every feeling to new intensity. Not the slightest breeze was blowing. The orchards ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... onward: the earthly Paradise was unfolded to their view; the air was balmy, and laden with rich fragrance from the numberless flowers around; but instead of filling the spirit with soft languor, and indisposing the body to exertion, the gentle breezes imparted new vigor to the frame, and the buoyant, hilarious feelings of early youth shot through the veins, making the thoughtful eye sparkle, ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... to church. But the church will 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, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... in a high-ceiled, white-walled room with French windows opening on a terrace where olea fragans blossoms expanded round the base of a statue by Canova. At last a feeling of incompleteness penetrated her languor. She rose to pace the mosaic floor on which appeared a design of mermaids ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... sister. Daisy's chair was so arranged that the back could be adjusted to any angle. It was of bamboo and cane with a soft blanket thrown over it, a pretty rose color that lighted up the pale little girl whose languor ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... furnish him with a discipline for his entry into life, and a satisfying vision of the universe. And if secularists have not always grasped this necessity, we may perhaps find therein one main reason why secularism has not met with so enormous and enthusiastic a reception as the languor and formalism of the churches ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... leisurely means: one is not shocked by the unseemly sights of a battlefield, and the wielder of the weapon has time to watch its effects as they develop: he can see the victim going through the successive stages of misery—debility, languor, exhaustion—until the final point is reached; and as his scientific curiosity is gratified by the gradual manifestation of the various symptoms, so his moral sense is fortified by the struggle between a proud spirit ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... off in the middle of his sentence. Simultaneously he abandoned his carefully chosen attitude of studied languor. He was leaning forward in his chair watching a carriage which had just come into sight along the straight wide road which led from the outside world to ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... am sorry old dear if I hurt you, No doubt it is all very nice, With the lilies and languors of virtue And the raptures and roses of vice. But the notion impels me to anger That vice is all rapture for me, And if you think virtue is languor Just try it ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... given for such a craftsman? The hardness, coarseness, and animal crudity of the Roman School are absent: so also is their vigour. But where the grace of form and colour is so soft and sweet, where the high-bred calm of good company is so sympathetically rendered, where the atmosphere of amorous languor and of melody is so artistically diffused, we cannot miss the powerful modelling and rather vulgar tours de force of Giulio Romano. The scale of tone is silvery golden. There are no hard blues, no coarse red flesh-tints, no black shadows. Mellow lights, the morning hues of primrose, or of palest ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... lost juvenility. As Baron de Slane says of these stock comparisons (Ibn Khall. i. xxxvi.), "The figurative language of Moslem poets is often difficult to be understood. The narcissus is the eye; the feeble stem of that plant bends languidly under its dower, and thus recalls to mind the languor of the eyes. Pearls signify both tears and teeth; the latter are sometimes called hailstones, from their whiteness and moisture; the lips are cornelians or rubies; the gums, a pomegranate flower; the dark foliage of the myrtle is ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... subject of all his lucubrations, his social physics, they grow distressingly conspicuous. The work extends to six volumes, some of them of unusually large capacity; and by the time we arrive at the last and the most bulky, the style, for its languor, its repetitions, its prolixity, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... the change is of every thing before you? You cannot have yet forgotten how dull every thing appeared to you yesterday; the ground was parched up for want of rain; the flowers had lost their colour, and hung their heads in languor; and, in short, all nature seemed to be in a state of inaction. What can be the reason, that nature has so suddenly put on such a different aspect?"—"That is easily accounted for, Sir," said Anthony, "it undoubtedly is occasioned by the rain ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... swinging of the palm leaves, in the multitudinous burgeoning and bloom about her. It lay in the long-drawn music of the men's voices, in the caressing laughter of the women. It lay in the flaming blushes that, even at table, mantled her face; in the delicious languor that pervaded her limbs and seemed to creep into the innermost marrow of ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... two days afterward, when we were hoisting the main-top-mast stun'-sail, and the Lieutenant of the Watch was reprimanding the crowd of seamen at the halyards for their laziness—for the sail was but just crawling up to its place, owing to the languor of the men, induced by the heat—the Captain, who had been impatiently walking the deck, suddenly stopped short, and darting his eyes among the seamen, suddenly fixed them, crying out, "You, Candy, and be damned to you, you don't pull an ounce, you blackguard! Stand up to that gun, sir; ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... dazzling smile with which he accompanied this poignant question! ... the pitiless, burning ardor he managed to convey into the sleeping brilliancy of his soft, poetic eyes! ... the beautiful languor of his attitude, as leaning his head back easily on one arm, he turned upon the shrinking girl a look that seemed intended to pierce into the very inmost recesses of her soul! The roseate color faded from her cheeks, . . white as a marble image ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... still a pale young gentleman, and had a certain conquered languor about him in the midst of his spirits and briskness, that did not seem indicative of natural strength. He had not a handsome face, but it was better than handsome: being extremely amiable and cheerful. His figure was a little ungainly, as in the days when my knuckles ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... himself (which was a poor return for him), opened his large brown eyes, and saw a beautiful girl looking at him. As their eyes met, his insolent languor fell—for he generally awoke from these weak lapses into a slow persistent rage—and wonder and unknown admiration moved something in his nature that had never moved before. His words, however, were scarcely up ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Mr. Hope-Scott's table-talk was highly agreeable. There was, however, a certain air of languor about him, caused partly by failing health, but far more, no doubt, by that 'softened remembrance of sorrow and pain' which my readers can by this time understand better than any of those who then surrounded him. His conversation, therefore, when the duty of entertaining his ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... comes within the range of all: in reading him we break not in any way with modernity, yet retain our hold upon antiquity. I know nothing more delightful as one grows in years, when the mind retains its subtlety, but is conscious of increasing languor, than to test the one and brace the other by companionship with a book familiar and frequently re-read: we walk thereby with a supporting staff, stroll leaning upon a friendly arm. This is what Horace does for us: coming back to him in our old age, we recover our youthful selves, and are ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... pageants; the brief triumphs gained in fashionable tournaments, will not expel this foe of your higher and nobler life, but only veil, for brief seasons, his presence from your consciousness. When these are past, and you retire into yourself, then comes back the pain, the languor, the excessive weariness. Is it not so, Delia? Is not ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... her arms, in graceful languor, then, throwing herself on the couch, she closed her eyes, but she was not sleeping. A panorama of thoughts and visions passed rapidly through her mind. She saw herself as she had been, a pagan, a worshipper of the gods, with no thought ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... fell silent. For my part, despite the jolting of the vehicle, the lift was grateful to my spent limbs, and the blue sky and the rustling leaves and the near prospect of at last seeing the Baal Shem contributed to lull me into a pleasant languor. But my torpor was not so deep as that into which my new friend appeared to fall, for though as we approached a village another vehicle dashed towards us, my shouts and the other driver's cries only roused him in time ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... 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
... to all his other failures was added a complete disregard of his ideas by the literary public of his own day. He died unknown, save by two or three friends, having never experienced anything but languor, disappointment and obscurity. Under the pseudonym of Clazomene, just before his death, he drew a picture of his own fortune and character which proves that he had no illusion about himself, and which yet contains not a murmur against the injustice of fate nor a ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... constitutional indolence, looked on it as a temptation, and struggled against it, almost envying his cousin his unabated eagerness and untiring energy, and liking to be with him, because no one else so effectually roused him from his habitual languor. His indolence was, however, so much the effect of ill health, that exertion was sometimes scarcely in his power, especially in hot weather, and by the time his brothers' studies were finished each day, he was unfit for anything but to lie on ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... inside the mysterious palace next Wednesday evening," said Lady Fulkeward, closing her eyes with a graceful air of languor, "It will be charming, I am sure, and I daresay we shall find that there is no mystery at all ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... 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
... the picture in an instant. There was no mistaking the glow of the limbs, the midsummer languor of the smile, the magical atmosphere in which the gold of sunlight, of autumn leaves, of amber grapes, seemed fused by some lost alchemy of the brush. As he gazed, the scene changed, and he saw himself in a darkened room with cabalistic hangings. He saw ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... not meet each other's eyes with those mute demands in them any more; but they stole stealthy glances sometimes each to see how the other face looked; what tokens of wear and tear it was showing; taking in at a rapid view the lines of weariness, the marks of anxiety, the faded colour, the languor of spirit which had gradually taken the place of the earlier energy. In word and action they showed none of all this. All the more, no doubt, when each was alone and the guard might be relaxed, a very grave ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... snowy breast was bare to greedy spoil Of hungry eyes which n' ote therewith be fill'd, And yet through languor of her late sweet toil Few drops more clear than nectar forth distill'd, That like pure Orient perles adown it trill'd; And her fair eyes sweet smiling in delight Moisten'd their fiery beams, with which she thrill'd Frail hearts, yet quenched not; like starry light, ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... patches of sky can be seen. The vigorous vegetation and the quivering, deathlike stillness of the old cemetery still reign in this path. In all the country round Plassans there is no spot more instinct with languor, solitude, and love. It is a most delightful place for love-making. When the cemetery was being cleared the bones must have been heaped up in this corner; for even to-day it frequently happens that one's foot comes across some fragment ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola |
