"Sluggish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... than any yet passed, and with banks of such a character as to bring them to a dead stop, with the necessity of considering whether it can be crossed at all. For it is a watercourse of the special kind called riachos, resembling the bayous of Louisiana, whose sluggish currents run in either direction, according to the season of the year, whether it be flood-time or ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... Spanish defences, we were able to hug pretty closely most parts of the Cuban coast. Had the Spanish guns at Santiago kept our fleet at a greater distance, we should have lamented still more bitterly the policy which gave us sluggish monitors for mobile battleships. ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... maybe the elusive shadow of a native craft with her mat sails flitting by silently—and the low land on the other side in sight at daylight. At noon the three palms of the next place of call, up a sluggish river. The only white man residing there was a retired young sailor, with whom he had become friendly in the course of many voyages. Sixty miles farther on there was another place of call, a deep bay with only a couple of houses on the beach. And so on, in and out, picking up coastwise cargo here ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... respectable troglodytic peer, who represented the one sluggish element in a swiftly progressing Government. He was an oldish man with bushy whiskers and a reputed mastery of the French tongue. A Whig, who had never changed his creed one iota, he was highly valued by the country as a sober element in the nation's councils, and ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... the feeding of the salts to the ocean arises from the slower work of meteorological and organic agencies attacking the molecular constitution of the rocks; processes which best proceed where the drainage is sluggish and the quiescent conditions permit of the development of abundant ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... would be glad to hear how it all happened, and he began to tell us. At first the current of his memory—or imagination—seemed somewhat sluggish; but as his embarrassment wore off, his language flowed more freely, and the story acquired perspective and coherence. As he became more and more absorbed in the narrative, his eyes assumed a dreamy expression, and he seemed to lose sight of his auditors, and to be living over again ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... throughout the group, and lives exclusively on the rocky sea-beaches, being never found, at least I never saw one, even ten yards in-shore. It is a hideous-looking creature, of a dirty black colour, stupid, and sluggish in its movements. The usual length of a full-grown one is about a yard, but there are some even four feet long; a large one weighed twenty pounds: on the island of Albemarle they seem to grow to a greater size than elsewhere. Their tails are flattened sideways, and all four feet partially webbed. ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Now would the jovial sun break gloriously from the east, blazing from the summits of the hills, and sparkling the landscape with a thousand dewy gems; while along the borders of the river were seen heavy masses of mist, which, like midnight caitiffs, disturbed at his reproach, made a sluggish retreat, rolling in sullen reluctance upon the mountains. As such times all was brightness, and life, and gayety; the atmosphere was of an indescribable pureness and transparency; the birds broke forth ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... mesmerism which friendship possesses, and under the operation of which a person ordinarily sluggish, or cold, or timid, becomes wise, active, and resolute, in another's behalf? As Alexis, after a few passes from Dr. Elliotson, despises pain, reads with the back of his head, sees miles off, looks into next week, and performs other wonders, of which, in his own private normal condition, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... week or two the sluggish stream of Wellingsfordian life flowed on undisturbed. The chief incident was a recruiting meeting held on the Common. Sir Anthony Fenimore in his civic capacity, a staff-officer with red tabs, a wounded soldier, ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... my fishing-rod, and went down through our orchard to the river-side; but as three or four boys were already in possession of the best spots along the shore, I did not fish. This river of ours is the most sluggish stream that I ever was acquainted with. I had spent three weeks by its side, and swam across it every day, before I could determine which way its current ran; and then I was compelled to decide the question by the testimony of others, and not ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... but they are partial; and so cannot altogether correspond with the facts of life. Sweets are good for people who expend much physical energy. They prove injurious in more than limited amounts to the bed-ridden, the inactive, or the sluggish. Hence this premise is partial and so far incorrect. Sweets do give heat and energy, true. I am chilly and tired, also true. But why? Because I am already toxic from the sweets and meats I have had throughout my sedentary years. The question is, Do I need any more energy-producing food when I am ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... I saw a Spad shot down in flames, it was like Lucifer falling down from high heavens. The whole scene was enframed by a sluggish line of observation balloons. ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... been extinguished, and whose walls were levelled to the earth. The black fungus, the burdock, the nettle, and all those offensive weeds that follow in the train of oppression and ruin were here; and as the dreary wind stirred them into sluggish motion, and piped its melancholy wail through these desolate little mounds, I could not help asking myself—if those who do these things ever think that there is a reckoning in after life, where power, and insolence, and wealth ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... on the brink of a wide smooth velvet-creased range that dipped down and down to miniature canons far below. Not a single little boulder broke the rounded uniformity of the wild grasses. Out from beneath us crept the plain, sluggish and inert with heat. ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... ores of eastern Cuba are formed by the weathering of a serpentine rock on an elevated plateau of low relief, where the sluggish streams are unable rapidly to carry off the products of weathering. Where streams have cut into this plateau and where the plateau breaks down with sharp slopes to the ocean, erosion has removed the products of weathering, ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... a rather curious fact that, as all our milling knowledge was originally inherited from England, which country is very sluggish in the adoption of new methods, it was not until our improved flour reached that country that the English millers accepted the new method, and have since acted upon it. It is a case of the ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... companion, the woman in the yellow scarf, had, with head bent forward and eyes fixed upon her stomach, remained silent; but on rare, unexpected occasions she had, in the hoarse, sluggish voice of a peasant, sung a song ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... passion, mystery and revenge, makes the sluggish blood course wildly through every artery of the ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... snow. One day Thorpe saw it sink into itself and gradually run away. The tinkle tinkle tank tank of drops sounded from his own eaves. Down the far-off river, sluggish reaches of ice drifted. Then in a night the blue disappeared from the stream. It became a menacing gray, and even from his distance Thorpe could catch the swirl of its rising waters. A day or two ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... aimlessly along, moved only by the sluggish currents, which shifted occasionally, but generally bore us westward and southward; not a breath of wind arose, and our sails were as useless as though we had been on dry land. Night came on again, and ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... bounds forward, startled by the tread of the advancing horse. The caiman crawls lazily along the bank, or hides his hideous body under the water of a sluggish stream, and the not less hideous form of the iguana, recognised by its serrated crest, is seen crawling up the tree-trunk or lying along the slope of a lliana. The green lizard scuttles along the path—the basilisk looks with glistening eyes from the ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... remain abroad indefinitely. He would make Venice his headquarters; he would have the constant society of his friends; the fellowship of Jack; together, after the joint literary labors of the day, they would stem the sluggish tide of the darksome canals and exchange sentiment and cigarette smoke in mutual delight. Paul was to write a weekly or a semi-monthly letter to the journal employing him as a special correspondent. At intervals, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... humming-bird becomes more audible. The variegated butterflies and dragon-flies on the bank of the river, produce, by their gyratory movements, lively and fantastic plays of colour. The ground is covered with swarms of ants, dragging along leaves for their architecture. Even the most sluggish animals are roused by the stimulating power of the sun. The alligator leaves his muddy bed, and encamps upon the hot sand; the turtle and lizard are enticed from their damp and shady retreats; and serpents of every colour crawl along the warm ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... material growth of our population, it is as much as we do. Where is the joyful buoyancy and expansive power with which the Gospel burst into the world? It looks like some stream that leaps from the hills, and at first hurries from cliff to cliff full of light and music, but flows slower and more sluggish as it advances, and at last almost stagnates in its flat marshes. Here we are with all our machinery, our culture, money, organisations—and the net result of it all at the year's end is but a poor handful of ears. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... the Invisible King,—or, to avoid confusion, let us say the Artificer—which should acquit him of the charge of being a callous and mischievous demon rather than a well-willing God? Can we not only place pain and evil (a tautology) to the account of sluggish, refractory matter, but also conjecture a sufficient reason why the Artificer should have started the painful evolution of consciousness, instead of leaving the atoms to whirl insentiently in the figures imposed on them by ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... If Peegwish was sluggish by nature his malady was evidently not incurable. He uttered a shout, and leaped back into his hut like a panther. His sister came out, gave one glance at the river, became wild-cattish for the first time in her life, and sprang after ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... Frobisher, and Hawkins—from infancy at home on blue water—was manifest in the very, first encounter. They obtained the weather-gage at once, and cannonaded the enemy at intervals with considerable effect, easily escaping at will out of range of the sluggish Armada, which was incapable of bearing sail in pursuit, although provided with an armament which could sink all its enemies at close quarters. "We had some small fight with them ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Athens," she interrupted, smiling; "but it was 'rather sluggish from its size and needed a gadfly to ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... great amount of especial skill though not necessarily a high degree of intelligence. Along the flats all goes well enough, but once in the unbelievable rough country of a hill trek the situation alters. A man must know cattle and their symptoms. It is no light feat to wake up eighteen sluggish bovine minds to the necessity for effort, and then to throw so much dynamic energy into the situation that the whole eighteen will begin to pull at once. That is the secret, unanimity; an ox is the most easily discouraged working animal on earth. If the first three couples begin to ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... the cheek on which it had fallen; and he recognized, too well, the high, thoughtful brow, now white, cold as marble; the large, dark eye, whose fixed and glassy stare had so horribly replaced the bright intelligence, the sparkling lustre so lately there. The clayey, sluggish white of death was already on his cheek; his lip, convulsively compressed, and the left hand tightly clenched, as if the soul had not been thus violently reft from the body, without a strong: pang of mortal agony. His right hand had stiffened round the hilt ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... length, is of the same shape as the head. This peculiar form, added to their habit of wriggling backwards as well as forwards, has given rise to the fable that they have two heads, one at each extremity. They are extremely sluggish in their motions, and are clothed with scales that have the form of small imbedded plates arranged in rings round the body. The eye is so small as to be scarcely perceptible. They live habitually in the subterranean chambers of ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... Reuben's visit to him he one day told Barbier the fact of his French descent. Barbier declared that he had always known it, had always realised something in David distinct from the sluggish huckstering English temper. Why, David's mother was from the south of France; his own family came from Carcassonne. No doubt the rich Gascon blood ran in both their ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... kingdom. If so, their force is naturally not contemptible. To say that in all contests the decision will of course be in favor of the greater number is by no means true in fact. For, first, the greater number is generally composed of men of sluggish tempers, slow to act, and unwilling to attempt, and, by being in possession, are so disposed to peace that they are unwilling to take early and vigorous measures for their defence, and they ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... yards or so of the wooded bank, sometimes approaching still closer, in accordance with the configuration of the land. His desire to keep advancing, while the chance was his, led him to venture further in, in order to take advantage of the sluggish current. Once or twice he felt a projecting root graze the bottom, and again the craft came almost to a standstill from partially grounding in a shallow portion. Its momentum, however, carried it over into deeper water, when its ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... such a love to such a condition, and such a satisfaction in it, as that they may shift every thing that hath a tendency to rouse them up out of that sluggish laziness, as not loving to be awakened out of their sleep. So we see the bride shifts and putteth off Christ's call and invitation to her, to arise and open ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... nothing to me about any girl. What like is this one?" Van Busch twisted the ring about his little finger, and spoke with a more sluggish lisp and slurring of the consonants than even was usual with him. "Is she short and square, with black hair and round blue eyes, and red cheeks and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... quietly poling the diahbeeah against the sluggish stream, we observed wild buffaloes that, at a distance of about 400 yards, appeared to be close to the bank of the river. I accordingly stopped the diahbeeah, and, accompanied by Lieutenant Baker, I approached them in the small boat, rowed by two men. A fortunate bend of the river, ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... on we went, until at length the whole country as far as the eye could reach was one vast sea, extending virtually to the horizon; its sluggish surface only broken by the tops of the submerged trees. One day we sighted a number of little islets some distance ahead, and then we felt we must be nearing the mouth of the river. The last day or two had been full of anxiety and inconvenience for us, for we had been simply drifting aimlessly on, ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... be well for the reader to make his acquaintance. The first suggestion conveyed by his rotund figure was, that however scantily he furnished his boarders, he never stinted himself in the matter of food. He had the sluggish, clumsy look of a heavy eater. His face was large, his almost colorless eyes were small, and, if one might judge by the general expression of his features, his favorite viand was pork. Indeed, if the swine into which the devils once entered had left any ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... of self, springing from the consciousness of a historical idea, awakens in a people its will to historical formation: the will to action. The political people is no passive, sluggish mass, no mere object for the efforts of the state at government or protective welfare work ... The great misconception of the democracies is that they can see the active participation of the people only in the form of plebiscites according to the principle of majority. ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... Melancholly, Who euer yet could sound thy bottome? Finde The Ooze, to shew what Coast thy sluggish care Might'st easilest harbour in. Thou blessed thing, Ioue knowes what man thou might'st haue made: but I, Thou dyed'st a most rare Boy, of Melancholly. How found you him? Arui. Starke, as you see: Thus smiling, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... dense cornfields; or, denser still, the leagues of swaying hemp. The smell of this now lay heavy on the air, seeming to be dragged hither and thither like a slow scum on the breeze, like a moss on a sluggish pond. A deep robust land; and among its growths he—this lad, in his way a self-unconscious human weed, the seed of his kind borne in from far some generations back, but springing out of the soil naturally now, sap of its ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... gradually filled its seas with moving things that manifested its idea of life. Slowly, throughout inconceivable eons of time, it unrolled and evolved, until at last, through untold generations of stupid, sluggish, often revolting animal forms, it began to evolve a type of mind, a crude representation of the mind that is God, and manifesting its own concept of intelligence. That type was ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... facts impressed the young country lad far more than the tall buildings and fine streets. His own active nature bounded with admiration at the life and dash on every hand. He had been reared among sleepy people—people in a rut, whose blood flowed as slowly as the sluggish current upon which they floated ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... the rout of those irregulars and these sluggish Hessians a deed to boast of?" said the other with a contemptuous smile. "You speak of the affair, Captain Wharton, as if your boasted Mr. Dunwoodie, for major he is none, had discomfited the ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... nose of his is as tender as a baby's, and he is snuffed out by a blow that would hardly bewilder for a moment any other forest animal, unless it be the skunk, another sluggish non-combatant of our woodlands. Immunity from foes, from effort, from struggle is always ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... land the nightingales were singing as they only sing in Spain. It was nearly dark, a warm evening of late spring, and there was no wind. Amid the thousand scents of blossom, of opening buds, and a hundred flowering shrubs there arose the subtle, soft odour of sluggish water, stirred by frogs, telling of cool places beneath the trees where the weary and the dusty might lie in oblivion ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... being agreed on this point, the whole band re-embarked, and proceeded on their way up the river. They advanced rapidly, for although the stream was against them it was so sluggish as to be scarcely appreciable, and by keeping near to the banks they were not ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... admit that things looked bad for the League. How were girls who raced at machines all day, who had neither money nor the voice of the press, to rouse this sluggish, corrupt city to the menace of sending to the legislature men like E.J. Troy, pledged body and soul to the manufacturers? How could they waken the public to woman's bitter necessity for shorter hours? The case looked hopeless, ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... out of the southwest a heat like an affliction sent upon an accursed people, and the air was soon dead of it. Dripping negro ditch-diggers whooped with satires praising hell and hot weather, as the tossing shovels flickered up to the street level, where sluggish male pedestrians carried coats upon hot arms, and fanned themselves with straw hats, or, remaining covered, wore soaked handkerchiefs between scalp and straw. Clerks drooped in silent, big department stores, stenographers ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... debt rescheduling. Considerable potential exists for development of a tourist industry, and the government has taken steps to expand facilities in recent years. The government also has attempted to reduce price controls and subsidies, but economic growth has remained sluggish. Sao Tome is also optimistic that significant petroleum discoveries are forthcoming in its territorial waters in the oil-rich waters of the Gulf of Guinea. Corruption scandals ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... fruit morning, noon, and night. Fresh lemon juice in the form of lemonade is to be his ordinary drink; the existence of diarrhoea should be no reason for withholding it." The writer goes on to show that headache, indigestion, constipation, and all other complaints that result from the sluggish action of bowels and liver can never be cured by the use of artificial ...
— Food Remedies - Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses • Florence Daniel
... continued. The bees in the hive also, or in the old tree in the woods, no doubt awoke to new life; and the hibernating animals, the bears and woodchucks, rolled up in their subterranean dens,—I imagine the warmth reached even them, and quickened their sluggish circulation. ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... the air of triumph with which she led him to the head of the line, and positively delightful to the onlookers to see Hen Lord doing right and left, ladies' chain, balance to opposite and cast off, at a girl's beck and call. He was not a bad dancer, when his sluggish blood once got into circulation; and he was considerably more limber at the end of Money Musk, considerably less like a wooden image, than at the ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... fresh and fit. He had slept well. The cold air entering by the open window, whipped his sluggish blood. He had no clear recollection of the scenes of the previous day, and had it not been for the burning sensation at his neck, he might have thought that he had retired to rest after ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... with the rest of the family. Instead, he struck out across the fields away from them. He climbed the back boundary fence and was soon walking up to his knees in grass and weeds. The air was hot and sticky and heavily charged with a shimmering white water vapour. There were a few sluggish clouds with sombre centres hanging about the valley to the southwest, and there was a drone and zip of flying creatures in swarms above the drying weeds and stubble. Coming to a large oak tree standing solitary in that wasting field, he threw himself face downward on ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... the sullen, sluggish Missouri, that highway of an earlier day to the great Northwest; and after that the better wooded and better settled lands of Iowa ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... and justly feared though he was physically, Lupus was mentally a sluggish beast, and not over and above intelligent. In this he favoured his sire, who was slow-moving, sluggish, and, withal, as fierce as any weasel, and immensely powerful. When Lupus caught his first glimpse ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... scent of some flower pressed against his face seemed to pierce into him and reach his very heart, awakening the memory of something past, forgotten. Then, seizing the branches, snapping them in his haste, he dragged the skiff along through the sluggish water, the gnats dancing in his face. She seemed to know where he was taking her, and neither of them spoke a single word, while he pulled out into the open, and over ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... block was alerted. The people, like some sluggish beast goaded reluctantly into action, began to make tentative movements toward Dennison, impelled by the outraged cries of ...
— Forever • Robert Sheckley
... grave? As we have seen, he had revealed these intrigues long before they were known to the world, and the French court knew that he had revealed them. His position had become untenable. His friendship for Henry could not be of use to him with the delicate-featured, double-chinned, smooth and sluggish Florentine, who had passively authorized and actively profited by her ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... this literary bellicosity is pathological. Men overmuch in studies and universities get ill in their livers and sluggish in their circulations; they suffer from shyness, from a persuasion of excessive and neglected merit, old maid's melancholy, and a detestation of all the levities of life. And their suffering finds ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of lagoons to the westward, we came, after a few miles travelling, to the Condamine, which flows to the north-west: it has a broad, very irregular bed, and was, at the time, well provided with water—a sluggish stream, of a yellowish muddy colour, occasionally accompanied by reeds. We passed several gullies and a creek ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... just at point to take ship with his host; so that all was put off till the next spring, and there was time and to spare for Sir Godrick to do all he would strengthening the defences of the city. But none the more for that was he sluggish, but did so much that he made the City of the Sundering Flood exceeding strong, so that it might scarce be stronger; and all things flourished there: old foes became new friends, and all men were well content, save it were the King and his faitours, who rued it ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... the colour of the sea when wind lashes it into foam is different from the colour when the waters are at rest, so do the colours of things change when the atoms whereof the things are composed change from one arrangement to another, or from sluggish movements ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... have supernatural assistance, some marvellous interference, to enable him to become good: this is a very prejudicial doctrine for him, it is directly subversive of his true happiness; by teaching him to hold himself in contempt, it tends necessarily to discourage him; it either makes him sluggish, or drives him to despair whilst waiting for this grace: is it not easy to be perceived, that he would always have it if he was well educated; if he was honestly governed? There cannot well exist a wilder or a stranger system of morals, than that of ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... haunches, going perfectly up to his bit, and on perfect ground. Without all these perfections—suppose even the circumstance of the horse being excited or alarmed, or becoming violent from any other cause; that he is sluggish or sullen; that he stiffens his neck or pokes his nose—single-handed indications are worth nothing. But as for riding a horse perfectly on his haunches through a long day's journey, or in rough or deep ground, or across country, one might ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook. The purple petals, fallen in the pool, Made the black water with their beauty gay; Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, And court the flower that cheapens his array. Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why This charm ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... I stood, a rugged bastion of the line of bluffs concealed the doctor's house; and across the top of that projection the soft night wind carried and unwound about the hills a coil of sable smoke. What fuel could produce a vapour so sluggish to dissipate in that dry air, or what furnace pour it forth so copiously, I was unable to conceive; but I knew well enough that it came from the doctor's chimney; I saw well enough that my father had already disappeared; and in despite of reason, I connected in my mind the loss ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and her face was the face of a spirit; it quickened the sluggish blood in his veins to see her ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... to my rooms, from which I had been absent since the previous day, I heard from the concierge that a visitor awaited me. I climbed the stairs without anticipation. My thoughts were sluggish, my limbs leaden, my eyes heavy and bloodshot. Twilight had gathered, and as I entered I discerned merely the figure of a woman. Then she advanced—and all Hell seemed to leap flaring to my heart. My visitor ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... 1717, he published two volumes of essays in prose, which can be commended only as they are written for the highest and noblest purpose, the promotion of religion. Blackmore's prose is not the prose of a poet; for it is languid, sluggish, and lifeless; his diction is neither daring nor exact, his flow neither rapid nor easy, and his periods neither smooth nor strong. His account of wit, will show with how little clearness he is content to think, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... few sensations more unpleasant than this application. The tar descended in warm and sluggish streams, trickling over my forehead, dropping from my eyelids, rolling over my cheeks, sealing my mouth, gluing my ears to my skull, identifying itself with my hair, pursuing the path indicated by my spine beneath my shirt,—in short, enveloping me with a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... bleedings at the nose so sudden and so violent that they did not dare to leave him alone, fearing lest all the blood in his veins should flow out. And the doctor ended by saying that although the boy's intelligence had been sluggish, he still hoped that it would develop in an environment of ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... and through the misty air In sickly radiance struggles—like the dream Of sorrow-shrouded hope. O'er Thames' dull stream, Whose sluggish waves a wealthy burden bear From every port and clime, the pallid glare Of early sun-light spreads. The long streets seem Unpeopled still, but soon each path shall teem With hurried feet, and visages of care. And eager throngs shall meet where dusky marts Resound like ocean-caverns, ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... flats and marshes through which the narrow, sluggish river wanders to Lake Michigan, came the hoarse whistle of a steamer. Bannon turned and looked. His view was blocked by some freight cars that were standing on the C. & S. C tracks at some distance to the east. He ran across the tracks and out on ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... due and adequate representation of a state, that does not represent its ability, as well as its property. But as ability is a vigorous and active principle, and as property is sluggish, inert, and timid, it never can be safe from the invasions of ability, unless it be, out of all proportion, predominant in the representation. It must be represented, too, in great masses of accumulation, or it is not rightly protected. The characteristic essence of property, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... quickly up on to the square stern of the ferry-boat, she went forward and kept her back resolutely turned upon the old fellow as he scrambled on board after her, shoved off and settled to the oars. The river was low, and sluggish from the long drought with consequently easy passage to the opposite bank. It took but a short five minutes to reach the jetty, crawling like some gigantic, damaged, many-legged insect out over the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... of mere sincerity, Being able 'twixt corn and cockle to discern, Apply their study to replenish the bern; That is thy Church, by their doctrines increase, And make many heirs of thine eternal peace. Amen. Amen. But soft, let me see who doth me aspect. First, sluggish Saturn of nature so cold, Being placed in Tauro, my beams do reject, And Luna in Cancro in sextile he behold. I will the effect hereafter unfold: Now Jupiter the gentle, of temperature mean, Poor Mercury the turncoat, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... nothing that one ought to see.' Or, 'I sat in the cathedral at Lucerne while the others were going round. The organ was playing, and it was such rest!' Or, again, after a day on the Lago di Como, 'It was glorious, and if you and Edward were here, perhaps the beauty would penetrate my sluggish soul!' ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Affirmed I was a savage or a brute, When I did dash cold water in their necks, Discharged green squashes through their window-panes, And stript their beds of soft, luxurious sheets, Placing instead harsh briers and rough sticks, So that their sluggish bodies might not sleep, Unroused by morning bell; or when perforce, From leaden syringe, engine of fierce might, I drave black ink upon their ruffle shirts, Or drenched with showers of melancholy hue, The new-fledged dickey peering o'er the stock, Fit emblem of a young ambitious ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... It isn't every elderly lady who can get a compartment from the Pullman Company for the price of a seat. She was put on at Albany by one set of grandchildren and she's to be taken off at Boston by another set. And she's old and her heart's a little sluggish—self-sacrifice goes downward not upward, through the generations, I observe—though I'm a young physician ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... rapidity, as to be equal only to one | | long; they, therefore, naturally exhibit the act of passing | | through a long space in a short time. But the alexandrine, | | by its pause in the midst, is a tardy and stately measure; | | and the word 'unbending,' one of the most sluggish and slow | | which our language affords, cannot much accelerate its | ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... from the scattered houses in the long High street was the only evidence of human life. The slow progress of the hands of the old clock in the church steeple was the only token by which a traveler could perceive that a sluggish course of rustic life had not come to a full stop in the village ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... behind, passing through a pleasant country well wooded with elm, ash, birch, cottonwood, and box elder, and the grass growing high everywhere. They crossed more than one clear little stream, a pleasant contrast to the sluggish, ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... Russia, in consequence of internal dissensions and administrative weakness, without taking heed of the love of all Russians for Russia, of their devotion to the long-suffering giant whose life is throbbing in their veins. The Germans expected to encounter raw and sluggish troops under intriguing time-servers and military Hamlets whose "native hue of resolution" had been "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." Instead of that they were confronted with soldiers of the same type as those whom Frederick the Great and Napoleon admired, led ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... found that he and the fierce carpenter were engaged in a furious quarrel, which ended as quickly as it began, the captain making his reappearance, driving the ship's boy before him, and hastening the poor fellow's sluggish, unwilling movements by now and then ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... pretty actresses and scheming publishers: he is enticed into thoughtless dissipation, and, after a brilliant start, finds that he is at the mercy of the cleverer villains who surround him; that he has been bought and sold like a sheep; that his character is gone, and his imagination become sluggish; and, finally, he has to escape from utter ruin by scarcely describable degradation. He writes a libel on one of his virtuous friends, who is forgiving enough to improve it and correct it for the press. In order to bury his mistress, who has been ruined with him, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Sherwood, who had been much captivated by Mr. O'Callaghan's showy, off-hand manner, his civilities, and his flatteries, felt, for the first time in her life, that she had been taken in; and being a peculiarly prudent, cautious personage, of the slow, sluggish, stagnant temperament, which those who possess it are apt to account a virtue, and to hold in scorn their more excitable and impressible neighbours, found herself touched in the very point of honour, ...
— Honor O'callaghan • Mary Russell Mitford
... body, heavy, slow to act, sluggish. Yet there was nothing vicious about the man. Altogether he suggested the draught horse, immensely strong, stupid, ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... Hotel at La Crosse, looking out on the Great Mother of Waters, on whose cold bosom the ice and the steamers were struggling for mastery. Beyond stretched the snow-clad bluffs, sternly looking down on the Mississippi, as if to say, "'Thus far shalt thou come and no farther'—though sluggish, you are aggressive, ever pushing where you should not; but all attempts in this direction are alike vain; since creation's dawn, we have defied you, and here we stand, to-day, calm, majestic, immovable. Coquette as you will in other latitudes, with flowery banks and ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... and lit it, and the underground stream was lit by a faint ruddy glow. The channel, covered by a semi-circular arch, was just wide enough for one boat to pass through, with oars out. The black water flowed silently by in a sluggish, Stygian stream. Bats, startled by the light, fluttered in their faces, and then ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... this peaceful landscape; but try to call up something as different as darkness is to light. Forget the river, and the houses, and the pretty branching canals, and see nothing but marshes, wild and terrible, with sluggish rivers crawling through mud-banks to the sea, beaten back by fierce tides, to overflow into oozy meers and stagnant pools. Think of raging winds, never still, the howling of seas, and the driving of pitiless rains. No other views but those, and no definite ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... On a certain sluggish noon hour in August, Dickie, as far as the kitchen door with a tray balanced on his palm, realized that he had forgotten this man's order. He hesitated to go back. "Like as not," reasoned Dickie, "he didn't rightly know ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... this point, the clearer it appeared to him, who had known his friend's only son from an infant, and had always felt much interested in him. As a child, and a boy, William Stanley had been of a morose temper, and of a sluggish, inactive mind—not positively stupid, but certainly far from clever; this claimant, on the contrary, had all the expression and manner of a shrewd, quick-witted man, who might be passionate, but ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... herds, and immunity from the vexation of monopolies and taxes. And here at once will be seen how the seeds sprang up of a rooted antagonism between Boer and Briton that nothing can ever remove, and no diplomacy can smooth away. The Boer nature naturally inclines to a sluggish content, while the British one invariably pants for advance. The temperamental tug of war, therefore, has been one that has grown stronger and stronger with the progress of years. The principles of give and take have been ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... of such excellent reach, and moved so fast over the ground, that his pace was rather over than under four miles an hour. Passing the thirteen chimneys of the "Lang Raw," he crossed Dee bridge and bent his way to the right along the wide spaces of the sluggish river. The old fortress of the Douglases, the castle of Thrieve, loomed up behind him through the wavering heat of the morning. Above him was the hill of Knockcannon, from which Mons Meg fired her fatal shots. The young minister stood ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... the southwest corner of Lake Michigan, which, seventy years ago, was half morass from the overflowing of the sluggish creek, whose waters, during flood, spread over the low-lying, level plain, or were supplemented in the dry season by the inflow from the lake, showed no sign of any future development and prosperity. The few streets of wooden houses that had been built by their handful of isolated ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... room were dead—that only his brain was alive. Then Mrs. Excell burst into sobbing. The judge looked away into space, his dim eyes seeing nothing that was near, his face an impassive mask of colorless flesh. The old lawyer's words had stirred his blood, sluggish and cold with age, but his brain absorbed the larger part of his roused vitality, and when he spoke his voice had an unwontedly flat and ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... falls on the caterpillar it sends out germ-threads which penetrate the caterpillar. Here the threads form long narrow spores which break off and form other spores until the body-cavity is entirely filled. The caterpillar soon becomes sluggish and dies. The fungus continues to grow until it has completely appropriated all of the insect's soft parts, externally a perfect caterpillar but internally completely filled with mycelial threads. Under favorable conditions this ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... his own phrase, he was "out of sorts." A sluggish reluctance to face change of any kind possessed him. He decided on staying at Salt Patch until his marriage to Mrs. Glenarm (which he then looked upon as a certainty) obliged him to alter his habits completely, once for all. From Fulham he had ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... sensual thoughts and aims of an irreligious and priest-ridden age—an age which ate and drank and slept and fought, and kissed the feet of popes, and maundered of the divine right of kings—from this sluggish degradation it roused and transfigured the Englishmen who came to be known as Puritans. It was a transfiguration, though its subjects were the uncouth, almost grotesque figures which chronicle and tradition have made familiar to us. For a people ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... scene of bustle and preparation; the most sluggish natures amongst us appeared now inspired, whilst on all sides were heard good-humoured congratulations and glad anticipations. I confess, although a very experienced voyager, I felt a little touch of softness striving to sneak into and coil about my heart, ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... strength and poured out through the hull of the ship in a great cone that penetrated Earth's atmosphere in a quadrant that extended from Baffin land to Omaha, and from Hawaii to Labrador. The waves swept through skin and bone and entered the sluggish gelatinous brain of sentient beings, setting up in those organs the same thoughts and pictures that played among the electrons of the permallium strip that ...
— The Stutterer • R.R. Merliss
... and over the whole length of the bridge there were none but the dead-alive, men and women, black-polled ladala, sloe-eyed Malays, slant-eyed Chinese, men of every race that sailed the seas—milling, turning, swaying, like leaves caught in a sluggish current. ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... and powerful stature, he felt, in moments of strife, a degree of confidence in himself, that was commensurate with the amount of physical force he wielded. To this hardy assurance was to be added no trifling portion of the sort of enthusiasm that can be awakened in the most sluggish bosoms, and which, like the anger of an even-tempered man, is only the more formidable from the usually quiet habits of the individual. Nor was this the first, by many, of Ensign Dudley's warlike deeds. Besides ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... hall standing Far from the sun In Nastroend; Its doors are northward turned, Venom-drops fall In through its apertures; Entwined is that hall With serpents' backs. She there saw wading The sluggish streams Bloodthirsty men And perjurers, And him who the ear beguiles Of another's wife. There Nidhog sucks The ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... the claim be not too much of the nature of a truism, we may add that so far as quality is concerned the superiority of our finny tribes is even more strongly marked than in regard to quantity. In the sluggish streams that abound in "ten degrees of more effulgent clime," the fish partake of the slimy properties of their native element; it is only in the limpid waters of the North that they are found of flavor so unexceptionable as to please ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... on the ground beside the sluggish estuary, imparted to his accomplice the details of a bloody design, Palafox in the tavern waxed more and more violent. He menaced an imaginary foe with clinched fist. Mex tried to soothe him. He sat for a while in sulky quiet. Rousing again, he ordered a candle, opened a leathern ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... and willows that grew thick along the banks of the deep, sluggish bayou; and she did not come ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin |
