"Lethargical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mrs. Krauss and her niece a genial welcome. She and Mrs. Krauss had known one another for years, but had never been really intimate or close friends. Mrs. Gregory was energetic, modern and vivacious; the other, a somewhat lethargic beauty, was not interested in the burning questions of the day, and had long ceased to take part in local gaieties; but her niece, as Milly said, was charming, and Mrs. Gregory felt immediately inspired by a liking for this pretty, graceful, unaffected ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... well that telepathy remains, as a science, lethargic. Speculation sets before us the prospect of a Life Beyond in which every thought is communicated without the intervention of speech: a state wherein all neighbours and neighbourhoods would promptly be dispersed and few friendships ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... Lady Adela insisted on seeing Mary every day, and was assured that she should be a welcome assistant in case of need; but at present there was no necessity of calling in other help, the form of fever being lethargic with much torpidity, but no violence of delirium, and requiring no more watching than the ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... heats not, whereas conversation teaches and exercises at once.' But what if a book could be constructed on a new principle, so as to produce the effect of conference—of the noblest kind of conference—so as to rouse the stupid, lethargic mind to a truly human activity—so as to bring out the common, human form, in all its latent actuality, from the eccentricities of the individual varieties? Something of that kind appears to ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... rude bravado of youth, in the mere relishing of food at the same table with this tragic father; and though I was well enough used to the coarse, plain diet of the English, I ate scarce more than himself. Dinner was hardly over before he succumbed to a lethargic sleep; lying on one of the mattresses with his limbs relaxed, and his breath seemingly ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the town was not disturbed in any great degree. It was only when a vessel from Mexico, arrived, when the Governor of the province visited them, or when news of an Indian uprising was brought, that the town awoke from its almost lethargic calm. All this Apolinaria found out later. Today, however, the undisturbed quiet of the place suited her best, and she would not have had it otherwise, surprised as she was at first to find it thus, so different from the bustle attending ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... to me, as once at College We argued on the use of knowledge;— 'In old King Olim's reign, I've read, There lay two patients in one bed. The one in fat lethargic trance, 5 Lay wan and motionless as lead: The other, (like the Folks in France), Possess'd a different disposition— In short, the plain truth to confess, The man was madder than Mad Bess! 10 But both diseases, none disputed, Were unmedicinably rooted; Yet, so it chanc'd, by Heaven's permission, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... flames! that toil of ten long years Is finished; and the day desired appears! This happy day with acclamations greet, Bright with destruction of yon hostile fleet. The coward-counsels of a timorous throng Of reverend dotards check'd our glory long: Too long Jove lull'd us with lethargic charms, But now in peals of thunder calls to arms: In this great day he crowns our full desires, Wakes all our force, and seconds ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... through an open bit of tree-blocked prairie land, the moon shining in a clear sky, filling the fields and topping the lake with a silvery effulgence. Mrs. Sohlberg was being inoculated with the virus Cowperwood, and it was taking deadly effect. The tendency of her own disposition, however lethargic it might seem, once it was stirred emotionally, was to act. She was essentially dynamic and passionate. Cowperwood was beginning to stand out in her mind as the force that he was. It would be wonderful to be loved by such a man. There would be an eager, vivid life ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... and still less during severe cold weather. Mr. White (with many other apiarians) is of opinion, that a greater degree of cold than is commonly imagined to be proper for bees is favourable to them in winter, for the bees during that period, are in so lethargic a state, that ...
— A Description of the Bar-and-Frame-Hive • W. Augustus Munn
... Napoleon's reverie that he did not hear Macdonald enter, and the Duke of Vicenza was obliged to inform him of the Marshal's presence. "Sire," said Caulaincourt, "the Duke of Tarantum has brought for your signature the treaty which is to be ratified to-morrow." The Emperor then, as if roused from a lethargic slumber, turned to Macdonald, and merely said, "Ah, Marshal! so you are here!" Napoleon's countenance was so altered that the Marshal, struck with the change, said, as if it were involuntarily, "Is your Majesty indisposed?"—"Yes," answered ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... much under the dominion of Morpheus—and literally walk in their sleep from custom—as the young and inexperienced betray the influence of some more seductive charm. The very bell that called the drowsy student from his bed seemed to rise and fall in accordant sympathy with the lethargic humour that prevailed, tolling in slow and half-sounding notes scarcely audible beyond the college gates. The broken light, that shed its misty hue through the monastic aisle of painted windows and ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... father, had been taken from them. One need have no illusion as to the quality of their note; it lacked distinction, serving only, in its unmodulated vehemence, the drum-like purpose of calling attention to great matters, of reverberating, so one hoped, through lethargic consciousness. ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Mephistopheles himself in disguise; for ever since I signed that diabolical compact you made me, I have been in a state of terror, agitation, misgiving, and misery—and I thank and bless you for it; for these thorns and nettles they lacerate me, and make me live. They break the dull, lethargic agony of ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... the dull and lethargic appearance of the people, I was struck with surprise that they have been able to manage successfully complicated machinery, and to carry on several branches of manufacture profitably. Their machine shop makes and repairs all their ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... twelve years ago, though none has as yet seen the light) resemble those of the older type of oratorio in so far as they include narrative and dramatic incident and religious moralizing; but there is not a trace of the old lethargic taking things for granted, it is all a ringing sacramental challenge to the individual soul. Elgar's work is indeed the typical musical expression of recent Roman Catholic developments; but there are others also. There was ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... Spallanzani kept several frogs in the center of a lump of ice for two years, and, although they became dry, rigid, almost friable, and gave no external appearance of being alive, it was only necessary to expose them to a gradual and moderate heat to put an end to the lethargic state in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... chilling, freezing fiend, Love's mortal bane, Lethargic poison of the moral sense, Killing those high-soul'd children of the brain, Warm Enterprise and noble Confidence, Fly from the threshold, traitor—get thee hence! Without thee, we are open, cheerful, kind; ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... incense is upon their work, and you feel as you read them that you are worshipping in some sort of a temple with strange and solemnising rites. Indeed they insist upon this, and assiduously cultivate a kind of lethargic and quasi-religious manner which is supposed to be very impressive. But their temple is a pagan temple, and their worship, however much they may borrow for it the language of a more spiritual cult, is of the ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... could not get near him. It seemed as if his ear were turned away from her cry. She sank into a kind of lethargic stupor. I think, in order to convey to us the spiritual help we need, it is sometimes necessary—just as, according to the psalmist, "he giveth to his beloved in their sleep"—to cast us into a sort of mental quiescence, that the noise of the winds ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... to rouse his country men from the apathy and indifference which a timid Administration breathed upon it, and from the lethargic slumber into which the pro-Germans drugged it. During four years, his was the one voice in the United States which could not be silenced. He was listened to everywhere. Men might agree with him or not, but they listened to him, and they trusted him. Never for a ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... elect a king, or deliberate on state affairs, had power to nullify the most important acts, and even to dissolve the assembly. A single word, pronounced in the vehemence of domestic strife, or by the influence of external corruption, could plunge the nation into a lethargic sleep. And faction went so far as often to lead to the dissolution of the assembly. The treasury, the army, the civil authority then fell into a state of anarchy. Zamoyski also recommended the emancipation of serfs, the encouragement of commerce, the elevation of the trading classes, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... had found that it could be induced in him by suggestion. She had only to say to him, "Steven, you're thoroughly worn out," and he was thoroughly worn out. She had more pleasure, because she had more confidence, in this lethargic, middle-aged Rowcliffe than in Rowcliffe young and energetic. His youth had attracted him to Gwenda and his energy had driven him out of doors. And Mary had set herself, ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... able to impress upon her comatose mind the awful truth I had come to communicate; yet I had no alternative but to make the attempt; and I accordingly proceeded, with as few words as possible, and in a tone of voice suited to the lethargic state of her mind and senses, to inform her that the medicines she was getting from the hands of her husband were fraught with deadly poison, which was alone the cause of all her sufferings and agonies, and would soon be the means of a painful death. These words I spoke slowly and impressively, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... state Sofia's sensibilities were less benumbed than bound in a palsy of suspense not wholly destitute of dread; beneath the lethargic shallows of consciousness lay soundless deeps troubled ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... in a less sincere society restricts its expression to innuendo or forced politeness, left the rustic Ira only dumb and lethargic. He moved slowly and abstractedly around the room, accenting his slight lameness more than ever, or dropped helplessly into a chair, where he sat, inanely conscious of the contiguity of his wife and the deputy, and stupidly expectant of—he knew not ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... followed him in, and was standing just behind his chair, head hanging, ears lopping, lethargic patience showing in every contour ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... handed him the note and flung himself down in a heap on the straw mattress in the dark corner, where he had first become acquainted with Bones. In a few seconds he was in a deep lethargic slumber. ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... day after day, always in the same feverish lethargic oppression which baffled medical skill, and kept the sick mind beyond the reach of human aid; and so uniform were the days, that her illness seemed to last for months ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gravity was in no respect diminished. The sufferer had ceased to cough and to make restless movements, and had become lethargic; later, he spoke deliriously, or rather muttered, for his words were seldom intelligible. Amy had returned to the room at four o'clock, and remained till far into the night; she was physically exhausted, and could do ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... from Mercury," exclaimed Jim in surprise as he showed me the sketch. "That accounts for a good many things; why they are so lethargic, for one thing. Mercury is much smaller than the earth and the gravity is much less. According to Mercurian standards, they must weigh a ton each. It is quite a tribute to their muscular development that they can move and support ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... frightfully convulsed, breaking into shrieks and shouts. Some of them iterated a single word, as, "doctor," or "help," or "God," or "oh!" commencing with a loud spasmodic cry, and continuing the same word till it died away in cadence. The act of calling seemed to lull the pain. Many were unconscious and lethargic, moving their fingers and lips mechanically, but never more to open their eyes upon the light; they were already going through the valley and the shadow. I think, still, with a shudder, of the faces of those ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... no appeal to slow, lethargic temperaments, but there are in the country tens of thousands of quick, nervous, sanguine, excitable temperaments ready to be acted upon, and their feet will soon take hold on death. For some months and perhaps ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... afternoon I left for Frascati, where I'd promised to spend the Sunday with some friends. I was glad to escape from Gilbert, and by the same token, as I learned that night, I had also escaped from the eyes. I dropped into the same lethargic sleep that had come to me before when their visitations ceased; and when I woke the next morning, in my peaceful painted room above the ilexes, I felt the utter weariness and deep relief that always followed on that repairing slumber. I put in two ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... modest and the oppressed in their obscure retreat. We will set mankind an example of integrity and goodness. We will retrieve the original honours of the wedded state. Methinks, I could rouze the most lethargic and unanimated with my warning voice! Methinks, I could breathe a spirit into the dead! Oh, Matilda, let me inspire ambition into your breast! Let me teach that tender and right gentle heart, to glow with ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... you; and, if they are prevailed upon to pay some attention and respect to your words, they will sound in their ears, but not reach their hearts.... Therefore, to move them, to stir them up, to awaken them from the lethargic sleep with which they are overwhelmed, the thunder of divine wrath and the decree that condemns them to eternal flames must be dinned into their ears: "Depart from me, ye accursed, into everlasting fire" (Matt. XXV.). Make them consider attentively, and represent ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... honourable reputation by conscientiously slumbering through many duties. His tastes are for racing and shooting, but from sheer patriotism he has devoted himself to politics with all the energy of his lethargic manner, which successfully conceals abnormal common-sense. It was he, more than any other man, who saved Ireland from Home Rule, though as an Irish landlord he has not come much to the fore, because his vast English estates ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... back to my recital of what passed between us three. A strange lethargic calm seemed to have fallen upon Paul. He turned to me without even a single trace of the passion which had lit up his face ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... cause of popular education; they stumped the state, much like political campaigners, preaching the strange new gospel in mountain cabin, in village church, at the cart's tail—all in an attempt to arouse their lethargic countrymen to the duty of laying a small tax to save their children from illiteracy. Some day the story of McIver and Alderman will find its historian; when it does, he will learn that, in those dark ages, one of their greatest sources of inspiration ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... background of spiritual and national indifference that the towering figure of Grundtvig must be seen. For it was he, more than any other, who awakened his people from their lethargic indifference and started them upon the road toward a happier day ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... sometimes be as dowff as a sexagenary like myself. If your Royal Highness had seen him dreaming and dozing about the banks of Tully-Veolan like an hypochondriac person, or, as Burton's "Anatomia" hath it, a phrenesiac or lethargic patient, you would wonder where he hath sae suddenly acquired all this ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... till a late hour on the following day, that Catiline awoke from the heavy and half lethargic slumber, which had fallen upon him after the severe and stunning blow he received in the ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... him as their former companion. Some of the minstrels, jealous of his past triumphs, would fain regard him as their foe, but, influenced by one of their number, Wolfram von Eschenbach, they welcome him kindly and ask him where he has been. Tannhaeuser, only partly roused from his half lethargic state, dreamily answers that he has long been tarrying in a land where he found neither peace nor rest, and in answer to their invitation to join them in the Wartburg declares he cannot stay, but must wander on forever. Wolfram, seeing him about to depart once more, then reminds him ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... saw us, and those of them who could darted away like frightened rabbits, each to his own burrow. An old man who was sitting in the warm afternoon sun on the little bamboo platform before his hut was aroused from his lethargic repose by the scampering away of the children. He arose, trembling upon his tottering limbs, all drawn and twisted, and ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... of the literary and scientific progress of this period would be incomplete without some notice of progress in higher education. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge with their numerous colleges had in the eighteenth century lapsed into that lethargic condition which seemed to be the common fate of all corporations. They had to a certain extent ceased to be seats of learning. At Oxford the limitations imposed upon colleges by statute or custom in elections to fellowships and scholarships ensured the mediocrity of the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... all reference to the wreck. Indeed Roderick himself seemed to have no desire to speak about it, and although he had roused himself on the arrival of his relations, he had hitherto lain in such a weak semi-lethargic state that it was feared his head must have received severer injury than was at first supposed. On the morning of the day in question an Indian had arrived with a letter from Mr Gambart of Partridge Bay, which had not tended to ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... any longer, it had been for one whole week in a new atmosphere; it had roused itself; it was not thoroughly awake as yet, but restless and nervous and on the alert—and would not be hushed back into its lethargic state. ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... very easy matter to rouse him: so lethargic and heavy were his slumbers. Regaining his faculties by slow and faint glimmerings, he at length sat upright; and, displaying a very yellow face, a very red nose, and a very bristly beard: the joint effect of which was considerably heightened by a dirty ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... against the violent blow, which had thus suddenly destroyed the child in whom she had not only placed her greatest hopes, but so much of her maternal pride. While engaged in the latter incomprehensible manner, the lethargic Abner turned aside, and swallowing the unwonted emotions which were rising in his own ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... influence that no one can appreciate who has not observed their effects. Children who are slow, dull, and lethargic; who observe but little of what goes on around them; who react slowly to external stimuli; who are, in short, slow to see, to hear, to observe, to think, and to do, may be completely transformed in these ways by the playing of games. The sense perceptions are quickened: a ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... bored. "Why, Felicity, what's the matter? I haven't seen you so completely lethargic for a long time. I thought you kept ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... attitude of complete relaxation. But at the word they fall in again. They take up the slack, as it were, and move on again in that remarkable pas de flexion that is so oddly tireless. It is a difference of method; probably the best thing for men who are Gallic, temperamental. A more lethargic army is better governed probably by rule ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... hardly be believed, that Henry was sincere in subscribing conditions so humiliating; nor can his easy and lethargic temper account for his so readily relinquishing the pretensions of the Princess Joanna, whom, notwithstanding the popular imputations on her birth, he seems always to have cherished as his own offspring. He was accused, ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... Well, sister, since the truth must out, it may do as well now as hereafter; I think, one way to rouse my lethargic, sottish husband, is to give him a rival: security begets negligence in all people, and men must be alarmed to make 'em alert-in their duty. Women are like pictures, of no value in the hands of a fool, till he hears men of sense bid ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... why in slumbers Lethargic dost thou lie? Awake, and join thy numbers With Athens, old ally! Leonidas recalling, That chief of ancient song, Who saved ye once from falling— The terrible! the strong! Who made that bold diversion In old Thermopylae, And warring ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... the lethargic, the brainless, everything that savours of enthusiasm is a craze. The politician who throws himself heart and soul into a political contest is "off his head," is seized with a craze. The philanthropist who builds and endows hospitals and churches is ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... feeling of surprise increased, conquering haste; and in the end, seeing more snakes, I dismounted and approached the largest, when exactly the same thing occurred again, the snake rousing itself and coming angrily at me when I was still (considering the dull lethargic character of the deadliest kinds) at an absurd distance from it. Again and again I repeated the experiment, with the same result. And at length I stunned one with a blow of my whip to examine its mouth, but found ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... pallor from his mother," said John. "I should not like to see any of my children such complete reproductions of either parent as that boy is of her. Family likeness is always strongest among the uncultivated, and among lethargic and stupid people. If you go down into the depths of the country, to villages, where the parents hardly think at all, and the children learn next to nothing, you'll find whole families of them almost exactly alike, excepting ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... all. Smit with the love of honour,—or the pence,— O'errun with wit, and destitute of sense, Should any novice in the rhyming trade With lawless pen the realms of verse invade, Forth from the court, where sceptred sages sit, Abused with praise, and flatter'd into wit, Where in lethargic majesty they reign, And what they won by dulness, still maintain, 40 Legions of factious authors throng at once, Fool beckons fool, and dunce awakens dunce. To 'Hamilton's[84] the ready lies repair— Ne'er was lie made which was not welcome there— Thence, on ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... towers, shone ethereally white in the distance, with a narrow fringe of flashing surf between it and the vivid blue of the Caribbean. It was a thriving place, as the black dots of steamers in the roadstead showed, for of late years American enterprise had broken in upon its lethargic calm. The population was, for the most part, of Spanish stock that had been weakened by infusions of Indian and negro blood, but there were a number of Chinamen, and French Creoles. Besides these, Americans, Britons, and European adventurers had established themselves, and ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... mobility, is in other instances attended by increase in the height of response, as will be seen from the two sets of records which follow (fig. 64). Cold, due to prevailing frosty weather, had made the wires in the cell somewhat lethargic. The records in (a) were the first taken on the day of the experiment. The amplitudes of vibration were 45 deg., 90 deg., and 135 deg.. In (b) are given the records of the next series, which are in every case greater than those of (a). This shows ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose
... uncomfortable feeling that she was being cold-shouldered. That high moralist, Mrs Flint, edged her chair away from the poor lady of set purpose, and Miss Joliffe found herself at last left isolated from all, except Mrs Purlin, the builder's wife, who was far too fat and lethargic to be anything but ignorantly good-natured. Then, in a fit of pained abstraction, Miss Joliffe had made such a bad calculation as entirely to spoil a flannel petticoat with a rheumatic belt and camphor pockets, which she had looked upon as something ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... and vigorous helpmate, and not the weak, if beautiful, toy of man. The Government looks to you as its best aid, for moral sanction is its living soul; it looks to you for higher life, for, unless the heart of love is the throbbing life-pulse of Government, it sinks into a dull, lethargic mechanism. Far above the din of faction, the red tape of cabinets, the rivalry of generals, the strife of politicians, shines the resolve, and pulses the determination of woman, that mankind shall be free. For this, the dusky nation bless her as she moves; the frighted mother torn from her ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of the group, and the increased respect for Sanchez's wisdom, Pereo seemed to fall again into a lethargic slumber. It was late in the evening when he appeared to regain perfect consciousness. "Ah—what is this?" he said, roughly, sitting up in bed, and eying the watchers around him, some of whom had succumbed to sleep, and others were ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... hate campaign which may be all very well when it is intended to rouse the somewhat lethargic Briton to fight against a race of which he knows next to nothing otherwise; but was doubly dangerous when applied to one's fellow-countrymen in the name of a party, and were it employed, say, against Wales or Scotland would soon ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... kingdom. Their mode of existence under the shadow of the Sultan's mercy, but without national representation or protection, has subdued them to a condition of patient endurance, and killed the energy of their nature. They are quiet, fat, and lethargic, reserving their anxieties ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... steadily grew, would have become a maddening torture if he hadn't found refuge in a stony apathy. Sometimes he relieved this by an outburst of bitter or satirical self-exposure, when the mood found anybody at hand for his confidences. But for the most part he lived in a lethargic indifference, mechanically going through the ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... and lethargic eye We should endeavour to efface, And foster visual orbs that vie With those of eagles in its place; While belladonna's artful use An ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various
... has been hypnotized by any of the various processes—the chief are mesmeric passes of the hypnotizer's hands, his eyes fixed into the eyes of his subject, or the latter's on an object so held as to strain his eyes—the first stage of hypnotism is obtained, that of lethargy. In the lethargic state, the subject appears to be sunk in a deep sleep; his body is perfectly helpless; the limbs hang down slackly, and when raised fall heavily into the same position. In this condition all the ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... gate. She turned away; after all, these things were of no account to her. That was one of her agonies; she to whom all things had mattered, the much occupied, the ruler, the indefatigable administrator—she was forced into lethargic quiescence. Every hour was empty for her. She turned away listlessly. The afternoon was drawing to a close. It would be a white world to-morrow, she reflected, for those swollen clouds could not ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... libraries of Queens Borough are situated chiefly in separate towns and at seaside resorts. The children in some of these communities are inclined to be lethargic and lacking in initiative; or, the commercial instinct is abnormally developed in them. Habits of visiting a library for pleasure had not been established except in the case of older girls and boys who regarded it as a ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... he said, "to tell you that all is safe. Also to bid you good-bye. As soon as I can get employment I shall go down to Thorn to stir them up there. They are lethargic ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... multitudinous sounds in the neighbourhood of the water-hole had long subsided into complete silence, that the watchers felt at liberty to cease their vigil and snatch an hour or two of much-needed rest. Meanwhile, Grosvenor remained completely sunk in the lethargic sleep which had resulted from the saturation of ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... dewlap and his two hundred pounds of lethargic beefiness, felt a vague and inward stirring as he finally lifted his head and looked at her. He looked into the shadowy eyes under the level brows. He could see, as he had seen before, that they were exceptional ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... ever spent any considerable part of the year in Edinburgh, except for the purposes of educating their children, or superintending the progress of a lawsuit; and these were not more likely than a score or two of comatose and lethargic old Indians, to make head against the established influences of academical and forensic celebrity. Now Scott's tastes and resources had not much in common with those who had inherited and preserved the chief authority in this provincial hierarchy of ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... it on alternate nights, this night it being the father's regular turn to perform that duty; but his trip of twenty-five or thirty miles had fatigued him so much that it was judged best for his wife to relieve him,—his slumbers being usually so profound as to be almost lethargic, so that, when once fairly asleep, the loudest noises even in the same room would fail to arouse him, and it being feared, therefore, that the little patient might suffer, if left to his care in his present state of weariness. In the same room slept a young negro girl, whose duty ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... lethargic and placid. I could still occupy myself contentedly With bricks and soldiers, art and history, and trouble no one. But there is still that other element, instilled by Hugh—a love of the open air, of struggle with the ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... the windows grew smaller and smaller and were without glass. At the junction of the Kolashin road, from the north, we picked up a jolly Montenegrin with a big dog. He was a driver by profession, and he hurried our lethargic progress a little. Then the front spring broke. It was mended with wire and a piece of tree; when we ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... sitting by her tomb In torpor one dark night; When fitful tremours shook the doom Of cold lethargic settled gloom, That weighed ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... walked, borrowed money and did not return it, and altogether he showed by a series of psycho-physiological acts that he was a living being, possessing a stomach, a will, and a mind—but his soul was dead, or, to be more exact, it was absorbed in lethargic sleep. The sound of human speech reached his ears, his eyes saw tears and laughter, but all that did not stir a single echo, a single emotion in his soul. I do not know what space of time had elapsed. It may have been one year, and it may have been ten years, for the length of such ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... slander, "I will have recourse to the only means that are congenial to guilt: I will compel you to be silent." Freedom in this matter, as in all others, will engender activity and fortitude; positive institution (Godwin's term for law and constraint) makes the mind torpid and lethargic. It is hardly necessary to reproduce Godwin's vigorous arguments for unfettered freedom in political and speculative discussion, against censorships and prosecutions for religious and political opinions. Even were we secure from the possibility ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... as if to bring an experimental proof of this assertion, Lasigue published a report on catalepsy in persons of hysterical tendencies, which be afterward incorporated into his larger work. Among his patients, those who were of a quiet and lethargic temperament, by simply pressing down the eyelids, were made to enter into a peculiar state of languor, in which cataleptic contractions were easily produced, and which forcibly recalled hypnotic phenomena. "One can scarcely imagine," says the author, "a more remarkable ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... approaching swiftly. Meanwhile the transformation of Britain in which Lloyd George had had so large a hand was proceeding. No longer could it be said that the old country was lethargic. In all directions was the elementary strength of this stolid people manifesting itself. Classes were uniting in the determination that there should be limitless spending of energy, of blood, and of treasure, that the harder grew the fight the stronger ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... week, I commenced giving stimulants, selecting, as the chief article, sound old Maderia wine. The effect was soon apparent, in a firmer pulse and a quickened vitality. The lethargic condition in which she had lain for most of the time since the commencement of the attack, began to give way, and in a much shorter period than is usually the case, in this disease, we had the ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... Pierre Lawrence, not troubling further to deceive one so lethargic and simple. "I know that Dormer ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... his two last mistakes, in the campaign against the league, Charles, whether as a soldier or statesman, is seen at his best. When once the drums beat to arms there was an end to irresolution. He had that reserve of energy upon which an indolent, lethargic nature can sometimes at a crisis draw. The Netherlands seemed threatened from east to west; yet in perfect calm he ordered his agitated sister Mary to watch her frontiers, but to send every man and gun that could be spared under Buren to the front. Taking advantage of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... is so comfortably regulated at the present day that Robin Greve, looking back at his trip by air from Croydon Aerodrome to the big landing-ground outside Rotterdam, acknowledged that he had more excitement in his efforts to stir into action a lethargic Dutch passport official in London, so as to enable him to catch the air mail, than in the smooth and uneventful voyage across the Channel. He reached Rotterdam on a dull and muggy afternoon and lost ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... fall of the rhythmus, re-establishing its languid repose. The frequent use of half notes induces a predominance of the minor key, and this, with the constant recurrence of the rhythmical fall, imparts to Semitic and Hindoo music that melancholy, lethargic uniformity which expresses in a striking manner the benumbed energies and undeveloped spirit of the people among whom it is found. When a race has substituted habit and custom for national feeling, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... the Princesse Elizabeth, by whom Barnave had been much esteemed ever since the journey from Varennes, were both inconsolable. I really believe the Queen entirely owed her instantaneous recovery from that deadly lethargic state, in which she had been thrown by her grief for the destined sacrifice, to the exuberant goodness of the King's heart, who instantly resolved to compromise his own existence, to save those who had forfeited theirs for him and ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... inalienable rights is not so strange to us; on the contrary, it is an every-day affair in most of our lives. This particular manifestation of it is all that is new or surprising. We Americans and English look upon it as dangerous, but the Germans, more mystical and far more lethargic about liberty than are we, are not greatly disturbed by it. The secular press, largely in Jewish hands, and the new socialist members of the Reichstag, jealous of their prerogatives but unable to assert them, criticise and even scream their abhorrence and unbelief; but I am much ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... heart as the centre of all organic functions. A healthy natural excitement will cause the heart to vibrate more firmly and evenly; but an unhealthy excitement, like fear or anger, will cause it to beat in a rapid and uneven manner. Contrarily, despondency, or a lethargic state of mind, causes the movement of the blood to slacken. The happiness of love is thus the best of all stimulants and correctives for a torpid circulation, and it expands the whole being of a woman like the blossoming of a flower in the sunshine. From the time of her betrothal, ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... son," he would say. "I've got to make some speeches myself. Repeat that, now. 'Sins of omission are as great, even greater than sins of commission. The lethargic citizen throws open the gates to revolution.' How do ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Plummer and I had yielded to Mayes's threats so far as to undergo the "initiation" he proposed, at the time we were helpless in his hands—of that I have little doubt. I cannot suppose that he would have wasted much time over me, once I had fallen lethargic. When Hewitt burst in he would have found me lying dead, with the Red Triangle on my forehead. It would have saved Mayes a lot of noise and ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... she rose, crossed the room toward a low dressing table, when at the same time one of the several doors of the apartment opened, admitting the jestress, Jacqueline, whose long, flowing gown of dark green bore no distinguishing mark of the motley she had assumed the night before. The dreamy, almost lethargic, gaze of the princess rested for a moment upon the ardent eyes of the maid who stood ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... the comtesse—all was still;—she opened it and went in. The comtesse, exhausted by long watching, had fallen asleep in her chair, with her little girl in her arms. The child had sunk into a dull lethargic state never to be broken. Alas! Monsieur—alas! the little one was dead! Agathe ran and called me. I came in. What a spectacle!... Which of us should arouse the unhappy comtesse? or should we disturb her? Were it not better gently ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... heard of that Irish clerk who used to snore so loudly during the sermon that he drowned the parson's voice. The old vicar, being of a good-natured as well as a somewhat humorous turn of mind, devised a plan for arousing his lethargic clerk. He provided himself with a box of hard peas, and when the well-known snore echoed through the church, he quietly dropped one of the peas on the head of the offender, who was at once aroused to the sense of his duties, and uttered ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... of a young man, pest-stricken and thought to be dead, who was placed with the other dead for burial. He exhibited signs of life, and was taken back to the pest-hospital. Two days later he entered a lethargic condition simulating death, and was again on his way to the sepulcher, when he once ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... doorway, squatting on their heels, as their custom is—grave, monotonous, motionless, the smoke from their pipes almost the sole sign of life. For the Flemish peasant is a strangely inert creature, his work once done—as languid and lethargic as the canal that passes by his door. There was one cottage into which the boy would often peep on his way home from school, the home of seven brothers and one sister, all old, toothless, worn—working together in the daytime at their ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... zeal in support of the American cause, as well as his signal service, gave him such just pretnesions. The intelligence which he brought gave new impulse both to Congress and to the State Legislatures. The lethargic slumbers into which they seemed to be sinking yielded to resolutions of the most ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... rouse him from lethargic dump, He tweak'd his nose with gentle thump, Knock'd on his breast, as if't had been To raise the spirits lodg'd within; They, waken'd with the noise, did fly From inward room to window eye, And gently op'ning lid, the casement, Look'd out, but yet with ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... which seeks to enforce the violated laws and to restore the American political and economic system to its pristine purity and vigor. From their point of view certain abuses have become unwholesomely conspicuous, because the average American citizen has been a little lethargic, and allowed a few of his more energetic and unscrupulous fellow-citizens to exploit for selfish purposes the opportunities of American business and politics. The function of reform, consequently, is to deprive these parasites of their peculiar ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... that she was a very handsome woman, and that her physical type—that of the more lethargic and heavily built Neapolitan—suggested very happily the mad and melancholy Queen. She had superb black hair, eyes profoundly dark, a low and beautiful brow, lips classically fine, a powerful head and neck, and a complexion which, ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... away until he could see only the roundness of her check's contour and the curling softness of the hair on her neck. Her voice carried a burden of lethargic weariness. "No, I didn't fancy it ... I knew it ... I've ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... no sleep that night in the Stuart apartments. Mr. Stuart was pronounced out of danger and able to travel, but he still lay in that lethargic trance—not speaking at all, and seemingly not suffering. Next day Charley started ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... a startling cry from the masthead, so welcome to a whaler's ears, of "There she spouts!" and in a moment the crew, hitherto so lethargic, were aroused into action. Some flew to the falls, to lower a couple of boats, others sprang up the shrouds, to observe the position of the whale; and soon afterwards the boats, of which the first and second mates ...
— The Voyage of the "Steadfast" - The Young Missionaries in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... Ippenburen, he was quite lethargic; his hand fell down as if lifeless, and his tongue hung out of his mouth. He gave, however, signs enough of life by continually crying out, as well as he ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... the robber chief roused himself from his lethargic state, and carefully scanned my face with his lack-lustre eyes. I met his gaze without flinching, and perhaps the bushranger read pity in my looks, for he merely uttered a sigh, and I heard ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... James as unfit to rule his dominions as any child in swaddling clothes, or as any maniac who was grinning and chattering in the straw of Bedlam. That course must therefore be taken which had been taken when Henry the Sixth was an infant, and again when he became lethargic. James could not be King in effect: but he must still continue to be King in semblance. Writs must still run in his name. His image and superscription must still appear on the coin and on the Great Seal. Acts of Parliament must still be called from the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... blessing and every mercy been taken as a matter of course, and every pleasure been enjoyed with a thankless forgetfulness of the hand from which it flowed? If such has been the case, let it be so no longer; but awake and rouse ye from your lethargic slumber, be true to yourselves, and remember that you are responsible beings, and will have to account for all the time and talents misspent and misapplied. Reflect seriously on the true end of existence ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... would not try to deny it," answered Jacob, in his calm, lethargic way, still regarding Cuthbert with a look of admiration and curiosity, somewhat as a savage regards a white man, scarce knowing from moment to moment what his acts will be. "Yet for all that I would warn thee ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... ahead;" its inhabitants are ever changing; its population is composed of all nations, with a very large proportion of Germans, French, and Irish. But their national characteristics, though not lost, are seen through a medium of pure Americanism. They all rush about—the lethargic German keeps pace with the energetic Yankee; and the Irishman, no longer in rags, "guesses" and "spekilates" in the brogue of Erin. Western travellers pass through Buffalo; tourists bound for Canada pass through Buffalo; the traffic of lakes, canals, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... taken an oath of fidelity to their king, whose interest is inseparable from that of his people, but had sworn to support the ruinous projects of abandoned men (of whatever faction) must rouse the most lethargic, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... watched by his bedside. Now he slept, now he woke up fitfully, now he fell into a lethargic repose. The doctor and Sir Everard kept watch in an adjoining chamber, within sight of that ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... Austria plumped her brutal ultimatum upon little Serbia. There were no vivid debates, no pronounced current of opinion one way or the other, not much public interest in the prolonged discussions at the Consulta; just a lethargic iteration of the belief that sooner or later war must come with its terrible risks, its dubious victories. Given the Italian temperament and the nearness of the brink toward which the country was drifting, one looked for flashes of fire. But ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... Slow and lethargic in his ordinary movements, in an emergency he was quick as a panther, never failing to get ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... woman was standing up. In awakening from her lethargic sleep, before even regaining full consciousness, in turning upon her side and raising herself on her elbow, she had extinguished three of the candles which burned near the bed. Then, gaining strength, she got ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... having worked out its destruction, Mr Boffin next appeared in a cab with Rollin's Ancient History, which valuable work being found to possess lethargic properties, broke down, at about the period when the whole of the army of Alexander the Macedonian (at that time about forty thousand strong) burst into tears simultaneously, on his being taken ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... honor and enlightenment, on the other, by pursuing one of two paths which are now laid before us for our consideration and choice; may we not, therefore, hope that our people will awaken from their lethargic slumbers, and seek for themselves that future course of conduct which will elevate them from their present position and place them on an equality with the other more advanced races of mankind—may we not hope that they will consider seriously the self-evident proposition ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... feet,—put hand to forehead,—stare around. The twilight has deepened apace; only by glancing upwards can you distinguish a definite light. You are uncertain and lethargic in your movements, as though the dawning in you of a worthy resolution had impaired the evil principle of your vitality. You are as a man nourished on poison, who suddenly tastes an antidote,—and finds ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... "Yet they are lethargic enough at times," returned Sir Richard, pointing to a recumbent form lying unconcernedly on the platform a few feet from their open window. "Look at that fellow sleeping there—he doesn't care in the least what goes on around him—and many times in the street one ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... part of Milton; and in many generations of readers, however alive and awake with malice, a corresponding forgetfulness not less astonishing. Two readers only I have ever heard of that escaped this lethargic inattention; one of which two is myself; and I ascribe my success partly to good luck, but partly to some merit on my own part in having cultivated a habit of systematically accurate reading. If I read at all, I make it a duty to read truly and faithfully. I profess allegiance ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... the hero of the prophetic age, twilight would more appropriately have drawn her soft veil over nature, birds would have begun their vespers, clouds would have put on their changing, pensive colors, while cadences of music, breathed by the winds, would have shed lethargic influences into the scene. Inspiration does not trifle with us by really meaning such a preparation for a sleep of ages, and yet informing us, in so many words, that "the Lord would take up Elijah into heaven by a whirlwind." No; going to heaven is not going to sleep, and going to sleep ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... Vassili Petrovitch, which his lethargic, sober-minded friend regarded as indicating temporary insanity in the speaker, represented fairly the mental condition of very many Russian nobles at that time, and were not without a certain foundation. The idea about a secret clause in the Treaty of Paris was purely ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... the reaction from the stormy excitements of the Great Awakening, nothing had seemed to arouse the New England churches from a lethargic dullness; so, at least, it seemed to those who recalled those wonderful days of old, either in memory or by tradition. We have a gauge of the general decline of the public morals, in the condition ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... it into place, and lowered by a screw, the cushions intended to receive his head, and got the lethargic trunk and skull of the Artillery doctor well-placed for his purpose, he took out a roll of sticking-plaster and a great piece of lint, and laid them on the table, and unlocked his box, which was a large one, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Foreign serpent.—Ver. 693. This is, most probably, the asp, a small serpent of Egypt, which is frequently found represented on the statues of Isis. Its bite was said to produce a lethargic sleep, ending in death. Cleopatra ended her life by the bite of one, which she ordered to be conveyed to her in a basket of fruit. Some commentators have supposed that the crocodile is here alluded to; but, as others have justly observed, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... persistently lethargic condition evidently alarmed him. He inspected the contrivance that had been applied by the field attendant to check the flow of blood, which was simply a cord passed around the leg outside the trousers and twisted tight with the assistance of a bayonet sheath, with ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... of sentience departed; for the consciousness and the sentiment remaining supplied some of its functions by a lethargic intuition. I appreciated the direful change now in operation upon the flesh, and, as the dreamer is sometimes aware of the bodily presence of one who leans over him, so, sweet Una, I still dully felt that you sat by my side. So, too, ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... dawns on a man recovering from chloroform, there swept over their lethargic Eastern brains the simultaneous idea that Curley Crothers and Joe Byng were the real quarry; and—again like men recovering from chloroform—they did not quite know what to do. Should they slay, there was the ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... tragic philosophy of Heyst's father—that fatalism which is beyond hope and beyond pity—overshadows, like a ghastly image of doom seated upon a remote throne in the chill twilight of some far Ultima Thule, all the events, so curious, so ironic, so devastating, which happen to his lethargic and phlegmatic son. It is this imaginative element in his work which, in the final issue, really and truly counts. For it is a matter of small significance whether the scene of a writer's choice be the uplands of Wessex or the jungles of the tropics, as long as that ironic and passionate ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... of bitterness was now full to overflowing. Crawling out of the stream, he sank down on the bank in a species of lethargic torpor, from which, he awakened next morning in a raging fever. Delirium soon rendered him insensible to his sufferings. The sun rose like a ball of fire, and shone down with scorching power on the arid plain. What mattered ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... concentrated every thought for every want of Rome. Indefatigably occupied, he inspected, ordained, regulated all things; in the city, in the army, for peace, or for war. But he was feebly supported, and those he employed were lukewarm and lethargic.' Still his arms prospered. Place after place, fortress after fortress, yielded to the Lieutenant of the Senator: and the cession of Palestrina itself was hourly expected. His art and address were ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... state of utmost confusion, as we have pulled all our offices down and are going to rebuild and alter them. I am personally in a state of utmost confusion also, for my cruel wife has persuaded me to leave off snuff for a month; and I am most lethargic, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... poetry. The bird never sang to her but one song, the flowers or trees spake but one language, and her skies never brightened except in color. She came out strong on the Catholic saints, and would toss you up a cleanly-shaven Aloysius, sweetly destitute of expression, or a dropsical, lethargic Madonna that you couldn't have told from an old master, so bad it was. Her faculty of faithful reproduction even showed itself in fanciful lettering,—and latterly in the imitation of fabrics and signatures. Indeed, with her eye for beauty ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... and lower and lower sank the hopes of her people. Their momentary joy under the influence of such events as the Morgan reception was like the result of a stimulant or narcotic, quickly over and leaving the body lethargic and dull. But this dullness had in it no thought ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... condition of feeling around him. The glamour of book-lore will spread over it, and hide it from his sight. He has a noble enough mission, at all events: to raise the standard of educational culture in a city that hardly knows the meaning of the term; and if any glimpse should come to him of the lethargic inhumanity around him, he can afford to let it pass as a glimpse—his look being fixed on the sacred heights which the scholar's feet ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... broader, truer fiction is disputed by the slow racial mind: and opposed by the marketers of literature on grounds of visible self-interest, as well as lethargic conservatism. ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... spoke almost in a whisper, her lips, close to the ear of Mrs. Dexter. The words, or at least some of them, had the effect to rouse the latter from her half lethargic condition. Lifting her face from the bosom of her friend, she looked ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... winter's skates, with the old boat, and with the family pony. So the zealot finds the gymnasium insufficient long before he has learned half the moves. To some temperaments it becomes a treadmill, and that, strangely enough, to diametrically opposite temperaments. A lethargic youth, requiring great effort to keep himself awake between the exercises, thinks the gymnasium slow, because he is; while an eager, impetuous young fellow, exasperated because he cannot in a fortnight draw himself up by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... circumstances, the same blow will evoke responses of different amplitudes. Early in the morning, after the prolonged inactivity of a cold night, we find the plant inclined to be lethargic, and its first answers correspondingly small. But as blow after blow is delivered, this lethargy passes off, and the replies become stronger and stronger. A good way to remove this lethargy quickly, is to give ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... battle is sending the blood boiling through the great arteries of the beast, and his accustomed lethargic existence is galvanised into a new fierce life. You can see that he is longing for the battle, with an ardour that would have distanced that of a Quixote, and, for the first time, you begin to see something to ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... level plain. Terribly wracked by the ordeal but safe they pronounced her. The visiting physician occasionally omitted her in his daily round. But convalescence was more trying than the struggle with the fever. The lethargic hours seldom brought either sleep or rest. Beset by nervous fears, the collective suffering of the giant building weighed upon her, and she begged ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... knew. This is the only way for a man to keep alive. When I've got a hoe in my hand—" He could not quite explain it. He had always had a flow of words on paper, but since he had believed his life was finished his tongue had been more and more lethargic. It would not obey his brain because, after all, what could the brain report of his distrustful heart? Lydia had a moment of bitter mortification because she had not seemed to understand. Anne understood, she knew, and had tried, with infinite patience, to help on this queer ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... say to myself daily, "Semper ego auditor tantum? Nunquam ne reponam?" "Will no one wake up this unhappily lethargic mass, and by forcing the weapons of knowledge and reason into their hands provoke them and enable them to meet the enemy at the gate?" Every other interest, philosophic, romantic, religious, fell away from me for the time. Wherever I was, whether in London or ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... excess of anguish had till now forbidden to flow. Paul mixed his tears with theirs; and nature having thus found relief, a long stupor succeeded the convulsive pangs they had suffered, and gave them a lethargic ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... intact, the Serpent had overfed her with pommes de luxe. On her return home—where the restoration of her child might have helped matters, but it doesn't know who she is and refuses to part from its foster-mother—we find her lethargic, off her feed, indifferent to the claims of menial toil, and clamorous (as I have shown) for her rights ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... cat was nowhere in the tiny cabin and it had no concealed hiding place. To make doubly sure Dane secured the panel before they carried Tau to his bunk. The Medic had blacked out again, passed into the lethargic second stage of the malady. At least he was out of the pain which appeared to be the worst symptom of ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... far from Richmond. It is some ten or fifteen miles from Murfreesboro in North Carolina, and about twenty-five from the Great Dismal Swamp. Up to Sunday, the twenty-first of August, 1831, there was nothing to distinguish it from any other rural, lethargic, slipshod Virginia neighborhood, with the due allotment of mansion-houses and log-huts, tobacco-fields and "old-fields", horses, dogs, negroes, "poor white folks", so called, and other white folks, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... the institution, but the results, medical and moral, of the superintendent. For the behoof of both houses a museum of natural history was formed, and proved a considerable attraction in stormy weather, or to lazy or lethargic observers. While in such a climate it was inevitable that indoor objects of interest should be supplied, attempts to draw those under treatment from the deteriorating atmosphere of seclusion were ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... saw the carriages pass over the bridges, and the boats glide through the arches. "Here I can live and breathe," he said to himself. "It was impossible for me to accomplish anything in that dull little hole of Aulnettes! How could one work in such a lethargic atmosphere?" ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... a transformation, of putting immediate social convenience in the first place, and respect for truth in the second, are seen, as we have said, in a distinct and unmistakable lowering of the level of national life; a slack and lethargic quality about public opinion; a growing predominance of material, temporary, and selfish aims, over those which are generous, far-reaching, and spiritual; a deadly weakening of intellectual conclusiveness, and clear-shining moral illumination, and, lastly, of a certain stoutness ...
— On Compromise • John Morley |
