"Languor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I care, in the dreams and the languor of spring, That my songs do not show me at all? For they are a fragrance, and I am a flint and a fire, I am an answer, they ...
— Flame and Shadow • Sara Teasdale
... sometimes the case, a look of languor suited her; and he thought she had grown decidedly better-looking in the last year. At Redsands Miss Brabazon had been a little too buxom, a little too self-possessed, also, for his taste. And yet—and yet how wonderfully good she had ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... the cold voice of his wife. She did not turn her eyes from their dreamy contemplation of the ceiling, nor did she alter in any way the languor of her posture, the indifference of her manner. But, somehow, the quality in her voice was insistent, and the gentle, musical tone broke on his delivery with a subtle force sufficient to halt it against ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... solitary Christianity. My religious needs are not satisfied any more than my social needs, or my needs of affection. Generally I am able to forget them and lull them to sleep. But at times they wake up with a sort of painful bitterness ... I waver between languor and ennui, between frittering myself away on the infinitely little, and longing after what is unknown and distant. It is like the situation which French novelists are so fond of, the story of a vie de province; only the province is all that is not the country of the soul, every place where ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... walks, generally at night when her brain was wild with the bitter warfare, had served a useful purpose, and kept her in better health. But the strain could not last forever. For days she had alternated between a chilly, stupid languor, and hours when her brain seemed on fire, when, indeed, she hated the whole world with a bitter, awful intensity. In this mood she had stolen ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... chair, thanked her for her proposal, said that he would come without fail ... without fail! and went away, bearing in his soul an impression of a quiet voice, of gentle and sorrowful eyes—and burning with the languor of anticipation. ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... like it—for the latter had quite recovered, and was fit to hold his own, almost, with any one; the charming confusion of mind with which Fred Jenkins intermingled the sailor's hornpipe with it; the inimitable languor with which La Certe condescended to go through it; the new-born energy with which Slowfoot footed it; the side-splitting shrieks with which Old Peg regarded it; the uproarious guffaws with which the delighted old Duncan hailed it; the sad smile with which that ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... the most airy births. Many were attacked with teazing coughs; others complained of violent pains in the head; and even the healthiest among us felt a sensation of suffocating heat, attended by an insufferable languor, and a total loss of appetite. But though our situation was for a time thus uneasy and alarming, we had at last the singular satisfaction of escaping from these fatal seas, without the loss of a single life; A circumstance which was probably ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... three only, by the massive force of practical genius, were able to free themselves from the fascination of the common ideal. But Mirabeau and Danton were overborne by the full tide, and Napoleon, when he arrested it in its languor, turned it into depths from which it emerged the other day to sweep away his column in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... petitioners for patronage and place. But his arduous labors impaired his health and doubtless shortened his life. Before his term of office had half expired his friends were pained to witness his shortened and enfeebled step, and the air of languor and ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... minutest flowers, the humble daisy, the blue forget-me-not, the convolvulus in the hedgerows raise their heads and follow you with a longing look—does it not happen to you to experience an inexpressible sensation of languor, to sigh for no apparent reason, and even to feel inclined to shed tears, and to ask yourselves, 'Why does this feeling of love oppress me? why do my knees bend under me? ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... could almost step from the steamer into its streets. Meantime, the long, bright afternoon, so rich in manifold impressions, draws on; cypresses and mulberry-trees announce the approach to Avignon. A golden softness in the evening sky, a heavy warmth and languor in the air, proclaim the South. Every inch of the way is varied and rememberable. Feudal walls still crest the distant heights, as we glide slowly between reedy banks and low sandy shores towards the ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... rare combination of powers exhibited in the works we have enumerated. We have left unnoticed the wonderful extent and accuracy of the learning, the compass and profundity of the thought, the inexhaustible spirit, ever preserving the happy mean between mental languor and nervous excitement. In these twenty-seven volumes of criticism, scarcely an error has been detected, scarcely a single repetition is met with; there is scarcely a page which a reader, unpressed for time, would be inclined to skip. Where you least agree with the author, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... Flood, who complained of a violent pain in his head, occasioned by the intense heat. There was no shelter, however, for him under the miserable shrubs that surrounded us; but I stopped for half an hour, during which the horses stood oppressed by languor, and without the strength to lift up their heads, whilst their tails shook violently. Being anxious to get to water without delay, I took a straight line for the water-holes, and reached them at half-past 6 p.m., after an exposure, from morning till night, to ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... spoken of.[901] His heart full of faith, he should worship the deities in the five well-known sacrifices. Endued with patience, never heedless, having self-control, conversant with duties, with a cleansed soul, divested of joy, pride, and wrath, the Brahmana should never sink in languor. Gifts, study of the Vedas, sacrifices, penances, modesty, guilelessness, and self-restraint,—these enhance one's energy and destroy one's sins. One endued with intelligence should be abstemious in diet and should conquer one's senses. Indeed, having subdued both lust ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... countess sings to us, which is all the same; and you know that time flies swiftly on the wings of harmony. She has an uncommonly sweet voice, and a taste which I never heard paralleled. By the way, you cannot imagine anything more beautiful than the Polish music. It partakes of that delicious languor so distinguished in the Turkish airs, with a mingling of those wandering melodies which the now- forgotten composers must have caught from the Tartars. In short, whilst the countess is singing, I hardly suffer myself to breathe; and I feel just what our poetical friend William ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... hoisting. The cat's-paws came thicker and thicker, the dark blue line increasing in width, till in a short time we were staggering away before as brisk a breeze as the little craft could desire. All languor quickly vanished, and we served out an additional supply of water to our poor sheep. My anxiety, however, did not cease, for just afterwards, as I was sweeping the horizon with my telescope, I saw, rising above it, the ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston
... Hollister—the Mrs. Hollister—was giving in her honor. It was about noon of a warm day, and the air that came in at the open windows was thrillingly alive with troubling, disquieting suggestions of the new life of spring. Lydia, however, showed none of the languor which the sudden heat had brought to the two elder women. She was a little late, and her hurry had sent a high color to her cheeks, the curves of which were refined to the most exquisite subtlety by the loss of flesh so deplored by Dr. Melton. She was used, by this time, to dressing in a hurry, ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... Pausanias, "Sleep is dearest to the Muses;" and when the child of the Muses does not get his regular nine hours' rest (which he fails to do in warm weather), then his verse and prose are certain to bear traces of his languor. It is true that all children of the Muses do not require about double the allowance of the saints. Five hours was all St. Jerome took, and probably Byron did not sleep much more during the season when he wrote ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... What summer-delight of other lands could match the beauty of the first Venetian snow-fall which I saw? It had snowed overnight, and in the morning when I woke it was still snowing. The flakes fell softly and vertically through the motionless air, and all the senses were full of languor and repose. It was rapture to lie still, and after a faint glimpse of the golden-winged angel on the bell-tower of St. Mark's, to give indolent eye solely to the contemplation of the roof opposite, where the snow lay half an inch deep upon the brown tiles. The little ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... did, and then let herself subside into a dreamy state, principally taken up by thoughts of the change, the preparations for that change, and visions of the glorious country—all sunshine, languor, and delights—which Barron never seemed to ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... has been observed, was suffering from languor in Art industry. The excellent designs of the Adams and their school, which obtained early in the century, had been supplanted, and a meaningless rococo style succeeded the heavy imitations of ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... it did not take her long to prepare herself for the journey. All her languor had departed. The idle fooling in which she had indulged during the previous hours was replaced by an earnest activity in moving about her room. Her fingers were skilful and rapid in the arrangement of her dress. In less than a quarter of an hour, she ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... lay motionless, with not even the movement of an eye-lash to indicate consciousness, wrapped in a delicious languor. Gradually this passed and the feeble flutter of his heart grew into a steady, rhythmic beat. The keen brain was awakening; he was beginning to remember. What had happened? He knew only that in some manner a drug had been administered to him, a bitter ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... boughs swayed slowly up and down, a breath passed over Renee's temples and touched her neck, a puff of wind kissed and cheered her. Gradually she began to lose all consciousness of her physical being, the sensation and fatigue of living; an exquisite languor took possession of her, and it seemed to her as though she were partially freed from her material body and were just ready to pass away in the divine sweetness of all these things. Every now and then she nestled closer to her father like ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... horses—their previous owner could not have recognised them. It is true they were what is styled "all there," but there was an inexpressible droop of their heads and tails, a weary languor in their eyes, and an abject waggle about their knees which told of hope deferred and spirit utterly gone. The pony was the better of the two. Its sprightly glance of amiability had changed into a gaze of humble resignation, whereas the aspect of the obstinate horse was one of impotent ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... past I had been violently afflicted with a slow nervous fever attended by a continual head-ache, a total loss of appetite, and a very bad digestion, by which I was reduced to a deplorable state of languor and dejection of spirits. After being attended by many Doctors, and taking a variety of Medicines, my husband, Mr. JOHN TOD, hearing from several persons with whom he was acquainted, of the wonderful effects your excellent Tea had done in nervous ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... with it, delirium. Which was merciful. For weeks she lay closer to death than to life.... Now she was better; and yet far from well. Violet eyes were sad—dull. Brown-gold flesh was pallid. She moved with languor. ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... furniture. Yes; and I dismissed my faithful Rebecca and the clinging Lucy, and they departed, God knows where; it was as though I had sold them into slavery. Again and again, in the final week, I cut myself to the quick, recklessly, perhaps purposely; I moved in a sort of terrible languor, deaf to every appeal, pretending to be stony, and yet tortured by my secret fear, and by a hemorrhage of the heart that no philosophy could stanch. And I swear that nothing desolated me more than the strapping and the labelling of my trunks that morning after ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... can without danger; but the light from this lamp hurts my eyes, a soft languor weighs down my eyelids. I do not know what emotion agitates me; a demi-obscurity will please me more; one would say I am in the ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... in general there was only languor. She used to lie by the window, looking so smiling and tranquil, that it was hard to believe how much she had gone through; and so peaceful, that we could not dare to wish to bring her back to care and turmoil. The last time she was able to talk to ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... again, easterly wind and pretty cool, and I am losing the cough and languor which the damp of the Simoom brought me. Sheykh Yussuf has just come back from Keneh, whither he and the Kadee went on their donkeys for some law business. He took our saddle bags at Omar's request, ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... hours after reaching the house the parents noted a peculiar change that had taken place in their son. A dreamy languor seemed to have taken possession of him, in place of the exuberant flow of animal spirits that characterised him as a boy. He had a strange habit of looking as though he were endeavouring to read the very thoughts of those with ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous
... hands and feet, set his pillow aright, and then stooped and kissed him. His chills had ceased; a feeling of heavy, helpless languor crept over him. ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... gleam or two now and then. What he said was much in the spirit of his former mind as far as the matter and meaning went, but the tone of strength and elasticity was wanting. The appearance was that of a placid languor, sometimes approaching to torpor, but not otherwise than cheerful. He is thin and shrunk in person, and that extraordinary face of his has no longer the fire and strength it used to have, though the singular cast of the features, and the habitual expressions, make it still a most remarkable ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... over Walter's reeling brain; darkness, pierced by a thousand gleaming, twinkling lights, brilliant as stars, then came a void and nothingness. Slowly at last he felt himself struggling up out of the void, battling, fighting for consciousness, then came a delicious sort of languor. If this was dying, it was very pleasant. Forms seemed to be flitting before his half-opened eyelids and the hum of voices seemed to float in his ears. One voice irritated him greatly; it was faintly familiar in its loud joyousness. What was ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... of capes and islands whose appellations are music and a song.... The first big land sighted on the outward passage is Java Head; beside it stands Cape Sangian Sira, with its name like a battle-cry. We are in the Straits of Sunda: name charged with the heady languor of the Orient, bringing to mind pictures of palm-fringed shores and native villages, of the dark-skinned men of Java clad in bright sarongs, clamoring from their black-painted dugouts, selling fruit and brilliant birds. These waters are rich ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... our returning to hear what we no longer understand. Thenceforth a mighty fog, a fog heavy and dun as lead, enwraps the world. For how long? For a whole millennium of horror. Throughout ten centuries, a languor unknown to all former times seizes upon the Middle Ages, even in part on those latter days that come midway betwixt sleep and waking, and holds them under the sway of a visitation most irksome, most unbearable; that convulsion, namely, of mental weariness, which ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... which they awakened was romantic and pleasing, such as his soul delighted in, and, willingly adjourning till more broad day the doubtful task of determining on his future line of conduct, he abandoned himself to the pleasing languor inspired by the music, and fell into a sound and refreshing sleep, from which he was only awakened at a late hour by old Caxon, who came creeping into the room to render ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... my adolescence. I was born down on the northern edge of the southern range of the North American malaria belt; and when I was growing up, if one seemed intellectually torpid or became filled with an overpowering bodily languor, the indisposition always was diagnosed offhand as a touch of malaria. Accordingly, the victim, taking his own advice or another's, jolted his liver with calomel until the poor thing flinched every time a strange ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... The languor of the crimson shawl's abasement,— Lying without a stir Upon the floor,—the absence at the casement, The solitude and hush were full ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... appeared to be conscious of error; at all events, her manner and temper were changed. Watching her closely, I thought that neither shame for an outbreak of unwonted extravagance nor fear of my displeasure would account for her languor and depression. But illness is so rare among a race educated for countless generations on principles scientifically sound and sanitary, inheriting no seeds of disease from their ancestry, and safe from the infection of epidemics long extirpated, that no apprehension of serious ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... his pride, for he chanced to be a splendid tiger-marked feline of purest Persian breed, with glorious yellow eyes and a Solomon-in-all-his-glory tail. His pedigree could be traced directly back to Padisha Zim Yuki Yowsi Zind—a dignity, in itself, sufficient to cause an aristocratic languor; but, to the layman, he was ...
— A Night Out • Edward Peple
... dress was purple, her slippers were golden, Her eyes were blue; and a purple orchid Opened its golden heart on her breast . . . She leaned to the surly languor of lazy music, Leaned on her partner's arm to rest. The violins were weaving a weft of silver, The horns were weaving a lustrous brede of gold, And time was caught in a glistening pattern, Time, too elusive ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... Rationalis (1674), was one of the first to attempt to do justice to both sides of the coffee question. At best, he thought it a somewhat risky beverage, and its votaries must, in some cases, be prepared to suffer languor and even paralysis; it may attack the heart and cause tremblings in the limbs. On the other hand it may, if judiciously used, prove a marvelous benefit; "being daily drunk it wonderfully clears and enlightens each ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the early afternoon languor. If a man has nothing to do, he will sooner get into mischief than do nothing at all; this invariably happens in France. Youth at present day has two sides to it; the studious or unappreciated, ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac
... house; Afternoon—evening—the next day—my little man of business performed his function promptly and assiduously. But in the afternoon of the second day he began to change perceptibly. He wore an aspect of languor and melancholy that alarmed me. The next morning he was pale, and went to his work with an ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... The languor and ineffectuality of the image tell us clearly how the poet has failed in his larger task; its exactness, its precise expression of an ineffectuality made conscious and condoned, bears equal witness to the poet's minor probity. He remains ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... thin, and birdlike Frenchman named Pierre, who had been a soldier, and then for several years a servant at the Trappist Monastery at Staoueli; Charmian's maid; and an Arab boy whom everyone called Bibi, and who alternated between a demeanor full of a graceful and apparently fatalistic languor, and fits of almost monkeylike gaiety and mischief which Pierre strove to repress. A small Arab girl, dressed like a little woman in flowing cotton or muslin, with clinking bracelets and anklets, charms on her thin bosom and scarlet and ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... first day of Death is fled, The first dark day of Nothingness, 70 The last of Danger and Distress, (Before Decay's effacing fingers Have swept the lines where Beauty lingers,) And marked the mild angelic air, The rapture of Repose that's there,[cj] The fixed yet tender traits that streak The languor of the placid cheek, And—but for that sad shrouded eye, That fires not, wins not, weeps not, now, And but for that chill, changeless brow, 80 Where cold Obstruction's apathy[59] Appals the gazing mourner's heart,[ck] As if to him it could impart The doom he ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... Fifth Avenue, of Capitol City, that smoky illuminant of our great central levels, but although it esteems itself an established cosmopolitan thoroughfare, it is still provincial enough to be watchful; and even in its torrid languor took some ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... ridiculous as soon as they lose the recommendation of the mode. The tediousness of continued allegory, and that, too, seldom striking or ingenious, has also contributed to render the Fairy Queen peculiarly tiresome; not to mention the too great frequency of its descriptions, and the languor of its stanza. Upon the whole, Spenser maintains his place upon the shelves among our English classics; but he is seldom seen on the table; and there is scarcely any one, if he dares to be ingenuous, but will confess, that, notwithstanding all the merit of the poet, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... Titian has none of this Oriental languor, no memories of perfumed places where "the throne of Indian Cama slowly sails." One cannot help admiring the fancy which saw the conquering god still steeped in Asiatic ease, still unawakened to more vigorous passion by the fresh wind blowing ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... all who recollect the incidents detailed in former pages will readily believe. Her health still continued so delicate as frequently to occasion her aunt some anxiety. Through the winter, strange to say, she had not suffered, but the spring brought on, at intervals, those depressing feelings of languor which Mrs. Hamilton hoped had been entirely conquered. The least exertion or excitement caused her to suffer the following day, and therefore, except at very small parties, she did not appear even at home. ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... Yale; and, as a rule, they were students worth teaching—hardy, vigorous, shrewd, broad, with faith in the greatness of the country and enthusiasm regarding the nation's future. It may be granted that there was, in many of them, a lack of elegance, but there was neither languor nor cynicism. One seemed, among them, to breathe a purer, stronger air. Over the whole institution Dr. Tappan presided, and his influence, both upon faculty and students, was, in the main, excellent. He sympathized heartily with the work of every professor, allowed to each great liberty, yet conducted ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... could not exactly trust the report of others against her own experience and observation. The thoughts of this orphan boy clung to her heartstrings with a fondness for which she herself was unable to account. He seemed to have been sent to her by Heaven, to fill up those intervals of languor and vacuity which deprived her of much enjoyment. Perhaps he was not less dear to her, because she well saw that he was a favourite with no one else, and because she felt, that to give him up was to afford the judgment of her husband and others a triumph over her own; a circumstance not quite ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... others were so, they imagined themselves must be equally entertained; or if the dullness of the place was too great to be overlooked, they charged it on their own want of spirits, and complained of a languor which rendered ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... cruise? We sat smoking by the open window, long after Carlotta had been sent to bed, and looking at a full moon sailing over the tops of the trees in the park; enveloped in that sensuous atmosphere of a warm summer night which induces a languor in the body and in the will. On such a night as this young Lorenzo, if he happens to have Jessica by his side, makes a confounded idiot of himself, to his life's undoing; and on such a night as this a reserved philosopher commits the folly of discussing ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... still sufficient to give exercise and amusement to an octogenary rider. This is the establishment of a University, on a scale more comprehensive, and in a country more healthy and central than our old William and Mary, which these obstacles have long kept in a state of languor and inefficiency. But the tardiness with which such works proceed, may render it doubtful whether I shall live to see it ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... heavy fringe of dark lashes drooped wearily on Lynette's white cheeks, and the long-limbed, slight, supple body leaned back in the favourite chair by the fireside with a little air of languor that only added to her allure. And Saxham, looking at her, said again ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... dark-browed and silent, their limbs slack, like the ropes above them, entangled as they are in those inextricable meshes about the patched knots and heaps of ill-reefed sable sail. What a majestic sense of service in all that languor! the rest of human limbs and hearts, at utter need, not in sweet meadows or soft air, but in harbor slime and biting fog; so drawing their breath once more, to go out again, without lament, from between the two skeletons of pier-heads, vocal with wash of ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... into life, and a satisfying vision of the universe. And if secularists have not always grasped this necessity, we may perhaps find therein one main reason why secularism has not met with so enormous and enthusiastic a reception as the languor and formalism of the ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... the next day, it was evident that he had thrown from his heart a load of cares; and though they had left a languor upon his face, content was in his voice, in his manners, in every word and action. Far from seeming to retain any resentment against his ward, for the danger into which her imprudence had led him, he appeared rather to pity her indiscretion, ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... had never beheld in the former time of his affluent, dazzling youth. And, indeed, in his language, and in the thoughts it clothed, there was an earnestness, a concentration, a directness, a purpose, which had seemed wanting to his desultory talk in the earlier days I expected that reaction of languor and exhaustion would follow his vehement outbreak of passion, but, after a short pause, he went on with steady accents. His will was sustaining his strength. He was determined to force his convictions on me, and the ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... go after him," muttered Joe Emson; and, casting off the feeling of languor which had impelled him to call others instead of acting himself, he braced himself up, left the scorching iron house behind, and trotted after Dyke, scaring a group of stupid-looking young ostriches into a run behind the ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... had come gliding by, her eyes wandering lazily, her lips just parted; her neck, hardly less pale than her white frock; her face pale, and marked with languor, under the heavy coil of her tawny hair; and her swaying body seeming with each turn of the waltz to be caught by the arms of her partner from out of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... my life's delight! Let me not in languor pine! Love loves no delay; thy sight The more enjoyed, the more divine. O come, and take from me The pain of being ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... never shall I forget my first sight of Charmion Fane as she trailed into the dining-room and seated herself at a small table opposite our own. She was so tall and pale and shadowy in the floating grey chiffon cloak that covered her white dress, she lay back in her chair with such languor, and drooped her heavy eyelids with an air of such superfine indifference to her fellow-men, that Kathie and I decided then and there that she was succumbing to the effects of a dangerous operation, and— with care—might be expected to last six ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... their clear insight into facts, their swiftness in availing themselves of every opportunity, their persistence and their perseverance, but that we rebuke ourselves because of the difference between the earnestness with which we follow the things that are of this world, and the languor of our pursuit after the things that are ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... now, and stood upright, all her languor gone. Why could he not say what he meant at once? She wondered why he had taken the trouble to seek for proofs of anyone's guilt. Enough for a man of his type to find an obstruction in his path. He would need no authority but his own for removing it. She hated ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... April, that year, before the last of the winter's snow disappeared, and the robins and blue-birds darted in and out among the naked trees. But, as the sun grew high, and the days long, and the spring languor filled the air, Pen felt an ever-increasing dissatisfaction with his position in his grandfather Walker's household, and an ever-increasing desire to relinquish it. Not that he was afraid or ashamed ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... ambition and thirst of conquest, and the subjugation of Germany, the dissolution of all the empires still existing, a double universal monarchy would, under the present circumstances, be the next consequence; and if the present system, or rather the present hopeless languor should continue for several more years, this must sooner or later be ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... and languor which immediately followed Nan's fall passed off during her drive home; she chatted and laughed, her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright. Hester turned with a relieved face to ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... there are some fresh pictures of youth and childhood in Fleetwood. But St. Leon, besides its historical shortcomings (which, once more, we may postpone), is full of faults, from the badly managed supernatural to an only too natural dullness and languor of general story: nor has Fleetwood anything like the absorbing power which Caleb Williams exercises, in its own way and on its own people. Yet again we may perhaps say that the chief interest of Godwin, from our point of view, is his repeated and further weighted ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... on paper, and communicated only to two or three, "On the new kind of Tactics necessary with those Austrians and their Allies," who are in such overwhelming strength. "To whose continual sluggishness, and strange want of concert, to whose incoherency of movements, languor of execution, and other enormous faults, we have owed, with some excuse for our own faults, our escaping of destruction hitherto,"—but had better NOT trust that way any longer! Fouquet is one of the highly ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... temperature vary very much according to the amount of moisture in the air, as when the air is nearly saturated in hot climates, or even in summer in our own, more or less languor and malaise are felt, with great indisposition to bodily labor. With a dry air these are not so noticeable. The cause is evident; in the former case but little evaporation occurs from the skin, and the normal amount of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... Among the former he counted foul smells, disgusting habitations, bad workshops and workshop-customs, scarcity of light, air, and water, in short the absence of all easy means of decency and health; and among the latter, the mental weariness and languor so induced, the desire of wholesome relaxation, the craving for some stimulus and excitement, not less needful than the sun itself to lives so passed, and last, and inclusive of all the rest, ignorance, and the want of rational mental training, generally ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... unjust, an outrage. Mexico Mullins's warning recurred to him. And yet—. He shifted slowly as he talked till his back was to the door of the big tent. They were watching him carefully, for all their apparent languor and looseness in saddle; then as he started to leap within and rally his henchmen, his mind went back to the words of Judge Stillman and his niece. Surely that old man was on the square. He couldn't be otherwise with her beside him, believing in him; and a suspicion ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... seemed to last even longer than the period of her wandering, but this also began to pass at length. The light grew stronger all about her, the mists rolled slowly away from her clogged brain, leaving only a drowsing languor that was infinitely restful to her ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... lost a quantity of blood, which loss has decreased the heart's action sufficiently to produce the languor under which she now ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... of exclamation, set ironically, Mahony felt constrained to second Turnham's enthusiasm. And it was indeed a lovely picture: the gracious, golden-haired woman, whose figure had the amplitude, her gestures the almost sensual languor of the young nursing mother; the two children fawning at her knee, both ash-blond, with vivid scarlet lips.—"It helps one," thought Mahony, "to understand ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... the languor of inglorious days, Not equally oppressive is to all; Him who ne'er listen'd to the voice of praise, The silence of neglect can ne'er appal. There are, who, deaf to mad Ambition's call, Would shrink to hear the obstreperous ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... for that languor which the situation might breed, care must be had that hardships which the site does not enforce, shall be enforced by the laws; and that the example of those wise nations be imitated, who, inhabiting most fruitful and delightful countries, and ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... reverse of the medal. I remembered the opinion of the most sagacious and penetrating spirit which it had been my lot ever to know; and I felt that the Continent was to be our field of battle no longer. The languor of home service, to one who had seen war in its stateliest shape, and in its most powerful activity, rose before my mind with an inexpressible sense of weariness. On the other hand, supposing that I possessed the faculties for political life, was I possessed of the temper, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... old man, a daily putting on the new man—a daily repentance for sin, and a daily turning to and laying hold of Christ. Such a revival is Scriptural and efficacious. It will not only put an end to the languor and deadness of the past, but it will preclude the ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... a balmy air, but one which induces languor, and as Mrs. Coit stopped at a street corner and bought a bunch of roses, she thought she would get the children out of town as soon as possible. Her eye was next attracted by some exquisite laces. She wanted a few yards, and stopped to price them. They were thread, filmy as cobwebs; they were costly; ...
— Harper's Young People, June 22, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... happened which made her prudence coincide with her desires; one of the children sickened with a languor that was the precursor of disease, and the doctors said that only country air could bring back strength. And then fate itself took the whole matter out of my control. Something happened in the city—I know not what—and the firm I served came near to shipwreck. Business shrank to a diminished ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... look at 'im, 'ee knows what's what—never fear!" he exclaimed now and then, flourishing a hand hard and fleshless like the claw of a snipe. Jimmy, on his back, smiled with reserve and without moving a limb. He affected the languor of extreme weakness, so as to make it manifest to us that our delay in hauling him out from his horrible confinement, and then that night spent on the poop among our selfish neglect of his needs, had "done for him." He rather liked to talk about it, and of course we were always interested. ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... With all her languor and laziness and selfishness, the Marchesa was not devoid of tact, least of all where her own ends were concerned, and when she took the trouble to have any object in life at all. She saw in her daughter's face that something had annoyed her, and she at once determined that no reference ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... epithet to crulean, which makes the common interpretation doubtful. 'The Germans,' he says (De Mor. Ger. 4.), 'have truces et crulei oculi, fierce, lively blue eyes.' With us, this colour is always indicative of a soft, voluptuous languor. What, then, if we have hitherto mistaken the sense, and, instead of blue, should have said sea-green? This is not an uncommon colour, especially in the north. I have seen many Norwegian seamen with eyes of this hue, which were invariably ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... for the continent interrupted the course of his intimacy at the Black Fort, and while it relieved the elder of its inmates from much internal apprehension, spread an air of languor and dejection over the countenance of the younger, which, at Bridgenorth's next visit to the Isle of Man, renewed all his terrors for ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... incredulous laugh at this. But two days afterward, when we were hoisting the main-top-mast stun'-sail, and the Lieutenant of the Watch was reprimanding the crowd of seamen at the halyards for their laziness—for the sail was but just crawling up to its place, owing to the languor of the men, induced by the heat—the Captain, who had been impatiently walking the deck, suddenly stopped short, and darting his eyes among the seamen, suddenly fixed them, crying out, "You, Candy, and be damned to ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... that to cherish disappointment even in her inmost soul would be flying in the face of providence; her spirits struggled up to their normal high level, and once more she was the happiest of women. It was another fortnight before she could leave the house, but the languor was a new and pleasant sensation and not unbecoming the weather. Warner read aloud instead of to himself, and they wondered that they had never discovered this firm subtle link in comradeship before. The rainy summer is the winter of the ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... regions of imagination. Some charitable dole is wanting to these, our often very unhappy brethren, to fill the gloomy void that reigns in minds which have nothing on earth to hope or fear; something to relieve in the killing languor and over-labored lassitude of those who have nothing to do; something to excite an appetite to existence in the palled satiety which attends on all pleasures which may be bought, where Nature is not left to her own process, where even desire is anticipated, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... your daughter arrived here. We were all delighted to see her, Virginie in particular; for, hearing of her approaching marriage with M. La Touche, we were afraid she might not come. We all noticed a change in her—her manner different from what it used to be—a languor, an apathy to all things—a general listlessness that nothing could arouse her from. She, who used to be so full of life and spirits, was now the quietest in the house, and seemed to like nothing so well as being by herself and dreaming the hours ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... fatigued, and my horse appeared no less so; and it is probable that the lazy and listless manner in which we were moving on tired us both much more effectually than hurrying along at a swift trot would have done, for I have observed that when the energies of the body are not exerted a languor frequently comes over it. At length, arriving at a very large building with an archway, near the entrance of a town, I sat down on what appeared to be a stepping-block, and presently experienced a great depression of spirits. I began to ask ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... not enjoyed my tranquillity above a week, before my fears were roused afresh, hearing the same sound of voices twice the same night, but not many minutes at a time. What gave me most pain was that they were at such a distance, as I judged by the languor of the sound, that if I had opened my door I could not have seen the utterers through the trees, and I was resolved not to venture out; but then I determined, if they should come again anything near my grotto, to open the door, see who they ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... strange world masked behind the vast superficies of brick against which they were perched. Jaffery said something about a nest midway on a cliff side overlooking the sea. He also, in bass incoherence, formulated the opinion that in such a nest might he found true happiness. The pretty languor of early summer laughed in the air. Their situation, 'twixt earth and heaven, had a little sensuous ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... have no other desire than to find myself again in my little chamber in that beautiful country, where it seems to me that I ought to be so happy. Alas! when one has a soul which feels deeply, one is destined to pass his days in the languor of inaction or in ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... a throne with womanhood enshrined upon it. While chivalry existed among men, it mattered little, he said, as to the decrees of courts, for in that higher tribunal, human hearts, woman would remain forever in control. At his conclusion, women were hysterical, and men were aroused from their usual languor by the eloquence of the speaker. Had the judge rendered an adverse decision at that moment, he would have needed protection; for to the men of the South it was innate to be chivalrous to womanhood. But the court was cautious, and after announcing that he would take the ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... "hung motionless" in the water, their heads towards me, holding their position only by a slow flapping of their dorsal and pectoral fins. Their nesting time over, their season's labor ended, it was with them, as with many other beings, a time of languor. ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor; 'tis like spending this year part of the ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... a manner, out of the reach of Fortune, and makes us happy without her assistance. Indeed, the sensations of pleasure it gives are much more constant as well as much keener, than those which that blind lady bestows; nature having wisely contrived, that some satiety and languor should be annexed to all our real enjoyments, lest we should be so taken up by them, as to be stopt from further pursuits. I make no manner of doubt but that, in this light, we may see the imaginary future chancellor just called to the bar, the archbishop in crape, and the prime ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... variety of ways and not the least by providing against sexual excesses and abuses. These are a copious fountain of ill to humanity. A host of diseases, such as tuberculosis, diabetes, cardial and nervous affections, epilepsy, hysteria, general debility, weaknesses of sight, languor and general worthlessness, hypochondria, weakness and total loss of reason, and, in married life, impotence and sterility are some of the effects of venereal excesses. Any excitement of the sexual passion before the body has received its full development ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... hall of the Ducal Palace but can show a canvas of Veronese or the assistants by whom he was now surrounded. From time to time he resumed the decorations of S. Sebastiano, and his incessant production betrays no trace of fatigue or languor. The martyrdom of the saint is a triumph of the beauty of the silhouette against a radiant sky. He goes back to Verona and paints the "Martyrdom of St. George." He pours light into it. The saints open a shining path, down which a flower-crowned Love flutters with the diadem and palm ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... a languor and weariness in her limbs that made her doubtful if she could run about very much, and slower modes of progressing she despised. Besides this, there was a gnawing pain, under her arms, and the cough was ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... (it is my belief she would have gone into a consumption and died of languor, if the event had been delayed a day longer,) a messenger, with a trumpet, brought a letter in haste to the Prince of Cleves, who was, as usual, taking refreshment. "To the High and Mighty Prince," &c. the letter ran. "The Champion who had the honor of engaging ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Responsibility, resolution, remorse—they had fallen from him like so many discarded garments. He was sharply alive to the pleasure of the moment, keenly appreciative of the sunlight, the soft air, the laughter of the children romping in the streets. Of a singular languor which had been wont to come over him toward the close of each busy day of the past six weeks there was now no hint. He walked rapidly, with his shoulders thrown back, and his chin well elevated, but his course was not in the direction of his home, nor yet in that of the "Sentinel" office. ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... were my transports, when the undrawn bolt presented to me my long-expected goddess. Her emotions were more sweetly feminine, after the first moments; for then the fire of her starry eyes began to sink into a less dazzling languor. She trembled: nor knew she how to support the agitations of a heart she had never found so ungovernable. She was even fainting, when I clasped her in my supporting arms. What a precious moment that! How near, how sweetly ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Gerald's languor had vanished, and a glint had appeared in his eye that would have reminded Orde of Miss Bishop's most mischievous mood ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... which, when it strives for anything, strives to give an added atmosphere to the incontinence portrayed by the stage pictures, and proclaimed in the text. It is not dangerous music, however, for it is impotent, with all its blatant pretense. The composer seeks to fill the opening scene with languor and lassitude; he fills it with ennui instead. If De Lara's music were a hymning of anything, I should say it was a hymning of sensuality in its lowest terms; but there are neither eloquent melodies nor moving harmonies in the score. De Lara is ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... very secret—then, his heart may be touched and he may begin to understand. And then it may occur to him that this ardour, and the sacrifice it impelled, the hard life which it supported, witness to another level of being; reprove his own languor and comfort, his contentment with a merely physical mental life, and are not wholly to be accounted for in terms of ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... conspicuous for aiming at a loftier ideal than that of his everyday associates, and characterized by the devout and ardent temperament essential to the religious reformer. It was in the year 1206 that he became a changed man. He fell ill—he lay at Death's door. From the languor and delirium he recovered but slowly—when he did recover old things had passed away; behold! all things had become new. From this time Giovanni Bernardone passes out of sight, and from the ashes of a dead past, from the seed which has withered that the new life might germinate and fructify, Francis—why ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... clean gone did he have the least suspicion that it had been there, and (if he could have known it) the first glimmering of reawakening pulse in him was the considering of its nature. Brooding upon it, while he grieved over his languor, he discovered that it had not been hard and scaly, like your ordinary vampire, but soft-lipped, brown-eyed, warm-fleshed, cloudy-haired; in fact, a pretty woman. Now, in all his previous relations with that sex, while he had given much of himself, he had never met ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... model of the Piet of Christian art, the Virgin with the dead body of her divine Son in her lap, of which the most celebrated example is the one by Michael Angelo in St. Peters. That noble group, in which the living sorrow of the mother contrasts so wonderfully with the languor of death in the son, is one of the finest compositions in marble. Ancient Greek art has bequeathed to us few works so beautiful, and ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... the night wretchedly. Sometimes my pulse beat so quickly and hardly that I felt the palpitation of every artery; at others, I nearly sank to the ground through languor and extreme weakness. Mingled with this horror, I felt the bitterness of disappointment; dreams that had been my food and pleasant rest for so long a space were now become a hell to me; and the change was so rapid, the ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... in warm, poetic tales, Of eastern fragrance and Arabian gales? Bowers of delight, of languor, and repose, Where beauty triumph'd as the song arose? Fancy may revel, fiction boldly dare, But truth shall not forget that thou wert there, Scourge of the world! who, borne on ev'ry wind, From bow'rs of roses [1] sprang to curse mankind. [Footnote 1: The first medical account ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... come after us will be more impressed than we are by the Laureate's versatility. He has touched so many strings, from "Will Waterproof's Monologue," so far above Praed, to the agony of "Rizpah," the invincible energy of "Ulysses," the languor and the fairy music of the "Lotus Eaters," the grace as of a Greek epigram which inspires the lines to Catullus and to Virgil. He is with Milton for learning, with Keats for magic and vision, with Virgil for graceful recasting ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... strong nature cried out for further tests to prove its fortitude and its power of dissimulation. As the band slipped into the final section of the waltz, she wilfully dragged the time, deepening a little the curious superficial languor which concealed her secrets, and at the same time increasing her consciousness of Arthur's control. She dreaded now that what had been intolerable should cease; she wished ardently to avert the end. The glare of lights, the separate sounds of the instruments, the slurring of feet on the ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... under cover of his holy privileges as a father! The moment had then arrived for me to play my part; and though the old rascal's conduct and person were loathsome to me in the extreme, I affected all the languor, flutter, and ardor of passionate longings; which he perceived with the ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... pencil, when I was summoned to the death of him to whom I owe my life. He had been dying for months, but he and I hoped to have got and to have given into his hands a copy of these Horae, the correction of which had often whiled away his long hours of languor and pain. God thought otherwise. I shall miss his great knowledge, his loving and keen eye—his ne quid nimis—his sympathy—himself. Let me be thankful that it was given to me assidere valetudini, fovere deficientem, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... night; warm, with the languor of September, fragrant with the heavy odors of ripening fruit and the late autumn blossoms. There was no moon, but the long summer twilight had not yielded entirely to the darkness and the ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... pain and languor of a mortal wound, Braddock showed unflinching resolution. His bearers stopped with him at a favorable spot beyond the Monongahela; and here he hoped to maintain his position till the arrival of Dunbar. By the efforts of the officers about a hundred men were collected ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... hell which filled the fancies of the faithful were material and glowing, equally so were their conceptions of paradise. On this world of the blessed were lavished all the charms so fascinating to the Oriental luxuriousness of sensual languor, and which the poetic Oriental imagination knew so well how to depict. As soon as the righteous have passed Sirat, they obtain the first taste of their approaching felicity by a refreshing draught from "Mohammed's Pond." ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... fragrant, and delicious, and the larboard watch of the tired crew of the Gentile, after a boisterous passage of forty days from Gibralter, yielded to its somnolent influence, and lay stretched about the forecastle and waists, enjoying the voluptuous languor which overcomes men suddenly emerging from a cold into a ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... ground, and began to read. Now and then she paused as she turned a leaf, to look around at the beautiful animals, each one of which might have served as a model for Landseer or Rosa Bonheur. Gradually the languor of the atmosphere stole into her busy brain; as the sun crept down the sky, her eyelids sunk with it, and very soon she was fast asleep, with her head on the book, and her cheeks flushed almost to a vermilion hue. From that brief summer dream she was ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... this world's interest, from its hopes, its aspirations, its victories, into the visible presence of death—and he did not quail. Not alone for the one short moment in which, stunned and dazed, he could give up life, hardly aware of its relinquishment, but through days of deadly languor, through weeks of agony, that was not less agony because silently borne, with clear sight and calm courage, he looked into his open grave. What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes, whose lips ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... keen joyance Languor cannot be; Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee; Thou lovest, but ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... Haven, and as he passed through that town the next morning, the scenes of early life in which he had there been an actor, moved in melancholy succession over his mind. That day he grew more indisposed; he experienced an unusual languor, listlessness and debility; chills, followed by hot flashes, heavy pains in the head and back, with incessant and intolerable thirst. It was near night when he reached Killingsworth, where he halted, as he felt unable to go farther: he called for a bed, and through ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... will not repeat the terms in which I poured forth, at her feet, the raptures of my gratitude. My impetuosity soon extorted from Clarice a confirmation of her mother's declaration. An unrestrained intercourse was thenceforth established between us. Dejection and languor gave place, in my bosom, to the irradiations of joy and hope. My flowing fortunes seemed to have attained ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... the supreme bliss of touching her lips with his own. If he could get her to come there with him again—to-night—when the others were occupied with their talk of earthly things, and if she would only tell him frankly that he might go to her father, and that her prayers would go with him! A soft languor came over his body at the deliciousness of these reflections, but it was dissipated by the sound of voices which presently came to him from the other side of ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... beauty that can stand the disfigurement of such a scar. However bright your eyes, and rosy-red your color, and soft the contour of lip and cheek, when the relish of an impure jest creeps in, the comeliness fades and perishes, as lilies in the languor of a poisonous breath from off the marshes. I beg of you, dear girls, shun the companion who seeks to foul your soul with an obscene story or picture, as you would shun the contagion of smallpox. If I had a daughter who went out into the world to earn her bread, as some of you do, and ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... keen eye for the imagery attendant on a word is essential to all writing, whether prose or poetry, that attempts the heart, so languor of the visual faculty can work disaster even in the calm periods of philosophic expatiation. "It cannot be doubted," says one whose daily meditations enrich The People's Post-Bag, "that Fear is, to a great extent, the ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... and drowsy languor fell over me. The door opened, and I saw Alice Young, a very nice, respectable parlor maid, who had not been with us ...
— My Mother's Rival - Everyday Life Library No. 4 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... comparisons (Ibn Khall. i. xxxvi.), "The figurative language of Moslem poets is often difficult to be understood. The narcissus is the eye; the feeble stem of that plant bends languidly under its dower, and thus recalls to mind the languor of the eyes. Pearls signify both tears and teeth; the latter are sometimes called hailstones, from their whiteness and moisture; the lips are cornelians or rubies; the gums, a pomegranate flower; the dark foliage ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... more than the potency of a drug, lulling him into a splendid waking-sleep, every word being a supreme incantation. And it was not only his mind that was charmed by such passages, for he felt at the same time a strange and delicious bodily languor that held him motionless, without the desire or power to stir from his seat. And there were certain phrases in Kubla Khan that had such a magic that he would sometimes wake up, as it were, to the consciousness that he had been lying on the bed or sitting in the chair by the ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... about the run into Antwerp. No doubt it was a thrilling performance—through all the languor of malaria it thrills me now when I think of it—but it wasn't much to offer a War Correspondent, since it took us nowhere near the bombardment. It had nothing for the psychologist or for the amateur of strange sensations, and nothing for the pure and ardent Spirit of Adventure, and nothing for that ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... languor from the rest, and the heaviness from the food were forgotten; and there existed but one dominating, resistless impulse in dog and man—the impulse ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... stirred from the far-away river, no coolness came with the dark, no relief from the brooding, sultry heat. It was no hotter than many nights in any break in the rains, but the guests invited by Mrs. Wilder felt the languor of the air, and felt it more profoundly because their hostess ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... by. Weel, then, wha kens that the fox isna away snorin' happy afore the houn's? I hae nae doubt he is, for a fox is no sae complete a coward as to think huntin' cruel; and his haill nature is then on the alert, which in itsel' is happiness. Huntin' him fa'in into languor and ennui, and growin' ower fat on how-towdies (barn-door fowls). He's no killed ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... stay in our village, the young Brandons and herself were often together—and Gerald's admiration had evidently lost nothing from separation. His health had improved, though he still looked pale and delicate; but this physical languor lent refinement to his appearance, and excited Theresa's warmest sympathy. It would have been strange, were not the occurrence so common, that we should not have anticipated the probable consequences of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... a summer breeze, so Mesa was stirred from its usual languor by the visit of Simon West. For the little Arizona town was dreaming dreams. Its imagination had been aroused; and it saw itself no longer a sleepy cow camp in the unfeatured desert, but a metropolis, in touch with ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... as need be. They are inevitably Gothic, too, and they spring from the river-side as if they grew from the ground there far into the gray sky to which their architecture is native. It was a pale, resigned afternoon, with the languor of the long, unwonted heat in it, which a recent rain had slightly abated, and we were glad of a memoriferous property which it seemed to exhale. Suddenly in the midst of that most alien environment we confronted a ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... had developed her strength to the utmost. She did many things well, but did nothing with that sort of conviction, so to say, which proceeds from conscious inward vigour. When she was not actually riding or fencing, or doing something of the sort, there was a languor in her movements and her manner which told that she had no great vital force upon which to draw. Those who already know something of her story, will remember that her life was short ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford |
