"Languid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fact that the sky is brighter than the earth is not a precious truth unless the earth itself be first understood. Despise the earth, or slander it; fix your eyes on its gloom, and forget its loveliness; and we do not thank you for your languid or despairing perception of brightness in heaven. But rise up actively on the earth,—learn what there is in it, know its color and form, and the full measure and make of it, and if after that you can say "heaven is bright," it will be a precious truth, but not till then. Giovanni Bellini ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... patient snores loudly, and his sleep is frequently broken by sudden night terrors. Owing to the disturbed sleep, to imperfect oxygenation of the blood, and to frequent attacks of nasal and bronchial catarrh, the child's nutrition is interfered with, and he becomes languid and ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... Peters moved about the house, making certain arrangements so rapidly as to startle the languid Hili-lites. In ten or fifteen minutes they had removed to the cellar all the necessary furniture of a comfortable room, including a bedstead for Lilama, and another for her two maids. Three lamps were taken to the cellar, lighted, and oil sufficient for a ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... disappointed Olneyites knew of Mrs. Richard Markham, who, as Eunice reported, had breakfasted in bed, and was still lying there when the one bell in Olney rang out its summons for church. She did not pretend to be sick—only tired and languid, and indisposed for any exertion; and then it was much nicer taking her breakfast from the little tray covered with the snowy towel which Richard brought her, than it was to go down stairs and encounter "all those dreadful people," as she mentally styled Richard's ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... He had had his bad half-hour before McLean came; had had to stand by, wordless, and see Harmony trying to smile, see her dragging about, languid and white, see her tragic attempts to greet him on the old familiar footing. Through it all he had been sustained by the thought that a day or two days would see the old footing reestablished, another woman in the house, life again worth the living and Harmony smiling ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... towards the whole unhappy race of negroes. (Cheers.) My lords, we fill up the incasare of injustice by severely executing laws badly conceived in a still more atrocious and cruel spirit. The whole punishments smell of blood. (Hear, Hear.) If the treadmill stop in consequence of the languid limbs and exhausted frames of the victims, within a minute the lash resounds through the building—if the stones which they are set to break be not broken by limbs scarred, and marred, and whaled, they are summoned by the crack of the whip to ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... languid interest David watched Lighthouse Harry and Colonel Beamish screw a heavy tripod to the deck and balance above it a quick-firing one-pounder. They worked very slowly, and to David, watching them from the lee scupper, ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... still weak and languid, and again the monks left him in Matilda's care. As he listened to an old ballad sung by her sweet voice, he found renewed pleasure in her society, and was conscious of the influence upon him of her beauty. For three days she nursed him, while he watched her with increasing fondness. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... action of light upon the vapour of this liquid is, at first, more languid than upon iodide of allyl; indeed many beautiful reactions may be overlooked, in consequence of this languor at the commencement. After some minutes' exposure, however, clouds begin to form, which grow in density and in beauty as the light ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... ankles; and is hardly more than an attitude, a fixed gesture, like the Eastern women whom one sees passing, with oblique eyes and mouths painted into smiles, their faces curiously traced into a work of art, in the languid movements of a pantomimic dance. The soul behind those eyes? the temperament under that at times almost terrifying mask? Salammbo is as inarticulate for us as the serpent, to whose drowsy beauty, capable of such sudden ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... Lordship that I had made the wager, and could not in honour withdraw, though the horse had killed a dozen grooms. But already he seemed to have lost interest. He gave a languid pull at the velvet tassel on his bell-rope, ordered the wine; and, being informed that his anteroom below was full of people, had them all dismissed with the message that he was engaged upon important affairs. He told Mr. Fox he had ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... brow continually puckered in a fretful frown. She was not old, Nellie decided—not much over thirty, at the very most; but oh, how unlike Aunt Judith! What a contrast there was betwixt that listless, languid form on the sofa, and the quiet figure on the low chair near! Nellie turned with a positive sigh of relief to rest her eyes on Miss Latimer's peaceful countenance and wonder at the marvellous ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... mendicancy who never tried, How little of your almsman me you know! Your little languid hand in mine you slide, Like to a child says—'Kiss me and let me go!' And night for this is fretted with my tears, While I:-'How soon this heavenly neck doth tire Bending to me from its transtellar spheres!' Ah, heart all kneaded out of honey and fire! Who bound thee to a body ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... like those whom the prophet describes, "Cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from amongst us. Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of thy way!" If your closets seldom witness your private devotions, if your moments in retirement are languid and uninteresting—your religion can have no hold on your heart; and the reason why your religion has no hold on your heart is because you have no love of God. There are some whose religion sits easy and delightful upon them; its acts and functions are free and lively: there are ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... kind offer was declined with thanks: and perhaps he was not sorry; being weak and languid and in no danger of suffering from ennui with horses to ride and plenty of books ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... in the woods, where the breathless boughs Hung heavy and faint in a languid drowse, And the ferns were curling with thirst and heat; Glared down on the fields where the sleepy cows Stood munching the ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... leeward spread the freshening deep Purple beneath a rosy gleam. From a high, mist-engirdled steep Thin anthems to the orient beam Came faint as languid waves of sleep That lap the lonely strands ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... Twiggs, before January was quite past, was an event that shed light and joy in at least two dwellings. It seemed as if she belonged to all of us, and as she increased in size and beauty it was hard to say who, among us all, was most proud of her. If we had ever felt any languid hours before, we could have none now—she was the pet, the darling, the joint property of ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... sternly. She rose to go, and Belinda also, with languid response of motion, as if Paulina Maria ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... in first, bundled mysteriously in her furs and holding a glass of wine jelly as a conventional symbol of the role of Lady Bountiful which she had for the moment assumed. Claire could almost fancy how conspicuously she had contrived to carry this overworked badge of the humanities, and the languid drawl of her voice as she explained to ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... refreshed. A kind of wicked selfish prosperity perhaps, as if we had grabbed everything, fixed everything, down to the last lovely object for the last glass case of the last corner, left over, of my old show. That's the only take-off, that it has made us perhaps lazy, a wee bit languid—lying like gods together, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... very languid and stunning, amidst her luxurious surroundings, received M. Paul with the patronizing indifference that bored rich women extend to tradespeople. But presently when he explained that he was a detective and began to question ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... new arrival with languid interest. Smith walked stiffly over toward the saloon to size up the men before he should enter it. The middle man of the group, with a thin red face and very blue eyes, was chewing tobacco in an unpromising way. ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... exclaimed, in a languid voice, leaning back in his easy-chair. "Ah! dear D'Artagnan! see how regularly I live and how easy I am here. We have experienced the ingratitude of 'the great,' as you ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... leaf it becomes clasped, but is released sooner than when a nitrogenous solid is clasped; yet it is difficult (except with raw meat and flies) to be sure of the result, owing to differences in vigour of different plants. The last experiments which I tried before my plants became too languid are very curious, and were tried by putting microscopical atoms on the gland itself of single hairs; and it is perfectly evident that an atom of human hair, 1/76000 of a grain (as ascertained by weighing a length of hair) in weight, causes conspicuous movement. I do not believe (for ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... felt that the wonderful sunshine was the dominant feature of that arid region. It was like white gold. It had burned its color in a face he knew. It was going to warm his blood and brown his skin. A hot, languid breeze, so dry that he felt his lips shrink with its contact, came from the desert; and it seemed to smell of wide-open, untainted places where sand blew and strange, pungent plants gave a bitter-sweet tang to ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... contrary, he felt languid and scarcely able to do the duties that devolved upon him ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... dress. They were under thirty, and in them elegance and dissipation were equally evident. Lord Muchross, a clean-shaven Johnnie, walked at the head of the gang, assuming by virtue of his greater volubility a sort of headship. Dicky, the driver, a stout commoner, spoke of drink; and a languid blonde, Lord Snowdown, leaned against the chimney-piece displaying a thin figure. The others took seats and laughed whenever Lord ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... gave a hearty squeeze to some buxom girl, while the fire roared a heartier welcome still. Then was there a dance indeed—no soft swish of lace and muslin, but the active swing of linsey and simple homespun; no French fiddler's bows and scrapings, no intricate lancers, no languid waltz; but neat shuffling forward and back, with every note of the music beat; floor-thumping "cuttings of the pigeon's wing," and jolly jigs, two by two, and a great "swinging of corners," and "caging the bird," and "fust lady to the right CHEAT an' swing"; no flirting from behind fans and under ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... presupposes a scientifically exact study of forms. It was by no means the splendid image which they sought to grasp but the soul itself; at one time the flower barely open in all its enchanting freshness, at another the softened petals drooping in languid fashion, revealing a splendor still present but soon to fade; at times the dew moistening the leaves, the snow shrouding them with its purity, or the slow monotonous rain beneath which they drip, motionless. These paintings are always instinct with ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... deer in its lair); and in 1323 he is concerned in a dispute about a party wall. We know too, from his will, that he had a wife named Donata, and three daughters, Fantina, Bellela, and Moreta. Had he loved before, under the alien skies where his youth was spent, some languid, exquisite lady of China, or hardy Tartar maid? Had he profited himself from the strange marriage customs of Tibet, of which he remarks (with one of his very rare gleams of humour), 'En cele contree aurent bien aler les jeume de seize anz en vingt ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... paling, and the garden stirred with the first languid breath of the hot day to come, when she suddenly rose and bound up the loosened hair, and went in. Harriet was not yet twenty-seven, and every fibre of her being cried out for sleep. Cold water on the tear-stained face, and the childish prayer she never forgot, and she had crept gratefully ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... been slight compared with what had happened to her; and the memory of the wrong that had been done to her put such a pain into his heart that he seemed to lose sight of everything, till a fish leaping in the languid lake awoke him, and he walked on, absorbed in the memory of his mistake, his thoughts swinging back to the day he had met her on the roadside, and to the events that succeeded their meeting. Father Peter was taken ill, two days after he was dead, before ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... points of interest," said he, in his languid fashion. "May I ask, in the first place, Mr. McFarlane, how it is that you are still at liberty, since there appears to be enough evidence to ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rogues!" cried he. "Kindly lend me one of your staves for the purpose." He gave them a drubbing as one horsed his brother in turn, and dropped them, a chapfallen trio, beside their dead. "Now," said he, "take that languid gentleman with you, and be so good for the rest of your journey as to imitate his indifference to strangers. Thus you will have a prosperous passage. ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... full light of day in her eyes. She felt tired, but not inert, languid and luxurious, rather, and explored to the full the happiness of stretching. Round about her were huddled the drowsy boys; on the slopes of the steep place where she lay she could see the goats browsing on lentisk ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... achievement amounted to no more than proser de la rime et rimer de la prose. Unawares, indeed, Regnier, to a certain extent, co-operated with Malherbe, who recognised the genius of his younger adversary; he turned away from languid elegances to observation of life and truth of feeling; if he imitated his masters Horace and Ovid, or the Italian satiric poets, with whose writings he had become acquainted during two periods of residence in Rome, his imitations were not obsequious, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... last from Mrs. Travers in an accent so coldly languid that d'Alcacer felt a shudder run down ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... this complaint was plainly traceable to the food we had used for the last day or two; it rendered us both incapable of the least exertion of any kind, whilst the disorder continued, and afterwards left us very languid and weak. In the evening upon examining the meat, a great deal of it was found to be getting putrid, or fly-blown, and we were obliged to pick it over, and throw what was ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... had passed half round the room with the glide that looked languid but that was really a remarkable form of activity, and had given a transforming touch, on sofa and chairs, to three or four crushed cushions. It was all with the hanging head of a broken lily. "You're to ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... rouse their speed, with various arts; Their languid limbs they prompt to act their parts. Now with bent hams, amidst the practis'd crowd, They sit; now strain their lungs, and shout aloud Now a short flight with fiery steps they trace, And with a sudden stop ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... and starts, of burning fever alternating with shivering spells, of terrifying dreams and wretched haunted hours of wakefulness. At last the longed-for morning stole in at the windows to find her eyes heavy, her limbs languid, her brain muddled ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... gently as though yet tracing their phantom paces upon the airy floors. Her head, like a snapped lily, lay forwards and a little to one side, so that her pale cheek rested against the taut white satin of the riband from which she hung. The wind blew the languid meshes of her hair softly, kissing her once, kissing her twice, and kissing her ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... sitting up on the couch. For a moment they neither of them spoke. She, too, had been suffering, then, he thought, recognising the signs of ill-health in her colorless cheeks and languid pose. ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... externals John Clare could lay any pretensions. The only advantage possessed by him over his rival was that he pleaded his cause with all the zeal and ardour of a man deeply enamoured, and this, as always, so here, carried the day finally. There was some languid indifference in the addresses of the loving shoemaker, to punish which Martha Turner threw herself into the arms of John Clare. So far, things were looking prosperous at the Pickworth lime-kiln, during ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... not turn the mind from one thing to another, except for relaxation, and that when it is necessary and the time suitable, and not otherwise. For he that relaxes out of season wearies, and he who wearies us out of season makes us languid, since we turn quite away. So much does our perverse lust like to do the contrary of what those wish to obtain from us without giving us pleasure, the coin for which we will ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... should be faithfully complied with, he seemed to care for nothing more. Even when they proposed, in the hope of rousing him to an exhibition of something like pleasure, that the girl should read to him for an hour every day out of one of his favorite books, he only showed a languid satisfaction. Weeks passed away, and still, do what they would, they could not make him ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... the powerful force of age The body languid grows, and ev'ry joint Its proper juice exhal'd, ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... In May following, the bees worked industriously, and built new comb. Soon afterwards they ceased to build, and appeared dispirited; and when, in the beginning of June, he examined the colony again, he found plenty of drone brood in worker cells! The queen appeared weak and languid. He confined her in a queen cage, and left her in the hive. The bees clustered around the cage; but next morning the queen was found to be dead. Here we seem to have the commencement, progress and termination of super-annuation, all in the space of ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... the manor was very much diminished. Even if he agreed in his lease of the demesne to the new farmer that the villains should perform their customary services in as far as these had not been commuted, yet the farmer could not enforce this of himself, and the lord of the manor was probably languid or careless or dilatory in doing so. The other payments and burdens of serfdom were not so lucrative, and as the ranks of the old villain class were depleted by the extinction of families, and fewer inhabitants were bound to attend the manor courts, ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... strong man is always a man who feels strongly and who can carry his feeling into action. Robert, with all his mysticism, is never subject to the deep depressions of spirit which usually afflict men of his gifts. He does not know what it is to be languid; or to have invincible indecisions. He will die game—even if he does know ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... seat himself next to Claudia. A request on her part for the salt sufficed to open a conversation between them; but as it was in German, I could not follow its meaning. I observed, however, that it by and by waxed rather more warm than is customary in the languid hour of a table-d'hote; and, what was more, a silence ensued amongst a considerable number of those within hearing, as if the subject of their conversation were of an interesting character. A kind-looking English gentleman on the opposite ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... abilities and equal virtue, the auditor will inevitably, in time, choose his favourite, yet as that choice must be without any cogency of conviction, the hopes or fears which it raises will be faint and languid. Of two heroes acting in confederacy against a common enemy, the virtues or dangers will give little emotion, because each claims our concern with the same right, and the heart lies at ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... would like to return to the barrack home or the barrack school. If the inspection had been from the first merely official, public opinion would have been suspicious and sceptical, but when ladies saw the children in these homes, and watched how the dull faces brightened, and the languid limbs became alert after a few weeks of ordinary life—when the cheeks became rosier, and the eyes had new light in them; when they saw that the foster parents took pride in their progress at school, and made ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... forehead was very lofty and smooth, the eyebrows thin and greatly arched (the envious gallants whispered that something at least of their curve was due to art, as was also the exceeding smoothness of those delicate cheeks). The face was somewhat long and thin; the nose aquiline; and the languid mouth showed, perhaps, too much of the ivory upper teeth; but the most striking point of the speaker's appearance was the extraordinary brilliancy of his complexion, which shamed with its whiteness that of all fair ladies round, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... infinitely blue and clear, golden light slanting across the plain's distant edges. Before them, silent, not a breath stirring the close-packed growth, stretched the marshes. They were miles in extent; miles upon miles of these level bulrush spears threaded with languid streams, streams that curved and looped, turned back upon themselves, narrowed into gleaming veins, widened to miniature lakes on whose bosom the clouds, the birds and the stars were mirrored. They ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... but languid attention such items as that: "Shakespeare stands supreme among dramatists for consummate knowledge of the human heart"; that: "as Ralph Roister Doister is the first pure comedy, so The Vicar of Wakefield may be termed the first idyllic English novel"; that: "while Byron possessed ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... Allen, staring at the old gentleman, out of a pair of very dim and languid eyes, and working his right arm vehemently up and down, 'you—you ought to ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... laid down, for a foundation of the Cure, the two times, of Separation and Expulsion, he argues as well against too high an Ebullition or too hasty a separation (by a hot diet or high Cordials) as against too languid a one (by Blooding, Purges, and Cooling medicines.) The like he does to the Time of Expulsion, forbidding both immoderate Heat (whereby Nature's expelling operation is disturbed by a precipitated and too thick a crowd of the protruded pustuls,) and too much Cooling, ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... Dick to dislike her, because she deliberately turned her back on the smart yacht, and gave heed only to the safe lowering of certain trunks from the roof of the omnibus. He heard the manner of her speech to a neatly dressed maid and its languid insolence did not help ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... superb products of labour which others had executed. Without tapestries her big stone palaces would have lacked the note of soft luxury, without coloured hangings her balconies would have been but dull settings for languid ladies, and her water-parades would have missed the wondrous colour that the Venetian loves. Yet to her rich market flowed the product of Europe in such exhaustless stream that she became connoisseur-consumer only, nor felt the need of serious producing. ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... languid or languishing: comp. Par. Lost, vi. 496, "their languished hope revived"; Epitaph on M. of W. 33. The suffix -ed is frequent in Elizabethan English where we now ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... More faintly now gleamed the expiring light of the lamp, which looked a cold unearthly beam, colourless and fixed, save when the chilling draft of nightly air found its way through a crevice of the ponderous casement, and animated the languid flame with ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... present great crisis of Europe upon the large scale on which it should be looked at by the leading Minister of this empire; instead of which, we see in all our discussions a cold, narrow, and contracted view of this subject, infinitely too languid and little for the object, and made peculiarly unfavourable to our propositions, by the disinclination which he certainly feels to concur heartily with us in the great interests attached to the Austrian possession of the Low Countries. We have, it is true, obtained from him assurances ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... others. She walked with a dainty slowness, a composed consciousness, that were almost the least bit affected, and as she stood still for a minute close to her mother, with her long eyes half shut, she looked typically of the world worldly, languid, ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... flourish in this in-between-seasons time. Wise Miss Meredith marshalled her forces and took counsel with the Heads of Houses; the gymnasium staff put on extra dancing classes, and indoor basket-ball matches, but in spite of all their efforts many of the girls seemed languid and uninterested. ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... matter, in the metrist has yet to be mentioned. It has been said how well the stanza suits Spenser's pictorial faculty; it certainly suits his musical faculty as well. The slightly (very slightly, for he can be vigorous enough) languid turn of his grace, the voluptuous cadences of his rhythm, find in it the most perfect exponent possible. The verse of great poets, especially Homer's, has often been compared to the sea. Spenser's is more ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... traits and the languid reign of Charles IV have been treated by historians with derision. He forgot the general welfare of the empire in his eagerness to enrich his own house and aggrandize his paternal kingdom of Bohemia. The one remarkable law which emanated from him, and whereby alone his reign is distinguished in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... young Muse! since we now can ne'er meet; If our songs have been languid, they surely are few: Let us hope that the present at least will be sweet; The present—which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... they are epic. No English verse narrative except Chaucer's ranks, as a whole, above Scott's. Chaucer's disciple, William Morris, has an equal flow and continuity, and keeps a more even level of style; but his story-telling is languid compared with Scott's. The latter is greater in the dynamic than in the static department—in scenes of rapid action and keen excitement. His show passages are such as the fight in the Trosachs, Flodden Field, William of Deloraine's ride to Melrose, the trial of Constance, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... your request, I visited the Meistersingers' Club (an institution which, seemingly from its name, has been established as a memorial to WAGNER), where a "dramatic performance" was given last week that had many points of interest to the languid pleasure-seeker, wearily thirsting for fresh sources of amusement. The evening's entertainment commenced with a play obligingly described by the author as a farce, which was followed by a new and original operetta, ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... and joyous was my life! Night brought refreshing rest, And morning's dawn awakened naught but rapture in my breast: Now, sad and languid, weak and faint, I seek, but seek in vain, To lay me down in soft ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... upon the scarecrow. Possibly an excess of strong and disproportionate carving in nose, mouth and chin, accompanied by weak eyes and unexpectedness of forehead, may tend to make the Evil One but languid in his desire for the capture of its human exemplar. This may help account for the otherwise rather curious coincidence of frightful physiognomy and preternatural goodness in this world of sinful beauties[B]. Under such a theory, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... some abridgment of the public liberty. But the scheme of the junto under consideration not only strikes a palsy into every nerve of our free constitution, but in the same degree benumbs and stupefies the whole executive power, rendering Government in all its grand operations languid, uncertain, ineffective, making Ministers fearful of attempting, and incapable of executing, any useful plan of domestic arrangement, or of foreign politics. It tends to produce neither the security of a free Government, nor the energy of a Monarchy that is absolute. ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... o'er his urn, And all the virtues bending mourn; Humanity, with languid eye, Melting for others' misery; Prudence, whose hands a measure hold, And Temperance, with a chain of gold; Fidelity's triumphant vest, And Fortitude in armor drest; Wisdom's grey locks, and Freedom, ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... walls, I walked along their inner base, to the Church of St. John Lateran, into which I went, and sat down to rest myself, being languid and weary, and hot with the sun, though afraid to trust the coolness of the shade. I hate the Roman atmosphere; indeed, all my pleasure in getting back—all my home-feeling—has already evaporated, and what now impresses me, as before, is the languor of Rome,—its weary pavements, its little life, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... undressing, threw herself on a lounge by the open window. The night air played with the curtains, and lifted the curls from her brow. Her bloom, which of late had been changeful and delicate, had now left her cheek, and languid and depressed she abandoned herself to thought. So absorbed was she, that she was not aware any one had entered the room, until her mother stood near, gently reproving her for thus exposing herself to the night air. "Do get up and go to bed," ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... periods, they all discover excellencies never to be enough admired. If they trace him from the first productions of his youth to the last performances of his age, they will find, that as the tyranny of rhyme never imposed on the perspicuity of sense, so a languid sense never wanted to be set off by the harmony of rhyme. And, as his early works wanted no maturity, so his latter wanted no force or spirit. The falling off of his hair had no other consequence than to make his laurels be seen ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... when they are five-and-fifty, papa?" I asked that evening, as I lay languid and weary ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Stole soft, and faintly beat against its side; Such is that sound, which fond designs convey, When, true to love, the damsel speeds away; The sails unshaken, hung aloft unfurl'd, And simpering nigh, the languid current curl'd; A crumbling ruin, once a city's pride, The well-pleased eye through withering oaks descried, Where Sadness, gazing on time's ravage, hung, And Silence to Destruction's trophy clung - Save that as morning songsters swell'd their lays, Awaken'd Echo humm'd repeated praise: The ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... reasonably doubted whether this system of judicial administration can anywhere give satisfactory results. It is everywhere found by experience that in tribunals from which the healthy atmosphere of publicity is excluded justice languishes, and a great many ugly plants shoot up with wonderful vitality. Languid indifference, an indiscriminating spirit of routine, and unblushing dishonesty invariably creep in through the little chinks and crevices of the barrier raised against them, and no method of hermetically ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... of Indians. The younger children in these houses on the Sapo were free from spots; but two or three of them, about ten years of age, showed signs of their commencement in rounded yellowish patches on the skin, and these appeared languid and sickly, although the blotched adults seemed not to be affected in their general health. A middle-aged half-caste at Fonte Boa told me he had cured himself of the disorder by strong doses of sarsaparilla; the black patches had ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... talking to the Miss Werrels, two girls of the athletic type, with short skirts and their hair brushed tightly back over their foreheads. He was leaning with one arm on the mantelpiece, and was looking down on the ladies with an air of languid interest: his eyes were restless, and every now and again glanced towards his father. The two Miss Ponsonbys were massive ladies of any age over fifty. Clad in voluminous black silk, with several little reticules and iron chains, their black hair bound in tight coils at the back ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... Margaret responded with an elasticity that amazed Isabelle, who remembered the languid woman she had known so many years. "Just beginning," she murmured, "after the journey in ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... rehearsal of a dramatic version of Scott's Woodstock. This has been written by Your Humble Servant who is at the same time engaged on a historic romance. At intervals in the languid rehearsing, endless discussions take place: between Oldershaw and G.K. on Thackeray, between Oldershaw, his father and G.K. on Royal Supremacy in the Church of England. The boys, walking between their two houses, "discuss Roman Catholicism, Supremacy, Papal v. Protestant ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... refined and slightly languid tones; "I am such a clumsy creature"—partly addressing her friend, but mainly speaking to the entire compartment. "Really, I seem quite lost without my ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... such gross mistakes.... Here is the woman who believes sex to be the source of all good, all life, all joy. She holds a medical degree and is passionately opposed to the emancipation of womanhood. She is unmarried, and dresses with old-fashioned emphasis of the eternal feminine. With a soft and languid smile she deprecates the fate which sent her to the medical school instead of the nursery. "Why," she tells me, with radiant eyes, "everything is sex; poetry, painting, sculpture, religion are sex. Women who suppress their sexual nature by pursuing the ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... let such speeches as this go by him with a languid indifference, that testified at once to his easy temper and his comfortable disregard of his father's opinion. He was fond of his little sister Clary, in rather a careless way, and would suffer her companionship, juvenile as she was at that time, with ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... condition of the stomach incident upon such hearty meals, fosters headaches and indigestion and renders brain and mind so inactive that the participants feel too dull for meditation and study, too sleepy to keep awake during service, too languid for anything but dozing and lounging, and the day that should have fostered spiritual growth is worse than thrown away. Nor is this all; the evil effects of the indigestion occasioned are apt to be felt for several succeeding days, making the children irritable and cross, ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... you doing here, sir?—You're no longer in my employment, sir," exclaimed Tag-rag, attempting to speak calmly, as he hurried down the shop, white with rage, to meet Titmouse, and planted himself right in the way of his languid and ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... how a man, impressed with the idea that his blood had all been drawn from him by a sorceress, should become faint, and remain many days in a languid state; but how the people around should believe that they saw the blood flowing from both parts of the cane at the place cut through, it is not ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... and Paria, and the other countries, without shedding tears. I thought that what had occurred there would have been an example for others; on the contrary, these settlements are now in a languid state, although not dead, and the malady is incurable, or at least very extensive. Let him who brought the evil come now and cure it, if he knows the remedy, or how to apply it; but when a disturbance is on foot, every one is ready to take the lead. It used to be ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... large arm-chair opposite her bed, and was sitting there fanning herself violently and trying to catch a breath of fresh air from the widely-opened window beside her. But there was no air, fresh or otherwise; and nothing but the languid steps of the passers in the street below was heard. Not the roll of a wheel, the hoof of a horse, or the yelp of a dog. It seemed as if the whole place had been given over to the cruel glare of sunshine and the persevering impertinence ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... deceived she was! After a time Mrs. Miller said, "Fanny, Mr. Miller seems very anxious about your altered and languid appearance. May I not tell him the truth? He will sympathize with you as truly as I do; for he feels for you almost the ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... He was not generally popular among the undergraduates, though it always seemed to me that what was set down as pride was really an attempt to cover extreme natural diffidence. In appearance he was a man of exceedingly aristocratic type, thin, high-nosed, and large-eyed, with languid and yet courtly manners. He was indeed a scion of one of the very oldest families in the kingdom, though his branch was a cadet one which had separated from the northern Musgraves some time in the sixteenth century, and had established itself in western ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... of Rue du Sentier. The curious spectators continued to assemble mainly on the southern side of the street. It was an ordinary crowd and nothing more,—men, women, children, and old people who looked upon the languid attack and defence of the barricade as a sort ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... extremely languid and indolent, and wanting in strength and agility. Looking at them squatting down, standing or walking, with their long hair flowing down their backs, one would take them for the women of a harem rather than savages used to enduring the inclemency of the weather and to struggle ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... himself. After the interview in which this was ascertained, Mr. Langton began to think that his daughter might do worse than marry this young Ashburn after all. Mrs. Langton had liked Mark from the first in her languid way, and the fact that he had 'expectations' decided her to support his cause; he was not a brilliant parti, of course, but at least he was more eligible than the young men who had been exciting her maternal alarm of late. And under her grandfather's will Mabel would be entitled on her marriage ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... large this summer," said Jane Graham, in a languid tone, resting her beautiful eyes on the bunch in ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... fair as Gussie, and her figure was shorter and more rounded. She was quick and alert in all her movements, and laughed when Gussie called her a tomboy, but she was only thoroughly wide-awake, and enjoyed life with a zest that was but natural in a girl of her years. She scorned the languid air that Gussie affected, and looked with disdain on the one-legged storks that her sister delighted to transfer to canvas, and she wondered how it was possible for anyone to sit for hours over a bit of fancywork the usefulness of which was doubtful; but this was the only kind of work that ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... pointed toward the land; "This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon." In the afternoon they came unto a land, In which it seemed always afternoon. All round the coast the languid air did swoon, Breathing like one that hath a weary dream. Full-faced above the valley stood the moon; And like a downward smoke, the slender stream Along the cliff to fall and pause and ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... owed subscriptions were unable or unwilling to pay them. Such had been the case before the accession of the new President. It hung its drooping head; had almost withered away. Mr. Freddy Parker tended the languid flower, and watered it—with ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... be back directly," and with astonishing speed she ran to the house with Colin and Giftie barking on either side of her. It was but a moment till she returned and pressed a golden sovereign into each languid hand. The sight of so much bullion all at once braced us for the moment, and we forgot to be miserable. She came with us to the gate, asking a dozen questions about ourselves, and our father, and Giftie's stay with us. Giftie had to be restrained ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... surface of the ground The hot air trembles. In pale glittering haze Wavers the sky. Along the horizon's rim, Breaking its mist, are peaks of coppery clouds. Keen darts of light are shot from every leaf, And the whole landscape droops in sultriness. With languid tread, I drag myself along Across the wilting fields. Around my steps Spring myriad grasshoppers, their cheerful notes Loud in my ear. The ground bird whirs away, Then drops again, and groups of butterflies Spotting the path, upflicker as I come. At length ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... reveal'd through ball-room dresses, Where all the parties are peer-esses; The dulness of the toujours gai, The yawning night, the sleepy day, The visages of cheese and chalk, The drowsy, dreamy, languid talk; The fifty other horrid things, That strip old Time of both his wings! There's not a topic of them all But comes, ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... but the other observes, impudent and languid like: You see, there's no future in a thing like that—is there? . . Oh! no, says Cloete. Certainly not. I don't mean this to have any future—as far as you are concerned. It's a 'once for all' transaction. ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... twelve in all. My friend Eustace brought his gondolier Antonio with fair-haired, dark-eyed wife, and little Attilio, their eldest child. My own gondolier, Francesco, came with his wife and two children. Then there was the handsome, languid Luigi, who, in his best clothes, or out of them, is fit for any drawing-room. Two gondoliers, in dark blue shirts, completed the list of guests, if we exclude the maid Catina, who came and went about the table, laughing and joining in the songs, and sitting down at intervals to take her share ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... The Quill or Head of every Feather is or ought to be full of a vigorous Substance, which gives Spirit, and supports the brightness and colour of the Feather; and as this is more or less in quantity, the bright Colour of the Feather is increased, or turns languid and pale. ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... languid lady was Mrs. Warden, wearing her thin but still brown hair in "water-waves" over a pale high forehead. She was sitting on a couch on the broad, rose-shaded porch, surrounded by billowing masses of vari-colored worsted. It was her ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... 'he was always languid and embarrassed at starting; it took him ten minutes to get ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... course, that he had proved to be a poor, even a downright worthless military man and soldier; but what I had not expected was, that he had displayed no special bravery; that in battle he wore a dejected and languid aspect, as though he were partly bored, partly daunted. All discipline oppressed him, inspired him with sadness; he was audacious to recklessness when it was a question of himself personally; there was no wager too crazy ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... been tossed backwards and forwards between the two raging factions. His feelings, languid and unsteady as they always were, drew him to the Girondists; but he was awed by the vigor and determination of the Mountain. At one moment he held high and firm language, complained that the Convention was not free, and protested against the validity ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... outside the church of S. Chiara, asked whether we should not like to view the body of the saint. This privilege could be purchased at the price of a small fee. It was only necessary to call the guardian of her shrine at the high altar. Indolent, and in compliant mood, with languid curiosity and half an hour to spare, we assented. A handsome young man appeared, who conducted us with decent gravity into a little darkened chamber behind the altar. There he lighted wax tapers, opened sliding doors in what looked like a long coffin, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... also: that dark skin in which it seemed as if the customary pigment had been blended with mystery; that extravagance of certain features, the largeness of the eye, the luxury of lashes; that manner at once languid and alert, which might have been acquired by residence in some country where molten excess of fine weather was corrected by gales of adventure. But though so close in blood and in seeming to the most beloved, this woman could not be loved. She could not possibly be liked. But ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... before you vote," came the languid voice of Waterman, as the hands shot up. "You don't want to be in such a hurry. It's bad for the nerves. People in a hurry have fits. They get themselves into knots and tangles which take no end of time to get out of, and leave them with a lovely headache into the bargain. ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... languid, though free and easy, way in which Simion Petrovitch Kollomietzev, a young man of thirty-two, entered the room; from the way in which he brightened suddenly, bowed slightly to one side, and drew himself up again gracefully; from the manner in which he spoke, not too harshly, ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... then, the name of graduate that will do all this. It is not a scrape pass; it is not decent mediocrity with a languid interest. It is a fair and even attention throughout, supplemented by auxiliaries to the class work. It is such a hold of the leading subjects, such a mastery of the various alphabets, as will make future references intelligible, and a continuation ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... the modern spirit the profound and pathetic fables of antiquity without vulgarizing by modern affectations their divine simplicity. This beautiful poem appears now in an edition de luxe—a setting not unworthy of such gems. The designs are noteworthy for their tenderness of sentiment and their languid ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... rising in the blue aether, when Kenneth Gordon approached his home. He was weary with his journey, but the pictured visions of his happy home, his smiling wife, and the caresses of his sunny haired children, cheered the father's heart, though his step was languid, and his brow feverish. But oh! what a sight of horror for a fond and loving heart met his eyes, as he came in sight of the spot that contained his earthly treasures—the foreboding silence had surprised ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... two other youths, articled like Peter, stupid sons of honest Treliss householders, with high collars, faces that shone with soap and hair that glistened with oil, languid voices and a perpetual fund of small talk about the ladies of the town, moral and otherwise. Peter did not like them and they did not like Peter. One day, because he was tired and unhappy, he knocked their ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... bareheaded, following his guest. Borrowdean watched them closely as they approached. The woman's expression was purely negative. There was nothing to be learned from the languid smile with which she recognized their presence. Upon Mannering, however, the cloud seemed already to have fallen. His eyebrows were set in a frown. He had the appearance of a man in some manner perplexed. He carried ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ever seen; and since those Californian days I have lived in almost every capital of Europe. The music is so monotonous and sweet, the figures so melting and harmonious, that to both spectator and dancer comes a dreaming languid contentment, as were the senses swimming on the brink of sleep. Chonita and Valencia were famous rivals in its rendering, always the sala-stars to those not dancing. Valencia was the perfection of ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... was unmistakably hot—a heat homelike in its intensity, yet of a different effect, throwing him into languid reverie rather than filling his veins with fire. Secure in his seclusion in the leafy chase, he took off his jacket and rambled on in his shirt sleeves. Through the opening he presently saw the abbey again, with the restored wing where the noble owner lived for two or three weeks ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... Nickols' languid, fascinating voice that always draws me to the edge of his world. "And Greg Goodloe, by all that is good and ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... screen. Who loves it, now rejoices for its sake, And those are glad who sleep, and those who wake. When cool-breathed evening visiteth the world, In flower and leaf the beaded dew is pearled, Reviving all that droops at length, And to the languid giving strength. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... face, a little freckled; but the mouth, although it was beautifully curved, was a trifle too long, and except when she was in a passion, was not sufficiently under the control of her muscles, so that her words escaped not properly formed. Generally she was rather languid in her attitudes, sitting in her chair in any way but the proper way, and often giving her father cause of correction on this point as she grew up, inasmuch as he properly objected that when she ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... sun had set and the moon risen. The mocking-birds were singing, the fire-flies executing, in the sweet, languid atmosphere, a dance full of mystery. The garden was like a land of enchantment. It was easy to sit still and let the beauty of heaven and earth sink into the heart. And for some time John was contented with it. It was enough to sit and watch ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... other armchair on the opposite side of the table, and from under his languid and half-tipsy eyelids cast passionate ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... idler on a summer day Piping with Iris by a dancing brook; And all his world was rife with Pleasures gay, And languid Follies smiled from ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... return, dear Mr. Storm," she said, in the languid voice of the great lady, but the accent of St. Louis, as she led the way to the drawing-room. "My daughter told me about it. She was always interested in your work, you know.... Oh, yes, quite well, and having a real good ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... her mother wailed, raising a prematurely-wrinkled hand heavy with rings to defend the note which a languid ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... fine-looking woman, though her complexion was spoiled already by pimples due to liver complaint, on which grounds she was said to be exacting. With a slender figure and delicate proportions, she could afford to indulge in languid manners, savoring somewhat of affectation, but revealing passion and the consciousness that every least caprice ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... doesn't with its draft bring on A wind to blow in earnest from some quarter, As once it did with me upon an April. The breezes were so spent with winter blowing They seemed to fail the bluebirds under them Short of the perch their languid flight was toward; And my flame made a pinnacle to heaven As I walked once round it in possession. But the wind out of doors—you know the saying. There came a gust. You used to think the trees Made wind by fanning since you never ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... universal instinct honours beauty. It is so difficult to believe it either dull or base. In virtue of some mysterious harmonies it is 'the image of God,' and must, we feel, enclose the God-like; so I suppose I felt, for though I wished to think her stupid, I could not. She was not exactly languid, but a grave and listless beauty, and a ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... over-work, and recommending rest and change of air. He listened good-naturedly, but with laughing indifference, telling her that she was "trop bonne," and that he felt perfectly well. Madame appealed to me—Dr. John following her movement with a slow glance which seemed to express languid surprise at reference being made to ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... social culture than moral principle; but I acknowledge no aristocracy except one of service and self-sacrifice, in which he that is chief shall be servant, and he that is greatest of all, servant of all. And it is surely time to notice the threepenny braggadocio of caste which makes the languid Captain Vemon de Vere (or words to that effect) an overmatch for half-a-dozen hard-muscled white savages, any one of whom would take his lordship by the ankles, and wipe the battlefield with his patrician visage; which ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... perpendicularly in light cloudlets which vanished far aloft. On a level with the houses passed vibrating waves of life, waves of all the life pent up there. The loud voices of the streets softened amidst the sunshine into a languid murmur. But all at once a flutter attracted Jeanne's notice. A flock of white pigeons, freed from some adjacent dovecot, sped through the air in front of the window; with spreading wings like falling ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... over to a plate on the table beside him and picking up a handful of hash tossed it into the air. It descended as a languid parabola in snowflake effect on the heads of ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... him, just as day was coming. A new Bland, fresh shaven,—with Johnny's razor,—and with a certain languid animation in his manner that was in sharp contrast to his extreme ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... it?" she asked with languid interest, having expected something more significant. "Is ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... equestrian science; the lawyer, understood, on his own authority, to be well informed in everything; the society young lady, erect, precise, self-satisfied; the Texan, riding with apparent laziness, his hands rather high and seldom quiet, but not to be shaken from his seat; the beauty, languid and secretly discontented because her horse was "intended for a brunette, and a ridiculous mount for a blonde"; Versatilia, who had "taken up riding a little," and the cavalryman, calm, quiet, and fraternally regarded by the master, as he reviewed the little flock from the ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... of it during that languid autumn at Cassicium—that autumn heavy with all the rotting of summer, but which already promised the great winter peace. The yellow leaves of the chestnuts were heaped by the roadside. They fell in the brook which flowed near the baths, and the slowed ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... with its sultriness, its sudden evening storms shot through with flaming lightning and reverberant with the drums of thunder, brought to Annie a cessation of her purpose. She was languid, subject to whimsical desires and appetites, at times a prey to sudden nervous tears. The household work slipped back into Aunt Dolcey's faithful hands, save now and then when Annie felt more buoyant and instinct with life and energy ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... every earthly Desire, baffled every uneasy Passion, lost every disturbing Fear, while nothing remained in her tender Bosom but a lively Hope of future Happiness. When her very Griefs were in a manner forgot, the Impression of them as faint and languid as a feverish Dream to one restored to Health, all calm and serene her Mind, forgiving and praying for her worst Enemies, she retired from all her Afflictions, to meet the Reward of her ...
— Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding
... winds answer; the clouds rise White from the grave, shaking their head, Strewing the grave-clothes through the skies, In languid drifting shadow shed Upon the fields where, ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... man, of soft voice and gentle manners, he had already proved more than once during his adventurous career that he not only possessed in a high degree the courage of the soldier, but also the equanimity and decision of the born leader. A languid elegance in his bearing covered a shrewd brain and a soul of fire. A distorted and half-paralysed hand reminded the observer that Hamilton, as a young lieutenant, had known at Majuba what it was to face the Boer rifles. Now, in his forty-seventh year, he had returned, matured and formidable, to reverse ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... one great difficulty in the way of the explorers. The blackfellow of Australia seemed to partake largely of the country he lived in. His whole life was one fight for existence, and not even the sudden advent of a strange race could do more than stir him to a languid curiosity. Bounded, as he always had been, by his surroundings, and never venturing beyond tribal limits, what information he was able to impart was, as a rule, meagre and misleading, and without any good result ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... are in imminent danger of giving themselves over to integrity, to industry, perseverance, and single-mindedness, without looking forward to those posts of usefulness for which these qualities eminently fit them. Fired with the love of learning, they are languid in claiming the honors which learning has to bestow. Eager to become worthy of the highest places, they make no effort to secure the places to which their worth points them. Political supineness is the bane of our society. The one great need is to rouse ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... my chamberlains and attendants, by whom I ought to be surrounded?" asked the prince, raising his languid head from the bosom of Wilfrid, and looking round the spacious but deserted room of ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... defective in neatness."—Ib., ii, 29. "And therefore the suppressing copulatives must animate a description."—Ib., ii, 32. "If the laying aside copulatives give force and liveliness, a redundancy of them must render the period languid."—Ib., ii, 33. "It skills not asking my leave, said Richard."—Scott's Crusaders. "To redeem his credit, he proposed being sent once more to Sparta."—Goldsmith's Greece, i, 129. "Dumas relates ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... ever I behold Thy dreamy, passionate eyes, Blue as the languid skies Hung with the sunset's fringe of gold; Now strangely clear thine image grows, And olden memories Are startled from their long repose Like shadows on the silent snows When suddenly the night-wind blows Where quiet ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... waited for one. Perhaps he was clever enough to know that half his acquaintances detested him theoretically, but were glad to have him about. Nina and Harriet came in from an afternoon at the club to find him playing with languid hands at the piano, and he lazily rose to greet them. While Nina was there, his attitude toward both was pleasantly impersonal, but his suggestion, which was more like a command, that she run upstairs ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... endeavored in vain to draw her out of this languid mood. He selected an interesting subject of conversation to—himself; he told her of his feats yachting in the Mediterranean; he did not tell her, though, that his yacht was sailed by the master and not by him, her proprietor. In reply ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... middle-aged woman, with a thin classical face, large colourless eyes, and untidy fair hair. She was very plainly dressed, and as she darted forward to greet the girl with entire frankness and kindness, Alice forgot her fears and kissed her heartily. A languid young woman was introduced as Miss Afflint, and in a few minutes the three were in the Glenavelin carriage with the wide ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... have been classifying MSS.... The sun came in through the loft uncurtained windows; and, during my reading, often very interesting, I could hear the languid bumblebees bump heavily against the windows, and the flies intoxicated with light and heat, making their wings hum in circles around my head. So loud became their humming about three o'clock that I looked up from the document I was reading—a ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... languid to be more than indifferent when she saw us, and the first sign of warmth that she gave was her kiss, when I went back to visit her after putting her to bed at the hotel. She looked up, put her arms round my neck, and said, "This ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with France was carried on in a manner somewhat languid, and produced no enterprise of great lustre or renown. Sir Hugh Calverly, governor of Calais, making an inroad into Picardy with a detachment of the garrison, set fire to Boulogne.[**] The duke of Lancaster conducted ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... stuff; Robert Chambers, David Graham Phillips, and E. Phillips Oppenheim complete, and a scattering of Tennyson and Kipling. Of all his class work only "L'Allegro" and some quality of rigid clarity in solid geometry stirred his languid interest. ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... tho tired." Grace made languid efforts to prove that she was weary. There could be no doubt of it. She did not have the endurance possessed by her companion, and even Harriet's strength was leaving her, because of that terrible numbness in her lower limbs, a numbness that was ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... A little, languid, mocking breeze That rustles through the Jasmin flowers And stirs among the Tamarind trees; A little gurgle of the spray That drips, unheard, though silent hours, Then ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... little pale-faced children, without the merriment and laughter of childhood, played in a languid, unchildlike way, sickness prevailed; for fever had broken out, and indoors suffering ones tossed on beds, if they could be so called, ...
— Little Frida - A Tale of the Black Forest • Anonymous
... should be set, and all the crimson and white varieties of garden daisy. Lily-of-the-valley, despite its name, likes more sun than our brook garden admits except in certain places; but certain of the lilies which flourish in the garden beds grow with an added and more languid grace on the green bank of our flower-bordered brook, and the American swamp-lily finds its natural place. Then special pools will be formed for the growth of those plants, foreign and English, which love to have their roots in water-soaked mud or the beds of running streams, while leaves ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... fifteenth year, before any changes had taken place and the great outbreaks of cholera and yellow fever were yet to come, I spent four or five weeks in the city, greatly enjoying the novel scenes and new life. After about ten or twelve days I began to feel tired and languid, and this feeling grew on me day by day until it became almost painful to exert myself to visit even my most favoured haunts—the great South Market, where cage-birds were to be seen in hundreds, green paroquets, cardinals, and ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson |
