"Lassitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... To the right about face! March!" So saying, he flung open the door, and arm-in-arm with Mr. Frampton hurried down the stairs, followed by the others in double-quick time. When they were all gone I made an effort to rouse myself from the state of lassitude and depression into which I had fallen, and 246succeeded so far as to recover sufficient energy to attempt the labour of dressing, though my hands trembled to such a degree that I could scarcely accomplish it, and was forced to postpone the operation ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... centry strict The threshold to protect. But in the midst The lofty bed of ebon form'd, was plac'd. Black were the feathers; all the coverings black, And stretch'd at length the god was seen; his limbs With lassitude relax'd. Around him throng'd In every part, vain dreams, in various forms, In number more than what the harvest bears Of bearded grains; the woods of verdant leaves; Or shore of yellow sands. Here came the nymph; Th' opposing dreams push'd sideways with her hands, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... mother's apprehensions. Without once reflecting on the possible consequences, I sat down on a chair beside the sufferer, felt her pulse, and as well as I could, made inquiries after her health. Her pulse was quick, her tongue white and thickly furred, and extreme lassitude was shown by her dejected countenance. Uncertain as to the nature of her disease, and unable to offer any alleviation of her sufferings, I retired to my apartment. There I did reflect on the danger ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... and shabby clothes seemed only to show off all the hitherto hidden strength and vigour of the powerful limbs below; indeed it almost seemed that with his elegant garments he had laid aside his lassitude also and taken on a new air of resolution, for his eyes were sleepy no longer, and his every gesture was lithe and quick. So great was the change that Spike stared speechless, and Mr. ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... where I might enjoy the congenial peace suited to some new artistic creation. In consequence, however, of thoughtlessly indulging in ices, I soon got an attack of dysentery, which produced the most depressing lassitude after my previous exaltation. I wanted to flee from the tremendous noise of the harbour, near which I was staying, and seek for the most absolute calm; and thinking a trip to Spezia would benefit me, I went there by steamer a week later. Even this excursion, which ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... thirst and lassitude such as I had never before experienced soon began to overcome all of us; for such a state of things we had unfortunately landed quite unprepared, having only two pints of water with us, a portion ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... surrender several times. There were afternoons of belated ripened warmth, a kind of summer that had been long in the bottle, with a certain lassitude in the air and a blue haze among the trees, that made her feel the folly of all resistances to fate. Why, after all, shouldn't she take life as she found it, that is to say, as Sir Isaac was prepared to give it to her? He wasn't really ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... years I have lived in the neighborhood of Vienna. There are German critics who cannot forgive me this choice of a domicile. But I still ask them to approve it. On my part I promise them never to give in to the Capuan lassitude which, I might add, is nothing but a legend among the superficial. True, the productive man is here more isolated, the man resolved to reach a goal is here left more to his own resources, than elsewhere; but many stormy winds blow, and if the post which one has taken is rendered dangerous, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... French people, and when they were defeated in this they voted for his death. I am unable to find any thing in the memorials of Madame Roland which shows that she had any sympathy with this. What is written tends rather to show that she was in the very apathy and lassitude of horror. From the time when her courageous effort to work justice upon the abettors and perpetrators of the massacre failed, her history ceases to ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... a success; very little inflammation and a small scab being the only evidences. But I have a cough, and much lassitude. ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... awoke. Rachel opened her eyes first. A lassitude filled her. She remained quiet for moments and then sat up and stared at Erik. His face was flushed and he was sleeping lightly, ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... was still the question of where to initiate the attack. Edge or heart? Once more there was controversy, but it lacked the enthusiasm remembered by veterans of the salt argument; a certain lassitude in debate was evident as though too much excitement had been dissipated on earlier hopes, leaving none for this one. There was little grumbling or soreness when the decision was finally confirmed to let fall the bomb on what had ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... month or more, she became aware that even her ill health was used as a weapon against her, and she suddenly resolved to throw off her lassitude, and assert her right to go out and call upon her friends. But she was petulant and foolish in the carrying out of the measure. She had made up her mind to visit her aunt on the following day, and though the weather was bitterly cold and ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... and having entered the grave-yard by stone steps that were in a part of the wall—for a passage went through it—she reached her boy's grave, where it was supposed, after having for some time, probably until lassitude and sorrow, and a frame worn down by her peculiar calamity, had induced sleep—she was found dead in the course of the morning—an afflicting but beautiful instance of that undying love of a mother's heart, which survives the wreck of all the ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... more. She had realized, during the weeks that had elapsed since Steve's return from the heart of Unaga, a curious growing bodily lassitude in the man. It was something approaching inertia, and she knew its cause. Fear had grown up in her simple Indian mind and heart. She wanted to speak. She wanted to offer her warning. But somehow ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... feet slowly, wondering at the strange lassitude which made me so indifferent to that life I had always before so highly valued. ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... traveller, he leaves his anonymous babies all over the world; every baby an exotic. In good time, nevertheless, as the ardour of youth declines; as years and dumps increase; as reflection lends her solemn pauses; in short, as a general lassitude overtakes the sated Turk; then a love of ease and virtue supplants the love for maidens; our Ottoman enters upon the impotent, repentant, admonitory stage of life, forswears, disbands the harem, and grown to an exemplary, sulky old soul, goes about all alone among the meridians ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... information of Haldin's death gave Razumov the feeling of general lassitude which follows a great exertion or a great excitement. He kept very still on the sofa, but a ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... which stood in the way, we should have seen it. At our leisure we discussed painting. Before us, a perfect landscape; around us, a deep solitude and stillness, broken by the sighing of ancient aristocratic shades, and the songs of birds; within us, emotions of lassitude and dreamy delight. ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... illuminated; and in that of his tenant, Somerset could perceive none of the marks of disease, but every sign of health, energy, and resolution. While he was still looking, the visitor took his departure; and the invalid, having carefully fastened the front door, sprang upstairs without a trace of lassitude. ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... his pocket, a letter that he had re-read many times, always with an uneasy conflict of emotions. He was in a sort of hot-cold humor over it, in a fever-fit that had a way of turning into lassitude. He postponed analysis indefinitely. Meanwhile his eyes searched the bright, cold city, its crowds, its traffics, its windows—most of all, its placards, and, not far to seek, there were the posters of "The Leopardess." He leaned out to study ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... shore to shore.— The Latian band, with sympathising woe, At last I spied amid the moving show: Bologna's poet first, whose honour'd grave His relics hold beside Messina's wave. O fickle joys, that fleet upon the wind, And leave the lassitude of life behind! The youth, that every thought and movement sway'd Of this sad heart, is now an empty shade! What world contains thee now, my tuneful guide, Whom nought of old could sever from my side? What ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... back in their nice, cosy sitting-room, and a feeling of not altogether unpleasant lassitude stole over Mrs. Bunting. It was a comfort to have Daisy out of her way for a bit. The girl, in some ways, was very wide awake and inquisitive, and she had early betrayed what her stepmother thought to be a very unseemly and ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... a lassitude which was coming upon her, and took Mrs. Crawford's advice. When they returned to the richer quarter of the town, and especially after luncheon, her spirits revived. At the hotel she observed that the clerk ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... a weary journey, that return from the quest of the White Squaw. But the weariness had been mental. The excitement of their going had eaten up their spirit, and left them with a feeling of distressing lassitude. They were sobered; and, as men recovering from drunkenness, they felt ashamed, and their ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... they expressed, it was something of a more entertaining nature, at least so Dolly found it,—it was nothing more nor less than a slowly awakening interest in her which paid her the compliment of rising above the surface of evident boredom and overcoming lassitude. It looked as if he was just beginning to study her, and found the game worth the candle. Dolly met his glance with steadiness, and as she met it she measured him. Then she turned to Euphemia again and fluttered the fan ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... may be classified as physical losses, economic losses, and social losses. The immediate physical effect is exhilaration, but this is succeeded by lassitude and incompetency. The stimulus gained is momentary, the loss is permanent. It is well established that even small quantities of alcohol weaken the will power and benumb the mental powers. Habitual use depletes vitality and so predisposes to disease. Life-insurance policies ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... sky above their heads, they saw only a thick canopy of clouds. The sails were flapping against the masts; the air was oppressive. There the ship lay, her head moving now in one direction, now in another. Those who had before been full of life and spirits began to complain of lassitude and weariness. The seamen no longer moved actively about the decks, but went sauntering along when called upon to perform any duty. The heat grew greater and greater. The iron about the ship was unpleasant to touch. The pitch bubbled in the seams of the deck and stuck to the feet. Emily and ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... business, and occupied so much time that the end of January arrived before they could be said to be fairly settled. And then began a life of dreary monotony. Then seemed to creep over everyone a kind of moral torpor as well as physical lassitude, which Servadac, the count, and the lieutenant did their best not only to combat in themselves, but to counteract in the general community. They provided a variety of intellectual pursuits; they instituted debates in which everybody was encouraged to take part; ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... and joint ventures. The most gratifying result has been a strong spurt in production, particularly in agriculture in the early 1980s. Otherwise, the leadership has often experienced in its hybrid system the worst results of socialism (bureaucracy, lassitude, corruption) and of capitalism (windfall gains and stepped-up inflation). Beijing thus has periodically backtracked, retightening central controls at intervals and thereby undermining the credibility of the reform process. ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... far as energy is concerned, is this: they tend to exhaust the bodily reserve so that there is not sufficient left for properly running the vital processes. Evidences of their weakening effect are found in the feeling of discomfort and lassitude which result when stimulants to which the body has become accustomed are withdrawn. Not until one gets back his bodily reserve is he able to work normally and effectively. Increase in bodily energy comes through health and not through the ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... as though their condition were meant to be a state of uniform indulgence, and vacant, unprofitable sloth. To multiply the comforts of affluence, to provide for the gratification of appetite, to be luxurious without diseases, and indolent without lassitude, seems the chief study of their lives. Nor can they be clearly exempted from this class, who, by a common error, substituting the means for the end, make the preservation of health and spirits, not as instruments of usefulness, but as sources of pleasure, ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... Arsinoe reddening, and stretching herself with fatigue she threw herself back on a couch. She did not feel weary exactly, for the lassitude she felt in every limb had a peculiar pleasure in it. She felt as if she had come out of a hot bath, and since her father had roused her she seemed to hear, again and again, the sound of the inspiriting music which she had followed arm in arm with Pollux. Now and again ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... cost him to speak made him conscious of extreme lassitude following upon great exertion. It seemed that when he lay down and drew his blanket over him the action was the last before utter prostration. He stretched inert, wet, hot, his body one great strife of throbbing, stinging nerves ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... like burnished steel. The heat became so stifling that even the Africans were gasping for breath, and we envied them their freedom from all impediments. The least exertion was irksome, and attended with extreme lassitude. During the afternoon thin cirri clouds, flying very high, spread out over the western heavens like a fan. As the day lengthened they thickened to resemble the scales of a fish, bringing to mind the old saying, "A mackerel sky and a mare's ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... support; will go on needing it for two or three years, financial as well as moral. He mustn't be allowed to fail. That's the essence of it. He's—spent, you see; depleted. One speaks of it in figurative terms, but it's a physiological thing—if we could get at it—that's behind the lassitude of these boys. It all comes back to that. That they're restless, irresolute. That they need the stimulus of excitement and can't endure the drag of routine. They need a generous allowance, my dear,—even for an ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... habitations, wore a foreign aspect; where nothing, in short, resembled a country which they regretted; they began to be dismayed at the distance they had traversed, and their faces already bore the stamp of fatigue and lassitude. ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... reflection she found hope in his deferring reply. It was all that was left to her. She had done her utmost, the rest lay with him. She sighed deeply, she had never felt such weariness of mind and body. As she gave way to a feeling of growing lassitude drowsiness came over her which she was too tired to combat and for some time she slept heavily. She awoke with a start to find Gillian, wide-eyed with concern, kneeling beside her, the girl's slim warm fingers ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... fit to keep one body from the cold; Then would it flit to higher rooms, and stay To view a dull, dress'd company at play; All the old comfort, all the genial fare For ever gone! how sternly would it stare: And though it might not to their view appear, 'Twould cause among them lassitude and fear Then wait to see—where he delight has seen - The dire effect of fretfulness and spleen. "Such were the worthies of these better days; We had their blessings—they shall have our praise. "Of Captain Dowling ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... at night the thing developed. A slow-driving inquisition, night after night. It drove her through and beyond the deadly fever lassitude. She was not building up out of it; she was beaten down below it. She was beaten through all the successive stages of breaking nerves. She used all the known arguments, all the intellectual methods to sustain ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... The lassitude which had held the house party in thrall was dispelled. It was almost as though Judith had applied a cleansing fluid to the atmosphere. She stood in their midst, displaying her wares with an earnestness and simplicity that ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... a sort of feverish lassitude about her that makes them very anxious. They were hoping to persuade her to see Mr. Frampton when Lady Temple ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nearly half a century ago, and sought freedom for his natural development backward in the wilds of the Adirondacks. Sometimes it is a love of adventure and freedom that sends men out of the more civilized conditions into the less; sometimes it is a constitutional physical lassitude which leads them to prefer the rod to the hoe, the trap to the sickle, and the society of bears to town meetings and taxes. I think that Old Mountain Phelps had merely the instincts of the primitive man, and never ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... With a few judicious experiments in daily regimen, and a little abstinence now and then, he can subdue head-aches, catarrhs and digestive troubles, and by exercising an intelligent will, can generally prevent their recurrence. If one finds himself in the morning in a state of languor and lassitude, be sure he has abused some physical function, and apply a remedy. An invalid will make a poorly equipped librarian. How can a dyspeptic who dwells in the darkness of a disease, be a guiding light to the multitudes who beset him every hour? There ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... one upon each arm of her chair, with the air of being left there to be picked up at her convenience. Arnold, over the teapot, agreed that walking in Calcutta was an insidious pleasure—one gathered a lassitude—and brought her cup. She looked at him for an instant as ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... readily succumb to low temperatures. The symptoms are increasing lassitude, drowsiness, coma, with sometimes illusions of sight. Post mortem, bright red patches are found on the skin surface, and the blood ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... almost lulled to silence, but in their place a sluggish calm rapidly spread over the Church, not only over the established National Church, but over it and also over every community of Nonconformists. It is remarkable how closely the beginning of the season of spiritual lassitude corresponds with the accession of the first George. The country had never altogether recovered from the reaction of lax indifference into which it had fallen after the Restoration. Nevertheless, a good deal had occurred ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... each discharged in a line by itself, like a separate broad-side of red-hot shot - were among the least of the warnings addressed to an unthinking people. Yet, the Ministers of Fate who drove the awful cars, leaned forward with their arms upon their knees in a state of extreme lassitude, for want of any subject of interest. The first man, whose hair I might naturally have expected to see standing on end, scratched his head - one of the smoothest I ever beheld - with profound indifference. The ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... following day, when we came to the road, they smiled. They smiled to us and for us. And we smiled in answer. Their head fell back, and their arms fell, as if their arms and their thin white neck were stricken suddenly with a great lassitude. They were not looking upon us, but upon the sky. Then they glanced at us over their shoulder, [-as-] {and} we felt as if a hand had touched our body, slipping softly from our ...
— Anthem • Ayn Rand
... was passing, and the poison was not telling, as far as he, the poisoner, could judge from appearances, on Douglas Dale. He never complained of illness, and beyond a slight lassitude, he did not seem to have anything the matter with him. This would not do. It behoved Carrington to expedite matters. His project was to accomplish the death of Douglas Dale by poison, throwing the burthen of suspicion—should suspicion arise—upon ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... However, on Saturday morning, Kennedy, as he awoke, complained of lassitude and feverish chills. The weather was changing. The sky, covered with clouds, seemed to be laying in supplies for a fresh deluge. A gloomy region is that Zungomoro country, where it rains continually, excepting, perhaps, for a couple of weeks ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... to lie languid and dreamy before our tent and muse on the past and the future, and when most overcome with lassitude, my eyes turned always toward the distant Black Hills. There is a spirit of energy and vigor in mountains, and they impart it to all who approach their presence. At that time I did not know how many dark superstitions and gloomy legends ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... the midst of woods, incommodious even for those accustomed to them, their feet torn by thorns and brambles, their provisions exhausted, and dying with thirst, they were fain to subsist on a few seeds, wild fruit, and the palm cabbage. At length, oppressed with hunger and thirst, with lassitude and loss of strength, they seated themselves on the ground without the power of rising, and, waiting thus the approach of death, in three or four days expired one after the other. Madame Godin, stretched on the ground by the side of the corpses of her brothers and other companions, stupified, delirious, ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... thirty," etc. These things were instructive, and sometimes interesting. But when "Case 1" is expanded to a novel of three or four hundred pages, or "Case 2" expressed in the form of hectic vers libre, a feeling of lassitude comes o'er us which is more or ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... would call her to account, and I heartily wished myself otherwhere. Perhaps it was all for the best; my presence prevented, for the time, explanations, and I fancied the woman was grateful for the respite. Her lassitude, and effort to overcome it, smote me to the quick, and right willingly I would have aided her had I but the ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... speak to Macdonald?" said Forbes, dropping into a chair with a curious lassitude of manner which ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... of a respectable quarter of the town. He was very cool—and it was quite coolly that he thought how much better it would be if neither of them ever spoke again. She sat with closed lips, with an air of lassitude in the stony forgetfulness of her pose, but after a moment she lifted her drooping eyelids and met his tense and inquisitive stare by a look that had all the formless eloquence of a cry. It penetrated, it stirred without informing; it was the ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... excited my compassion; but now that my judgment is matured, I pity the rich. I know that in this opulent kingdom there are nearly as many persons perishing through intemperance as starving with hunger; there are as many miserable in the lassitude of having nothing to do as there are of those bowed down to the earth with hard labour; there are more persons who draw upon themselves calamity by following their own will than there are who experience it by obeying the ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... unacquainted with lassitude and spleen, the lust of variety, and the impatience of curiosity. In a state of society our ideas habitually succeed in a certain proportion, and an employment that retards their progress, speedily becomes disagreeable and tedious. But children, not having ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... crude effort in the science of the universe, bears the impress of their habitat. The Eskimo's hell is a place of darkness, storm and intense cold;[69] the Jew's is a place of eternal fire. Buddha, born in the steaming Himalayan piedmont, fighting the lassitude induced by heat and humidity, pictured his heaven as Nirvana, the cessation of all activity ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... and he treated Lizzie to all he could pretend to know on the subject, and he condemned the owner for the glaringly modern garden benches with which the swards were interspersed. The sun was setting, there was lassitude in every passing boat, the girls leaned upon the arms of the young men, and the woods stood up tall and contemplative, as beautiful in the deep blue river as upon ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... to run now. The lassitude of months was gone from his limbs. He wanted to fling aside that clogging crowd, run, leap, arrive. How long was this hour? Where was he? He tried to see the housetops to know, but the glow was in his eyes. He felt the hands of his comrades ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... nervous strength in waiting and feeling, were now cross and inclined to belittle the affair and to be angry at Arenta and themselves for their lost day. And men, young and old, all went back to their ledgers and counters and manufacturing with a sense of lassitude ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... passage, it occurred to him to make a last try by knocking at the door. It was opened by a woman whose uncombed hair was already getting grey, though she could not be more than forty; while her pale lips, and dim eyes set in a yellow countenance, expressed utter lassitude, the shrinking, the constant dread of one whom wretchedness has pitilessly assailed. The sight of Pierre's cassock disturbed her, and she stammered anxiously: "Come in, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... adaptation of laws, customs, morality, and institutions! What a rupture of the inward equilibrium which maintains man passive and tranquil! The consequent mental agitation will lead to agitation, impulsion, ambitions, lassitude, despondency, and disorder in all the sentiments which had thus far maintained every species of society, the family, the commune, the Church, free association and the State!—Now, along with the immediate effects ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Sandbeach, lodging at the inn, but spending most of his time with Honor. He owned that he had been unwell, and there certainly was a degree of lassitude about him, though Honor suspected that his real motive in coming was brotherly kindness and desire to see whether she were suffering much from the death of Owen Sandbrook. Having come, he seemed not to know how to go away. He was too ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was deeply wrinkled, and time had just begun to grizzle a head of dark, straight hair, a heavy moustache, and whiskers which formed a beard beneath his chin. Whether from his recent captivity or from constitutional causes, there was an air of lassitude in his look to which the fatigues of his voyage not improbably contributed. Altogether, he gave one the idea of a visionary or theoretical enthusiast rather then of ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... rising precipitously as at Menton, the shelter from the northerly winds is less complete. At the same time the vast olive groves screen the locality from cold blasts and temper them into healthful breezes, imparting a pleasing freshness to the atmosphere, and removing sensations of lassitude often experienced in too well-protected spots. The size of the sheltered area gives patients a considerable choice of residences, which can be found either close to or at varying distances from the sea, according to the requirements of the case; while the numerous wooded valleys, abounding ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... the pangs of hunger are lost in an overpowering languor and sickness. The head becomes giddy; the ghosts of well-remembered dinners pass in hideous procession through the mind. The seventh day comes, bringing increased lassitude and farther prostration of strength. The arms hang listlessly, the legs drag heavily. The desire for food is still left, to a degree, but it must be brought, not sought. The miserable remnant of life which still hangs to ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... spun-glass, and neatly confined under one of those high Norman caps of which the long starched frills, encircling the face, lend a cold, severe expression to the wearer: her gait was stooping, her steps feeble, and her whole appearance denoted lassitude and weakness. She was, as I guessed, the wife of the elder and the mother of the younger of my companions; and the glance she threw at these when she saw them told as plainly as the language of a wife's and mother's eyes can tell what a large and willing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... lovely than these summer mornings; nor than the southern window at which I sit and write, in this old mansion, which is like an Italian Villa. But O, this lassitude,—thisweariness,—when all around me is so bright! I have this morning a singular longing for flowers; a wish to stroll among the roses and carnations, and inhale their breath, as if it would revive me. I wish I knew the man, who ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... begun to tell upon him; and while Tom Thurnall's chest, under the influence of hard work and oxygen, measured round perhaps six inches more than it had done sixteen years ago, Elsley's, thanks to stooping and carbonic acid, measured six inches less. Short breath, lassitude, loss of appetite, heartburn, and all that fair company of miseries which Mr. Cockle and his Antibilious Pills profess to cure, are no cheering bosom friends; but when a man's breast-bone is gradually growing into his stomach, they will make their appearance; and small blame to him whose temper ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... occupied an hour, and when it was all over the prim, starched old lady actually sat down upon her own door-step with lax hands, and crushed her best new bonnet against the door-post in a very abandonment of lassitude ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... fantasies of Eustace became more violent and more continuous as he began to note the lassitude which gradually crept into her intercourse with him. London rang with them. At one time he pretended to a strange passion for death; prayed to a skull which grinned in a shrine raised for it in his dressing-room; lay down each day in a coffin, and asked Winifred to close it and scatter earth ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... writes: "I perceive in the intellect and conduct of Napoleon during the Hundred Days no sign of enfeebling: I find in his judgment and actions his accustomed qualities." In a passage quoted above (p. 449) Mollien notes that his master was a prey to lassitude after some hours of work, but he says nothing on the subject of disease; and in a man of forty-six, who had lived a hard life and a "fast" life, we should not expect to find the capacity for the sustained intellectual efforts of the Consulate. Meneval noticed ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... poor Highlander for at once lamp and candlestick, and bent me over your fourth page, to scan the Sabbath returns of a Scottish railroad. But my rugged journey and the beating of the storm had induced a degree of lassitude; the wind outside, too, had forced back the smoke, until it had filled with a drowsy, umbery atmosphere, the whole of my dingy little apartment: Mr. M'Neill seemed considerably less smart than usual, and more than ordinarily offensive, and in the middle of his speech I fell ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... clothes, it is left for us to loose him; the strange spectral wreath of the Florence Pieta, casting its pyramidal, distorted shadow, full of pain and death, among the faint purple lights that cross and perish under the obscure dome of St^a. Maria del Fiore, the white lassitude of joyous limbs, panther like, yet passive, fainting with their own delight, that gleam among the Pagan formalisms of the Uffizii, far away, showing themselves in their lustrous lightness as the waves of an Alpine torrent do by their dancing among the dead stones, though ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... performed the same labor with much greater ease; and were in a great measure free from that lassitude and fatigue to which they ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... had lasted nearly ten months before entering the Hooghly. While ascending the stream, the lassitude produced by the climate was so great that Martyn's spirits sank under it: he thought he should "lead an idle, worthless life to no purpose. Exertion seemed like death; indeed, absolutely impossible." Yet at the least he could write, "Even ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... his rooms overcome by a lassitude that was not, however, quite despair. He had made his effort, failed—but there was still within him the unconquerable hope of the passionate lover. . . . As well try to extinguish in full June the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... woman, listening to her own speech, patient with her own silences. There was a droop to her shoulders now; his own were sagging as he leaned slightly forward in his chair, arms resting on his knees, while around them the magic ebbed, eddied, ebbed; and lassitude succeeded tension; and she stirred, looked up at him with eyes that seemed dazed at first, then widened slowly into waking; and he saw in them the first clear dawn of alarm. Suddenly she flushed and sprang to her feet, the bright colour ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... consider elephant hunting more dangerous than lion, rhino, or buffalo hunting, any one of which can hardly be called an indoor sport. These are the four animals that are classed as "royal game" in game law parlance, and each one when aroused is sufficiently diverting to dispel any lassitude produced by the climate. It is wakeful sport—hunting these four kinds of game—and in my experience elephant hunting is the ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... rather than of high principle. Especially, do not try to take advantage of some circumstances in order to urge a lame and ephemeral peace. Public opinion will be bitterly divided if the war is brought to an end merely by lassitude and a desire for comfort. Public opinion will accept only a peace inspired with high ideals, without needless humiliation for the conquered, and equally without sacrifice of any principles which have ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... feeling buoyed him up when he was inclined to despondency or sadness, and kept him busy with his new labor during many an otherwise weary and painful hour. And so his days passed on until the pain and the lassitude left him, and he could again go forth to work amid the erect and strong, with his own frame bent still lower by ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... child of a weary spirit and of the lassitude of ill health, swayed me in the direction of a quiet retreat in Barbados, that peaceful island of an eternal summer cooled by the northeast trades, where the rush and turmoil of modern life are unknown and where a very modest income more than suffices for all ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... make for mental fogginess, snarling tempers, and general physical lassitude in any group of men. And, while quarter rations were not quite starvation meals, they closely approached it. It was fortunate, therefore, that MacNeil decided to approach ...
— Cum Grano Salis • Gordon Randall Garrett
... whether Molly heard anything of this exposition; she may well have missed one or two steps in a carefully reasoned argument. Hers was that state of absorbent lassitude when the words and acts put to you sink into the floating mass of your weakness. The late shocking grief hovers felt about you: a buzz of talk, a rain of caresses, hold the spectre off, and so are serviceable—but no more. The cold cheek, the clay-cold ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... heart, she permitted herself to be charmed but never carried away—receiving from all, but giving nothing in return. Her life was brilliant, but there was lurking in the background the demon of sadness and lassitude and the terrible disease of the ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... my first attack I could not stir, and was delirious during the paroxysms of fever; but the worst being over, I made an effort to rouse myself, knowing that incurable disorders of the liver and spleen follow ague in this country if the feeling of lassitude is too much indulged. So every morning I shouldered my gun or insect-net, and went my usual walk in the forest. The fit of shivering very often seized me before I got home, and I then used to stand still and brave ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... that primitive period which people defined as "before the war"! It was as if he had belonged then to some primary emotional stratum of life. All the complex forces, the play and interplay of desire and repulsion, of energy and lassitude, had developed in the last ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... duties, selecting those which have a directly opposite tendency, cannot be justified. Of course, if a person feel that the previous day's diversions have shortened the hours of needful repose, or induced a lassitude of mind or body, instead of invigorating them, it is certain that an evil has been done, ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... and then a sudden lassitude and an immense sadness came over him. Holding his head between his hands, he ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... date of this year's expedition had been set, and as often changed. The last date had been fixed for the eighth of July; but the excitement of the wreck, and the reaction of lassitude which followed that catastrophe, put to flight, for a time, all thoughts of amusement, and a fortnight elapsed without an apparent ripple on the calm of existence ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... the time when they had exchanged that long reckless gaze over Elly's head! And now there was the triumphant glory of security which had been in his kiss . . . why, that was this morning, only a few hours ago! Even through her cold numbed lassitude she shrank again before the flare-up of that excitement, and burned in it. She tried to put this behind her at once, to wait, like all the rest, till this truce should be over, and she should once more be back in that melee of agitation ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... however, a perfect monster of many-sided cerebral efficiency, and his critic gives no objective grounds whatever for his strange opinion, save that Symonds complained occasionally, as all susceptible and ambitious men complain, of lassitude and uncertainty as to ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... irresistible force, which would have shattered the old order whose evils He denounced, and have made Him the dictator of a new order, based on the ideals in which He believed. He did none of these things, not through lassitude of spirit or failure to perceive their possible issues, but simply because these were not the things to do. In His judgment the only abiding kingdom belonged to the meek. He who suffered injustice with patience ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... the bird in idle lassitude, I ended in keen excitement. The sight of it seemed to take a film from my eyes. I realized the zest of liberty, the passion of life again. I felt that beyond this dim underworld there was the great joyous earth, and I longed for it. I wanted to live now. My memory cleared, ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... full of interest and excitement for the little girl. The heavy lassitude of her steerage days had fallen from her, and already that first morning a delicate glow of returning ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... Factories, bridges, beflagged week-end resorts, ramshackle houses, and blocks of new buildings were scattered here and there. The train was running on a causeway between miles of tenements where women and children, overtaken by lassitude, hung out of the windows: then the blackness of the tunnel, and Honora closed her eyes. Four minutes, three minutes, two minutes . . . . The motion ceased. At the steps of the car a uniformed station porter seized her bag; and she started ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... also remarked the unusual deadly whiteness of his friend's complexion, and the air of lassitude and unhappiness which pervaded his face, but he would not have alluded to them for the world. He never made impertinent ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... his hand to help her up. He had the intention to smile, but abandoned it at the nearer sight of her still face, in which was depicted the infinite lassitude of her soul. On their way to regain the forest path they had to pass through the spot from which the view of the sea could be obtained. The flaming abyss of emptiness, the liquid, undulating glare, the tragic brutality of the light, made ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... opposite Taiwan, and in Shanghai, where foreign investment has helped spur output of both domestic and export goods. The leadership, however, often has experienced - as a result of its hybrid system - the worst results of socialism (bureaucracy and lassitude) and of capitalism (growing income disparities and rising unemployment). China thus has periodically backtracked, retightening central controls at intervals. The government has struggled to (a) sustain adequate jobs growth ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... beat of German drums, and sleep in the soft air of Italy? Are the ball-room, the billiard-room, and the Boulevard, the only attractions that win us into wandering, or tempt us to repose? And when the time is come, as come it will, and that shortly, when the parsimony—or lassitude—which, for the most part, are the only protectors of the remnants of elder time, shall be scattered by the advance of civilization—when all the monuments, preserved only because it was too costly to destroy them, shall have been crushed by the energies of ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... his disappointment Linforth realised that he had misjudged his companion. Here was no official, here was a man. The attitude of indifference had gone, the air of lassitude with it. Here was a man quietly exacting the hardest service which it was in his power to exact, claiming it as a right, and yet making it clear by some subtle sympathy that he understood very well all that the service would cost to ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... of a soul without thyroid or without enough thyroid is not all. The first great successes with thyroid were achieved in adults, particularly adult women, exhibiting a peculiar obesity, coldness, loss of hair and teeth and a remarkable lassitude and torpor that might be summed up as a chronic drowsiness, like a saturation of the blood with some narcotic drug. Or there may be a melancholia, or a lack of ability to seize the finer points of a mental process, or an argument treated in ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... classes of promises have correlative with them three phases of man's condition, three diverse aspects of his need and misery. The 'covert' and the 'hiding-place' imply tempest, storm, and danger; the 'river of water' implies drought and thirst; 'the shadow of a great rock' implies lassitude and languor, fatigue and weariness. The view of life that arises from the combination of these three bears upon its front the signature of truth in the very fact that it ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... tremendous effort, she raised her eyes to his to speak indifferently and break through this horrible feeling of dread and lassitude, but as their eyes met, her hands dropped from the keys, as, with a passionate cry, he took a step forward, caught her to his breast, and she lay for the moment trembling there, and felt his lips pressed to her in a wild, ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... and her strong feelings and sense of responsibility made even small domestic affairs matters for close attention; yet in the diaries and letters of her later life there are no entries which betray either the lassitude or the restlessness of fatigue. She was not one of those busy women who only keep pace with their interests by deputing home management to others. This power of endurance in a deeply feeling nature is one of the first ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... last vestige of lassitude out of the detective's system, and, after an ample breakfast prepared and served by the single servant of the house, Britz devoted himself to the reports which Manning had delivered to him ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... Mrs. Underwood, with Felix and Wilmet, tied up the plates, knives, and forks, and then the mother, taking Angela with her, went to negotiate kettle-boiling at the cottage. Geraldine would fain have sketched, but the glory and the beauty, and the very lassitude of delight and novelty, made her eyes swim with a delicious mist; and Edgar, who had begun when she did, threw down his pencil as soon as he saw Felix at liberty, and the two boys rushed away into the wood for a good tearing scramble and climb, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... necessary to do his work largely in a personal way, by meeting and talking with people, and this took up a great deal of his time, especially after the summer vacation, when he had to get into relations with them anew, and to help them recover themselves from the moral lassitude into which people fall during that ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... coverd with red arabesques. Domini heard two or three bars of the melody. They were ineffably wild and bird-like, very clear and sweet. They seemed to her to match exactly the pure and ascetic light cast by the dawn over these bare, grey hills, and they stirred her abruptly from the depressed lassitude in which the dreary chances of recent travel had drowned her. She began, with a certain faint excitement, to realise that these low, round-backed hills were Africa, that she was leaving behind the ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... performed with little attention, and less enthusiasm. Some recline on their couches with closed eyes, as if the heat made the labour of using their organs of vision too much for them; others, in the midst of a conversation, suddenly leave a sentence unfinished, apparently incapacitated by lassitude from giving expression to the simplest ideas. Every sight in the apartment that attracts the eye, every sound that gains the ear, expresses a luxurious repose. No brilliant light mars the pervading softness of the atmosphere; no violent colour materialises the ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... invariable reflection used to be, "It is not nearly so hot out of doors as one fancies it would be." Then there is none of the stuffiness so often an accompaniment to our brief summers, bringing lassitude and debility in its train. The only disadvantage of an unusually hot season with us was, that our already embrowned complexions took a deeper shade of bronze; but as we were all equally sun-burnt there was no one to throw ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... man who does not emigrate but who has his fling at home, who "knocks around" and tells you to do likewise and be no fool—mark him for your guidance. You will find his leisure is boisterous, but never gay. Catch him between whiles off his guard and you will find the deadening lassitude of his life. This votary of pleasure has a burden to carry in whatever walk of life, high or low. On the higher plane he may have a more fastidious club or two, a more epicurean sense of enjoyment, more leisure and more luxury; but the type wherever found is the same. ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... in spite of the lassitude which that burnt-out passion had left behind in brain and body, she knew what it meant. She understood. She had hated his weakness; she still hated his lack of manhood which had made him fail her. That hatred would be a long time dying now—if it ever did perish. ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... fourteen hours a day, I tried total abstinence, but I found myself dyspeptic and stupid, and was obliged to resume my accustomed potations. I have found that any unusual amount of alcohol, while stimulating mental activity for a time, soon produced lassitude and sleepiness. ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... draws the veil, And I behold, to me, the starting fact, That human minds oft vain illusions hug Which time alone hath pow'r that grasp to loose; And only then through friction with the world Will freedom from provincial slavery And mental lassitude be e'er attained. When I my glorious deeds with savage tribes Did iterate before the gaping throng, It seemed to me as to the schoolboy raw That ne'er before had such superb exploits E'er been achieved by knightly mortal man. But now 'tis said my predecessor wrought Like wounders in a less ostentious ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... Intense lassitude followed the wild mental turmoil of that night. She had arranged to meet him again two days hence in order to repeat to him what she had heard the while of Sir Marmaduke's movements, and when she was like to be free to go to Dover. ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... driving team was unyoked—he could hear it being led away—but the ache in his head grew almost intolerable and his lassitude more intense. For a while he had no idea what was going on; and then a hoarse cry, which seemed one of alarm, rang out sharply. There was a patter of running feet, a thud of hoofs on the soft soil, and, breaking ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... horse-chestnut, and lime-earths are all more powerful than that of the oak, and therefore are rarely used, for their exceeding strength would overpower the natural electricity and leave a lassitude in the patient. The tree-earth baths are rarely used for adults, except in cases when, earlier in my reign, the mental powers of several persons had been overtaxed at the expense of their ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... course of his adventurous career, had Perenna experienced such a knockdown blow. It gave him a feeling of extreme lassitude, depriving him of all power of speech or movement. Father and son were dead! They had been killed during that night! A few hours earlier, though the house was watched and every outlet hermetically closed, both had been poisoned by an infernal puncture, even as Inspector Verot was poisoned, even ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... deities," he continued, "our Lady of the Poppies is exacting. After a protracted sojourn at her shrine, so keen are the delights which she opens up to her worshipers, that a period of lassitude, of exhaustion, inevitably ensues. This precludes the proper worship of the goddess in the home, and necessitates—I say NECESSITATES the presence, in such a capital as London, of a suitable Temple. You have the honor, Soames, to be a ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... Abel?" and I wail and beseech: "Am I my brother's keeper?" My soul is guilty—guilty of loving him—guilty of his death, for had I not loved him he would never have known the Black Hills. Oh! if I could but be resigned—if I could but bind up my bleeding wounds and lose myself in immeasurable lassitude! ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... the present advanced period.—Highland manners, characters, scenery, superstitions, Northern dialect and costume, the wars, the religion, and politics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, give a charming and wholesome relief to the fastidious refinement and "over-laboured lassitude" of modern readers, like the effect of plunging a nervous valetudinarian into a cold-bath. The Scotch Novels, for this reason, are not so much admired in Scotland as in England. The contrast, the transition ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... addressing or trying to amuse or instruct girls who are no more prepared than I felt myself to be for any preconceived ideal of art or ethics. The omnipresence of dirt and ugliness, of machines and "stock," leave the mind in a state of lassitude which should be roused by something natural. As an initial remedy for the ills I voluntarily assumed I would propose amusement. Of all the people who spoke to us that Saturday, we liked best the one who made us laugh. It was a relief to hear ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... man might pass for a love story. He had flirted a great deal when he was thirty, with a married woman. She had not troubled, she had only slightly eddied, stirred with a few ripples the placidity of a placid stream of life. In hours of lassitude it pleased him to think that she had ruined his life. Man is ever ready to think that his failure comes from without rather than from within. He wrote to her every week a long letter, and spent a large part of the long vacation in her house in Yorkshire, telling her that he had ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... enveloped in a black atmosphere floating confusedly over the exterior of things, and sorrow was engulfed within her soul with soft shrieks such as the winter wind makes in ruined castles. It was that reverie which we give to things that will not return, the lassitude that seizes you after everything was done; that pain, in fine, that the interruption of every wonted movement, the sudden cessation of any prolonged ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... as (I do not know if you heard of it) I had a very violent and dangerous hemorrhage last spring. I am almost glad to have seen death so close with all my wits about me, and not in the customary lassitude and disenchantment of disease. Even thus clearly beheld, I find him not so terrible as we suppose. But, indeed, with the passing of years, the decay of strength, the loss of all my old active and pleasant habits, there grows more and ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... was the exciting thing. In home affairs, social questions, and the ordinary events of the day not much change was noticeable. A certain Oriental carelessness seemed to have crept into the editorial department, and perhaps a note of lassitude not unnatural in the work of men who had returned from what had been a fairly arduous journey. The aforetime standard of excellence was scarcely maintained, but at any rate the general lines of policy and outlook were not departed ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki |
