"Languor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... enjoyed my tranquillity above a week, before my fears were roused afresh, hearing the same sound of voices twice the same night, but not many minutes at a time. What gave me most pain was that they were at such a distance, as I judged by the languor of the sound, that if I had opened my door I could not have seen the utterers through the trees, and I was resolved not to venture out; but then I determined, if they should come again anything ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... on the fact that her eyes were brown. They had a haughty sparkle when she pleased, and when she pleased a soft languor circled them. Excitement had dyed her cheeks deep red. He was a youth, and she an enchantress. He a hero; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... saw distinctly, and afterwards recalled it all in order, as it befell. But sometimes, as he recalled it, he seemed to be watching the scene with an excruciating ache in his brain; at others, in a delicious languor of weakness. He remembered too how the banks suddenly gathered speed and slid past while the boat plunged and was whirled off in the heart of the rapid. Muskingon had uttered no cry: but back—far back—on the shore sounded ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... contraction of the throat, by twitchings in the hypochondriac and epigastric regions, by dimness and rolling of the eyes, by piercing cries, tears, hiccough, and immoderate laughter. They are preceded or followed by a state of languor or dreaminess, by a species of depression, and ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... Dorn spoke up manfully, "Well, don't you try sharing it. I want all of it, every bit of it." He played with her hair, and relaxed in a languor ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... love-god may prove less innocent than he looks, and in the distance Fate may be foreshadowed by the figure of weary Age awaiting Death. Yet this one moment is all the lovers' own, and they profane it not by speech, but stir their happy languor only with faint notes of music borne on ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... may be seen beside their vehicles, urging the horses, with the thermometer at 110 deg., and perhaps a stout-looking Englishman inside, with white kerchief to his face, the image of languor and lassitude. ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... peaceful solitudes of Africa, to find himself amid the cries of street-sellers, the rolling of carriages, and the incessant movement of the great city, was too great a contrast to him. Pierre was overcome by languor; his head seemed too heavy for his body to carry; he mechanically entered a cab which conveyed him to the Hotel du Louvre. Through the window, against the glass of which he tried to cool his heated forehead, he saw pass in procession ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... is in these woods, for I have seen him scores of times, but whether he builds high or low, on the ground or in the trees, is all unknown to me. That is his song now,—"twe-twea-twe-e-e-a," with a peculiar summer languor and plaintiveness, and issuing from the lower branches and growths. Presently we—for I have been joined by a companion—discover the bird, a male, insecting in the top of a newly fallen hemlock. The black, white, and blue of his uniform are seen at a glance. His movements are quite slow ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... confinement and this process, the air is deprived of its appropriate supply of oxygen, the purification of the blood is interrupted, and it passes without being properly prepared into the brain, producing languor, restlessness, and inability to exercise the intellect and feelings. Whenever, therefore, persons sleep in a close apartment, or remain for a length of time in a crowded or ill-ventilated room, a most pernicious influence is exerted on the brain, and, through this, on the mind. A person ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... egg-plants and the white fennel roots (finocchi) that well-fed travellers devour in the hotels of Naples. Or else they tend the vines that yield the generous Lagrima Christi, of which imprudent and heated visitors drink long draughts unmixed with water, and then complain of ensuing languor and pains beneath their waistcoats. Luscious, yet seductive wine! Counsellor of moderation after a first experience of excess! Essence of Vesuvius, whose strange name so puzzled ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... said Constantia, lifting her head from Mrs. Mellicent's bosom, where she had sunk, from the extreme languor that succeeded the violent hysterics into which the terrors of this alarming night had thrown her. A more lovely or interesting object could scarcely be conceived than this charming girl, just ripening into woman, ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... matter in the slightest degree where I stay. I only mentioned it because I promised her I would speak to you about it." There was more than languor in ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... long and narrow line of the Lizard, half lost in a silver haze. For the rest, a cool wind went this way and that through Mrs. Rosewarne's room, stirring the curtains. There was an odor of the sea in the air. It was a day for dreaming perhaps, but not for the gloom begotten of languor and an ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... room. Aunt Jane, a trim little dark-eyed woman, looking at two and forty much the same as she might have done at five and twenty; and Aunt Adeline, pretty and delicately fair, with somewhat of the same grace as Lady Merrifield, but more languor, and an air as if everything about her were for effect. Though not specially fond of theses aunts, Dolores was glad to have them as ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... widely opened and fixed upon mine. She was not of the neurotic type, with her clear complexion and sun-kissed neck; her arms, healthily toned by exposure to the country airs, were rounded and firm, and she had the agile shape of a young Diana with none of the anaemic languor which breeds morbid dreams. She was frightened; yes, who would not have been? But the mere idea of this thing which she believed to be in Redmoat, without the apparition of the green eyes, must have prostrated a ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... they were beginning to move up stream again, as the woman called it. Charley told her all about himself, about his home, his dear mamma and Judith, his papa's ill-health, and hopes of restoration, his college schoolboy life. It was delicious to lie there in the languor of returning health, and talk of these things. The kindly woman won his love and confidence; but when she asked him how he came to fall into the river, he could never remember. In the social atmosphere of companionship, in the bright sunlight, Charley ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... has none of this Oriental languor, no memories of perfumed places where "the throne of Indian Cama slowly sails." One cannot help admiring the fancy which saw the conquering god still steeped in Asiatic ease, still unawakened to more vigorous passion by the fresh wind blowing from Thrace. Of all ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... several years a servant at the Trappist Monastery at Staoueli; Charmian's maid; and an Arab boy whom everyone called Bibi, and who alternated between a demeanor full of a graceful and apparently fatalistic languor, and fits of almost monkeylike gaiety and mischief which Pierre strove to repress. A small Arab girl, dressed like a little woman in flowing cotton or muslin, with clinking bracelets and anklets, charms on her thin bosom and scarlet and yellow silk handkerchiefs on her braided ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... been a hard day for him, physically and mentally. He had been called in the morning before he had quite slept off the effects of the liquor which Luigi had drunk; and so, for the first half-hour had had the seedy feeling, and languor, the brooding depression, the cobwebby mouth and druggy taste that come of dissipation and are so ill a preparation for bodily or intellectual activities; the long violent strain of the reception had followed; and this had been followed, in turn, by the dreary sight-seeing, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... what zeal will do for me. It has enabled me to keep drowsiness, fatigue, and languor at bay during a long night. Converse with thee, heavenly maid, is an antidote even to sleep, the most general and inveterate of ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... in tweeds, of an incomparable languor of demeanour, and carrying a cane with genteel effort. From the name, I had looked to find a sort of Viking and young ruler of the battle and the tempest; and I was the more disappointed, and not a little alarmed, to come face to face with this ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 2569. Symptoms.—Languor and restlessness, hoarseness, wheezing, and short, dry cough, with occasional rattling in the throat during sleep, the child often plucking at its throat with its fingers; difficulty of breathing, which quickly becomes hard and laboured, causing great anxiety of the ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... his successful sales, he found a changeling. His wife was not so different in looks or words as in a subtle something he could not define. She laughed at his jokes, and even, in a gentle way, ventured pleasantries of her own; but a strange languor hung about her. It might have been called patience, an acceptance of a situation rather than her eager cheer ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... about them: you'll never effect any good by that. Have patience with me, and bear with my languor and crossness a little while, till I get this cursed low fever out of my veins, and then you'll find me cheerful and kind as ever. Why can't you be gentle and good, as you were last time?—I'm sure I ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... King sent away Racine, saying he was going to work. The poet never afterwards recovered his position. Neither the King nor Madame de Maintenon ever spoke to him again, or even looked at him; and he conceived so much sorrow at this, that he fell into a languor, and died two years afterwards. At his death, Valincourt was chosen to work in his place with Despreaux upon the history ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... a studio. Their life was modest, secluded, humble, without friends or functions. She spent the day taking care of her daughter and the house, without help except a dull, poorly-paid maid. Oftentimes when she seemed most active, she fell into a sudden languor, complaining of strange, ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... and wept, entreated, and soothed by turns until at last the poor child crept away with throbbing temples to a long night of pain and sleeplessness. The wound was one that she must hide in her own heart; her pallor and languor for several days proved how deep it ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... Private Thoughts," thrown on paper, and communicated only to two or three, "On the new kind of Tactics necessary with those Austrians and their Allies," who are in such overwhelming strength. "To whose continual sluggishness, and strange want of concert, to whose incoherency of movements, languor of execution, and other enormous faults, we have owed, with some excuse for our own faults, our escaping of destruction hitherto,"—but had better NOT trust that way any longer! Fouquet is one of the highly select, to whom ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... hurried from the dock, making for a lodging-house or for The Asiatics' Home. Some hurried into the dock, with that impassive swiftness which gives no impression of haste, but rather carries a touch of extreme languor. An old cargo tramp lay in a far berth, and one caught the sound of rushing blocks, and a monotonous voice wailing the Malayan chanty: "Love is kind to the least of men, EEEE-ah, EEEE-ah!" Boats were loading up. Others were unloading. Over all ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... quickly with the surprise of her new dominion, while with gentle dignity her brow accepts the holy coronation of womanhood. The forehead and temples beneath her loosely bound hair were fair without paleness, and meek without languor. She had the soft, lacklustre beauty of the South; no ruddiness of coral, no waxen white, no pink of shell; no heavenly blue in the glance; but a face that seemed, in all its other beauties, only a tender accompaniment for the large, brown, melting eyes, where the openness of child-nature mingled ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... grows apace on such a diet; It fires the blood from languor. Ye neighbors' children, have a care This ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... good its early promises, and buds and blossoms had hurried forth with quivering eagerness. The soft breeze which rustled the leaves and played caressingly with the floating locks was as mild as in summer, and the girls felt that pleasant languor which comes ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... Alice was better for talk and quiet play than her sister. She read a great deal; and there was an exchange of story-books, and much conversation over them, between her and Kate—indeed, the spirit and animation of this new friend quite made her light up, and brighten out of her languor whenever the shrill laughing voice came near. And Kate, after having got over her first awe at coming near a child so unlike herself, grew very fond of her, and felt how good and sweet and patient she was. She never ran off to play till Alice was taken in-doors; and spent all her spare ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... vividness and brightness about him, in his piercing dark eyes, in his red lips, in his healthy and manly face with its rosy brown complexion and its powerful decided chin. He had none of the sleepiness and fatalistic languor of the fat hubble-bubble smoking Turk of caricature. The whole of him looked aristocratic, energetic, perfectly poised and absolutely self-possessed. Many of the women in court glanced at him without ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... English physician and scientist, asserts that the misery of the women of the poorer classes of the population in England is more than doubled by the use of tea, which only soothes or stimulates to intensify the after-coming depression and languor. ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... seeing it all the tropic languor and sweetness of the life he had conjured up, so remote, so utterly different from the rough-hewn ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... Finding a disease of languor, occasioned by an enlargement of the liver, to which he had for some time been subject, increase, and daily expecting a total loss of sight, he wrote a letter to the academy, intimating his intention to resign the office of president on account of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... say'st, as if the Quakers had put the sun in their pockets—all around was soft and mild, and even pleasant; but there was, in the whole routine, a uniformity, a want of interest, a helpless and hopeless languor, which rendered life insipid. No doubt, my worthy host and hostess felt none of this void, this want of excitation, which was becoming oppressive to their guest. They had their little round of occupations, charities, and pleasures; Rachel ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... to their surprise, the door opened, and Mara came in, and both sisters were struck with a change that had passed over her. It was more than the result of mere physical repose. Not only had every sign of weariness and bodily languor vanished, but there was about her an air of solemn serenity and high repose that made her seem, as Miss Ruey afterwards said, "like an angel jest walked out of ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... just where we are until morning," said Grandma Padgett. "The night's pleasant and warm, and there are just as few mosquitoes here as in the tavern. I didn't sleep last night." She felt stimulated by the tea, and sufficiently recovered from the languor which follows extreme anxiety, to linger up watching the fire, allowing the children to linger also, while J. D. Matthews put his cupboard to rights ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Spring languor was in earth and sky, and in my bones, too; yet, through this Northern forest ever and anon came faint reminders of receding snows, melting beyond the Canadas—delicate zephyrs, tinctured with the far scent of frost, flavoring the sun's balm at moments ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... day, a balmy air, but one which induces languor, and as Mrs. Coit stopped at a street corner and bought a bunch of roses, she thought she would get the children out of town as soon as possible. Her eye was next attracted by some exquisite laces. She wanted a few yards, and stopped to price them. They ...
— Harper's Young People, June 22, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... period of great political languor. The burden of the war was severely felt. The blaze of freedom, it was said, that burst forth at the beginning had gone down, and numbers, in the thirst for riches, lost sight of the original object. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... although Holland is a country of the greatest religious freedom, they were not better satisfied there than in England. They were tolerated, indeed, but watched. Their zeal began to have dangerous languor for want of opposition, and being without power and influence, they grew tired of the indolent security of their sanctuary. They were desirous of removing to a country where they should see no superior."—Russell's Modern Europe, vol. ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... had dreamed of the vault and the smugglers, and that my being prisoned in the darkness was but the horror of a nightmare. I was for getting up, but fell back on my pillow in the effort to rise, with a weakness and sick languor which I had never known before. And as I sunk down, I felt something swing about my neck, and putting up my hand, found 'twas Colonel John Mohune's black locket, and so knew that part at least of this adventure was ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... we shall be saved." M. Correard replied in the same tone, and as if he had been in his ordinary condition.—"Have you a pigeon to carry your orders with such celerity?" The cries and the confusion soon roused us from this languor; but when tranquillity was somewhat restored, we again fell into the same drowsy condition. On the morrow, we felt as if we had awoke from a painful dream, and asked at our companions, if, during their sleep, ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... the other hand overshadowed by a wistful melancholy. The frame, braced by wintry cold, revelled in the outburst of warmth, of light, of life; and yet the very luxuriousness of the sensation brought with it a languor and a weariness that was akin rather to death than life. He rode alone far into the shining countryside, and found, in the middle of wide fields with softly swelling outlines, where the dry ploughlands were dappled with faint fawn-coloured tints, a little wood, in the centre of which ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... languor and richness of his complexion,—the dark eyes, soft as an Indian girl's,—the mouth, melting and red as the grapes where under a tropical sun his foreign mother had lain, and, gathering them ripe, had dropped them lazily into his baby mouth: these were new and strange features in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... fair-featured beauties. The eyes themselves, which those long lashes shrouded, were of the deepest violet blue; so deep, that at first sight you would have deemed them black, but for the soft and humid languor which is never seen in eyes of that color. The rest of her features were as near as possible to the Grecian model, except that there was a slight depression where the nose joins the brow, breaking that perfectly straight line of the classical face, which, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... the beginning can not be accurately determined, as the beginning symptoms of the disease are so slight as to escape notice. Impaired process of nutrition, languor and headache are symptoms from which the existence of some serious affliction may be inferred without being able to determine its ...
— Prof. Koch's Method to Cure Tuberculosis Popularly Treated • Max Birnbaum
... interstices filled up with Moss and Ivy. Seats of Turf were placed on either side, and a natural Cascade fell from the Rock above. Buried in himself the Monk approached the spot. The universal calm had communicated itself to his bosom, and a voluptuous tranquillity spread languor through his soul. ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... they stood, a sense of languor stealing between them. Without a word, their thoughts formed the same possibility, as two who have a child that is vaguely threatened. They were deeper in the jungle than they thought. . . . The cordon of native beaters was still a mile ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... over Walter's reeling brain; darkness, pierced by a thousand gleaming, twinkling lights, brilliant as stars, then came a void and nothingness. Slowly at last he felt himself struggling up out of the void, battling, fighting for consciousness, then came a delicious sort of languor. If this was dying, it was very pleasant. Forms seemed to be flitting before his half-opened eyelids and the hum of voices seemed to float in his ears. One voice irritated him greatly; it was faintly familiar in its loud joyousness. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... air of the place must have poisoned him. He sat by the pillar at which he had first placed himself, and hardly ever rose from it. With great slow eyes he gazed at everything, but nothing did he see. Sometimes he had the look of one who listens, but never did he hear. Thus in silence and languor he passed from day to day, and from night to night, scarcely sleeping, rarely eating, and seeming always to ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... on such a diet; It fires the blood from languor; Ye neighbor's children, have a care, This ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... never noticed how when night comes on a tired languor seizes the body, and inactive torpor overpowers the soul, and reason shrinks within itself like a fire going out, and feeling quite worn out is gently agitated by disordered fancies, only just indicating that the man is alive? But when the sun rises and scares away deceitful ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... her in loose, graceful folds. She wore no flowers, jewels, or ribbons, but the dark masses of her hair were unfastened, and hung round the white neck; there was a warm, bright flush on her face, with the least touch of languor in her manner. She threw herself back in her lounging chair, saying, with a ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... hurt him. He can earn neither your praises nor reproach. As well might you blame the staring noon of summer or throw a kind word to the everlasting hills. The bleak pride of the Castillano, the flint and steel of Aragon, the languor which veils Andalusian fire—travelling the lands which gave them birth, you find them scored in large over mountain and plain and riverbed, and bitten deep into the hearts of the indwellers. They are as seasonable there as the flowers of waste places, and will charm you as much. So Spanish travel ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... few straggling shooting stars appeared. The languor of fatigue overcame me, and I slept prostrate on the cushions of the deck as the murmurous reverberations from the walls of the rock-bound canal rose and fell, with the cadence of the waves, ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... under a tropical sun which burns its grassy plains to bitter dust even as the sharp cold reduced the Mackenzie region to barren tundra. The St. Lawrence flows through fertile grain fields and the homes of an active people of the temperate zone, but the Amazon winds its slow way amid the malarious languor of vast tropical forests in which the trees shut out the sky and the few natives are apathetic with the eternal inertia of the ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... nights stretched upon his side with his wide-open eyes boring into vacancy and a drab future, that he heard the wind whine over the ridgepole of the squat bunk-house and knew that it had risen from a dead calm since bedtime. The languor of nervous exhaustion was pulling his eyelids down over his tired eyes, and he knew that it must be nearly morning; for sleep never came to him now until after Applehead's brown rooster had crowed ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... he confesses his want of courage? All of us love companionship and sympathy; some of us may love them too much. All of us are more or less imaginative in our theology. Some of us may find the aid of material symbols a comfort, if not a necessity. The boldest thinker may have his moments of languor and discouragement, when he feels as if he could willingly exchange faiths with the old beldame crossing herself at the cathedral-door,—nay, that, if he could drop all coherent thought, and lie ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... to improve the style, to give variety to conversation, and to lend a grace to more important accomplishments. He who can effect this has surely done something. Is no useful end served by that writer whose works have soothed weeks of languor and sickness, have relieved the mind exhausted from the pressure of employment by an amusement which delights without enervating, which relaxes the tension of the powers without rendering them unfit for future exercise? I should not be surprised ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... tables, and pictures, were crowded together. A soft light was diffused through the apartment by an alabaster shade-lamp. An intoxicating perfume loaded the atmosphere, and even oppressed the senses. Lacour, as he sank upon the sofa, felt overcome by a strange languor. The mask sat close ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... destroyed. The splendor of his palace and the beauty of his gardens, became at length so familiar to his eye, that they were frequently before him, without being seen. Even flattery and music lost their power, by too frequent a repetition: and the broken slumbers of the night, and the languor of the morning, were more than equivalent to the transient hilarity that was inspired by wine. Thus passed the time of ALMORAN, divided between painful labours which he did not dare to shun, and the search of pleasure which he could ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... of May, and the sun had passed the noon line in a bright sky, causing the shadow of Peter Taylor to fall east of north and infusing his substance with the delightful languor called Spring Fever. Leaning upon an idle spade, Peter watched the lazy motions of a negro slave whom he had directed to trim a level lawn ornamented with flowerbeds. The English origin of the overseer was revealed by his looks ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... care of us, and no "policing" or keeping clean. Symptoms of typhoid fever soon appeared; forty of our hundred were more or less ill. My brother and I knew very well that the only way to avert this was to exercise vigorously. On waking in the morning we all experienced languor and lassitude. Those who yielded to it fell ill. Henry was always so ready to work, that once our sergeant, Mr. Bullard, interposed and gave the duty to another, saying it was not fair. I always remembered it with gratitude. But this feverish languor passed ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... in New York about ten days when he awoke one morning near noon. An immense languor possessed him. He had been with Julia the night before and never had she been more charming, more abandoned.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} He ordered his breakfast to be sent up, and then stretched out in bed and lit an expensive Russian cigarette. ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... of old Sherry, Whose shrugs and jerks would make us merry, If not by tedious languor wrung— 45 ...
— No Abolition of Slavery - Or the Universal Empire of Love, A poem • James Boswell
... as it is called, many of the delicate suffer from languor, listlessness, and headache. These symptoms usually go away suddenly when the weather breaks or the storm comes on and rolls over. Exertion in cases of this kind should be avoided, as well as anything like heavy meals. The sufferer is better out of doors than in, and ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... was she called, even here, nor seemingly without justice, capricious and unsteady in her likings. These clever personages, after a little while, all seemed to disappoint her expectations of them; she sought the acquaintance of each with cordial earnestness; slid from the acquaintance with weary languor,—never, after all, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and languor began gradually to steal over me, partly, perhaps, from the heat of the fire, and partly from some unexplained cause. An uncontrollable impulse to sleep weighed down my eyelids, while, at the same time, my brain worked actively, and a hundred beautiful ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... buoyant heart defied the languor of illness and the gloomy day. The post had brought her a letter from Ovid—enclosing a photograph, taken at Montreal, which presented him ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... speech for Lady Alice. Her mother looked at her in amazement. There certainly must be something out of the ordinary in this peculiar American cousin to wake Alice from her customary languor. ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... which he must be allowed to have a superlative Genius) and now and then penning a Catch or a Ditty, instead of inditing Odes, and Sonnets, the Gentlemen of the Bon Goust in the Pit would never have been put to all that Grimace in damning the Frippery of State, the Poverty and Languor of Thought, the unnatural Wit, and inartificial Structure of his Dramas. I am, SIR, Your very ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... following morning Miss Plympton called on Edith, and was shocked to see the changes that had been made in her by that one night. She did not regard so much the pallor of her face, the languor of her manner, and her unelastic step, but rather the new expression that appeared upon her countenance, the thoughtfulness of her brow, the deep and earnest abstraction of her gaze. In that one night she seemed to have stepped from girlhood to maturity. It was as though she had lived through ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... sought to take you in its arms and embrace you; when the minutest flowers, the humble daisy, the blue forget-me-not, the convolvulus in the hedgerows raise their heads and follow you with a longing look—does it not happen to you to experience an inexpressible sensation of languor, to sigh for no apparent reason, and even to feel inclined to shed tears, and to ask yourselves, 'Why does this feeling of love oppress me? why do my knees bend under me? ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... room, gained his carriage, and ordered the coachman to drive to Downing-street. He drew down the blinds, and leant back. A certain languor became visible in his face, and once or twice he mechanically put his ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... could sit there in stillness, gazing out over the chilly and mournful sea. There was something so unutterably sad about Felicita's condition that it awed the simple, cheerful nature of Madame. It was more than illness and exhaustion. The white, unsmiling face, the drooping head, the languor of the thin, long hands, the fathomless sorrow lurking behind her dark eyes—all spoke of a heart-sickness such as Madame had never seen or dreamed of. The children did not cheer their mother. When she saw that, Madame felt that there was nothing to be done but to leave ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... music—tender, fitful, dreamy!—an exquisite languor stole into Crystal's limbs. She was not asleep, yet she was in dreamland—all alone in semi-darkness, that was restful and soothing, and with the fragrance of crimson roses in her nostrils and their velvety ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... still had an instinctive veneration. Yet I could not but observe the difference between the zeal with which I snatched at a volume of Carlyle or Ruskin—since these magicians were now first revealing themselves to me—and the increasing languor with which I took up Alford for my daily 'passage'. Of course, although I did not know it, and believed my reluctance to be sinful, the real reason why I now found the Bible so difficult to read was my familiarity with its contents. These had the colourless triteness of a story ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... life, whether there were healing balms in the perpetual summer through which they sailed, or whether she abandoned herself to the pleasures of the flying hours, she began to regain strength and color, her languor disappeared, she spent the day in the soft blissful air with her books or work, her mother knitting and nodding near by; while John, if not sick himself, yet feeling very miserable, lay on a mattress on the deck, sometimes dozing, sometimes following with his eye the graceful lines and snowy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... mark'd, where, gleaming through the night, Aerial crosses shed a lurid light. Those wrestlers, too, whom naked we behold Through many a summer's night and winter's cold, Now changed appear'd, his pristine languor fled, Expiring Abel raised his sinking head, While with fix'd eyes his murderer seemed to stand, The bone half dropping from his nerveless hand. So, when of old, as Latian records tell, At Pompey's base ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... talking in a soft low voice in the most affectionate and considerate manner, and with good taste and judgment that exceedingly struck and pleased the new curate. It was the more surprise to him to find the congregations thin, and a general languor and indifference about the people who attended the church. There was also a good deal of opposition in the parish, some old sullen seceders who went to a neighbouring proprietary chapel, many more of erratic ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the cafes of Paris are never so full as after a great night at the Opera. To-night there had been a wonderful performance. The flow of people down the stairs seemed interminable. Young women and old,—sleepy-looking beauties of the Southern type, whose dark eyes seemed half closed with a languor partly passionate, partly of pride; women of the truer French type,—brilliant, smiling, vivacious, mostly pale, seldom good-looking, always attractive. A few Germans, a fair sprinkling of Englishwomen, and a larger proportion still of Americans, whose women were the best dressed of the whole company. ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ornaments; but the latter years of her life were marked by her munificence, and attachment to the reform doctrines. But her power ceased almost as soon as she became queen. She could win, but she could not retain, the affections of her royal husband. His passion subsided into languor, and ended in disgust. The beauty of Anne Boleyn was soon forgotten when Jane Seymour, her maid of honor, attracted the attention of Henry. To make this lady his wife now became the object of his life, and this could only ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... the one thing happened which made her prudence coincide with her desires; one of the children sickened with a languor that was the precursor of disease, and the doctors said that only country air could bring back strength. And then fate itself took the whole matter out of my control. Something happened in the city—I know ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... labour lost; Then cheers his heart with what his fate affords, And chants his sonnet to deceive the time, Till the due season calls him to repose; Thus I, long-travelled in the ways of men, And dancing with the rest the giddy maze Where Disappointment smiles at Hope's career; Warned by the languor of life's evening ray, At length have housed me in an humble shed, Where, future wandering banished from my thought, And waiting, patient, the sweet hour of rest, I chase the moments with a serious song. Song soothes our pains, and ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... of patients recover completely. A number complain for a time of headache, languor, muscular weakness, and incapacity for sustained effort—traumatic neurasthenia. Sometimes there is a condition of mental instability, the patient is easily excited, and is unduly affected by alcohol or other stimulants. Occasionally there is permanent mental impairment. It is not uncommon ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... bade a trusty servitor To Cornwall's queen forthwith. "Take this," he said, "and show to her How great my languor, sith This signet's round will not be found ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... which is natural to humid places; the light of day thinly veiled by the exhalations from the earth; an odor of decaying plants, long silence interrupted by dull sounds; an air of abandonment, of idleness, of lassitude, the melancholy languor of a life departing regretfully; the recollection of something which was, and will never reappear, never! Such was the word which this wild solitude murmured to Gilbert's ear. Never! repeated he to himself, and his heart was oppressed by a sense of the irretrievable. He seated ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... splendour of the autumn foliage; above all, to enjoy the keen and frosty air. All his life he had longed for cold weather. He had anticipated it daily during his voyage, and, although he had never given way to the natural indolence of the Tropics, he had always been conscious of a languor to fight. But the moment the sharp air of the North had tingled his skin his very muscles seemed to harden, his blood to quicken, and even his brain to become more alert and eager. If he had been ambitious and studious ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... undecided mood in the small passageway leading up-stairs he felt the pressure of a finger on his shoulder. Looking up, he met the eyes of Amabel, who was leaning toward him over the banisters. She was smiling, and, though her face was not without evidences of physical languor, there was a charm about her person which would have been sufficiently enthralling to him twenty-four hours before, but which now caused him such a physical repulsion that he started back in the effort to rid his shoulder from ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... the rest killed or drowned in trying to cross the rapids. The loss of the English was small in numbers, but immeasurable in the death of Howe. "The fall of this noble and brave officer," says Rogers, "seemed to produce an almost general languor and consternation through the whole army." "In Lord Howe," writes another contemporary, Major Thomas Mante, "the soul of General Abercromby's army seemed to expire. From the unhappy moment the General was deprived of his advice, neither order nor discipline was observed, and a strange kind of ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... depressing, and the mind, which is never satisfied with anything long, begins to wonder what the world is like beyond the enclosing cliffs, and the desire to climb them and to look forth under a wider range of sky grows stronger. Such change is needed, for when there is languor within, the impressions from without are dull. The country through which I now passed was very beautiful with its multitude of chestnut-trees, the pale yellow plumes of the male blossom still clinging to them and hiding half their leaves; but here again was the sad ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... artifices were employed that are calculated to charm the senses, ensnare the feelings, and dissolve the heart into tenderness. Don Ambrosio was a master of the subtle arts of seduction. His very mansion breathed an enervating atmosphere of languor and delight. It was here, amidst twilight saloons and dreamy chambers, buried among groves of orange and myrtle, that he shut himself up at times from the prying world, and gave free scope to ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... the deadly languor of her mind came to her from Music. That was no great wonder; but, strange to say, the music that did her good was neither old enough to be revered, nor new enough to be fashionable. It was English music too, and passe' music. She ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... his closed upon it, and their eyelids fluttered and drooped down. The river still rumbled en, somewhere in the infinite distance, but it came to them like the murmur of a world forgotten. A soft languor encompassed them. The golden sunshine dripped down upon them through the living green, and all the life of the warm earth seemed singing. And quiet was very good. Fifteen long minutes they drowsed, ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... little from pain and anxiety; but this did not deter her from going out with the first daylight in the morning to rake among the snow near the door, although her throat was sore beyond concealment, her jaws stiff, and the pleasant languor and quick-wittedness had ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... the brightest hues and the greatest contrasts seem to go tripping along conscious of being irresistible. Many of the Croatian peasants are fine, strapping fellows, and very handsome women are observed in the villages - women with great, dreamy eyes, and faces with an expression of languor that bespeaks their owners to be gentleness personified. Igali shows evidence of more susceptibility to female charms than I should naturally have given him credit for, and shows a decided inclination ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... selfishly he had been engrossed for weeks, how little he had thought for her, of her who must be so lonely and homesick in her new sphere. He was almost shocked now at the pallor of her face, the droop and languor of the slender figure that was so buoyant and elastic those bright days aboard ship just preceding the catastrophe. What friends and chums they had become! How famously he was getting on with his Spanish! What ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... The calm languor of her tone was almost fearful, and even as she spoke a shuddering seized her, making her tremble convulsively, her teeth knocking together, and ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mad emperor. Strong hands tore him away and he was borne, struggling and fighting, to the floor. A sharp pain in his forearm. A deadening of the muscles. He was powerless, save for the painful ability to crawl to his knees, swaying drunkenly. A delicious languor overcame him. Nothing mattered now. He saw that a tall man in the purple had withdrawn the needle of the hypodermic and was replacing the instrument in its case. Ever so ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... called farre away, And her awaking bad her quickly dight, For lo! her bridegrome was in readie ray 640 To come to her, and seeke her loves delight: With that she started up with cherefull sight, When suddeinly both bed and all was gone, And I in languor left there ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... dove color, with faint touches of blue, was effective, and she knew it. Nevertheless, she was a little pale, and her manner lacked that note of quiet languor which generally characterized it. She talked rather more than usual, chattering idly about the acquaintances to whom she was continually nodding and bowing. Her face hardened a little as the Marchioness, on her way through the room with a party of friends, ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to the latter species. His nose and mouth had the exquisite refinement of the descendant of generations of art-collectors and poet-patronizers. He enjoyed life—but not with rude activity, like the grosser members of the ruling caste—rather with a certain rare languor. He sniffed and savoured the whole spherical surface of the apple of life with those delicate nostrils, rather than bit into it. His one conviction was that in a properly—managed world nothing ought to occur to disturb or agitate the perfect tranquillity ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... on it as the sable locks of night, but glittering out wherever a wandering ray glanced on its glossy surface like the bright tresses of Aurora. The broad and marble forehead, the pencilled brows, and the large liquid eyes fraught with a mild and lustrous languor; the cheeks, pale in their wonted mood as alabaster, yet eloquent at times with warm and passionate blushes. The lips, redder than aught on earth which shares both hue and softness; and, more than all, the deep and indescribable expression ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... her head, and crossed the apartment; and in so doing her condition was very visible, not only in her shape, but in her languor. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... impossible for any impurity to stick to it, and maintained that it was an absurdity to wash a face which was of necessity always clean. I don't know how much fancy there was in this; but there is no fancy in saying that the lassitude of tired-out operatives, and the languor of imaginative natures in their periods of collapse, and the vacuity of minds untrained to labor and discipline, fit the soul and body for the germination of the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... he, with becoming solemnity, "that all this is merely a temporary reaction from having believed too much; the languor and dejection which attend the morrow after a night's debauch. I assure you that I rejoice rather than grieve to hear that you have curtailed your orthodoxy. It has been just my own case, as you know: only I flatter myself, that, perhaps ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... misfortune; they require continual great emotions to keep them in tolerable humour with themselves; they must have tears in their eyes, or they are apprehensive that their hearts are growing hard. They have accustomed themselves to such violent stimulus, that they cannot endure the languor to which they are subject in the intervals of delirium. Pink appears pale to the eye that is used to scarlet; and common food is insipid to the taste which has been vitiated by ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... former periods, to invert the common order of things: by day he read, refreshed himself with the aspect of nature, conversed or corresponded with his friends; but he wrote and studied in the night. And as his bodily feelings were too often those of languor and exhaustion, he adopted, in impatience of such mean impediments, the pernicious expedient of stimulants, which yield a momentary strength, only to waste our remaining fund of it more speedily ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... Crassus, we are specially told, had given himself up to the charms of no mid-day siesta. His mind had been full of the greatness of the task before him, but he will show neither fatigue nor anxiety. The art, the apparent ease with which it is all done, the grace without languor, the energy without exertion, are admirable. It is as though, they were sitting by running water, or listening to the music of some grand organ. They remove themselves to a wood a little farther from the house, and there they listen to the eloquence of Crassus. Cotta and Sulpicius only ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... dissimulation Draw a profit out of the necessities of this state England hated the Netherlands Friendly advice still more intolerable Haereticis non servanda fides He who confessed well was absolved well Insensible to contumely, and incapable of accepting a rebuff Languor of fatigue, rather than any sincere desire for peace Much as the blind or the deaf towards colour or music Subtle and dangerous enemy who wore the mask of a friend Word peace in Spanish mouths simply meant the ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... was an atmosphere of extraordinary languor—just to sit here and let the days slip by, the years pass. Just to stay here with no one to hurt one, no ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... splendour. She felt the security of an Olympian, who knew that she was daughter of the depths, and might say to the ocean, "Father!" And she exposed herself, unattainable and proud, to everything that should pass—to looks, to desires, to ravings, to dreams; as proud in her languor, on her boudoir couch, as Venus in ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... there is a state of mind distinguished by a concurrence of the following circumstances: a languor, a listlessness, or want of resolution and activity with respect to all undertakings; a disposition to seriousness, sadness and timidity as to all future events; an apprehension of the worst or most unhappy state of them; and therefore, often ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... delicious repose of refreshed nature, as in her pretty pink muslin, her white drapery folded round her, and her bright hair unbonnetted, she sat reclining in a low garden chair, at the door of the conservatory, a little pale, a little weak, but with a sweet happy languor, a soft tender bloom. ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in weaving variations on these words, and the evening was far advanced before my mirth ceased. Then a drowsy quiet overcame me; a pleasant languor which I did not attempt to resist. The darkness had intensified, and a slight breeze furrowed the pearl-blue sea. The ships, the masts of which I could see outlined against the sky, looked with their black hulls like voiceless monsters that bristled and lay in wait for ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... allowed, put but little constraint upon the extraordinary intimacy of the pair. The doctor was all devotion, and Miss Custer all languor and dependence. She made a beautiful invalid, with her rare complexion and her white, lissome hands lying so restfully and helplessly on the counterpane. One day, after being freshly dressed in an embroidered gown of the finest texture, and instructing Mrs. Tascher how to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various |
