"Listless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was not her undeniable beauty, or her dress and costly jewellery, which impressed Stafford so much as the proud, scornfully listless air with which she regarded him as she leant back indolently—and a little insolently—tapping the edge of the ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... of real gifts will fit himself to the work of any time; and so he will. But it is not necessarily to the first thing that offers. There is always latent in civilized society a certain amount of what may be called Sir Philip Sidney genius, which will seem elegant and listless and aimless enough until the congenial chance appears. A plant may grow in a cellar; but it will flower only under the due sun and warmth. Sir Philip Sidney was but a lovely possibility, until he went to be Governor of Flushing. What else was our friend, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... not feel the promise then. Life seemed growing dull, insipid. The course of the chariot wheels of progress, were impeded. What had become of her earnest, working self, whose deepest happiness was in laboring for humanity? Why were her hands so idle, and her mind so listless? Question rose on question, until her mind seemed plunging into a sea whose troubled waves moaned and dashed against her life-bark, giving her spirit no repose. Why was she floating on ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... linnets, and the twittering of swallows. At the outer gate sat two or three aged monks, picturesque and sculpturesque at once, like enchanted porters at the doors of some spellbound palace, their long, gray beards and sunken, listless eyes according with their own and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... were in their pleasant room which must soon be vacated, for the guiding presence that had made of them a family was wanting now. They had not been talking, only the quietest common-places—neither of them seemed to have words that they chose to utter. They were sitting in listless attitudes, each occupying a great arm-chair, which they called "study-chairs." Theodore with his hands clasped at the back of his head, and Pliny with his face half hidden in his hands. The latter was the first ...
— Three People • Pansy
... chief, to me has sent Their crown, and ev'ry regal ornament: The people join their own with his desire; And all my conduct, as their king, require. But the chill blood that creeps within my veins, And age, and listless limbs unfit for pains, And a soul conscious of its own decay, Have forc'd me to refuse imperial sway. My Pallas were more fit to mount the throne, And should, but he's a Sabine mother's son, And half a native; but, in you, combine A manly vigor, ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... the listless trees; A mother wept on her beaded knees For sons gone out to the long war's end; But more than mother or man wept I Who had no son in the world to send. The hour lagged by, and drifting high Came the fitful hum Of the little drum, And faint, ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... disturber of the peace; the parents can do nothing with him; he insists on eating just what he likes and when he likes; and he chooses, as a rule, candy, cake, pastries, ice cream, tea, coffee. Indigestion follows, the child loses weight, is languid and listless ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... ring was a circular enclosure of about four acres, with a spiked batten fence round it, and a listless crowd of back-country settlers propped along the fence. Behind them were the sheds for produce, and the machinery sections where steam threshers and earth scoops hummed and buzzed and thundered unnoticed. Crowds of sightseers wandered past the cattle stalls to gape at the fat bullocks; side-shows ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... starving and troops to the anxious battle-front of Europe. In spite also of the highest wages ever paid to a craft, they kept their efficiency at a lower point than lower paid workmen averaged in the listless pre-war days. Yet there was no lack of outcry that the workman was throttled and enslaved by the greed of capital. There was no lack of outcry that profiteers were bleeding the nation to death and making martyrs of ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... elegant workmanship, covered with a damasked French silk, reposed Madame de Fontanges, attended by three or four young female slaves, of different complexions, but none of pure African blood. Others were seated upon the different Persian carpets about the room, in listless idleness, or strewing the petals of the orange-flower, to perfume the apartment with its odour. The only negro was a little boy, about six years of age, dressed in a fantastic costume, who sat in a corner, apparently in a very sulky humour. Madame de Fontanges was a ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... Pyne nothing was to be seen but the outstretched legs and feet which projected grotesquely from a recess. Seated, oriental fashion, upon an improvised divan near the grand piano and propped up by a number of garish cushions, Rita beheld Mrs. Sin. The long bamboo pipe had fallen from her listless fingers. Her face wore an expression of mystic rapture like that characterizing the ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... face was marred by lines of peevish discontent, and the 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 calm that always ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... the morning standing in front of this statue gazing listlessly at it, as one does when in dreamy mood; and on both occasions, turning to go, I encountered the same man, also gazing at it with, apparently, listless eyes. He was an uninteresting looking man—possibly he thought the same of me. From his dress he might have been a well-to-do tradesman, a minor Government official, doctor, or lawyer. Quite ten years later I paid my third visit to the same statue at about the same hour. This time he was there before ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... now, where circling hills looked down With cannon grimly planted, O'er listless camp and silent town The golden ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... brink Where the cattle came to drink. They trilled and piped and whistled With the thrush and bobolink, Till the kine in listless pause, Switched their tails in mute applause, With lifted heads and dreamy eyes, And ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... revelation at the breakfast table, Fanny went about her little flat listless and discouraged. Her usual high spirits had gone; she felt nervous and ill at ease. If Virginia was unhappy it was she alone who was responsible. She had encouraged the match and really persuaded her sister into it. The very first opportunity ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... and certainly superior in fascination. Long black hair, dark languishing eyes, clear olive complexions, and forms more graceful in motion than can be conceived by an Englishman used to the drowsy, listless air of his countrywomen, added to the most becoming dress, and, at the same time, the most decent in the world, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... which were gay rather than neat or becoming, she would stroll out across the hills during afternoon service with some like-minded female companion, and return by tea-time listless and out of spirits, conscious of a great want, but unconscious of the only way to satisfy it. For Kate Evans had a mind and heart which kept her from descending into the paths of open sin. Many young women there were around her, neglecters, like herself, of God, his house, and ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... awkward wonder for a time As there she listless lay and sang my rhyme, Wrapped up in fabrics of an Indian clime She seemed a Bird of Paradise Languid from the ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... his shoulders sort of listless. "I don't know," says he. Then he turns to Uncle Noah. "Uncle," says he, "how will those scuppernongs be about now on the big arbor in front ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... magnificent bay at their feet, Merrihew's disappointment softened somewhat. It was the fashionable hour. The band was playing near-by in the Villa Nazionale. Americans were everywhere. Occasionally a stray princess or countess flashed by, inert and listless against the cushions, and invariably over-dressed. And when men accompanied them, the men (if they were husbands) lolled back, even more listless. And beggars of all sorts and descriptions besieged the "very great grand rich Americans." ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... they glanced at the silent and motionless figures on the seats. For the most part, the loiterers there were either asleep or sitting with closed eyes. Here and there they caught a glance from some spectral face, a glance cold and listless. The fires of life were dead amongst these people. The animal desires alone remained; their faces ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... changed: she was in the high exaltation of madness. Callous she still appeared, so possessed by her general doom that she had no sense of its particular woes. But she was listless no more. Willing her death, she seemed to borrow its greatness and become one with the law that punished her. Arrogating the Almighty's function to expedite her doom, she was the equal of the Most High. It was her feebleness that made her great. Because in her feebleness she yielded ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... and she is emptied of it now! Outright now!—how miraculously gone All of the grace—had she not strange grace once? Why, the blank cheek hangs listless as it likes, No purpose holds the features up together, 235 Only the cloven brow and puckered chin Stay in their places; and the very hair, That seemed to have a sort of life in it, Drops, a ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... pride itself on leadership, yet has an uncomfortable sensation when not followed. But there are times with all when solitude is sought. The Varsimle' had been fat and well through the winter, yet now was listless, and lingered with drooping head as the grazing ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... insisted on getting up; and Dr. Donaldson gave his consent to her returning into the drawing-room. She was restless and uncomfortable in every position, and before night she became very feverish. Mr. Hale was utterly listless, and incapable of ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... other side of the room a row of stretchers, shut in by bars. At a table in the middle, on which were bottles, lint, graduated glasses, sat a warder, with outstretched legs and fallen head: near him, standing listless, a convict hospital-orderly, who continually edged nearer the stove; and, half-way down ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... proceeded, undismayed, to make good his accusation. He had dropped back into his slightly listless air of thinly veiled persiflage, and he appeared to address the lady, to explain the situation to her, rather than to justify the charge he ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... proceeded indoors. The door of the steward's room stood open, and she turned into it, fancying it was empty. Down on a chair sat she, a marked change coming over her air and manner. Her bright colour had faded, her hands hung down listless; and there was an expression on her face of care, of perplexity. Suddenly she lifted her hands and struck her temples, with a gesture that looked ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... hasn't been home all night," responded the woman in a dreary, listless tone. "You work at the railroad, don't you? Have they sent for Lem? He said he was expecting a job there—we need it ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... to seek his fane, and Diana was unable to offer them any cool, shady retreat which, at such an hour, she would herself have loved so well. Yonder, under the soot-imbued awning of the Francesco, sits many a listless ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... replied the young man, with a short, heavy sigh. 'You mean—the question of suicide—I cannot understand it at all—it seems so sudden and so terrible—she certainly had seemed listless and troubled lately—but only at times—and yesterday morning, when I went to business, she appeared quite herself again, and I suggested that we should go to the opera in the evening. She was delighted, I know, and told me she would do some shopping, and pay ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... so, they used various little devices. Theirs was a good roomy boat and those who were to sleep first disposed themselves comfortably, while Henry sat in the prow and Tom in the stern, both silent and apparently listless, but watching with eyes and ears alike. The dawn came, and, as they had foreseen, it was a bright, hot day. It was so close among the bushes that the sleepers stirred restlessly and beads of perspiration stood on the faces of the watchers. Not a breath of air ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... vanish from the scene. This requires genius. The less confident ploddingly fulfil Nos. 1 and 2, and don't attempt No. 3. Well, we loitered up and down, and collected a few handfuls, and when we had eked out the job to the uttermost, stood together in a listless knot and waited. "What shall we do?" we asked the corporal. "Do any —— thing," he despairingly cried, "but do some —— thing!" By this time the sergeant-major too was at his wits' end as he looked round his spotless lines. But you can't easily baffle a sergeant-major. ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... could never tell that woman that I loved her, or that she pleased me, or even that she was beautiful; there was nothing on my lips but a desire to kiss her, and say to her: "Make a girdle of those listless arms and lean that head on my breast; place that sweet smile on my lips." My body loved hers; I was under the influence of beauty ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... them, looked up at the windows, thought of all those great tiers, those moulds and blocks of learning on the shelves; and have you never watched the weary people that dribble in from the streets and wander coldly about, or sit down listless in them—in those mighty, silent empires of the past? have you never thought that somewhere all about them, somewhere in this same library, there must be some white, silent, sunny country of the future, full of children and of singing, full of something ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... have playfully called "Lincoln on the brain," let me say a few words in regard to the most marvellous man that this country has produced in the nineteenth century. His name is to-day a household word in every civilized land. Dr. Newman Hall, of London, has told me that when he had addressed a listless audience, he found that nothing was so certain to arouse them as to introduce the name of Abraham Lincoln. Certainly no other name has such electric power over every true heart from Maine to Mexico. The first time I ever saw the man whom we used to call, familiarly ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... no work whatever, not even swab the deck. It was only with difficulty that he could limp along, and every move caused him violent pain. He grew listless and dejected, and sat all day on the vessel's side, eagerly straining his eyes to catch any sight of land, or gazing vacantly into the weary sameness ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... to lose his spirits and to be dull without it, and to hate the hours when he could not see it; and all the time it grew or seemed to grow stronger and sleeker; his mother soon began to notice that he was not well; he became thin and listless, but his eyes were large and bright; she asked him more than once if he were well, but he only laughed. Once indeed he had a fright; he had been asleep under a hawthorn in the glen on a hot July day; and waking saw the cat ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... some one just think of your hand as containing hundreds of individual minds, each having an intelligence of its own. When you put this feeling into your hand shake it shows personality. When you shake hands in a listless way, it denotes timidity, lack of force and power of personality. When the hand grip is very weak and stiff, the person has little love in his nature, no passion and no magnetism. When the hand shake is just the opposite, you will find that the nature is also. The ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... anew with the joys and temptations of other days? Yet, each year these pilgrimages into the past must become more and more lonely journeys; the friends whom we can take by the hand and lead back to our old homes become fewer with each decade. It would be a useless sacrilege to force some listless acquaintance to accompany us. He would not hear the voices that call to us, or see the loved faces that people the silent passages, and would wonder what attraction we could find ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... always been a dreamer, but Hadrian had never seen him so listless, so vaguely brooding as in these days. When he tried to rouse him and spur him to greater energy his favorite would look at him beseechingly, and though he made every effort to be of use to him and to show him a cheerful countenance it was always with but ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... story of his love, with outstretched hands and kneeling on the knee; and very sorry and pitiful were the tales, so that often up in the galleries some maid of the palace wept. And very graciously she nodded her head like a listless magnolia in the deeps of the night moving idly to all the breezes its ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... calf retains its appetite, but as the severity of the disease increases the animal shows less and less disposition to suck, and has lost all vivacity, lying dull and listless, and, when raised, walking weakly and unsteadily. Flesh is lost rapidly, the hair stands erect, the skin gets dry and scurfy, the nose is dry and hot, or this condition alternates with a moist and cool one. By this time the mouth and skin, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... listless glance over the sheet which Jenkins held out to him. He was not the man to be caught by the ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... plainly; yet I found a clearer proof of the slavery in which the man held them in the perfect indifference with which they regarded my arrival—though a guest with two servants must have been a rarity in such a place—and the listless way in which they set about attending to my wants. Keenly remembering that not long before this my enemies had striven to prejudice me in the King's eyes by alleging that, though I filled his coffers, I was grinding the poor into the dust—and even, by my exactions, provoking a rebellion I was in ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... of two tiny estuaries appeared on either side. He could not see the final cape, but he saw the sea beyond it, flawed with catspaws, gold in the afternoon sun, and on it a small herring smack flopping listless sails. ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... simplification of administrative procedures. The tax burden remains one of the highest in Europe (43.8% of GDP in 2003). The current economic slowdown and inflexible budget items have pushed the 2003 deficit to 4% of GDP, above the EU's 3% debt limit. Business investment remains listless because of low rates of capital utilization, sluggish demand, high debt, and the steep cost ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... custom of hording together in families, and of not marrying out of their own kraals, has, no doubt, tended to enervate this race of men, and reduced them to their present degenerated condition, which is that of a languid, listless, phlegmatic people, in whom the prolific powers of nature seem ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... enough to be seen, but as time went on she doubted whether he would ever recover. Although the delirium which had followed his seizure had passed away, he was slow in regaining health, and remained in bed, listless and indifferent to everything, sometimes reading a little, but oftener lying still, staring at the wall. He was passive and quiet, and obedient as a child. He seemed to have no recollection of the events of the night of the murder, and his ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... years it is not in my power to recollect at what periods woodcocks used to be sluggish or alert when I was a sportsman: but, upon my mentioning this circumstance to a friend, he thinks he has observed them to be remarkably listless against snowy foul weather; if this should be the case, then the inaptitude for flying arises only from an eagerness for food; as sheep are observed to be very intent on grazing against ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... There is a sweetness in song or in the cunning reimaging of the beauty we see; but the Magician of the Beautiful whispers to us of his art, how we were with him when he laid the foundations of the world, and the song is unfinished, the fingers grow listless. As we receive these intimations of age our very sins become negative: we are still pleased if a voice praises us, but we grow lethargic in enterprises where the spur to activity is fame or the acclamation of men. At some point in the past we struggled mightily ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... that meal would never end, although no one took anything. In time even the fun and laughter, which had at first helped to keep the thing going, died away, and the fellows lolled back in the chairs in a listless, bored way. It was vain for me to try to lead the talk; I could not have done it even if I had had the spirit, and there was precious ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... minuteness, which entered so liberally into poetry, as into the daily life of the classes for whom poetry was then written — Chaucer beautifully enforces the lasting advantages of purity, valour, and faithful love, and the fleeting and disappointing character of mere idle pleasure, of sloth and listless retirement from the battle of life. In the "season sweet" of spring, which the great singer of Middle Age England loved so well, a gentle woman is supposed to seek sleep in vain, to rise "about the springing of the gladsome day," and, by an unfrequented path in a pleasant ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... nightshirts, watching the play of the cedar-branch shadows on the moonlit lawn, and planning schemes of fresh devilry for the sunshiny morrow. From below, strains of the jocund piano declared that the Olympians were enjoying themselves in their listless, impotent way; for the new curate had been bidden to dinner that night, and was at the moment unclerically proclaiming to all the world that he feared no foe. His discordant vociferations doubtless ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... he tried to distract himself by fancying how the discovery of their absence would be made. He heard the listless, half-querulous discussion about the locality that regularly pervaded the nightly camp. He heard the discontented voice of Jake Silsbee as he halted beside the wagon, and said, "Come out o' that now, you two, and mighty quick about it." He heard the ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... violent in opinion, frightening. For some time, while they drew their unemployment pensions, they did not make any effort to get work for the future. They said: "That can wait. I've done my bit. The country can keep me for a while. I helped to save it... Let's go to the 'movies.'" They were listless when not excited by some "show." Something seemed to have snapped in them; their will-power. A quiet day at home did ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... that. I know there's no harm in you from head to foot. And the trouble you've put on her is in her heart. All day long she sighs, and is listless as a shaded plant that does be needing the sun. All night long she keeps awake, and the wee silent tears come down her face. And before my eyes she's failing, and her step that was once light now drags the like of a cripple's. Young lad of the North, you've put love in ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... gate of Cahors, and no doubt the scene was worthy of note; but I had only a listless eye for it—much such an eye as a man about to be broken on the wheel must have for that curious instrument, supposing him never to have seen it before. The whole population had come out to line the streets through which ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... return he was at first disappointed. His uncle, he thought, looked older. He was listless too, preferring others to read to him and dictating nearly all his letters. Not until the day before he left had Eustace an opportunity of observing Adrian ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... horses hunted on foot, in parties not exceeding two persons. Their method was to follow the tracks of an elephant, so as to arrive at their game between the hours of 10 A.M. and noon, at which time the animal is either asleep, or extremely listless, and easy to approach. Should they discover the animal asleep, one of the hunters would creep stealthily towards the head, and with one blow sever the trunk while stretched upon the ground; in which case the elephant would start upon his feet, while the hunters escaped in the ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... their appearance, tinged here and there to lurid red and orange by the rays of the fast-disappearing luminary. The air, moreover, felt dull and heavy, and carried a peculiar odour not unlike brimstone. This singular condition of the atmosphere was not without its effect on the men, who felt listless and disinclined to work. A sense of impending peril seemed to be hanging over all. The wind, too, was gradually dying away, and came fitfully and at intervals in hot, sulphurous puffs. The sea, which had been ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... party, further than bestowing on us a cursory glance to ascertain whether he knew any of us, he drew up to the chimney corner, and placing the soles of his boots perpendicularly to the fire (which soon indicated by the vapour arising from them that he had been wading in water), he asked in a listless manner and without waiting for replies, some unconnected questions of the landlord: as, "Any news, Peter? how does the world use you? how are the young ladies? how is fish this season? macarel plenty? any wrecks ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... and hot. Their slumbers had been too profound to be refreshing, and they woke listless, and sat up, and stared about them with dull eyes. Only Wicks, smelling a hard day's work ahead, was more alert. He went first to the well, sounded it once and then a second time, and stood a while with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... indignation against the training school committee. In his bewilderment Phillotson entered the adjacent cathedral, just now in a direly dismantled state by reason of the repairs. He sat down on a block of freestone, regardless of the dusty imprint it made on his breeches; and his listless eyes following the movements of the workmen he presently became aware that the reputed culprit, Sue's lover Jude, was ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... his head, and played a little uneasily with an ormolu terrier-pot, upsetting half the tobacco in it; he was trained to his brother's nonchalant, impenetrable school, and used to his brother's set; a cool, listless, reckless, thoroughbred, and impassive set, whose first canon was that you must lose your last thousand in the world without giving a sign that you winced, and must win half a million without showing that you were gratified; ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... we went, of how, like her brother, she contrived—it was the charming thing in both children—to let me alone without appearing to drop me and to accompany me without appearing to surround. They were never importunate and yet never listless. My attention to them all really went to seeing them amuse themselves immensely without me: this was a spectacle they seemed actively to prepare and that engaged me as an active admirer. I walked in a world of their invention—they had no occasion whatever to draw upon mine; so that my time was ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... to day she ministered to him. Many a time as he sat, listless and moody, within his hiding-place, a handful of wild strawberries, steeped in the warm sweetness of the hills, would be pushed beneath the leafy branches that concealed the door. Sometimes she brought him bread baked ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... little puff of white smoke, the crack of a revolver, and Hume, laughing again, struck in his spurs and rode swiftly down the long slope. The men upon the ridge two miles off, as listless as Venable had been, ran up a big white sheet to flutter from a dead pine. This was the signal that the race was on, and that just one man ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... the admiral, finding her dull and listless, said, "Why don't you go and talk to the Sister? She amuses you. I'll join you when I ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... Rosalind's eyes remained cold, despite their softness, and Lesley was vaguely conscious of a repulsion—such as we sometimes feel on touching a toad or a snake—when Mrs. Romaine put her hand on the girl's listless fingers. No, what it was Lesley could not tell, but she was sure of this, that she could never ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... averred that Edith Dexter was no humble scion of proletariat. Her polished yet reserved manners bespoke high birth and aristocratic associations; but something in the composed, sad countenance, in the listless drooping of the pretty head, hinted that she had long since spilt the rosy sparkling foam of her cup of life, and was patiently ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... see her soft breath stirring the while. See, the scene itself was a picture,—the dark glen, the lonesome little lodge, on the very margin of the fairy lake—here she sat, motionless as marble; this bunch of roses had dropped from her listless hand, and you would have thought some tragedy of ancient sorrow, were passing before her, in the invisible element, with such a fixed and lofty sadness she gazed into it. But of course, of course, it is nothing to ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... day following Mrs. Taylor essayed the impossible. She took herself over to Molly Wood's cabin. The girl gave her a listless greeting, and the dame sat slowly down, and ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... night; the sea was now smooth as glass, and not a breath of air moved in the heavens; the sail of the raft hung listless down the mast, and was reflected upon the calm surface by the brilliancy of the starry night alone. It was a night for contemplation—for examination of oneself, and adoration of the Deity; and here, on a frail raft, were ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... notes,—the march drowning the miserere, and the sullen crowd thickening round them,—a crowd, which, if it had its will, would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it. And in the recesses of the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest classes, unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards; and unregarded children,—every heavy glance of their young eyes full of desperation and stony depravity, and their throats hoarse with cursing,—gamble, and fight, and snarl, and sleep, hour after hour, clashing their bruised centesimi upon ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... smooth array of phrase, Artfully sought and ordered though it be, Which the cold rhymer lays Upon his page with languid industry, Can wake the listless pulse to livelier speed, Or fill with sudden tears ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... are allowed freely to follow the bent of their own inclinations. I have often observed some of these little creatures ardent for amusement responding to their own predilections; others taking interest in frivolous things; others, again, listless, and interesting themselves in nothing. Whilst many would examine with breathless attention, others would ask questions, more or less intelligent, of the persons at the ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... Sundays and evenings come, Completely empty and listless I move about, I am completely glassy-eyed, play with dogs for fun, Ah, or with little stones that I find, Weary, without a thought, drag myself through the streets. I often also stand around at my ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... sprawling listless in his chair, staring absently at the rug, as if he had lost all interest ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... short silence between them. It was not until then, that he realised how dear during these last few months her companionship had been to him. He looked into the fire with sad, listless eyes. After all, what was success worth? He had grasped at the shadow, and Cicely with her charming little ways, her glorious companionableness and her dainty prettiness, was lost to him for ever. He had too much self-restraint ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... station—whose buvette served him such listless refreshment as one may find at railway lunch-counters and nowhere else the world over—a train was waiting with an apathetic crew and a sprinkling of sleepy passengers, for the most part farm and village folk of the department. There was nowhere in evidence any ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... July, about 2 P.M., I was sitting on the burzani as usual; I felt listless and languid, and a drowsiness came over me; I did not fall asleep, but the power of my limbs seemed to fail me. Yet the brain was busy; all my life seemed passing in review before me; when these retrospective scenes became serious, I looked serious; ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... fashionable lady be a listless parasite? Even if she wishes merely to be a queen of society, would she not be more queenly if she knew the trials and afflictions of others, and, better still, knew how to help them? Would she be less a queen if she were not dependent ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... upon account of his illness, which was of the bilious kind, and for which he had obstinately refused to take any medicine. He soon came ashore, with his boy Tayeto, and though while he was on board, and after he came into the boat, he was exceedingly listless and dejected, he no sooner entered the town than he seemed to be animated with a new soul. The houses, carriages, streets, people, and a multiplicity of other objects, all new, which rushed upon him at once, produced an effect like the sudden and secret power that is imagined of fascination. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... In listless quietude of mind, I yield to all The change of cloud and wave and wind And passive on the flood reclined, I wander with the waves, and with them rise ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... of yonder nodding beech That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high, His listless length at noontide would he stretch, And pore upon the brook ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... the night had all but fallen; the men were all on board; Amyas in command of one canoe, Cary of the other. The Indians were grouped on the bank, watching the party with their listless stare, and with them the young guide, who preferred remaining among the Indians, and was made supremely happy by the present of Spanish sword and an English axe; while, in the midst, the old hermit, with tears in his eyes, prayed ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... The listless life their brother led was a source of grief to them; for they were really attached to him, and believed that they had in every way been working for ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... effective speakers Ireland ever produced. I saw him at a great India meeting in Exeter Hall, where some of the best orators from France, America, and England were present. There were six natives from India on the platform who, not understanding anything that was said, naturally remained listless throughout the proceedings. But the moment O'Connell began to speak they were all attention, bending forward and closely watching every movement. One could almost tell what he said from the play of his expressive features, his wonderful gestures, and ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... wore a particularly listless air. The leafless trees hung out long and drooping arms, that swayed to and fro in the biting wind. The sullen sky overhead added its tone of dreariness to the picture. There was no cheerful whir of factories and shops, no brisk steps of men going to and fro, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... of yonder nodding beech That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high, His listless length at noon-tide would he stretch, And pore upon the brook that ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... him, and a wise "laying-to"—for his works, which are, in large part, finely-healthy, objective, and in almost everything unlike the work of an invalid, yet, in some degree, were but the devices to beguile the burdens of an invalid's days. Instead of remaining in our climate, it might be, to lie listless and helpless half the day, with no companion but his own thoughts and fancies (not always so pleasant either, if, like Frankenstein's monster, or, better still like the imp in the bottle in the Arabian Nights, you ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... Sunday never seemed Sunday to me. I could only say, foolishly enough, "But it is not Sunday at home." I could not attend their parties and I had little heart to dance. I had only to go to the window to see their various functions; it could hardly be called merry as they went at it in such a listless, lazy way, with apparently little enjoyment, the air that they carry into ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... he lay gazing up at them and mumbling to himself. With much trouble, they got him to a small, stony knoll, where they made a fire and spread their blankets on a bundle of reeds for him to lie on. Then he spoke, in a faint and listless voice. ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... awoke at last with a deep sigh, it was still dark. This was fortunate, for he could not see whose hand administered the physic, and was too listless and weak to inquire. It was bright day when he awoke the second time and looked up inquiringly in ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... looking at the fire, deep in painful thought. Two perpendicular wrinkles upon her broad white forehead—so calm, so unclouded in society—told of gnawing cares. Then she stole a look at her husband, as he reclined in his arm-chair, his head lying back against the cushions in listless repose, his eyes looking vacantly at the window, whence he could see only the rain-blurred fronts of opposite houses, blank, dull windows, grey slated roofs, against ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... no resisting such an appeal, and Anne remained in the rooms now left bare and empty, until a message was brought to her to come to the Queen. Mary Beatrice sat in a chair by her fire, looking sad and listless, her eyes red with weeping, but she gave her sweet smile as the girl entered, and held out her hand, saying in her sweet Italian, "You are faithful, Signorina Anna! you remain! That is well; but now my son is gone, Anna, you must be mine. I make you my reader ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... put on his hat, and muttering to himself, stamped indignantly from the room, and Adam, shutting the door upon him, turned to Miss Anthea, who stood white-lipped and dry-eyed, while gentle little Miss Priscilla fondled her listless hand. ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... depressing to a sympathetic nature," he declared. "For example, it constantly depresses me to observe the effect of the cotton mills on the girls in my employ. They come in from the country, fresh, blooming, and eager to work. Within a few months perhaps they are pale, anaemic, listless. Not infrequently a young girl contracts tuberculosis and dies before one realizes that she is ill. It wrings the ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... there on the beach, basking in the sun, and far too idle to read, her listless gaze became fastened upon a trim, smart-looking little schooner which, under all the canvas she could possibly spread, was creeping slowly up from the westward before the light summer breeze. The glance of indifference with which the fair girl at first regarded the little ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... something fatally wrong in that scheme of life which finds an heir of eternity weary, listless, discouraged, while yet in the dawning of existence? It is not in perishing things, merely, to give back the lost zest. But a glad zest and hopefulness might be inspired even in the most jaded and ennui-cursed, were there in our homes such simple, truthful natures as that ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... we may lose hope for our country. Let us remember the most scornful condemnation in Scripture was not given to the evil but to the indifferent: "Because thou art neither hot nor cold I will spew thee out of my mouth." Let us not be the Laodiceans of Europe, listless and indifferent to human needs, swallowing our whisky and our porter, stupefying our souls, while our poor are sweated; letting the children of our cities die with more carelessness about life than the people ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... banks, but the light pained our eyes, and we sought refuge in the cool, dim shades of the parlour. Our conversation was exactly like that of passengers on board ship when they are just about to collapse. The minutes seemed like hours; our limbs were listless, as if we had been beaten into helplessness. So passed one doleful hour. I mentioned breakfast, and Bob shuddered, while Coney rushed from the room. What a pleasant thing is a ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... was broken, and the conversation started afresh. But the girl who had passed the Yorkshire relish sat silent and listless, her food untouched, and her wine untasted. She was small and thin; her face looked haggard. She was a new-comer, and had, indeed, arrived at Petershof only two hours before the table-d'hote bell rang. But there did not seem to be any nervous shrinking in her manner, nor any shyness at having ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... out of Japan seems but a dull and listless affair. We miss the idle, easy-going life and chatter, the tea, the sweetmeats, the pipes and charcoal brazier, the clogs awaiting their wearers on the large flat stone at the entry, the grotesquely trained ferns, the glass balls ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... of their own griefs and discontents. The lives of those rural forefathers, whom we are apt to think very prosaic figures—men whose only work was to ride round their land, getting heavier and heavier in their saddles, and who passed the rest of their days in the half-listless gratification of senses dulled by monotony—had a certain pathos in them nevertheless. Calamities came to them too, and their early errors carried hard consequences: perhaps the love of some sweet maiden, the image of purity, order, and calm, had opened their eyes to the vision of a life in ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... bounty of his comrades, and the humble kindness of Martha and Bess, came like healing to his soul; for very often the tenderness of others will seem to atone for the injuries of our enemies, and at least soften our vehement desire for revenge. Yet, in a quiet, listless sort of way, Stephen still longed for God to prove His wrath against the master's wrong-doing. It appeared so strange to hear that all this time nothing had befallen him, that he was still strong ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... of forty with a listless expression and a face that showed signs of wear, was beginning to look old, but was still handsome and admired by women. He lived in his big homestead alone, and was not in the service; and people used to say ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... soon as the wedding was over. He had not come to the point of thinking yet that marriage with Robin Drummond was not the way the Finger of God had pointed out to him. It was impossible not to notice Nelly's listless step and heavy eyes. The Dowager put down these things to ordinary delicacy, something the ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... vacant sameness grays the sky, A moisture gathers on each knop Of the bramble, rounding to a drop, That greets the goer-by With the cold listless lustre of a dead ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... looks a weary saint, Embalmed in pallid gleam; Listless and sad, without complaint, Like dead ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... repeat after him the very words which had fallen from his lips. But when it came to almagest and astrolabe, the counting of figures and reckoning of epicycles, away would go her thoughts to horse and hound, and a vacant eye and listless face would warn the teacher that he had lost his hold upon his scholar. Then he had but to bring out the old romance book from the priory, with befingered cover of sheepskin and gold letters upon a purple ground, to entice her ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "In listless quietude of mind I yield to all The change of cloud and wave and wind; And passive, on the flood reclined, I wander with the waves, and with them ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... Flack—!" Francie laughed without fear. She had been much struck by his reminder of what they all owed him; for he truly had been their initiator, the instrument, under providence, that had opened a great new interest to them, and as she was more listless about almost anything than at the sight of a person wronged she winced at his describing himself as disavowed or made light of after the prize was gained. Her mind had not lingered on her personal indebtedness to him, for it was ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... afraid I can't," replied the listless voice. "He was in the service of some gentleman in the country; that's all I know ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... wind and I the sea— There is no splendor any more, I have grown listless as the ...
— Rivers to the Sea • Sara Teasdale
... High walls surround a rather commodious courtyard. There are mysterious little doors, through which you can get a peep of crooked little stairs leading to the upper rooms or to the roof, from dusky inside verandahs. Half-naked, listless, indolent figures lie about, or walk slowly to and from the yard with seemingly purposeless indecision. In the outer verandah is an old palkee, with evidences in the tarnished gilding and frayed and tattered hangings, that it once had some ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... And with listless hands he took up the old violin which lay upon his desk and touched the strings. The sound died away ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... and his hands were clasped upon his saddle-bow, while the reins fell loosely from between his listless fingers. ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... on the subject in the billiard-room after dinner. Bob was practising cannons in rather a listless way. ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... yesterday; listless to-day also; hot; oppressive days; one just longs for day to end. Towards evening (sunset) usually nice and cool, and ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... daughters, Descendants of the free, Beside whose far-famed waters Is heard sweet minstrelsy— Shall they, when hearts are breaking, And woman weeps in woe, Shall they, all listless waiting, No hearts of ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... in a listless, indifferent attitude near the door, not taking the smallest part in the active proceedings which were going forward, was for the first time aroused to interest by the expression on Rosalind's face. She moved a step or two into the crowd, and when one or two timid bids were heard for the ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... help from disturbing him with that dry tickling going on right along in her throat? It had been a trying day, when everything seemed to go wrong from the beginning. She had waked up feeling very listless and tired; had been late for school; had been kept in for Cicero. In the afternoon she had been going to a tea given to her class at the school, but her mother said her cold was too bad for her to go, and besides she really felt ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... shores once owned the dominion of his race; and when I told him of regions where his brothers still built their lodges midst the wandering herds of the stupendous wilds, far away towards that setting sun upon 'which his eyes were fixed, there came a change over his listless look, and when he spoke in answer there was in his voice an echo from that bygone time when the Five Nations were a mighty power on the shores of the Great Lakes. Nor are such as these the only prisoners ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... the swan was still in the yard. The ducks talked to it, but its sad, wondering eyes and listless wings spoke louder than words of its weariness and woe. Scores of boys came to see it that day, and the evening brought Benson's father. After hearing the story all he could say was: "It's a good thing for me that I was not there. I'm a pretty big fellow, and can lick chaps that are ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... had his dream, and all through life, Worked up to it through toil and strife. Afloat fore'er before his eyes, It colored for him all his skies: The storm-cloud dark Above his bark, The calm and listless vault of blue Took on its hopeful hue, It tinctured every passing ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... eyes and his mother's. Miss Lou thinks him strangely thoughtful and considerate in keeping away, as he does, after a few short visits at The Oaks. The truth is, he is wofully disappointed at the change in his cousin's looks. This pale, listless, hollow-eyed girl is not the one who set him to reading 'Taming of the Shrew.' That her beauty of color and of outline could ever return, he does not consider; and in swift revulsion of feeling ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... finished expression and its culminating point. Here he seems to have attained a consciousness that beyond the ideal which he had adopted there is another, larger, grander, and more satisfying. Nowhere else, perhaps, in the range of poetry, is the trance of a listless life so harmoniously married to appropriate melodies ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... began, full soon, On his youthful frame to tell; On the ivory brow, flushed, wearied now, It laid its burning spell; And listless—languid—he journeyed on, The smiles from his lips and bright ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... not easy, even for those who were aware from the very first that Strauss was not the spirit "pardlike, beautiful and swift" and that there always were distinctly gross and insensitive particles in him, to recognize in the slack and listless person who concocts "Joseph's Legende" and the "Alpensymphonie," the young and fiery composer, genius despite all the impurities of his style, who composed "Till Eulenspiegel" and "Don Quixote"; not easy, even though the contours of his idiom have not radically ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... himself in the affair, and obtained from the Baron a promise to avow his marriage; but the death of both Julian and his injured bride, together with the Abbot's resignation, his ignorance of the fate of their unhappy offspring, and above all, the good father's listless and inactive disposition, had suffered the matter to become totally forgotten, until it was recalled by some accidental conversation with the Abbot Ambrosius concerning the fortunes of the Avenel family. At the request of his successor, the quondam ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... expression resting upon the colourless lips shaded by a blond mustache inclining to red, lent a stern, by no means winning expression. In this environment of human beings, amid these excited young men with their healthful, sunburnt faces, he, with his impassive, reserved expression and somewhat listless bearing, looked strangely weary and worn. A woman's eye gazing at the group of officers would scarcely have regarded him with favour; a man's would have singled him out as the ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... evening I received another visit from the man in black. I had been taking a stroll in the neighbourhood, and was sitting in the dingle in rather a listless manner, scarcely knowing how to employ myself; his coming, therefore, was by no means disagreeable to me. I produced the hollands and glass from my tent, where Isopel Berners had requested me to deposit them, and also ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow |
