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Languish   Listen
noun
Languish  n.  See Languishment. (Obs. or Poetic) "What, of death, too, That rids our dogs of languish?" "And the blue languish of soft Allia's eye."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Languish" Quotes from Famous Books



... heroine, braving the hypocritical judgments of society to assert the claims of the individual soul. The woman who refused to abandon all for love's sake, was not only a coward but a criminal, guilty of the deadly sin of sacrificing her soul, committing it to a prison where it would languish and never blossom to its full perfection. The man who was bound to uncongenial drudgery by the chains of an early marriage or aged parents dependent on him, was the victim of a tragedy which drew tears from our eyes. The woman who neglected her ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey

... yielded, and the letter by which he became engaged to her had been written. He had never meant to evade it;—had always told himself that it should not be evaded; but, gradually, days had been added to days, and months to months, and he had allowed her to languish without seeing him, and almost without hearing ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... foregoing. The parenthized line (by the way I abominate parentheses in this kind of poetry) at the beginning of 7th page, and indeed all that gradual description of the throes and pangs of nature in childbirth, I do not much like, and those 4 first lines,—I mean "tomb gloom anguish and languish"—rise not above mediocrity. In the Epode, your mighty genius comes again: "I marked ambition" &c. Thro' the whole Epod indeed you carry along our souls in a full spring tide of feeling and imaginat'n. Here is the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... be deceived his glut, and with us two Be forced to satisfy his ravenous maw. But if thou judge it hard and difficult, Conversing, looking, loving, to abstain From love's due rights, nuptial embraces sweet; And with desire to languish without hope, Before the present object languishing With like desire; which would be misery And torment less than none of what we dread; Then, both ourselves and seed at once to free From what we fear for both, let us make short,— ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... residents of Hull-House place increasing emphasis upon the great inspirations and solaces of literature and are unwilling that it should ever languish as a subject for class instruction or for reading parties. The Shakespeare club has lived a continuous existence at Hull-House for sixteen years during which time its members have heard the leading interpreters of Shakespeare, both ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... for a broader field Wherein to sow the seeds of truth and right— Who fain a fuller, nobler power would wield O'er human souls that languish for the light— ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... speak of and lament in your prayer, you can easily learn from the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer. Open your eyes and look into your life and the life of all Christians, especially of the Spiritual estate, and you will find how faith, hope, love, obedience, chastity and every virtue languish, and all manner of heinous vices reign; what a lack there is of good preachers and prelates; how only knaves, children, fools and women rule. Then you will see that there were need every hour without ceasing to pray everywhere with tears of blood to God, Who is so terribly ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther

... of the dissatisfaction inseparable from the present misconceptions of love and society. The first move, obviously, in stopping war was the suppression of such ameliorating forces as the Red Cross; and, conversely, with complete unions, infidelity would languish and disappear. ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... discomfiture. It is in this Campaign, though not till far on in it, that the long lane does prove to have a turning, and the Fortune of War recovers its old impartial form. After which, things visibly languish: and the hope of ruining such a Friedrich becomes problematic, the effort to do it slackens also; the very will abating, on the Austrian part, year by year, as of course the strength of their resources is still more steadily doing. To the last, Friedrich, the weaker in material ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... had been exchanged, the conversation began to languish; and the minister seized my right hand and gently drew it from the mysterious recesses ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... his broken leg went back to languish in his prison. He found the flighty Governor furious because he had "flown away," eluding his bat's eyes and wings. The rigour used towards him made him dread the worst extremities. Cast into a condemned cell, he first expected to be flayed alive; and when this terror was removed, he perceived ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... thy sadness, What road our griefs may take; Whose brain reflect our madness, Or whom our terrors shake. For think, lest any languish By cause of thy distress The arrows of our anguish Fly farther than ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling

... have been on its membership roll, and of this number twelve have set their faces toward the Gospel ministry. Oh, what a source of joy to me that I leave that association in such a high condition of vigor and prosperity! No church can languish, no church can die, while it has plenty of ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

... friend with whom I had been interned. He secured his release some months before I shook the dust—and mud—of Ruhleben from my feet. On the day we parted he sympathised deeply with me at the prospect of being condemned to languish in the hands of the enemy until the clash of arms had died down. I did not seek to disillusion him, although, even at that time, I had made up my mind to get away by ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... to blind the learned and the wise, Is. vi, viii, xxix, etc.; and to preach the Gospel to the lowly, Is. xxix; to open the eyes of the blind, give health to the sick, and bring light to those that languish ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal

... wheat. It is the one complete, perfect, vegetable food. It contains all the elements necessary to the making of the human body. The supply of wheat is the arterial blood that makes this world of ours do something. Without wheat we would languish—go quickly to seed, as ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... conspiracy. It will be remembered what he had formerly suffered from his father; since that time he had married, and the close-fisted old man had left him, with his wife and children, to languish in poverty. Guerra's house was selected to meet in and ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... gates of the Hellespont and Bosphorus were shut, the capital still enjoyed within their spacious enclosure every production which could supply the wants, or gratify the luxury, of its numerous inhabitants. The sea-coasts of Thrace and Bithynia, which languish under the weight of Turkish oppression, still exhibit a rich prospect of vineyards, of gardens, and of plentiful harvests; and the Propontis has ever been renowned for an inexhaustible store of the most exquisite fish, that are taken in their stated seasons, without skill, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... continued, with a darkened brow, "what is the good of being the ruler if I cannot bear the name of ruler?—what is it to govern, if another is to be publicly recognized as regent and receive homage as such? The kernel of this glory will be mine, but the shell,—I also languish for the shell. But no, this is not the time for such thoughts, now, when the circumstances demand a cheerful mien and every outward indication of satisfaction! My time will also come, and, when it comes, the shell as well as the kernel shall be mine! But this is the hour for waiting ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... is very important. In "Beyond Good and Evil" we hear often enough that the select and superior man must wear a mask, and here we find this injunction explained. "And he who would not languish amongst men, must learn to drink out of all glasses: and he who would keep clean amongst men, must know how to wash himself even with dirty water." This, I venture to suggest, requires some explanation. ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... on the tempers, habits, and dispositions of the emigrants themselves. What suits one will not another; one family will flourish, and accumulate every comfort about their homesteads, while others languish in poverty and discontent. It would take volumes to discuss every argument for and against, and to point out exactly who are and who are not ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... he languish on his couch, God will pronounce his sins forgiv'n, Will save him with a healing touch, Or take ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts

... leave it alone, if they wished to starve! Just the 'freedom' which the slave has. If he does not mind being whipped, there is nothing to compel him to work for his master. The bonds in which the 'free' masses of the exploiting society languish are tighter and more painful than the chains of the slave. The word 'robbery' does not please the previous speaker? It is, indeed, a hard and hateful word; but the 'robber' is not the individual exploiter, ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... though at the more worldly watering-places the cottagers have killed off the hotels, as the graphic parlance has it. The hotels nowhere, perhaps, flourish in their old vigor; except for a brief six weeks, when they are fairly full, they languish along the rivers, among the hills, and even by the shores of the mournful ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... Company had given Mr. Hastings severe orders, and very severely had he executed them. The Company gave him no orders not to institute a present inquiry; but he, under pretence of business, neglected that inquiry, and suffered this man to languish in prison to the utter ruin ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... me, ye lovers, an thy lady flout thee one hour, grieve not—she shall be kind the next; an she scorn thee to-day, despair nothing—she shall love thee to-morrow; but, an she laugh and laugh—ah, then poor lover, Venus pity thee! Then languish hope, and tender heart be rent, for love and laughter can ne'er be kin. Wherefore a woeful wight am I, foredone and all distraught for love. Behold here, the blazon on my shield—lo! a riven heart proper (direfully aflame) upon a field vert. The heart, methinks, is aptly ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... salon and its conversation was much the same as the management of a state; she believed that the hostess must never join in the conversation as long as it goes on by itself, but, ever watchful, must never permit disturbances, disagreements, improprieties, or obstacles; she must animate it if it languish; she must see that conversation never takes a dangerous, disagreeable, or tiresome turn, and that it never brings into undue prominence one man especially, as this makes others jealous and displeases the entire society; it must always interest ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... the sixth mountain having greater and lesser clefts, they are such as have believed; but those in which were lesser clefts are they who have had controversies among themselves; and by reason of their quarrels languish in the faith: ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake

... and distress follow. He imparts to the air a deadly taint, and thousands perish by the pestilence. These visitations are to become more and more frequent and disastrous. Destruction will be upon both man and beast. "The earth mourneth and fadeth away," "the haughty people ... do languish. The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... Men enough, who from the mere Desire of increasing their Wealth, would give him that Assistance, which, like the artificial Heat of a Greenhouse, would bring that Art to a Ripeness, which would otherwise languish and die under the Coldness of the first Designer, and which in this Union of Riches and Invention would ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen

... like reason, must not Brest and the Shipping Interest languish? Poor Brest languishes, sorrowing, not without spleen; denounces an Aristocrat Bertrand-Moleville traitorous Aristocrat Marine-Minister. Do not her Ships and King's Ships lie rotting piecemeal in harbour; Naval Officers mostly fled, and on furlough too, with pay? ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... over himself. He tried to think that time would mitigate this haunting discomfort. His sense of guilt, his fear of his wife, would die when the novelty of once again being one with the crowd had worn away. It was not possible that he, defiant of man and God, could languish under this dread of a midnight visitation or a discovery that never would be made. It was the reentering into the communal life that had upset his poise—or was it the influence of the woman, the ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... the point, the acme of my distress, consisted in the awful uncertainty of our final fate. My prevailing opinion was, that my husband would suffer violent death; and that I should of course become a slave, and languish out a miserable though short existence, in the tyrannic hands of some unfeeling monster. But the consolations of religion in these trying circumstances, were neither few nor small. It taught me to look beyond this world, to that ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart

... Britain professed her earnest desire to restore promptly any American-born sailors whom her naval officers had seized through error. In fact many such sailors were soon liberated, but a large number either continued to serve on British ships or to languish in British prisons until the ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... sight My star,—and night Henceforth my steps enfolding lowers. Then break and bind My ravaged mind The terrors dread of doubt and anguish. I know the pack, I drove them back;— Only to-day does courage languish. Oh, come now, peace! Come faith's increase, That life's strong chain shall ever bind me! That not in vain I strive and strain Myself to seek until I ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... enjoys this ardent and glorious life," said the impatient Otho; "while I, whose arm is as strong, and whose heart is as bold, languish here listening to the dull tales of a hoary sire and the silly songs of an orphan girl." His heart smote him at the last sentence, but he had already begun to weary of the gentle love of Leoline. Perhaps when he had no longer to gain a triumph over a rival ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Sardinia can but have time allowed her in which to knit her forces, if she can for a time escape from foreign attacks and from internal divisions, Italy is secure. Venice, Rome, and Naples will not long languish under the tyranny of Austrian, of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... Ishtar, in the middle of the year the fields languish... The shepherd, the wise one, the man of sorrows, why have they slain?... In his temple, in his inhabited domain, The child, lord of knowledge, abides no more... In the meadows, verily, verily, ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... these classes, but was of a substance between the two—a healthy, happy-hearted woman, full of beauty and vigour, made to bloom in the sunshine, not to languish in the shadow of some old grief. Women of her stamp do not die of broken hearts or condemn themselves to life-long celibacy as a sacrifice to the shade of the departed. If unfortunately No. 1 is removed, ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... Lord Arthur Fluffinose enter? The obvious answer, that the firm which is mentioned in the programme as supplying his trousers would be annoyed if he didn't, is not enough; nor is it enough to say that the whole plot of the piece hinges on him, and that without him the drama would languish. What the critic wants to know is why Lord Arthur chose that very moment to come in—the very moment when Lady Larkspur was left alone in the oak-beamed hall of Larkspur Towers. Was it only a coincidence? And if the young dramatist answers callously, ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne

... essentially those existing with France, were, however, signally disappointed. Their opponents were wiser; for they not only measured accurately the indignation of the French by their own, but they took good care that it should not languish for want of encouragement. The French Directory might have been reconciled to the situation had it been plain to them that there was neither an "Anglicized" party nor a French party in the United States, but that the people were united in the determination to maintain, ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay

... fierceness of his glittering fires. 410 Willows and tamarisks and elms he burn'd, Burn'd lotus, rushes, reeds; all plants and herbs That clothed profuse the margin of his flood. His eels and fishes, whether wont to dwell In gulfs beneath, or tumble in the stream, 415 All languish'd while the artist of the skies Breath'd on them; even Xanthus lost, himself, All force, and, suppliant, Vulcan thus address'd. Oh Vulcan! none in heaven itself may cope With thee. I yield to thy consuming fires. 420 Cease, cease. I reck not ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... what they have thought, which indeed were often a very small matter, but in exhibiting what they have undergone or seen, which is a quite unlimited one, do talkers dilate. Cut us off from Narrative, how would the stream of conversation, even among the wisest, languish into detached handfuls, and among the foolish utterly evaporate! Thus, as we do nothing but enact History, we say ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... Ruin impends!—This will discover all! I'll perish first. [Aside. Though much I languish to behold my father, Yet now it were not fit—the sun goes down; Night falls apace; soon ...
— The Grecian Daughter • Arthur Murphy

... Netherlands had been necessarily suffered to languish, while every eye was fixed on the progress of the Armada, from formation to defeat. But new efforts were soon made by the duke of Parma to repair the time he had lost, and soothe, by his successes, the disappointed ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... appropriating the data of sense, these data could not be remembered or introduced at all into a growing and cumulative experience. Sensations would leave no memorial; while logical thoughts would play idly, like so many parasites in the mind, and ultimately languish and die of inanition. To be nourished and employed, intelligence must have developed such structure and habits as will enable it to assimilate what food comes in its way; so that the persistence of any intellectual habit is a proof that ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... begun to languish between the two men. Vine had answered all his host's inquiries about old friends and acquaintances on the other side, inquiries at first eager, then more spasmodic, until at last they were interspersed with brief periods of silence. And all the time Vine had said ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... vehicle, light; which the gloomy and torpent north is so many months depriv'd of; the too long seclusion whereof is injurious to our exotics, kept in the conservatories, since however temper'd with heat, and duly refresh'd; they grow sickly, and languish without the admission of light as well as air, as ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... purple sky,—cool and dewy and fresh;—they are the thoughts of Thelma; such thoughts! So wise and earnest, so pure and full of tender shadows!—no hand has grasped them rudely, no rough touch has spoiled their smoothness! They open full-faced to the sky, they never droop or languish; they have no secrets, save the marvel of their beauty. Now you have come, you will have no pity,—one by one you will gather and play with her thoughts as though they were these blossoms,—your burning hand will mar their color,—they ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... freedom of sentiment, its dignity may be lost. But, as the legislative proceedings of the United States will never, I trust, be reproached for the want of temper or of candor, so shall not the public happiness languish for the want of ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... the plan, even if I should accomplish it. I should get myself into trouble, dark and deep. Well, if I had to languish behind bars for a while I could survive it. But she might not. As I thought of this I knew that I had made ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... pale limbs, marred and scarred in love's lost battle, languish; See how the splendid passion still smiles quietly from his eyes: Come, come and see a king indeed, who triumphs in his anguish, Who conquers here in utter loss ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... no precise attack, no assault to which a name can be given, but without any definite reason they languish and die suddenly, like a taper, blown out. The torpor of the cloister ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... remain for family duties privately, as repeating sermons, and meditating upon the word, searching the Scriptures, whether things preached be so indeed, reading the Scriptures, catechizing their children and servants, &c.? and how will the life of religion in families, yea, and in churches also, languish, if these family exercises be not conscientiously upheld? If they be managed on the week days, how can all the people spare so much time, as still to be present, when perhaps many of them have much ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London

... and Miss Moore were talking, Frances and Miss Sherwin were making friends over their favorite story-books, and before the call was over they all had the pleasant feeling of being old acquaintances; and the acquaintance was not allowed to languish. ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard

... the toils we bear, And hear the prayers we send; In answer to our prayers, Our needy souls befriend;— We need not languish in the night, Though heaven receive ...
— Hymns from the Morningland - Being Translations, Centos and Suggestions from the Service - Books of the Holy Eastern Church • Various

... Dialogues of the Dead, The Art of Cookery, and other amusing works, was, at the end of the month, appointed Gazetteer, in succession to Steele, on Swift's recommendation. Writing earlier in the year, Gay said that King deserved better than to "languish out the small remainder of his life in the Fleet Prison." The duties of Gazetteer were too much for his easy-going nature and failing health, and he resigned the post in July 1712. He died in ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... that lonely traveller Empoisoned those sweet springs, To souls that languish, founts of life Bestirred ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon

... was in fact God. He knew of the future. He knew what crimes and horrors would be committed in His name. He knew the fires of persecution would climb around the limbs of countless martyrs; that brave men and women would languish in dungeons and darkness; that the church would use instruments of torture; that in His name His followers would trade in human flesh; that cradles would be robbed and women's breasts unbabed for gold, and yet He died with voiceless lips. If Christ ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... which He would have performed rather than any other, if it is true that He performed any at all. For example, it is claimed that God had the kindness to send an angel to console and to assist a simple maid, while He left, and still leaves every day, a countless number of innocents to languish and starve to death; it is claimed that He miraculously preserved during forty years the clothes and the shoes of a few people, while He will not watch over the natural preservation of the vast quantities of goods which are useful and necessary for the subsistence of great nations, and ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier

... had nearly glided by, and still no tidings of Mr. Ferret. Mrs. Grainger, and her sister Emily Dalston, a very charming person, had called repeatedly; but as I of course had nothing to communicate, they were still condemned to languish under the heart-sickness caused by hope deferred. At last our emissary made his ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren

... the ships arrived which were to take them from the island, where the unfeeling Ovando had suffered them to languish above a year, exposed to misery in all its various forms. When he arrived at St. Domingo, Ovando treated him with every kind of insult and injustice. Columbus submitted in silence, but became extremely impatient to quit a country ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich

... our increase of wealth in the country, and prevents it from lodging in a few hands, can work no injury whatever. No enterprise worthy of notice will languish for the want of the necessary capital. The savings banks are the depositories of the people, and the capital of those institution in all the cities of the country exceeds that of the commercial or capitalistic ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood

... tri-colored banner floating from St. Elmo's towers. Vain delusions, not destined to realization. The feeble attempts of the Italian patriots were easily suppressed, and Pepe retired to Paris, to mourn the fate of his beloved and beautiful country, doomed to languish in Austrian servitude and under ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... dashing and brilliant officer, far and away superior to those nominally above you. I am not without the power to make you an offer. The Spanish cause is lost; in a few months your armies will be crushed; Peru will be independent. Until that time you will languish miserably in prison. Afterwards I cannot pretend to prophesy your fate; but I offer you an opportunity to escape from the wreck. Join the Patriot army, and I pledge my word that San Martin shall give you the rank of colonel at once. In a year it will be your own fault if you are not a general. ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens

... "And people languish in the most terrible torture till death ends their suffering," added Cleopatra, in a tone of grave reproof. "No, girl, this victory is too easy. I will not send even my foe to death without a hearing, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Colonel, is of a different opinion," said he, when he had recovered. "He regards them as vermin to be left to languish and die of ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini

... forewel, What advers passions in his soul rebel? 340 Full of the beauty he adores and flies, He blames the tear, yet tears still fill his eyes: Now Mornay calls, now tender love retains; He goes, returns, and going still remains: But when she languish'd in his last embrace, 345 Colour and life forsook her lovely face, A sudden night obsur'd her radiant eyes: The God beheld—air echo'd with his cries; He trembled that the envious shades of night Should rob his empire ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire

... know the awful gibbet's anguish, Not they who, while sad years go by them, in The sunless cells of lonely prisons languish, Do ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... ex abundanti; simply the survival of any one distinguished Oracle upwards of four centuries after Christ—that is sufficient. But if with this fact we combine the other fact, that all the principal Oracles had already begun to languish, more than two centuries before Christianity, there can be no opening for a whisper of dissent upon any real question between Van Dale and his opponents; namely, both as to the possibility of Christianity coexisting with such forms of error, and the possibility that ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... accord, we kiss: About her neck my pleasure weeps; Against my lip the silk vein leaps; Then says an Angel, 'Day or night, If yours you seek, not her delight, Although by some strange witchery It seems you kiss her, 'tis not she; But, whilst you languish at the side Of a fair-foul phantasmal bride, Surely a dragon and strong tower Guard the true lady in her bower.' And I say, 'Dear my Lord. Amen!' And the true lady kiss again. Or else some wasteful malady Devours ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore

... my dear lady. But before we proceed to conclude this little deal I want to ask you a question or two. Surely you will not let me languish of curiosity. I want to know—tell me—how did you ever hit upon this plan ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... You think of him as presently—(say four or five years hence)—astounding the United States Senate with his eloquence. And when once you have heard him in debate, with that ineffable gesture of his, you absolutely languish in your admiration for him, and you describe his speaking to your country friends as very little inferior, if at all, to Mr. Burke's. Beside this one are some half dozen others, among whom the question of superiority is, you understand, strongly mooted. It puzzles you to think, ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell

... fortunes. The price was the lives of millions of slaves. And to-day it almost seems as though the sins of the fathers were being visited upon the children; as though the juju of the African, under the spell of which his enemies languish and die, has been cast upon the white man. We have to look only at home. In the millions of dead, and in the misery of the Civil War, and to-day in race hatred, in race riots, in monstrous crimes and as monstrous lynchings, we seem to see the fetish of the ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis

... least, confess that whatever may be its effects upon the interest of the nation, it has to him been very beneficial, as it has supplied him with a subject of raillery when other topics began to fail him, and given opportunity for the exercise of that wit which began to languish, for want ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson

... For whom had languish'd many a Swain: Leading her bleating Flocks to drink, She 'spy'd upon a River's brink A Youth, whose Eyes did well declare, How much he lov'd, but ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various

... among their modern successors. In the fine climate of Greece, Italy, and Spain, they were a natural growth, and involved no great strain upon a wooer's endurance. They assume a very different aspect under a northern sky, where young Absolute, found by his Lydia Languish "in the garden, in the coldest night in January, stuck like a dripping statue," presents a rather lugubrious spectacle. Horace (Odes, III. 7) warns the fair Asterie, during the absence of her husband abroad, to shut her ears against the ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... their tinsel beams and vanities, Threading with those false fires their way; But as you stay And see them stray, You lose the flaming track, and subtly they Languish ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... Daphnis, wherefore dost thou languish, while for thee the maiden by all the fountains, through all the glades is fleeting, in search of thee? Ah! thou art too laggard a lover, and thou nothing availest! A neatherd wert thou named, and now ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang

... old mansion, in order to prevent his having access to her, and with a view to compel her to marry Beauman. Her appearance had indicated a deep decline when he last saw her. "There, said he, far removed from friends and acquaintance, there did she languish, there did she die—a victim to excessive grief, ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.

... passion for her; and it is well known that the poet, who could not have forgotten so soon a devoted love, did not offer a single tribute of regret to her memory when she died a few years afterwards. It is also but too certain that Leonora left her supposed lover to languish in a dungeon without any reply to his pathetic complaints. The force of gravitation is a mutual thing; and just as the great sun himself cannot but bend a little in turn to the smallest orb that wheels around him, so the august Princess of Este ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... speck in the far Southern Pacific. By this story he ingratiated himself. He knew she was rich: he knew she was worth marrying: and to marry her, he had left my own real father, Richard Wharton, to starve and languish for twenty years among rocks and sea-fowl on ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen

... and fierce desires! Why languish thus the wonted fires That arm'd thine heart and nerved thine hand To do whate'er thy firmness planned? Has maudlin love subdued thy soul, Once so impatient of control? Has amorous play enslaved the mind Where erst no common chains confined? Has tender dalliance power to kill ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... "What, do my eyes deceive me? No, it is the festive and luxurious Perigord. Perigord, listen. I famish. I languish. I ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... also out of place in your garden, in strawberry and currant time. I hope I appreciate the value of children. We should soon come to nothing without them, though the Shakers have the best gardens in the world. Without them the common school would languish. But the problem is, what to do with them in a garden. For they are not good to eat, and there is a law against making away with them. The law is not very well enforced, it is true; for people do thin them out with constant dosing, paregoric, and soothing-syrups, and scanty clothing. But I, for ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... without some decisive effort on the part of France. With such an exertion as that of sending a superior fleet to America, we see nothing in the course of human affairs, that can possibly prevent France from obtaining such a naval superiority without delay. Without it the war may languish for years, to the infinite distress of our country, to the exhausting both of France and England, and the question left to be decided by ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various

... sort of assistance is dangerous. For the principal and only genuine excitement ought to come from within—from the moved and sympathetic imagination; whereas, where so much is addressed to the mere external senses of seeing and bearing, the spiritual vision is apt to languish, and the attraction from without will withdraw the mind from the proper and only legitimate interest which is intended ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... to explain how this instinctive attachment to his subject is especially requisite in the sacred poet. If even the description of material objects is found to languish without it, much more will it be looked for when the best and highest of all affections is to be expressed and communicated to others. The nobler and worthier the object, the greater our disappointment to find it approached with ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... GENERATION it is 'the style' to be healthy. Our heroines no longer languish and faint. They are all healthy girls and women who do a day's work or play just as a man does. If some of us are not so healthy as this, we try to be and take Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound when we ...
— Food and Health • Anonymous

... caressing, he looks a great deal more like a girl than a boy. His hair is as yellow as Maedel's; it's wavy like a girl's, and he wears it long and parted in the middle; and his eyes are large and very blue,—Phil says they are "languishing," and he and Felix have given him another nick-name of "Lydia Languish." He wore evening clothes, with a white flower in his buttonhole, and there were diamond studs in the bosom of his shirt, and a diamond ring on one of his fingers. When papa introduced him, he put his heels together and made us three very low ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus

... live up to her conception of an eighteenth-century buck, and made love with a fervour that was all the more enhanced by the sight of Miss Gibbs in the front row, sitting with pursed-up lips and straightened back. Meta, as Lydia Languish, sighed, wept, made eyes, and indulged in a perfect orgy of sentiment, while Lois acted the cheeky maidservant with enthusiasm. The best of all, however, was Mrs. Malaprop; Linda had seen the play on the real stage, and reproduced a famous actress to ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... things as the conveniences of life require, there would be such an abundance of them, that the prices of them would so sink, that tradesmen could not be maintained by their gains; if all those who labour about useless things, were set to more profitable employments, and if all they that languish out their lives in sloth and idleness, every one of whom consumes as much as any two of the men that are at work, were forced to labour, you may easily imagine that a small proportion of time would serve for doing all that is either ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... the Book of Love, that is called the Song of Love, or the Song of Songs. For he that loves greatly, lists often to sing of his love, for joy that he or she has when they think on that they love, specially if their love be true and loving. And this is the English of these two words: "I languish for love." Separate men on earth have separate gifts and graces of GOD, but the special gift of those who lead the solitary life, is for to love JESUS Christ. Thou sayest to me, 'All men love Him who keep His commandments.' ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole

... soldiers were desirous of a battle, except his colleague, whose mind (he observed) being more affected by his wound than his body, could not, for that reason, bear to hear of an engagement. But still, continued Sempronius, is it just to let the whole army droop and languish with him? What could Scipio expect more? Did he flatter himself with the hopes that a third consul, and a new army, would come to his assistance? Such were the expressions he employed both among the soldiers, and even about Scipio's tent. The time for the election of new generals drawing ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... favours upon them in a most indiscriminate and prodigal manner. Upon others she continually frowns. All their efforts uniformly bring back a plentiful harvest of disappointment. Their labour is ever in vain, they are left to languish in misery and to repine over the illusion which tempted them with a feigned promise of success ever nearer ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday

... another: [251]magistrates make laws against thieves, and are the veriest thieves themselves. Some kill themselves, others despair, not obtaining their desires. Some dance, sing, laugh, feast and banquet, whilst others sigh, languish, mourn and lament, having neither meat, drink, nor clothes. [252]Some prank up their bodies, and have their minds full of execrable vices. Some trot about [253]to bear false witness, and say anything for money; and though judges know of it, yet for a bribe they wink at it, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... cause devotion. But from dwelling on it there follows a certain affliction of soul: Remember my poverty ... the wormwood and the gall[93]—that is, the Sacred Passion; and then follows: I will be mindful, and remember, and my soul shall languish within me. ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas

... glimpse of the vicissitudes of the Consulate,—that precinct which I pictured as an ogre's lair, though the ogre was temporarily absent, while my father, like a prince bewitched, had been compelled by a rash vow to languish in the man-eater's place for a ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... a sweet "welcome home." I can minister no longer to her bodily wants, and listen to her counsels no more, but she has entered as an inspiration into my life, and through all eternity I shall bless God that He gave me that faithful, praying friend. How little they know who languish in what seems useless sick-rooms, or amid the restrictions of frail health, what work they do for Christ by the power of saintly living, ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss

... another still more favorable in the Monthly. And now the book found its way to tables which had seldom been polluted by marble-covered volumes. Scholars and statesmen, who contemptuously abandoned the crowd of romances to Miss Lydia Languish and Miss Sukey Saunter, were not ashamed to own that they could not tear themselves away from Evelina. Fine carriages and rich liveries, not often seen east of Temple Bar, were attracted to the publisher's shop in Fleet Street. Lowndes was daily questioned about the author, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... many years who has been Thus carefully forming thy plan! May smiles from the fair, Rid of much toil and care— Shine on him, in moments of anguish. May their tender hands To obey his commands Be ready, should he in life languish. ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... and for some years, more or less, they give us paying returns for our investments. But that food will not always last; it is gradually exhausted, and we fail to feed them again, or in that proportion their necessities require. They languish and die; a disease seizes them, and we complain and grumble at the ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... existence for you must be a scene of continual change and excitement, or else the world is a dungeon: you must be admired, you must be courted, you must be flattered—you must have music, dancing, and society—or you languish, you die away. Have you no sense to devise a system which will make you independent of all efforts, and all wills, but your own? Take one day; share it into sections; to each section apportion its task: leave no stray unemployed quarters ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... establish her dome, Chalicodoma muraria, coming and going across the arid table-land, traverses altogether a distance of 275 miles, which is nearly half of the greatest dimension of France from north to south. Afterwards, when, worn out with all this fatigue, the Bee retires to a hiding-place to languish in solitude and die, she ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... have totally lost the stoutness and complexion which I had when you saw me at Venice. My leanness is extreme, my sight is dim, my hands shake, and my knees totter, so that I can hardly drag myself to my country-house at Certaldo, where I only languish. After reading your letter, I wept a whole night for my dear master, not on his own account, for his piety permits us not to doubt that he is now happy, but for myself and for his friends whom he has left in this world, like ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... heart stay, and it will stay To honour thy decree; Or bid it languish quite away, And 't shall do so ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... uttered, with a sort of tender rudeness inconceivable vapidities, such as you would expect from none but a man of the highest fashion. The girl thus courted became selfishly unconscious of everything but her own joy, and made no attempt to bring the other girl within its warmth, but left her to languish forgotten on the other side. The latter sometimes leaned forward, and tried to divert a little of the flirtation to herself, but the flirters snubbed her with short answers, and presently she gave up and sat ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... condemned if they have left their bodies without receiving the sacrament of Christ, but of the pains they endure in this present life, under our very eyes. Did I wish to examine these sufferings, time would fail me rather than instances thereof; they languish in sickness, are torn by pain, tortured by hunger and thirst, weakened in their organs, deprived of their senses, and sometimes tormented by unclean beings. I should have to show how they can with justice be subjected to such things, at a time when they are yet without ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... Mongol fleet and driven back with serious loss, but this success was of no great service to the besiegers, since the cities were still well supplied. Thus for three years the siege went on, and it was beginning to languish, when new spirit was given it by fresh preparations on the part of the two contestants. Kublai, weary of the slow progress of his armies, resolved to press the siege with more vigor than ever, while the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... in their eyes, and bowing down to my feet, said, with whispering timid voice, "O gracious sir, our lady is doubly yours, since she was gained by your own valour when you rescued her from death, and is assigned to you by the all-powerful God of Love. Do not let her languish in vain. Make her your wife without delay." With this request I could not refuse to comply, and taking the hand of the princess, ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob

... a natural indolence of our disposition, which seeks pleasure in repose, and the resting in old habits, which must not be too violently opposed by "variety," "reanimating the attention, which is apt to languish under a continual sameness;" nor by "novelty," making "more forcible impression on the mind than can be made by the representation of what we have often seen before;" nor by "contrasts," that "rouse the power of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... I languish, Full of sorrow, full of anguish, Fainting, gasping, trembling, crying, Panting, groaning, speechless, dying; Methinks I hear some gentle spirit say, "Be not fearful, ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth

... witness of whom you can think, monsieur? Some witness that might be produced more readily. For if you can, indeed, establish the identity you claim, why should you languish in prison for ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini

... in the things of Mammon, which still leaves the rich man sensitive to the instincts of Heaven, and teaches him to seek for happiness in those beneficent virtues which distribute his wealth to the profit of others. If you could exclude the air from the rays of the fire, the fire itself would soon languish and die in the midst of its fuel; and so a man's joy in his wealth is kept alive by the air which it warms; and if pent ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... "who have been imprisoned so justly for stealing so handsome a motor-car in such an audacious manner, and for such lurid and imaginative cheek, bestowed upon such a number of fat, red-faced policemen!" (Here his sobs choked him.) "Stupid animal that I was" (he said), "now I must languish in this dungeon, till people who were proud to say they knew me, have forgotten the very name of Toad! O wise old Badger!" (he said), "O clever, intelligent Rat and sensible Mole! What sound judgments, what a knowledge of men and matters you possess! O unhappy ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... for genuine American wit and humour? Take notice of this in your answer; say, for instance, "Even although the letter had been unsigned, I could have had no difficulty in guessing who was my dear, lively, witty correspondent. Yours, Letitia Languish." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... were odious yesterday night, the letter said. Why did you not come to the stage-door? Papa could not escort me on account of his eye; he had an accident, and fell down over a loose carpet on the stair on Sunday night. I saw you looking at Miss Diggle all night; and you were so enchanted with Lydia Languish you scarcely once looked at Julia. I could have crushed Bingley, I was so angry. I play Ella Rosenberg on Friday: will you come then? Miss Diggle performs—ever ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... dangers, they now purposed to enjoy in ease and tranquillity. And most of the officers, having risen from the dregs of the people, had no other prospect, if deprived of their commission, than that of returning to languish in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume

... taken in licentiousness. From off the hill where my flock is wont to graze, it is easy, through many an opening of the forest, to see these roofs; and it would have been better that the body should languish, than that a grievous sin should be placed on that immortal spirit which is already too deeply laden, unless thou art far more happy than others of the ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... Colonel Fougas. "But gold has no attractions for my eyes. Wealth engenders weakness. Me, to languish in the sluggish idleness of Sybaris!—to enervate my senses on a bed of roses! Never! The smell of powder is dearer to me than all the perfumes of Arabia. Life would have no charm or zest for me, ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... never languish for husband or dower; I never sigh to see 'gyps' at my feet; I make the butter fly, all in an hour, Taking it home for my ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... quest of the dove, and take his young Queen with him. They were to go on foot as pilgrims, and leave all their pomp and state behind them, with their faces towards the east, and their eyes lifted to Heaven. While they were journeying on, the young Queen began to languish, and grow pale and wan. At last she sunk down at his feet, and told him that she was going to die, and leave him alone in his pilgrimage. The young King smote his breast, and throwing himself down by ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... not a right to demand its extermination! Shall society suffer, that the slaveholder may continue to gather his vigintial crop of human flesh? What is his mere pecuniary claim, compared with the great interests of the common weal? Must the country languish and die, that the slaveholder may flourish? Shall all interest be subservient to one?—all rights subordinate to those of the slaveholder? Has not the mechanic—have not the middle classes their rights?—rights incompatible with the existence ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... hands are clenching and unclenching in her heliotrope chiffon lap; there is a well-defined scowl between the black arched eyebrows, and the murky light of battle gleams in the eyes that no longer languish between their bistred eyelids as she scans the pure pale face under the sweep of her heavily blackened lashes. She would almost give the ruby buttons out of her ears to see it wince and quiver, and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... frequently languish, even in the hands of the busy, if they have not some employment subsidiary to that which forms ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various

... item had to be entered upon the sheet. Each item had to be valued. Discounts had to be figured, extensions had to be made, figures had to be checked meticulously, and the whole thing eventually bound up in six or eight huge volumes which were then allowed to languish in the Company safe. He had been through it before. And the thought of it was intolerable. This was June. June and inventory and Mr. Boner seemed to him to be cut from the same piece. For neither did Mr. Boner escape. Instead, he came earlier, ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... said I, solemnly, "do you remember how, some six years ago at Hydrabad, when yet beardless and whiskerless, the only hair upon my face being eyebrows and eyelashes, at your instigation and 'suadente diabolo,' I attempted to perform Lydia Languish in 'The Rivals?' and hast thou yet forgotten, O son of an unsainted father, how my grenadier stride, the fixed tea-pot position of my arms, to say nothing of the numerous other solecisms in the code of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... in these days of her prime; but there were thousands of more beautiful women in France. And for ten years Madame Scarron was left to languish within the convent walls with never a lover to offer her release. When the Queen-mother died, and with her the pitiful pension, her plight was indeed pitiful. Her petitions to the King fell on deaf ears, until Montespan, moved by her tears and entreaties, pleaded ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... Cumberland's officers, "that men of a larger size, larger limbs, and better proportioned, could not be found." The flower of their unhappy country; hundreds of these had not yet been blessed with the repose of death, but were left to languish in agony until the next day, when they were butchered by the orders of Cumberland. One of them, John Alexander Fraser, in the Master of Lovat's regiment, was rescued by Lord Boyd from destruction. A soldier had ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson

... foot-stool, Science groans in chains, And Wit dreads exile, penalties and pains. There foam'd rebellious Logic, gagg'd and bound, There, stripp'd, fair Rhetoric languish'd on the ground; His blunted arms by Sophistry are borne, And shameless Billingsgate her robes adorn. Morality, by her false guardians drawn. Chicane in furs, and Casuistry in lawn, Gasps, as they straiten at each end the cord, And dies, when Dulness gives her page the word. ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... I do but languish, I do but sorrow; and even those pleasures all things present me with, instead of yielding me comfort, do but redouble the grief of his loss. We were co-partners in all things. All things were with us at half; methinks I have stolen his part from him. I was so accustomed to be ever two, and so ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward

... Suez Canal, or of anchylosis in the St. Gothard Tunnel, and the Americans mowed down by shot and shell while fighting for the abolition of slavery, have helped to develop the cotton industry of France and England, as well as the work-girls who languish in the factories of Manchester and Rouen, and the inventor who (following the suggestion of some worker) succeeds in improving ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin

... the extent of the United States, and the vast amount of their present expenses, while at the same time all our operations languish, must certainly be convinced that some immediate remedy ought to be applied. The office of Superintendent of Finance I suppose is meant as one means of restoring economy and vigor; and nothing will keep up in the minds of the public servants ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various

... the cigars. We had talked long, and the conversation was beginning to languish; the tobacco smoke had got into the heavy curtains, the wine had got into those brains which were liable to become heavy, and it was already perfectly evident that, unless somebody did something to rouse our oppressed spirits, the meeting would soon come ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford

... Bar you first taught me to score, And bid me be free of my Lips, and no more; I was kiss'd by the Parson, the Squire, and the Sot, When the Guest was departed, the Kiss was forgot. But his Kiss was so sweet, and so closely he prest, That I languish'd and pin'd till ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay

... called his court chamber. What he did in it he termed the regulation of his affairs with humanity, and the collection of little wooden cells he called his jail. Every individual who had offended, hurt, humiliated, or defrauded him was assigned such a keep in which he was obliged to languish, figuratively, until his time, determined by a formal ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... wanted to say was, that she was a faithless wife, a reckless lover, a revengeful and unforgiving woman, since Joseph was left to languish in captivity for two long years, without any effort on her part, as far as we can learn or infer, ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley

... length the trial came on. A conviction was obtained; but the charges were so obviously futile, that the Government could not, for very shame, carry the sentence into execution; and Peacham, was suffered to languish away the short remainder of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... their croakings, Jupiter asked the cause of their complaints. Then {said} one of the inhabitants of the pool: "As it is, by himself he parches up all the standing waters, and compels us unfortunates to languish and die in {our} scorched abode. What is to become of us, ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus

... att first to make a discovery was horribly wounded with 2 arrowes and a blow of a club on the head. If he had stuck to it as we, he might proceed better. We burned him with all speed, that he might not languish long, to putt ourselves in safty. We killed 2 of them, & 5 prisoners wee tooke, and came away to where we left our boats, where we arrived within 2 days without resting, or eating or drinking all the time, saveing a litle stagge's meate. We tooke all their booty, which was of 2 sacks of Indian ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson

... told how Polycrates was treacherously seized and murdered by the Persian satrap Oroetes. Democedes had accompanied him to the court of the traitor, and was, with the other attendants of Polycrates, seized and left to languish in neglect and imprisonment. Soon afterwards Oroetes received the just retribution for his treachery, being himself slain. And now a third turn came to the career of Democedes. He was classed among the slaves of Oroetes, ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... dinner continued gayly, Saniel replying to Phillis's smiles, who would not permit the conversation to languish. She helped him to each dish, poured out his wine, leaving her chair occasionally to put a piece of wood on the fire, and such shoutings and laughter had never been ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot

... and House Agent, Surveyor, Valuer and Auctioneer; she was the prettiest of six, with two brothers, neither of the least use, but, thanks to the manner in which their main natural protector appeared to languish under the accumulation of his attributes, they couldn't be said very particularly or positively to live. Their continued collective existence was a good deal of a miracle even to themselves, though they had fallen into the way of not unnecessarily, or too ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James

... Soul that must languish in endless anguish, Thy life is a little spell, So take thy fill, ere the Pow'rs of Ill Shall ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... a far away expression, dreamy and tender, that soon affects the music. The magic violin sighs and breathes in melting tenderness. The melody floats upward, melting and fading away, exhaled into palpable silence. Not quite, for just as it seems ready to languish into nothing, a soft, sweet chord from the band completes the cadence and brings ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard

... expressing compassion for her situation, told her chat if she would make such an application of living toads as is mentioned she would be well.' Now is it likely that this unknown gentleman should express so much tenderness for this single sufferer, and not feel any for the many thousands that daily languish under this terrible disorder? Would he not have made use of this invaluable nostrum for his own emolument; or, at least, by some means of publication or other, have found a method of making it public for the good of mankind ? In short, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... pressure of other work, perhaps for other causes, investigations of this nature are allowed to languish. Some years ago, when the firm of Douglas, Lacey & Company was reaping its harvest, an inspector was assigned to investigate the concern's operations. He was one of the ablest inspectors of the service, a man with real detective ability and a knowledge of the devious ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... knocked three days in vain, the neighbourhood began to think it necessary to take some measures thereupon; but not choosing to run the hazard of breaking open the house, they sent to the old gentleman's nephew, whose father had been suffered to languish in extreme poverty many years before his death; nor was the son in much better condition; but he had acquainted some of the neighbours with the place of his abode in hopes of the event which now induced them to ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott

... me, nor swerve from the paths of truth. For if thou reply unto my questions with sincerity, I will loosen thy bonds and give thee treasures; but if thou deceive me, thou shalt languish till death in ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... and despite his believing that he was going to be perfectly indifferent about this, he felt deserted and sad. The influence of the springtime also affected him. The deep blue sky, cloudless, dense, dark, made him languish. Instead of entertaining himself with something or other, he did scarcely anything all day ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja

... Providence that calamity comes upon us, in most cases, with a force so sudden and overwhelming that it is rather seen than felt. As we realize the full torture of an ugly wound, not when the blow is struck, but after the whole system has been made to languish under its effects, so a blow struck at the heart can not make itself fully felt while the mind is still unable to picture what the future will be like now that the grief has come. We only taste our bitterest grief when the mind has shaken ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch

... Could I, coming out of Germany with Germans prove my identity? Would my story be believed? Would I have believed such a story before the days of my sojourn among the Germans? Might I not be consigned to languish in prison as a merely clever German spy, or be consigned ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... would sustain the project which can be completed within a measurable distance of years and for the benefit and to the advantage of the present generation. Time flies, and the years pass rapidly. Shall this project languish and linger and become the spoil of political controversy and a subject of political attack? Can we conceive of anything more likely to prove disastrous to the canal project than political strife, which proved the undoing of the French canal ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden

... Yeomanry left the hunting field for South Africa, and "registered" horses were commandeered by Government, fox hunting in counties where it is not the main business of life might be supposed to languish. As a matter of fact, it did not; and if the fields were smaller than usual, and a good many familiar faces missing, the master very properly felt that as he had his pack and there were plenty of foxes, he might as well employ the one ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish

... out of the way; When geese and pullen are seduc'd, And sows of sucking-pigs are chows'd; When cattle feel indisposition, 115 And need th' opinion of physician; When murrain reigns in hogs or sheep. And chickens languish of the pip; When yeast and outward means do fail, And have no pow'r to work on ale: 120 When butter does refuse to come, And love proves cross and humoursome: To him with questions, and with urine, They for ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... in her plan of getting me to leave the country, anything that resembled hypocrisy. In a word, I was firmly convinced that at the first word of love her door would be closed to me. Upon my return I found her thin and changed. Her habitual smile seemed to languish on her discolored lips. She told me that she had been suffering. We did not speak of the past. She did not appear to wish to recall it, and I had no desire to refer to it. We resumed our old relations of neighbors; yet there ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... the war of 1859 is beginning; in the latter, three maidens recount to the poet stories of the oppression which has imprisoned the father of one, despoiled another's house through the tax-gatherer, and sent the brother of the third to languish, the soldier-slave of his tyrants, in a land where "the wife washes the garments of her husband, yet stained ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells



Words linked to "Languish" :   die, deteriorate, drop, languisher, fade, ache, pine away, degenerate, long, waste, yen



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