"Lethargic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their heels, as their custom is—grave, monotonous, motionless, the smoke from their pipes almost the sole sign of life. For the Flemish peasant is a strangely inert creature, his work once done—as languid and lethargic as the canal that passes by his door. There was one cottage into which the boy would often peep on his way home from school, the home of seven brothers and one sister, all old, toothless, worn—working ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... was as fat as a hog and as red as a beet, was slowly digesting his breakfast, while his lethargic gaze slowly wandered over the magnificent panorama of the Mediterranean,—the Straits of Gibraltar, the accursed rock from which they take their name, the neighboring peaks of Anghera and Benzu, and the distant snows of the Lesser Atlas—when he heard hasty steps on the stairs and his ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... instances, it is the chief determining factor which materially influences the outcome of the case. A nervous, excitable animal, that is kept at hard work, may, under some conditions, be expected to experience disturbances which more lethargic subjects escape. Nervous subjects, it is known, are more prone to azoturia than are those of lymphatic temperament. Furthermore, the lymphatic subject often recovers from certain bone fractures which are successfully treated only ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... object for some activity, for some form of expression of the self. Are we interested in a new book, we must read it; in a new invention, we must see it, handle it, test it; in some vocation or avocation, we must pursue it. Interest is impulsive. It gives its possessor no opportunity for lethargic rest and quiet, but constantly urges him to action. Grown ardent, interest becomes enthusiasm, "without which," says Emerson, "nothing great was ever accomplished." Are we an Edison, with a strong interest centered in mechanical invention, it will drive ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... frame; the period of her life visibly approached. The Archbishop of Canterbury advised her to fix her thoughts on God. She did so, she replied, nor did her mind in the least wander from Him. Her voice and her senses soon after failing, she fell into a lethargic slumber, which having continued some hours, she expired gently, without a struggle, March 24, 1603, in the seventieth year of her age and the forty-fifth of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... beginning theirs, he had already studied broadly, had traveled widely over two continents, had gained credit and fame by the sword and the pen, and had amassed a fund of erudition and experience which the more lethargic lives of most men fail to approach after twice his length of days. It is eminently appropriate that a record of his busy career should be attached to the works on which his celebrity is chiefly bound, and in which he most conspicuously displays that command of language ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... his eyes. He saw the carriages pass over the bridges, and the boats glide through the arches. "Here I can live and breathe," he said to himself. "It was impossible for me to accomplish anything in that dull little hole of Aulnettes! How could one work in such a lethargic atmosphere?" ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... her brutal ultimatum upon little Serbia. There were no vivid debates, no pronounced current of opinion one way or the other, not much public interest in the prolonged discussions at the Consulta; just a lethargic iteration of the belief that sooner or later war must come with its terrible risks, its dubious victories. Given the Italian temperament and the nearness of the brink toward which the country was drifting, one looked for flashes ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... not try to deny it," answered Jacob, in his calm, lethargic way, still regarding Cuthbert with a look of admiration and curiosity, somewhat as a savage regards a white man, scarce knowing from moment to moment what his acts will be. "Yet for all that I would ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... where the trees had been, by the swirling waves. A flood is like those serpents which fascinate before they strike. The monotonous rain failing ohne Hast, ohne Rast, the dead immutable murk of the sky, the rush of gray wave after wave, induced a state of dull lethargic wonder: the feet—the foot more, would it accomplish that? Already the floor of the ranch-house was under water. But there was soon a sufficient dashing about of riders in long yellow oil-skin coats, and all was done that the situation seemed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... shimmering sand, powerful chiefs with large followings, who seemed more like the Arabs of her imaginings, and of whose lives she had the haziest idea. When not engaged in killing their neighbours she visualized them drowsing away whole days under the influence of narcotics, lethargic with sensual indulgence. The pictures she had seen had been mostly of fat old men sitting cross-legged in the entrance of their tents, waited on by hordes of retainers, and looking languidly, with an air of utter boredom, at some miserable ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... The donkey had followed him in, and was standing just behind his chair, head hanging, ears lopping, lethargic patience showing in every contour of ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... why in slumbers Lethargic dost thou lie? Awake, and join thy numbers With Athens, old ally! Leonidas recalling, That chief of ancient song, Who saved ye once from falling— The terrible! the strong! Who made that bold diversion ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... Mollendorf, Kleist, and Massenbach, old generals, who had served under the great Frederick,—men, says Jomini, "exhumed from the Seven Years' War,"—"whose faculties were frozen by age,"—"who had been buried for the last ten years in a lethargic sleep." ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... whispers to us of his art, how we were with him when he laid the foundations of the world, and the song is unfinished, the fingers grow listless. As we receive these intimations of age our very sins become negative: we are still pleased if a voice praises us, but we grow lethargic in enterprises where the spur to activity is fame or the acclamation of men. At some point in the past we may have struggled mightily for the sweet incense which men offer to a towering personality; but the infinite is for ever within man: we sighed for other worlds and found ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... calls for the porter, yet no porter appeared. At last the attendant was found—lazy villain!—asleep, snoring loudly, stertorously, in his little bunk at the end of the car. He was roused with difficulty, and set about his work in a dull, unwilling, lethargic way, which promised badly for his tips from those he ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... facility in writing seems really to have been accompanied with no corresponding readiness of speech and reply. Probably it was only, as she herself states, when she had a pen in her hand that her lethargic ideas would arise and flow in order as they should. And the need of self-expression felt by all those who have not the gift of communicating themselves fully and easily in speech or manner, a strong need in her case, from her having ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... back to my recital of what passed between us three. A strange lethargic calm seemed to have fallen upon Paul. He turned to me without even a single trace of the passion which had lit up his face a ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lethargic disposition, young Bulldogs are somewhat liable to indigestion, and during the period of puppyhood it is of advantage to give them a tablespoonful of lime water once a ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... the water-hole had long subsided into complete silence, that the watchers felt at liberty to cease their vigil and snatch an hour or two of much-needed rest. Meanwhile, Grosvenor remained completely sunk in the lethargic sleep which had resulted from the saturation of ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... to put my hand over her mouth, when I noticed that her words had made no evident impression upon my patient, who lay quietly and with a more composed expression than when I left her bedside. This assured me, as nothing else could have done, that she was really asleep, or in that lethargic state which closes the eyes and ears to what ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... spent together, and they were lying in the state of lethargic enjoyment when the sound of laughter at a distance soon aroused them to a sense of their exposed position, and they had barely time to set things straight before Mr. Etheridge. Frank, Harry, and the three girls ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous
... are wonderfully effective; an artist with sketch-book in hand would have many a good chance of catching graphic heads and costumes, and all the more easily because these pilgrims are not so lively as lethargic. Still, for grand scenic impression, I have never in Russia witnessed any church function so striking as the piazza in front of St. Peter's on Easter Day, when all Rome flocks to receive the Pope's blessing from the balcony. Yet the whole ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... loyalty were unimpeachable. To hear him read the Articles of War to us once a month was, if not improving, most amusing. He dogrogated God's honour with emphasis, and accused the ministers of the Church of being lethargic. Some of my messmates declared, although it was perfectly without intention on his part, that the captain in the last expression was right, for although the word was liturgy, he was justified in reading ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... that the good souls could make of her restless agitation. She slept that night from sheer exhaustion, a deep lethargic slumber, apparently broken once or twice by troubled dreams. When she awoke in the morning at the first sound of the voice of the mooddin, the evil dreams seemed to be with her still. She appeared to be moving along in them like one spell-bound by a great dread ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... his two last mistakes, in the campaign against the league, Charles, whether as a soldier or statesman, is seen at his best. When once the drums beat to arms there was an end to irresolution. He had that reserve of energy upon which an indolent, lethargic nature can sometimes at a crisis draw. The Netherlands seemed threatened from east to west; yet in perfect calm he ordered his agitated sister Mary to watch her frontiers, but to send every man and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... power to nullify the most important acts, and even to dissolve the assembly. A single word, pronounced in the vehemence of domestic strife, or by the influence of external corruption, could plunge the nation into a lethargic sleep. And faction went so far as often to lead to the dissolution of the assembly. The treasury, the army, the civil authority then fell into a state of anarchy. Zamoyski also recommended the emancipation of serfs, the encouragement of commerce, the elevation of the trading ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... I for a moment forgot my companions, and fell into a sort of lethargic stupor. I fancied that I too was dead or dreaming—I fancied that I was in hell—the Avernus of the ancients. In my youth, I had the misfortune to be well schooled in classic lore—to the neglect of studies more useful—and often in life have the poetical absurdities of Greek and ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... duty it was to slay either of the fighters who fled or who was forced out of the ring. Esle intoned a long prayer to Degar Astok. The word for combat was given. The two men approached each other cautiously. The Father confident in his strength, but he felt heavy and lethargic. Anak was clear-eyed and alert, ready to take advantage ...
— B. C. 30,000 • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... setting sun shone on her heavy brown hair, twisted into a thick coil at the back of her head, and revealed the amber paleness of her clear skin, the long oval of her eyes, the firm outline of her chin and somewhat full lips; and Claudet, roused from his lethargic reverie by the sound of her rapid footsteps, raised his eyes, and recognized the daughter of Pere Vincart, the proprietor ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of all nations, with a very large proportion of Germans, French, and Irish. But their national characteristics, though not lost, are seen through a medium of pure Americanism. They all rush about—the lethargic German keeps pace with the energetic Yankee; and the Irishman, no longer in rags, "guesses" and "spekilates" in the brogue of Erin. Western travellers pass through Buffalo; tourists bound for Canada pass through Buffalo; the traffic of lakes, canals, and several lines of rail centres at ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... and the adroit host, skilled in managing all kinds of people and in every condition, induced him to return to his room, under the pretence of wishing to taste his fine old brandy, and then kept him there until the lethargic stage set in as the result of his excess. And so an affair, which might have created much scandal, was smuggled out of sight and knowledge as far as possible. Mrs. Mayhew had been so occupied with ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... and the Princesse Elizabeth, by whom Barnave had been much esteemed ever since the journey from Varennes, were both inconsolable. I really believe the Queen entirely owed her instantaneous recovery from that deadly lethargic state, in which she had been thrown by her grief for the destined sacrifice, to the exuberant goodness of the King's heart, who instantly resolved to compromise his own existence, to save those who had forfeited theirs for ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... quoted. Zacchias mentions an instance which, from all appearances, is authentic. It was that of a young man, pest-stricken and thought to be dead, who was placed with the other dead for burial. He exhibited signs of life, and was taken back to the pest-hospital. Two days later he entered a lethargic condition simulating death, and was again on his way to the sepulcher, when ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... glittering gates, And there find a haven when peril's abroad, An asylum in jaws of the Fates! They are friends; and friendly they guide him to prey, Yet never partake of the treat— Eyes and brains to the dotard lethargic and dull, ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... of trumpets, a roll of drums, a stirring march of warlike melody, startled them out of the lethargic tedium of exhausted hopes and fears. "It is Santa Anna!" said Antonia; and though they durst not stand up, they drew closer to the balustrade and watched for the approaching army. Is there any woman who can resist that nameless emotion ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... congenial to guilt: I will compel you to be silent." Freedom in this matter, as in all others, will engender activity and fortitude; positive institution (Godwin's term for law and constraint) makes the mind torpid and lethargic. It is hardly necessary to reproduce Godwin's vigorous arguments for unfettered freedom in political and speculative discussion, against censorships and prosecutions for religious and political opinions. Even were we secure from the possibility of mistake, mischief and not good would accrue ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... incident of my earlier life, sir, before I entered your employment. I was in the service of the late Lord Brancaster at the time, a gentleman who owned a parrot to which he was greatly devoted, and one day the bird chanced to be lethargic, and his lordship, with the kindly intention of restoring it to its customary animation, offered it a portion of seed cake steeped in the '84 port. The bird accepted the morsel gratefully and consumed it with every indication of satisfaction. Almost immediately ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... parents to sit up with it on alternate nights, this night it being the father's regular turn to perform that duty; but his trip of twenty-five or thirty miles had fatigued him so much that it was judged best for his wife to relieve him,—his slumbers being usually so profound as to be almost lethargic, so that, when once fairly asleep, the loudest noises even in the same room would fail to arouse him, and it being feared, therefore, that the little patient might suffer, if left to his care in his present state of weariness. In the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... board. He has obtained his great and honourable reputation by conscientiously slumbering through many duties. His tastes are for racing and shooting, but from sheer patriotism he has devoted himself to politics with all the energy of his lethargic manner, which successfully conceals abnormal common-sense. It was he, more than any other man, who saved Ireland from Home Rule, though as an Irish landlord he has not come much to the fore, because his vast English estates are immeasurably more important than ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... country to vote its taxes; those necessary for public services and to satisfy (pay in full) the assistance North America and the corporations, organizations and individuals who help us to rise out of our lethargic state, are rendering us; taking care at the same time to abolish all those which have for basis a social vice or an immoral action, like the lottery, the tax on gambling dens, on galleras (arenas for fights of game cocks) and the farming out of the ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... as once at College We argued on the use of knowledge;— 'In old King Olim's reign, I've read, There lay two patients in one bed. The one in fat lethargic trance, 5 Lay wan and motionless as lead: The other, (like the Folks in France), Possess'd a different disposition— In short, the plain truth to confess, The man was madder than Mad Bess! 10 But ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... people descended from the hill, misconceiving each other's meaning and wishes, and unhappy under the influence of an ideal source of misery, when actual circumstances created so many that were substantial and real. Gershom was found awake, but, as his sister had described him, stupid and lethargic. The bee-hunter at once saw that, in his present condition, Whiskey Centre would still be an incumbrance rather than of any service, in the event of an occasion for extraordinary exertion. Margery had hinted that it usually took twenty-four hours to bring her brother ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... equally visible. In some ages governments seem to be imperishable, in others the existence of society appears to be more precarious than the life of man. Some constitutions plunge the citizens into a lethargic somnolence, and others rouse them to feverish excitement. When government appears to be so strong, and laws so stable, men do not perceive the dangers which may accrue from a union of church and state. When governments display so much inconstancy, the danger is self-evident, ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... disease thus wonderfully generated, betrayed more terrible symptoms. Fever and delirium terminated in lethargic slumber, which, in the course of two hours, gave place to death. Yet not till insupportable exhalations and crawling putrefaction had driven from his chamber and the house every one whom their duty ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... misery pass us unrelieved, never shall we remit the delightful task of seeking out the modest and the oppressed in their obscure retreat. We will set mankind an example of integrity and goodness. We will retrieve the original honours of the wedded state. Methinks, I could rouze the most lethargic and unanimated with my warning voice! Methinks, I could breathe a spirit into the dead! Oh, Matilda, let me inspire ambition into your breast! Let me teach that tender and right gentle heart, to ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... "Yet they are lethargic enough at times," returned Sir Richard, pointing to a recumbent form lying unconcernedly on the platform a few feet from their open window. "Look at that fellow sleeping there—he doesn't care in the least ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... nor, in the course of his long wait, had he seen so much as one specimen of that invariable concomitant of all screen journalism, the long-haired poet with his flowing tie and neatly ribboned manuscript. Even the office "boy," lethargic, neutrally polite, busy writing on half-sheets of paper, was profoundly untrue to the pictured type. Banneker wondered what the managing editor would be like; would almost, in the wreckage of his preconceived notions, have accepted a woman or a priest in that manifestation, when Mr. Gordon ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... dying glory flamed in the torches of the maples and smoldered in the burgundy of the oaks. It trailed a veil of rose-ash and mystery along the slopes of the White Mountains, and inside the crumbling school-house the children droned sleepily over their books like prisoners in a lethargic mutiny. ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... lethargic Mr. Wagg was manifestly unable to turn his slow wits on the single track of the mind and start them off ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... pleasantly and left the room, closing the door after him. For all his quiet, almost lethargic manner, it was curious what an atmosphere of swiftness and decision he seemed to carry ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... gorgeous mountain walls went round the poet's head like a purple windmill a thing happened which was superficially even more startling. The elderly and lethargic banker sprang erect in the coach and leapt over the precipice before the tilted vehicle could take him there. In the first flash it looked as wild as suicide; but in the second it was as sensible as a safe investment. The Yorkshireman ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... he uttered, the Princess Viazemskii, who was in the drawing-room with her, darted to her side, dreading that something might happen. But she still lay immovable, (although she had been speaking a moment before,) a heavy lethargic slumber had overcome her, and this slumber, as if purposely sent down in mercy from above, lasted till the very minute when the last groan rang on the other side of the door. But in this moment of most cruel agony, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... excitement will cause the heart to vibrate more firmly and evenly; but an unhealthy excitement, like fear or anger, will cause it to beat in a rapid and uneven manner. Contrarily, despondency, or a lethargic state of mind, causes the movement of the blood to slacken. The happiness of love is thus the best of all stimulants and correctives for a torpid circulation, and it expands the whole being of a woman like the blossoming of a flower in the sunshine. From the time of ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... know anything about you." The young man's lethargic conscience gives him a severe prick. He should not have made light of it to Laura and madame, but he did bind them to inviolate secrecy. "If I had seen you I should not have despised you, I should have married you," he says, triumphantly. "If you were free to-day, ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... responsibility for their own failure to the fatalism of the will of God; or is religion a terrible and dynamic force that compels right for right's sake independent of compromise? How does the Canadian live in his home? Is he beer-drinking, lethargic, dreamy and flabby in will power; or is he whisky-drinking, fiery, practical and pugnacious? Why hasn't he a distinctive literature, a distinctive art? Nature never was more lavish to any people in beautiful landscape from the quiet rural scenery of the ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... Twins, who were growing a trifle lethargic under the technicalities of the subject, roused themselves at this fresh turn ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... himself to that lassitude, both of mind and body, which generally follows a course of events that have agitated both, The effect of his late indisposition, which had much weakened his system, contributed to this lethargic despondency. "The puir bairn!" said auld Edie, "an he sleeps in this damp hole, he'll maybe wauken nae mair, or catch some sair disease. It's no the same to him as to the like o' us, that can sleep ony gate an anes our wames are fu'. Sit up, Maister Lovel, lad! After a's come and gane, ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... incredulity as to religious truths. Far from being so, it makes pretensions of developing the religious feelings to the highest degree; and there is in the writings of its most distinguished disciples something which arouses even the most lethargic minds. But it is far from attaining its end; for although it constitutes itself the supreme judge of Christianity, it does not really adopt one of the leading doctrines of that religion which alone has power over the moral nature of man. Its influence, if we observe it closely, extends ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... Belding shook off a lethargic spell and decided he had better set about several by no means small tasks, if he wanted to get them finished before the hot months. He made a trip to the Sonoyta Oasis. He satisfied himself that matters along the line were favorable, and ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... thick and violent for further utterance; she panted and wrought strongly, until at length she lay with locked teeth and clenched hands struggling in a fit which eventually, by leaving her, terminated in a state of lethargic insensibility. ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... active man, and one that could easily be wakened: he was not, like some Turks, an hour in recovering their lethargic senses. He was quick in decision and action; and his slaves resembled their master. He despatched a messenger immediately to the grand vizier, that the sultan's safety might be secured; and sent others to the magistrates, in ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... must have slid under the Swede's shoes. Either the prospect of a meal or of having a companion to whom he could lend a hand—nothing so desolate as a man out of work—a stranger at that—had put new life into his hitherto lethargic body. ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... till a late hour on the following day, that Catiline awoke from the heavy and half lethargic slumber, which had fallen upon him after the severe and stunning blow he received ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... to and fro between our little table and the kitchen. She looks pretty, she smiles. The slowness of her movements is no longer lethargic; it simply exhales an air of repose, a perfume of peace that suits her beauty. Her eyes have fastened on me at once and, as in the ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... finding both Madame de Gramont and Count Tristan at home. The former received him with as much cordiality as her constitutional stiffness permitted, but the latter appeared to be in a half-lethargic state; he scarcely rose to welcome his visitor, spoke feebly and indistinctly, and, as he sank back in his seat, leaned his flushed ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... left; one retires on the way, metaphorically speaking, into one's closet for meditation, for miles of silent thought—when one's stride is mechanical, and is like an absent-minded drumming with the fingers; but that it is better, for it pumps the blood for freer thought than in lethargic sitting. ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... Miss Elizabeth's will for having all things in running order. Peyton's drowsiness wrapped him closer and closer. Presently he was remotely aware of the opening of the door, the tread of light feet on the floor, the swish of skirts. But he had now reached that lethargic point which involves total indifference to outer things, and he did not even open ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... said the boy, the color struggling back into his pale cheeks, and an apologetic, bashful smile lighting his clear eyes. "Neither; but oh! such a gross, lethargic toad! And it ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... was reached, there were only seventeen places for eighteen Representatives. The most active mounted first. Antony Thouret, who himself alone equalled the whole of the Right, for he had as much mind as Thiers and as much stomach as Murat; Antony Thouret, corpulent and lethargic, was the last. When he appeared on the threshold of the omnibus in all his hugeness, a cry of alarm arose;—Where ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... the lethargic moments of a seaman's life. Days of toil bring nights of drowsiness; and the repose of nature presents a constant temptation to imitate her example. The reaction of excitement destroys the disposition to indulge in the song, the jest, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of such a transformation, of putting immediate social convenience in the first place, and respect for truth in the second, are seen, as we have said, in a distinct and unmistakable lowering of the level of national life; a slack and lethargic quality about public opinion; a growing predominance of material, temporary, and selfish aims, over those which are generous, far-reaching, and spiritual; a deadly weakening of intellectual conclusiveness, and clear-shining moral illumination, and, lastly, of ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... Sir Charles and Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice were unequally yoked with the lethargic Secretary of State for War. Lord Fitzmaurice has vivid recollection of Lord Hartington's entry at one sitting half an hour late, after his fashion. The question turned on the probable action of some Afghan chiefs, whereupon Lord Hartington ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... daylight; she knocked at the door of the comtesse—all was still;—she opened it and went in. The comtesse, exhausted by long watching, had fallen asleep in her chair, with her little girl in her arms. The child had sunk into a dull lethargic state never to be broken. Alas! Monsieur—alas! the little one was dead! Agathe ran and called me. I came in. What a spectacle!... Which of us should arouse the unhappy comtesse? or should we disturb her? ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... something more than light to awake him from his almost lethargic sleep, and Boone threw bone after bone at him, till the brute woke up, growled with astonishment at the unusual sight before him, and advanced lazily to examine it. The young man had caught up his rifle by the barrel; he ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... to new reflections, and Martin especially concluded that man was born to live either in a state of distracting inquietude or of lethargic disgust. Candide did not quite agree to that, but he affirmed nothing. Pangloss owned that he had always suffered horribly, but as he had once asserted that everything went wonderfully well, he asserted it still, though he ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... prognostic, augury, foretoken, adumbration, presage, indication. Simple, innocent, artless, unsophisticated, naive. Skilful, skilled, expert, adept, apt, proficient, adroit, dexterous, deft, clever, ingenious. Skin, hide, pelt, fell. Sleepy, drowsy, slumberous, somnolent, sluggish, torpid, dull, lethargic. Slovenly, slatternly, dowdy, frowsy, blowzy. Sly, crafty, cunning, subtle, wily, artful, politic, designing. Smile, smirk, grin. Solitary, lonely, lone, lonesome, desolate, deserted, uninhabited. Sour, acid, tart, acrid, acidulous, acetose, acerbitous, astringent. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... attorneys from the Legislature of Iowa were discussing the politics of the epoch and the details of national finance, while a wan, dolorous person, wearing concave glasses, alternately ate troches and almonds for a sedative, and sought condolence in a high, lamentable treble from a lethargic and somewhat deaf and enervate ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... approaching swiftly. Meanwhile the transformation of Britain in which Lloyd George had had so large a hand was proceeding. No longer could it be said that the old country was lethargic. In all directions was the elementary strength of this stolid people manifesting itself. Classes were uniting in the determination that there should be limitless spending of energy, of blood, and of treasure, that the harder grew the ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... comfortably regulated at the present day that Robin Greve, looking back at his trip by air from Croydon Aerodrome to the big landing-ground outside Rotterdam, acknowledged that he had more excitement in his efforts to stir into action a lethargic Dutch passport official in London, so as to enable him to catch the air mail, than in the smooth and uneventful voyage across the Channel. He reached Rotterdam on a dull and muggy afternoon and lost no time in depositing his bag at the Grand Hotel. An enquiry at ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... attended by increase in the height of response, as will be seen from the two sets of records which follow (fig. 64). Cold, due to prevailing frosty weather, had made the wires in the cell somewhat lethargic. The records in (a) were the first taken on the day of the experiment. The amplitudes of vibration were 45 deg., 90 deg., and 135 deg.. In (b) are given the records of the next series, which are in every case greater than those of (a). This shows that previous ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose
... been either discouraged or at the least lethargic, the pretender Tien Wang had been busily engaged in establishing his authority on a sound basis, and in assigning their respective ranks to his principal followers who saw in the conferring of titles and posts, at the moment of little meaning or value, the ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... his companion's words fully rousing him from his lethargic state. "Well, of all the cowardly things ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... (illustrated) on "Cracker Cowboys of Florida," and Lake Okeechobee, by A. J. Hanna and Kathryn Abbey, Indianapolis, 1948, treats of modern ranching in Florida, but the range people of that state have been too lethargic-minded to write about themselves and no Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings has settled in their midst to ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... of the essence of fear—to pain in the future. Fear and self-consciousness are closely interlinked. Similarly with animals, we often wonder how a horse or a cow can endure to stand out in a field all night, exposed to cold and rain, in the lethargic patient way that they exhibit. It is not that they do not FEEL the discomfort, but it is that they do not envisage THEMSELVES as enduring this pain and suffering for all those coming hours; and as we know ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... vulgarian. On the return of the guileless satirist to England the writer of the letter of introduction inquired how he had fared with the consul, and great was his surprise to hear him drawl out, in his habitual lethargic manner: ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... us, and those of them who could darted away like frightened rabbits, each to his own burrow. An old man who was sitting in the warm afternoon sun on the little bamboo platform before his hut was aroused from his lethargic repose by the scampering away of the children. He arose, trembling upon his tottering limbs, all drawn and twisted, and ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... "doctor," or "help," or "God," or "oh!" commencing with a loud spasmodic cry, and continuing the same word till it died away in cadence. The act of calling seemed to lull the pain. Many were unconscious and lethargic, moving their fingers and lips mechanically, but never more to open their eyes upon the light; they were already going through the valley and the shadow. I think, still, with a shudder, of the faces of those who were told mercifully that they could not live. The unutterable ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... know, Shawn," Lady O'Gara said, with sudden energy, "that, fond as I am of Eileen, I think she has not the stuff in her to hold a boy like Terry. There is something lethargic in her. I'm afraid she is a little selfish. She can be very sweet when she likes, but I think at heart she ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... too short. The girl had a native name, but Red called her Sally. He picked up the easy language very quickly, and he used to lie on the mat for hours while she chattered gaily to him. He was a silent fellow, and perhaps his mind was lethargic. He smoked incessantly the cigarettes which she made him out of the native tobacco and pandanus leaf, and he watched her while with deft fingers she made grass mats. Often natives would come in and tell long stories of the old days when the island was disturbed ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... cup of bitterness was now full to overflowing. Crawling out of the stream, he sank down on the bank in a species of lethargic torpor, from which, he awakened next morning in a raging fever. Delirium soon rendered him insensible to his sufferings. The sun rose like a ball of fire, and shone down with scorching power on the arid plain. ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... the ladies waited at Paris. It was well known how the King's illness must end. No one, save the Queen, professed to entertain any hope of his amendment; but Catherine appeared to be too lethargic to allow herself to be roused to any understanding of his danger; and as to the personal womanly tendance of wife to suffering husband, she seemed to have no notion of it. Her mother had never been supposed to take the slightest care of King Charles; ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the bear passes the cold months in lethargic sleep; yet, in all but the coldest weather, and sometimes even then, its slumber is but light, and if disturbed it will promptly leave its den, prepared for fight or flight as the occasion may require. Many times when a hunter has stumbled ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... there was an element of sin, a kind of rude bravado of youth, in the mere relishing of food at the same table with this tragic father; and though I was well enough used to the coarse, plain diet of the English, I ate scarce more than himself. Dinner was hardly over before he succumbed to a lethargic sleep; lying on one of the mattresses with his limbs relaxed, and his breath seemingly suspended—the very ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... immediately followed by the fall of the rhythmus, re-establishing its languid repose. The frequent use of half notes induces a predominance of the minor key, and this, with the constant recurrence of the rhythmical fall, imparts to Semitic and Hindoo music that melancholy, lethargic uniformity which expresses in a striking manner the benumbed energies and undeveloped spirit of the people among whom it is found. When a race has substituted habit and custom for national feeling, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... for tears, no acuteness of sensation. A weight as heavy as the world lay on her, crushing out struggle and resistance. She knew that he was dying. When they told her there was no doctor in the camp her flickering hope had gone out. Now she was prepared to sit by him and wait with a lethargic ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... because they have no voice; if they don't revolt, it is because they are lethargic; if you say they do not suffer, it is because you have not seen their heart's blood. But the day will come when you will see and hear. Then woe to those who base their strength on ignorance and fanaticism; woe to ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... certain that if the soul had not already quitted this inert, sluggish, lethargic body, it had at least retreated and concealed itself in depths whither the perceptions of the exterior organs ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... necessity of bringing to its aid the hitherto comparatively dormant resources of treason in the Northern States, and the enlargement of the arena of the Rebellion. Raids having ominously failed in their design to arouse the lethargic spirits of Northern sympathizers and advocates, to rush to the standard of the misguided South, it was immediately determined to prolong the war, at least, to the date of the next Presidential election, ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... distance, with a narrow fringe of flashing surf between it and the vivid blue of the Caribbean. It was a thriving place, as the black dots of steamers in the roadstead showed, for of late years American enterprise had broken in upon its lethargic calm. The population was, for the most part, of Spanish stock that had been weakened by infusions of Indian and negro blood, but there were a number of Chinamen, and French Creoles. Besides these, Americans, Britons, and European adventurers ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... in his frame of mind should sleep, but nature was at last exhausted, and yielding to the influence of the peculiar atmosphere slowly pervading the room, he fell away into a kind of lethargic slumber, while the work of destruction his own hand had prepared, went silently on around him. First the crimson curtain turned a yellowish hue, than the scorched threads dropped apart and the flame crept into the ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... Sofia's sensibilities were less benumbed than bound in a palsy of suspense not wholly destitute of dread; beneath the lethargic shallows of consciousness lay soundless ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance |
