"Sluggishness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my money," exclaimed McTeague, jumping up briskly. There was an activity, a positive nimbleness about the huge blond giant that had never been his before; also his stupidity, the sluggishness of his brain, seemed to be ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... appears to gain in momentum, in proportion as it advances to a greater distance from the point at which the impulse was given. The discoveries which at no remote period have been made, would, if prophesied of, have been laughed to scorn by the ignorant sluggishness of former generations; and we are equally ready to regard with incredulity the discoveries yet unmade, which will be familiar to our posterity. Indeed every man of a capacious and liberal mind is willing to admit, ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... love his cause. When that cause prospers they rejoice; when it declines they are hurt. When clouds and darkness are round about the church it is time to double our diligence and pray to God for help. Circumstances, over which no human being can have control, sometimes cause sluggishness in the character of a church. The hearts of God's people are often deeply affected by witnessing the indifference and carelessness of the people, and still more affected by a falling off in their numbers. When the godly ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 8, August, 1880 • Various
... Breed's Hill practically ejected him from Boston, enforced his halt before Brooklyn, delayed him at White Plains, explained his hesitation at Bound Brook, near Somerset Court-House, in 1777, as well as his sluggishness after the battle of Brandywine, and equally induced his inaction ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... offered the first welcome to so many eminent personages as here presented themselves in honor of his solemn festival. He was as yet invisible; the most favored of the guests had not beheld him. This sluggishness on Colonel Pyncheon's part became still more unaccountable, when the second dignitary of the province made his appearance, and found no more ceremonious a reception. The lieutenant-governor, although ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... found, but not in great numbers, in the dry districts to the north of Ceylon, where it frequents the trees, in slow pursuit of its insect prey; but compensated for the sluggishness of its other movements, by the electric rapidity of its extensible tongue. Apparently sluggish in its general habits, the chameleon rests motionless on a branch, from which its varied hues render it scarcely distinguishable in colour; and there patiently awaits the approach ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... through being in some way awakened by them to the consideration of those things, the intelligible species of which it receives from the separate principles: even this seems an insufficient explanation. For this awakening does not seem necessary to the soul, except in as far as it is overcome by sluggishness, as the Platonists expressed it, and by forgetfulness, through its union with the body: and thus the senses would be of no use to the intellectual soul except for the purpose of removing the obstacle which the soul ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... sharp translations of songe-creux, as Montaigne calls himself (Florio, i. 19, p. 34). 'I am given rather to dreaming and sluggishness.' ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... to do it but the one. (Calls from the door.) Come in here from the shed, Simon Niland, if the sluggishness is banished from your ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... barbels, evidently different from those of the other side of the range. I caught some trout yesterday evening, it is a most beautiful fish, I was particularly struck with the size of the eye, its prominence, and expressive pupil, in opposition to the sluggishness ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... whole soul to gain, caring nothing for the means by which he amasses it; some men's minds are disturbed by envy, some blinded by ambition till they are ready to fling themselves on the sword's point. In addition to this, one must reckon sluggishness of mind and old age; and also the opposites of these, restlessness and disturbance of mind, also excessive self-esteem and pride in the very things for which a man ought to be despised. I need not mention obstinate persistence in wrong-doing, or frivolity which cannot remain constant ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... gripe or weaken, but are a gentle effective laxative which stimulates the natural action of the bowels. They are excellent in conjunction with the Vegetable Compound; especially in those cases when the complaints that are peculiar to women are attended with constipation and sluggishness of the liver. In such cases these Pills enable the Vegetable Compound to do its work more speedily and effectively. The enormous sale of Lydia E. Pinkham's Liver Pills has been attained purely on their ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... it be true that all these common impressions are delusions strewn in the way of anti-slavery men to impair the effect of their exertions, it by no means follows that they should be induced by them to assume a moderation which encourages sluggishness. No great movement in human affairs can be made without zeal, energy, and perseverance. It must be animated by a strong will, and tempered by a benevolent purpose. Such is the shape which the anti-slavery reform is gradually assuming. ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... Thoughts," thrown on paper, and communicated only to two or three, "On the new kind of Tactics necessary with those Austrians and their Allies," who are in such overwhelming strength. "To whose continual sluggishness, and strange want of concert, to whose incoherency of movements, languor of execution, and other enormous faults, we have owed, with some excuse for our own faults, our escaping of destruction hitherto,"—but had better NOT trust ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Merthyr, and Emilia were in the carriage, well muffled up, with one window open to the white mist. Emilia was eager to thank her friend, if only for the physical relief from weariness and sluggishness which she was experiencing. She knew certainly that the dim light of a recovering confidence in herself was owing, all, to him, and burned to thank him. Once on the way their hands touched, and he felt a shy pressure from her fingers ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... were very simple, and he was in his manners like a rustic. To see him in a drawing-room you would not think the man a genius, nor even a bright specimen of his kind. Some of his friends remonstrated with him, and tried to rouse him from his sluggishness in society. He always replied, "I am not ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... a hot day in July when he set forth on his quest. He addressed the policeman at the corner, and was given the name of the street and the number. He hurried through the heat, irritated by the sluggishness of the passers-by, and at last found himself in front of a red building. The windows were full of such general announcements as—Working Men's Peace Preservation, Limited Liability Company, New Zealand, etc. The marriage office looked like a miniature bank; there were desks, and a brass railing ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... Sebastian admired when ten, eleven and twelve o'clock was come, they saw neither the old lord, nor any of the new guests. But when the coachman missed his coach and horses, he was in a greater maze, and thought some body had stolen them, and accusing himself of sluggishness and debauchery, that made him not able to hear, when the coach went out, he forswore all drinking: but when the house-keeper and he met, and discoursed about the lady and the rest, they concluded, that the old gentleman and she were agreed upon the matter; and being ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... wrung from her by such a cruel agony, that fatal bond made between her and Stephen Whitelaw, Ellen Carley's life seemed to travel past her as if by some enchantment. Time lost its familiar sluggishness; the long industrious days, that had been so slow of old, flew by the bailiff's daughter like the shadows from a magic-lantern. At the first, after that desperate miserable day upon which the hateful words were uttered that were to bind her for ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... nature, that she helps understanding but in a few, when the most part of mankind are inclined by her thither, if they would take the pains; no less than birds to fly, horses to run, &c., which, if they lose it, is through their own sluggishness, and by that means they become her ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... had much of the sluggishness of the Saxon, and were often impatient of a temper, both of devotion and energy, so much beyond them. If one was absent from the night service, the Bishop would take no notice till it was over; but when all the others were gone back to bed, he would wake the defaulter, ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... inflation of currency might have been temporarily concealed by its rapid passage from hand to hand. But with no such demand—with only the daily necessities of the household and of the person to relieve—the plethora of these promises to pay naturally resulted, first in sluggishness, then in a complete ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... kind of remark that you consider clever. As a matter of fact, it is simply an evidence of your mental sluggishness. My thoughts had passed on, by a perfectly natural transition, from volcanoes to powder magazines, which are things that sparks do set off. Any one with even a moderate amount of what I may call mental agility would have followed me without any difficulty, and refrained ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... head is of signal advantage when there is persistent headache, or a tendency of blood to that part. In cases of acute sciatica, congestion of the liver, spleen, and kidneys, accompanied by a general sluggishness and torpidity of the portal circulation, frequently very painfully indicated by internal or external hemorrhoids, the hot sitz bath gives ...
— Buxton and its Medicinal Waters • Robert Ottiwell Gifford-Bennet
... lotus, and was in danger of forgetting that I was ever to depart, till Mr. Boswell sagely reproached me with my sluggishness and softness. I had no very forcible defence to make; and we agreed to pursue our journey. Macleod accompanied us to Ulinish, where we were entertained by the sheriff of ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... Must I tour with you, as before?" she asked in dismay, for she was conscious of increased coarseness of body and sluggishness ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... most important of all remedies—is to keep the bowels open. Sluggishness of the intestinal tract greatly increases the tendency to dizziness and nausea. During the attack, it is advisable not to attempt to brush the teeth, gargle, or even drink cold water. While you are yet ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... been for two days in the mire. I was disturbed, and then I was sluggish. Oh, the sluggishness of my nature! ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... very easily been stirred out of the peculiar sluggishness, which enthralls and bewitches melancholy people. He had offered merely a passive resistance, however, not an active one, to his friend's schemes; and when the appointed hour came, he yielded to the impulse which Kenyon failed not to apply; ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... other's forehead, dreading wrinkles there; and at our temples, whence the hair is thinning away too early; and at the sunken eyes, which no longer shed a gladsome light over the whole face. I involuntarily peruse him as a record of my heavy youth, which has been wasted in sluggishness for lack of hope and impulse, or equally thrown away in toil that had no wise motive and has accomplished no good end. I perceive that the tranquil gloom of a disappointed soul has darkened through his countenance, where the blackness of the future seems to mingle with the shadows of the ...
— Monsieur du Miroir (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... awakes confused, but imputes his mental sluggishness to a hearty supper or "a bad night". A swollen tongue, blood-stained pillow, and urinated bed arouse suspicion as to the real cause, suspicion which is confirmed by a seizure during the day. He is more fortunate ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... they get their little feet settled in a dark, still corner than they are summoned out of it, to sunlight bright and strong. Miss Nancy lives with a bedridden father, who has grown peevish through long patience; can it be that slow, senile decay which has roused in her a fierce impatience against the sluggishness of life, and that she hurries her plants into motion because she herself must halt? Her father does not theorize about it. He says, "Nancy never has no luck with plants." ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... of the classes nearest the land, squires and farmers and parsons, are disqualified respectively by self-interest, by religious prejudice that scruples at anything that may lead to the mental enfranchisement of the poor, and by sheer sluggishness of intellect joined to a blind selfishness without parallel in any class of English society. The land and the labourer have hitherto been left to them. And we want a ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... effected by the ice. We are now beginning to see the end of the North American fauna; and if we do not move promptly, it will become a matter of history and of museums. The bison is on the danger line; if it survives the fatal effects of its natural sluggishness when abundantly fed, it still runs the more insidious but equally great danger of inbreeding, like the wild ox of Europe. The chances for the wapiti and elk and the western mule and black-tail deer are brighter, provided ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... sollozo sob. sombra shadow. sombrero hat. sombrio somber, gloomy. son m. sound. sonar to sound. sondear to sound. sonreir(se) to smile. sonrisa smile. sonar to dream. soplar to blow. soplo blowing, puffing. sordo deaf; secret; silent. sorna sluggishness, affected slowness. sorprender to surprise. sorpresa surprise. sosegar to calm. sospecha suspicion. sospechoso suspicious. sostener to sustain. Sr. senor. su, his, her, its, their, your. subir to mount, climb, go up; bring up; increase. subito sudden. subordinado ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... Now again had sluggishness taken possession of him, and with it came those promptings of the flesh which, but a few months ago, he easily subdued, but which the lapse of time had once more made perilous. To any who should have ventured ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... to itself. And here again we ought to consider certain septic processes. The refuse of the food should travel along the bowels at a certain rate, but if owing to sluggishness of their movements or to defects in the quality and amount of their secretion, the refuse is too long retained the masses become unduly dry, and, constantly shrinking in volume, are no longer capable of being urged along the tube at the ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... comers, even the most fastidious, found it the pleasantest of residences. It is certain, that freedom from household routine, variety of character and talent, variety of work, variety of means of thought and instruction, art, music, poetry, reading, masquerade, did not permit sluggishness or despondency; broke up routine. There is agreement in the testimony that it was, to most of the associates, education; to many, the most important period of their life, the birth of valued friendships, their first acquaintance ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... day he complained of the German: "It is as a Prussian, a Hanoverian, a Wuertemberger, a Bavarian, or a Hessian, rather than as a German, that he is disposed to give unequivocal proof of patriotism." The present ambitious German Emperor said, in 1899, at Hamburg: "The sluggishness shown by the German people in interesting themselves in the great questions moving the world, and in arriving at a political understanding of those questions, has caused me deep anxiety." What kind of material had the nation-makers to work with! What a long, disappointing task ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... sooner produce a solution. Having settled this basically important issue they turned their attention to investigating the slower progress of the grass to determine whether it was permanent or temporary and whether its present sluggishness could be turned to good account. As a sort of side project—perhaps to show the wideness of their scope—they undertook as well to study the reasons for the failure of the wartime inoculation of the steppes as contrasted ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... handling of his cane gracefully indolent, the almost habitual twisting of his chestnut-brown mustache attractively self-satisfied. His clothing is handsome, of distinctive materials, and tailored to the day. So much for an observing estimate. The critical observer would note more. He would detect a sluggishness in the responses of the pupils, as the eyes listlessly travel from face to face, producing an effect of haunting dulness. Mumbling movements of the lips, a slightly incoordinate swaying of the body, might speak for short periods of ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... product arising from the increase of stock costs him no labor. The little plowing he does is for the purpose of raising low-priced provisions suitable for his own nourishment, such as buckwheat, radishes, etc. His enjoyment consists only of his own idleness and sluggishness, hoping for a good chestnut year and doing nothing voluntarily but procreate;" unable to hire farming hands ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... plunge me in the lowest Hell of Hells? Will not the lightning's blast destroy my frame? Will not steel drink the blood-life where it swells? 5 No—let me hie where dark Destruction dwells, To rouse her from her deeply caverned lair, And, taunting her cursed sluggishness to ire, Light long Oblivion's death-torch at its flame And calmly mount Annihilation's pyre. 10 Tyrant of Earth! pale Misery's jackal Thou! Are there no stores of vengeful violent fate Within the magazines of Thy fierce hate? No poison in the clouds to bathe a brow That lowers on ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... their lives, long after he is dead; to wrest from mortality the spirit, the mind, and the character with which in his day he perchance put perversity and corruption to flight, established uprightness, aroused sluggishness, and uplifted dejection, and to deposit these, as his best legacy to posterity, in the spirits of his survivors, in order that, in their turn, they may again bequeath them equally adorned and augmented? What noble-minded man does not wish, by act or thought, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... it shows itself so entirely unimaginative and inane that it is no wonder that the charlatan in religion, politics, and education rampages over the world through a perfect maelstrom of bouquets. Nothing impersonal ever seems to stir the sluggishness of their "souls." They feel nothing that does not hit them straight between the eyes. They never perceive the tragedy behind the smile, the wrong behind the justice of the law, the piteousness and helplessness of men and women. The price of currants stirs them ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... to remain as hard as before, but the liquid turned brown, and Omar drank it on the chance that it contained some of the nourishment from the berries. He was amazed at how it refreshed him, enlivened his sluggishness, and raised his drooping spirits. Later, when he returned to Mocha, his salvation was considered a miracle. The beverage to which it was due sprang into high favor, and Omar himself was ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the bows. Water splashed on board, the engine hissed as the spray fell on it, and the floorings got wet. One could see the foam on deck wash about the headledge forward as the bows went up with a sluggishness that was the consequence of carrying an extra ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... feeling and interests among the samurai through habit, intercourse, and a living contemporary literature. These minor obligations do not earmark more than an hour in the day. Yet they serve to break down isolations of sympathy, all sorts of physical and intellectual sluggishness and the development of unsocial preoccupations of ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... seemed unable to tell even that the physician was a doctor, but knew the date. When asked how she came to Ward's Island, she said "By ambulance." The physical condition presented nothing of note, except for a certain sluggishness of ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... Pennsylvania, sufficiently demonstrates, if any demonstration is needed, that a boy's luck and pluck are equal to anything. It had been raining the proverbial pitchforks all day, and the hydrogen oozed into the gas-bag with even more than its accustomed sluggishness. The curiosity of a country crowd was not easily damped, however, and the basket was finally attached and Master Johnny stepped on board. The aerostat sensibly refused to consider the proposition for an ascension, although urged by the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... of forces that could be secretly and swiftly strengthened by drafts from the south and west, they would expose themselves to the gravest risks. The apologists of Abdul-Kerim claim that such was his design, and that the signs of sluggishness which he at first displayed formed a necessary part of a deep-laid scheme for luring the Russians to their doom. Let the invaders enter Central Bulgaria in force, and expose their flanks to Abdul-Kerim in the Quadrilateral, and to Osman Pasha at Widdin; then the Turks, by well-concerted moves against ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... of this or any other work of yours; in fact, I wish that we should communicate about them. I have been thinking yet more on the relations of politics and art. I do think seriously on consideration that not only my own sluggishness, but vital fact itself, must set to a great extent a veto against the absolute participation of artists in politics. When has it ever been effected? True, Cellini was a bravo and David a good deal like a murderer, ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... explained by this spirit of sluggishness, sunken to actual torpor, which a single fact will illustrate. When the authorities were talking of a highroad between Paris and Toulouse, it was natural to think of taking it from Vierzon to Chateauroux by way of Issoudun. The distance was shorter than to make it, as the road now is, through Vatan, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... found a soil in which to grow. I, as well as Virginia, conceived dream rooms, sketched them in water-colors, created them in wood, and paint, and drapery. I had escaped the stultifying effects of parasitism, rescued body and brain from sluggishness and inactivity, successfully shaken off the shackles of society. Freedom of act and speech was mine; independence, self-expression—yes, all that, but where—where ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... rested the stamp of a certain sluggishness: everything—nature and people—lived awkwardly, lazily; but in this laziness there was a certain peculiar grace, and it would seem that behind the laziness was concealed a huge force, an unconquerable force, as yet unconscious of itself, not ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... of the Tepee River, now returned to its normal sluggishness with the rapidity of mountain-fed streams, a man sat on his heels in a clump of spruce. There, two miles above the construction camp, the canyon fell away more gradually to the old river bottom, and the trees, encouraged by a century of immunity from floods, crept ever downward until they pressed ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... had been a vigorous resumption of the Church- question in the Commons, in consequence of the Report of a Committee on obstructions which had arisen to the Presbyterian settlement. There was great sluggishness all over the country in establishing elderships and classes; returns from counties were deficient; even in London the Provincial Synod had not yet met! To remove these obstructions various orders were passed, the Lords concurring (April 20-29). The most important of these was ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... the man at the door, "at the ways of this house?" "I never wondered more at anything I ever saw," said Finn. "I will tell you the meaning of them, so," said the man. "As to the giant you saw first," he said, "having the squealing pig in the prongs of his fork, Sluggishness is his name; and the girl here beside me that was shoving him along is Liveliness, for liveliness pushes on sluggishness, and liveliness goes farther in the winking of an eye than the foot can travel in a year. The old man there beyond ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... the pores of the skin open, and the whole circulatory system in a healthy condition, and you will have no need of bear's grease (alias hog's lard). Where there is a tendency in the hair to fall off on account of the weakness or sluggishness of the circulation, or an unhealthy state of the skin, cold water and friction with a tolerably stiff brush are probably the best ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... 681; inertness &c 172; obstinacy &c 606. lull &c (cessation) 142; quiescence &c 265; rust, rustiness. idleness, remissness &c adj.; sloth, indolence, indiligence^; dawdling &c v.. ergophobia^, otiosity^. dullness &c adj.; languor; segnity^, segnitude^; lentor^; sluggishness &c (slowness) 275; procrastination &c (delay) 133; torpor, torpidity, torpescence^; stupor &c (insensibility) 823; somnolence; drowsiness &c adj.; nodding &c v.; oscitation^, oscitancy^; pandiculation^, hypnotism, lethargy; statuvolence heaviness^, heavy ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... who knows the sluggishness of humanity to good, the impregnable intrenchments of vested wrongs, and the long reaches of time needed from one milestone of progress to the next, the task of setting up a Christian social order in this modern world ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... to her. The miserable nervous energy that once sustained her had given place to healthy activity, to bustling, restless, overflowing gayety. She had no trace now of the weakness, the dejection, the prostration, the supineness, the sluggishness that formerly distinguished her. The heavy, drowsy feeling in the morning was a thing of the past; she awoke feeling fresh and bright, and alive in an instant to the cheer of the new day. She dressed in haste, playfully; her agile fingers moved of themselves, and she was amazed to be so bright ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... labored with much earnestness, everything was soon ready, and the canoe speedily left the shore. The Kalamazoo is not in general a swift and turbulent stream, though it has a sufficient current to carry away its waters without any appearance of sluggishness. Of course, this character is not uniform, reaches occurring in which the placid water is barely seen to move; and others, again, are found, in which something like rapids, and even falls, appear. But on the whole, and more especially in the part of the stream where it was, the canoe had little ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... urged the deep responsibility of the nation to the world and to all posterity worthily to fulfil the great object of the testator. I only lamented my inability to communicate half the solicitude with which my heart is on this subject full, and the sluggishness with which I failed properly to pursue it." "Mr. Van Buren," Mr. Adams added, "received all this with complacency and apparent concurrence of opinion, seemed favorably disposed to my views and willing to do right, ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... bound to ask what is most likely to be the next outlet for Mr. CHURCHILL'S ebullient activity. Remembering that bust upon his mantelpiece it is hard to say. There are some who consider that, prevented by the sluggishness of our times from the chance of commanding an army in the field, he may turn his strategic mind at last to the position of Postmaster-General. If he does there can be no man better fitted than he to make ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... thousand more Robbers than we have; indeed that all these wretches are not thieves must give us either a very high Idea of their Honesty or a very mean one of their Capacity and Courage." And, leaving for a moment legislative reform, Fielding delivers a vigorous attack on the national sluggishness of public spirit which helped to render robbery a fairly safe profession. With such sluggishness his ardent nature had very little sympathy. "With regard to Private Persons," he protests, "there is no Country I believe in the World where ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... was a mild one. It was more: it was affected with the usual Italian sluggishness and indolence,—the dolce far niente; and accordingly it winked at innumerable ongoings, so long as these did not attract public attention. Bibles and religious Protestant works were introduced secretly, the Government knowing ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... was treated by the victor in the field, and in what manner he was afterwards received in England. Four hundred years have gone over us; but I believe we are not materially changed since that period. Thanks to our sullen resistance to innovation, thanks to the cold sluggishness of our national character, we still bear the stamp of our forefathers. We have not (as I conceive) lost the generosity and dignity of thinking of the fourteenth century; nor as yet have we subtilized ourselves into savages. We are ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... should be narrated in a more leisurely manner,—sometimes in a greater number of words than are absolutely necessitated by the sense alone,—the words being arranged, furthermore, in a rhythm of appreciable sluggishness. In "Markheim," the dealer is murdered in a single sudden sentence: "The long, skewerlike dagger flashed and fell." But, later on in the story, it takes the hero a whole paragraph, containing no less than three hundred words, ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... these doors did hang were of the olive tree, that fat and oily tree, to show that they do never open with lothness or sluggishness, as doors do whose hinges want oil. They are always oily, and so open easily and quickly to those who knock at them. Hence you read, that he that dwells in this house gives freely, loves freely, and doth us good with all his heart. 'Yea,' saith he, 'I will rejoice ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... burgher companies of certain districts, and send them to occupy certain positions that had been determined upon. They mustered slowly and incompletely, and some not at all; and scarcely had they arrived when several left the posts which had been assigned to them. The king, being informed of this sluggishness, sent for the regiment of the French Guards, and for four thousand Swiss cantoned in the outskirts of Paris; and he himself mounted his horse, on the 12th of May, in the morning, to go and receive them at the gate of St. Honord. These troops "filed along, without fife or drum, towards the cemetery ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... how Nature could ever find space For the weight and the levity seen in his face: There's thought and no thought, and there's paleness and bloom, And bustle and sluggishness, pleasure and gloom. ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... straight on, is clear evidence of the mental condition caused by that situation. There can be no doubt that in a blizzard a man has not only to safeguard the circulation in his limbs, but must struggle with a sluggishness of brain and an absence of reasoning power which is far more ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... sloth and licentiousness. All discipline vanished. The Germans and Gauls entered into the vilest habits of the city, and by their disorderly lives brought on an epidemic disease which swept thousands of them away. Vitellius, lost in sluggishness and gluttony, wasted the funds of the state on his pleasures, and laid severe taxes to raise new funds. "To squander with wild profusion," says Tacitus, "was the only use of money known to Vitellius. He built a set of stables for the charioteers, and kept in the circus a constant spectacle ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... objection in question is merely put forward as a pretext for opposition to all efforts in the direction I have indicated. Indolent and incompetent persons form an immense majority: and, under certain circumstances, incompetency and sluggishness unite, and ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... to ends; he concentrates into a dialogue of a few sentences an amount of feeling and character which it would take real men some hours to express; he imparts a rapidity to the stream of incident quite unlike the sluggishness of our daily experience. In this sense he does not copy what we see, but shows us what we can not see for ourselves. Our complaint against him is that the aspect of things which he shows us is merely the outward and natural, as opposed to the inner or ideal. ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... the inglorious campaign of the Thierache. Edward returned to Brussels "like a fox to his hole," and each side denounced the other for failing to keep the appointed tryst. The chivalry of the fourteenth century saw something ignoble in the sluggishness of Philip; but no modern soldier would blame him for his inactivity. Without striking a blow, he obtained the object of his campaign, for the enemy abandoned French territory. Had Edward been fully confident of victory, he could easily have forced a battle by advancing ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... sluggishness for Don Marcelo. It seemed to him that the messenger who had been despatched for him would never arrive. He paid scarcely any attention to the affairs which the Chief was so courteously showing them—the caverns which served the ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the bountiful supply of all the sciences, even the clever teaching in very many material crafts,—if you could but see the mere shadow of all these, surely, overpowered by their arguments, you would throw off your sluggishness and generously enter into the aforesaid enjoyments; and your eyes, grown old in old sights would renew their ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... was no sign of lethargy or sluggishness anywhere about it. The people were active and alert. Only a magical and uncanny softness lay over them ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... before all things, I think it desirable to enliven him by pleasant conversations, by vocal and instrumental music, to which it will not be amiss to add dancers, that their movements, figures, and agility may stir up and awaken the sluggishness of his spirits, which occasions the thickness of his blood from whence the disease proceeds. These are the remedies I propose, to which may be added many better ones by you, Sir, my master and senior, according to ...
— Monsieur de Pourceaugnac • Moliere
... the President was the double of what was necessary; but failed, as is the general opinion, through the insubordination of Armstrong, who would never believe the attack intended until it was actually made, and the sluggishness of Winder before the occasion, and his indecision during it. Still, in the end, the transaction has helped rather than hurt us, by arousing the general indignation of our country, and by marking to the world of Europe the Vandalism and brutal character of the English government. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... which the French exerted over all the northern regions of America by the possession of Louisbourg, a place naturally strong, and new-fortified with some slight outworks. They hoped to surprise the garrison unprovided; but that sluggishness, which always defeats their malice, gave us time to send supplies, and to station ships for the defence of the harbour. They came before Louisbourg in June, and were for some time in doubt whether they should land. But the commanders, who had lately ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... on a promontory washed on either side by the Potomac and Shenandoah, with all the natural advantages of abrupt rocks, feathery hanging woods, and broken water. Thenceforward there is little to interest or to compensate for the sluggishness of pace and frequency of delays. The track winds on always through the same monotony of forest and hill, plunging into the gorges and climbing the shoulders of bluffs, with the audacity of gradient and contempt of curve that marks the handiwork ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... the uncle and niece (any of the first three of the great novelists mentioned above would have made chapters of this); the dramatic and risky passages at the castle en Barrois; the contrast of Katherine's passion and Gerard's sluggishness; and the fashion in which this latter at once brings on the lout's defeat and saves the lady from danger at his hands—all this is novel-matter of almost the first class as regards incident, with no lack of character-openings to boot. Nor ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... of diseases are owing to the excessive promptitude, or sluggishness of the constitution to voluntary exertions, as well as to the quantity of desire or of aversion. This susceptibility of the system to voluntary motions is termed voluntarity, to distinguish it from volition, which is the exertion of desire or aversion; these diseases will be ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... have no more that they can do: but I will forewarn you whom you shall fear; him who, after he has killed, has power to destroy both body and soul in hell." Let a man fear him, the destroying devil, and fear therefore cowardice, disloyalty, selfishness, sluggishness, which are his works, and to be utterly afraid of which is to be truly brave. God grant that we of the clergy may remember this during the coming war, and instead of weakening the righteous courage and honour of our countrymen by instilling into them selfish ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... General Denbigh was the youngest of three sons. His seniors, Francis and George, were yet bachelors. The death of a cousin had made Francis a duke while yet a child, and both he and his favorite brother George, had decided on lives of inactivity and sluggishness. ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... seems to have gained advantages over him, when the stimulus of a heavy task was removed. In his meditations, there are many complaints of his "sluggishness" and resolutions of amendment. "A kind of strange oblivion has spread over me," he says in April, 1764, "so that I know not what has become of the last years, and perceive that incidents and intelligence pass over me without leaving ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... on varying load. The temperatures registered under a steady load test can be obtained with great reliability, but on a varying load, with constantly changing temperatures at all points, this is impossible. This is, of course, owing to the natural sluggishness of the temperature-recording instruments, of whatever class they belong to, in responding to changes of condition. As a matter of fact, the possibility of obtaining correctly the entire conditions in a system running under ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins
... horse has good feet, is mild-tempered, sufficiently swift, is willing and able to endure fatigue, and is in the highest degree obedient will probably give least trouble to his rider, and contribute most to his safety in military occupations. But horses that from sluggishness require a great deal of driving or, from excess of mettle, much coaxing and care, afford plenty of employment to the rider, as well as much apprehension ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... acid stomach, or fermentation, grow shorter and shorter until they are of daily occurrence; accompanying this fermentation there is gas distention of the bowels, and this inflation in time interferes with their motility and weakens them so that sluggishness is succeeded ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... we were still detained, for the people who attend at the ferries have a stupid kind of sluggishness in their manner, which is very provoking when you are in haste. At present I did not feel it, for, scrambling up the cliffs, my eye followed the river as it rolled between the grand rocky banks; and, to complete the scenery, they were covered with firs and ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... how Nature could ever find space For so many strange contrasts in one human face: [1] There's thought and no thought, and there's paleness and bloom And bustle and sluggishness, pleasure ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... here and there like great white-winged dragon-flies, as they were wafted swiftly one moment by some passing whiff of air, or lying still on the surface of the sea as the wind fell and they were temporarily becalmed, until another gust came from the hills to rouse them out of their noontide sluggishness. ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... industrial partnership(332) offers a great field for that kind of improvement which is worth more than a mere increase of wages, and seems to make it possible to reach the heavy weight of sluggishness among the lower and more hopeless strata of society. And it is possible that it will stir in them the powers which may afterward find employment in the harder problems ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... is as bad as that drowsiness out on the shore. I must do something! I had no right to promise!" She ran to the window and tore aside the little curtain. Her heavy coat fell from her, and with it seemed to drop the weight and burden that had oppressed her. The sluggishness of mind and body was gone. She was herself again! "No promise must hold me from my Cap'n Daddy!" she whispered in a ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... and of our enemies, nor of anything that would persecute and suppress Thy holy Word or hinder Thy kingdom; and grant that we may bear with patience and overcome whatever is to be endured on that account, lest our poor flesh yield or fall away from weakness or sluggishness." ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... the alimentary canal are allowed to accumulate for a considerable period and there is sluggishness throughout the various parts of the small and large intestines, poisons of all kinds are generated and absorbed into the circulation, thus creating conditions ranging all the way from a feeling of ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... tardiness of locomotion? Goldsmith, who would say something without consideration, answered "yes." I [Johnson] was sitting by, and said, "No, Sir, you do not mean tardiness of locomotion; you mean, that sluggishness of mind which comes upon a man in solitude." Chamier believed then that I had written the line as much as if he had seen me write it.' [Birkbeck Hill's 'Boswell', 1887, iii. 252-3.) It is quite possible, however, that Goldsmith meant ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... one reason of the African's dulness is that until he enlists, that is until he is from twenty-four to thirty years of age, he has never exercised his mind in any way; and the long years of mental idleness have produced a sluggishness which makes it extremely difficult for him to acquire anything new that requires thought. After enlisting, he picks up a species of unintelligible English, but that is the most that he can do. It is pitiful to see these men, some of them now old, struggling day after day, according to regulation, ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... against the assaults of the devil." "That ye may stand," saith he. Ye must stand in this battle, and not sit, nor lie along; for he that lieth is trodden under foot of his enemy. We may not sit, that is, not rest in sin, or lie along in sluggishness of sin; but continually fight against our enemy, and under our great Captain and Sovereign Lord Jesus Christ, and in his quarrel, armed with the armour of God, that we may be strong. We cannot be strong unless we be armed of God. We have no power of ourselves to stand against the assaults ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... courts—had confessedly proved inadequate. The prelates were in great part non-residents, and could not from a distance narrowly watch the progress of the objectionable tenets in their dioceses. One or two of their number were accused of culpable sluggishness, if not of indifference or something worse. The question naturally arose, What new and more effective procedure could ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... following upon her visit to the house on the Heath had brought unnatural quietness. Physical suffering troubled her, but the energies of her mind were for the time expended; the aching of her brow involved thought in sluggishness. She did not shun her parents, and even talked with them in a listless way; solitude would have been irksome to her just now. For once she felt glad of her mother's way of spending Sunday; to sit inactive was all that she desired. It was understood that her ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... an excessive quantity of food are first felt by an uneasiness and oppressive fulness of the stomach. This is succeeded by a general distension or fulness of the blood-vessels, particularly about the head; general lassitude; sluggishness and dulness of intellect, with a great aversion to mental effort. These sensations are accompanied by a general uneasiness throughout the whole system, with more or less pain. It also brings into exercise every unholy temper. It makes people fretful, impatient, and peevish. The best ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... were just those that were destined to defeat this aim. Where he sought to intimidate, he only aroused a more stubborn resistance: where he should have allayed national fears, he redoubled them. He did not understand our people: he saw not that, behind our official sluggishness and muddling, there was a quenchless national vitality, which, if directed by a genius, could defy a world-wide combination. If, instead of making secret compacts with the Czar and trampling on Prussia; if, instead of intriguing with ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... facts to-day is to play into the hands of our enemies, as we have been steadfastly doing during the past thirty years. The British and their allies are being overcome less by German skill and cleverness than by their own sluggishness, narrowness of outlook and love of ease. As the German professor, whose utterances I have already quoted, tersely put it: "My confidence is founded above all else on our enemies' incapacity for organization." In truth, it is not inborn incapacity to which we owe ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... counterblast—Ha, by my deathless soul—what's doing yonder?" he cried, and leant to peer across at the chase, and well he might. For suddenly (and marvellous to behold) this ship that had sailed so heavily seemed to throw off her sluggishness and, taking on new life, to bound forward; her decks, hitherto deserted, grew alive with men who leapt to loose and haul at brace and rope and, coming about, she stood towards us and right athwart our course. So sudden had been this manoeuvre ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... long winter evenings. Already the room was darkening toward the early December twilight, and he felt that his life was darkening in like manner. He was no longer eager to hear what had occurred. The mental and physical sluggishness which possessed him was better than sharp pain; he would learn all soon enough—the recognition, the beginning of a new life which inevitably would drift further and further from him. His best hope was to get through the time, to ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... a blow upon the crest that Athelstane also lay senseless on the field. Having achieved this double feat, for which he was the more highly applauded that it was totally unexpected from him, the knight seemed to resume the sluggishness of his character, returning calmly to the northern extremity of the lists, leaving his leader to cope as he best could with Brian de Bois-Guilbert. This was no longer matter of so much difficulty as formerly. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... shake off all this dull sloth, away with sluggishness, yes, and get back that old gift of guile of yours! Save your master: mind you don't do the same as other servants that use their wily wits ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... Johnson acquired learning, and stopped short from indolence at a certain point. Lessing assimilated it, and accordingly his education ceased only with his life. Both had something of the intellectual sluggishness that is apt to go with great strength; and both had to be baited by the antagonism of circumstances or opinions, not only into the exhibition, but into the possession of their entire force. Both may be more properly called original ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... the hollow of his arm, he cast an indolent but enquiring glance at the stranger, though neither of them expressed the least curiosity to know whence he had come or why he was there. This forbearance, however, proceeded only in part, from the sluggishness of their common temper; for long and frequent experience in scenes of a similar character, had taught them the virtue of discretion. The trapper endured their sullen scrutiny with the steadiness of one as practised as themselves, and ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... employed it, along with ammoniacum and galbanum, in hypochondriacal disorders, obstructions of the abdominal viscera from a sluggishness of mucous humours, and a want of due elasticity of ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... in the amount of natural sleep he enjoys, but in the time idly spent in bed when sleep has ceased, and in misplaced and mistimed sleep, which is not due to any genuine craving of the body for rest, but simply to mental sluggishness, to lack of ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... never occurred to him that it was his business, and not theirs, to put Mons in a condition to stand a siege. The public voice loudly accused him of having sold that celebrated stronghold to France. But it is probable that he was guilty of nothing worse than the haughty apathy and sluggishness ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and dullness, as well as bodily exhaustion, is attested by universal experience. A torpid condition of the liver, one of the most inveterate of chronic derangements, is indicated by sullenness, melancholy, despondency, loss of interest in the affairs of life, sluggishness, etc., and the ultimate tendency of this morbid state is towards suicide. A broad and deep development of the middle lobe of the brain, shown by a fullness under the chin, and of the adjacent portion ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... is well understood—general sluggishness of all the functions, stiffness of the joints, more or less so-called rheumatism, loss of strength, wasting tissues, broken sleep, failing hearing and eyesight, capricious appetite, and so on. But the psychology of old age ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... Thomson was fervid, but not active: he would give, on all occasions, what assistance his purse would supply; but the offices of intervention or solicitation he could not conquer his sluggishness sufficiently to perform. The affairs of others, however, were not more neglected than his own. He had often felt the inconveniencies of idleness, but he never cured it; and was so conscious of his own character, that he talked of writing an eastern tale ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... mothers and teachers that they can lighten their own labors, add to their efficiency, and help their children by being on the watch for mouth breathing, for strained, crossed, or inflamed eyes, for decaying teeth, for nervousness and sluggishness. Years ago, when I taught school in a Minnesota village, I had never heard of adenoids, hypertrophied tonsils, myopia, hypermetropia, or the relation of these defects and of neglected teeth to malnutrition, truancy, sickness, and ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... new-born baby, but with her faculties all restored, and her fever gone, when spring buds were blooming out, and spring birds sang merrily, Molly answered to her father's sudden questioning that she felt unaccountably weary; that her head ached heavily, and that she was aware of a sluggishness of thought which it required a ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... dissolve, so that practically little of it is digested. It serves a mechanical purpose in the digestive tract by helping to fill the organs and dilute the real food. If fibrous, it acts as an irritant and overcomes sluggishness of the intestines known as constipation. The outer coats of cereals are an example of coarse cellulose, as used in brown bread ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education
... 'cello bow heads that the greatest resemblance is seen. But even here one can easily note the unwonted massiveness, almost amounting to clumsiness, in that of Dodd; while the Tourte is full of lightness, strength and vigour. There is more or less of sluggishness observable in most of the preceding bows, but the ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... sluggishness of mind and body the next day. It is very dangerous to risk them before a hard match. The moving pictures immediately before playing tennis are bad, owing to the eye strain caused by the flicker of the film and the strong light of the camera. ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... our constant and careful study. We shall find in it much to rebuke the shallowness, the selfishness, the dulness, and the sluggishness of our prayers; and we shall also find in it a model of instruction, and the inspiration of all true petition and intercession. The Christian who learns from the prayers of the Apostle will learn some of the deepest secrets of the ...
— The Prayers of St. Paul • W. H. Griffith Thomas
... hardly formed Dr. Stiles's acquaintance before he discovered that, at that time, he was a man of one idea. And this one idea had for years brought upon his head much good-natured ridicule. For Dr. Stiles had his own explanation for much of the mental and physical sluggishness that prevailed in the rural sections of the Southern States. Yet he could not mention this without exciting uproarious laughter—even in the presence of scientific men. Several years previously Dr. Stiles ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... But his slant eyes contracted until scarcely more than the eye-lashes were revealed. However inactive he may have been up to now, Donaldson knew that an end had come to his sluggishness. When Chung left the room there was determination in every wrinkle of his loose ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... the Foreign Portfolio shall ply Kaunitz and the Kaiser, in another style than did poor Delessarts; whom indeed we have sent to our High Court of Orleans for his sluggishness. War-minister Narbonne is washed away by the Time-flood; poor Chevalier de Grave, chosen by the Court, is fast washing away: then shall austere Servan, able Engineer-Officer, mount suddenly to the War Department. Genevese Claviere sees an old omen realized: passing ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... understood it all. The craft was deeper in the water than before; she was gradually, almost imperceptibly, settling down, and already the rise and fall of her upon the swell was becoming characterised by that heavy sluggishness of movement that marks a water- logged ship. The scoundrels had scuttled her—I could understand it all now—and were taking away the boats in order that the miserable passengers and crew might by no possibility escape to tell ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... bidden. The shock of excitement thus prolonged was overcoming the sluggishness of her nerves. The mother could not refrain from calling in a neighbor who was passing by the open door, and the news of Mina's partial restoration spread through the building. When Phillida got back from the Diet Kitchen with some savory food, the doorway was blocked; but the people stood ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... voices of my sisters; 'come, come with us!' But I felt in my limbs that peculiar sluggishness which one perceives in dreams when one wishes to hasten. My chamber-window flew open before the tempest, and impelled by a strong curiosity I looked out. The sun stood opposite to me, pale, watery, without beams; but the whole firmament ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer |
