"Prostration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... came out in abundance, and the hempen apoplexy, which had only just begun, was arrested in its course. The young man moved and came more to life; then he fell, from natural causes, into a state of great weakness and profound sadness, prostration of flesh and general flabbiness. Now the old maid, who was all eyes, and followed the great and notable changes which were taking place in the person of this badly hanged man, pulled the surgeon by the sleeve, and pointing out to him, by a curious glance of the eye, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... for the dignity of this reserve, and even counted it as one of the grounds—grounds all handled and numbered—for ranking him, in the range of their acquaintance, as a success. He WAS a success, Waymarsh, in spite of overwork, or prostration, of sensible shrinkage, of his wife's letters and of his not liking Europe. Strether would have reckoned his own career less futile had he been able to put into it anything so handsome as so much fine silence. One might one's self easily have left Mrs. Waymarsh; and one would assuredly ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... educative effect would be great, but it is wasted without publicity. Since the public is not unanimous against public ownership and operation, there must be a considerable number of persons who are proof against anything but a catastrophe greater than the prostration of the railway and utility industries. That is an expansive way of education, but perhaps Dr. Cooley, Dean of the University of Michigan, is right in his view that the method is necessary to prevent a greater calamity by persistence ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... wonder and awe Thy mysteries told— The work of Thy hand Throughout all the land, Bearing on mankind— Man frail and mortal. Dark and ambiguous, mighty and grand, All Thy works are; Thee, whom all the angels adore, Falling in prostration before Thy radiant throne. In beauty of state The archangels wait, Seeking Thy glory, Great God, alone. How shall we bend, Seeking to lend Humble adorance, worship before Thee? How shall we yield us meekly submissive Unto Thy will? So prone is the heart oft to rebel, Murmuring ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... handcuffed and taken to the police station on foot, while the Sub-Inspector followed in a palanquin. Kumodini Babu's women-folk filled the house with their lamentations; and his eldest son, Jadu Nath, was the first to recover from the prostration caused by sudden misfortune. He had a pony saddled and galloped to the railway station, whence he telegraphed to his uncle, Ghaneshyam Babu, the pleader, "Father arrested: charge receiving stolen goods". Ghaneshyam arrived by the next train, and after hearing the facts returned to Ghoria, where ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... the shining of Heaven's own Splendor in the waste-howling darkness; the Pillar of Fire by night, that was to guide them on their desolate perilous way. Was it not such? Can a man's soul, to this hour, get guidance by any other method than intrinsically by that same,—devout prostration of the earnest struggling soul before the Highest, the Giver of all Light; be such prayer a spoken, articulate, or be it a voiceless, inarticulate one? There is no other method. "Hypocrisy?" One begins to be weary of all that. They who call it so, have no right to speak on such ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... physical accessories, making the architecture more and more stately and the pews more and more comfortable! Thus we attempt an amalgam of a mediaeval house of worship with an American domestic interior, adoring God at our ease, worshiping Him in armchairs, offering prostration of the spirit, so far as it can be achieved along with indolence ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... and threw her into the seething and surging of an excitement altogether beyond her control. She could not think until she had got familiar with the idea, which indeed had been vaguely shaping itself in her mind ever since she had emerged from the first profound gloom and prostration of the shadow of death. She had never definitely thought of her position before,—never even asked herself what was to become of her when Lady Mary died. She did not see, any more than Lady Mary did, why she should ever die; and girls, ...
— Old Lady Mary - A Story of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... or four intimate ones who were constantly with him. Nor did the mischief end there. We have spoken of his habitual use of chloral, which was taken at first in small doses as a remedy for insomnia and afterwards indulged in to excess at moments of physical prostration or nervous excitement. To that false friend he came at this time with only too great assiduity, and the chloral, added to the seclusive habit of life, induced a series of terrible though intermittent illnesses ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... husband's prostration with grief and desolation that drew her off, to do her best with her pretty childish caresses and soothings; and when the two had been sent to their own home, Mrs. Evelyn was so calm that her friend felt she might be left with her daughter ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said, a bit excited, "but I'm going to send her away to-day. I trust it will be soon enough. The doctor has been advising it this long time. Mrs. Colfax is on the edge of nervous prostration, and the baby should be taken from her now and put in your care ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... words, "His Majesty" left the room somewhat more hurriedly than he had entered it. His departure completed Mrs. Russell's prostration. For the remainder of the night she refused to be comforted, but remained terrified, lamenting bitterly, and exclaiming incessantly: "Oh, why did he leave me!—why, oh, why ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... committee of health as being in danger. I was to appear ignorant of my brother's design, of which in truth I was. I took medicine, which had the desired effect. It made me desperately sick, producing excessive prostration. Application was made for my removal to the place where you now see me. Being conveyed hither, arrangements were made for my bail by my supposed friends. I was persuaded that I should continue in this state of unnatural disease from that time till the present. ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... as he tells Peyton of the utter prostration of the last Confederate hope beyond the Colorado. All vain and ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... other disorders which are attributed to malarial conditions. Renal diseases are also wanting; disorders of the liver and kidneys, and Bright's disease, gout, and rheumatism, are not native. The climate in its effect is stimulating, but at the same time soothing to the nerves, so that if "nervous prostration" is wanted, it must be brought here, and cannot be relied on to continue long. These facts are derived from medical practice with the native Indian and Mexican population. Dr. Remondino, to whom I have before ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... intention Julien retired,—not sorry for being able to stretch himself at full length on the good bed prepared for him, in one of the unoccupied cabins. But he woke before day with a feeling of intense prostration, a violent headache, and such an aversion for the mere idea of food that Feliu's invitation to breakfast at five o'clock gave him an internal qualm. Perhaps a touch of malaria. In any case he felt it would be both dangerous and useless to return to town ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... had begun to recover from the first abject prostration of her sorrow, and her fair, resolute brow and sad, firm lips mutely assured him that she never would consent to be his own until their marriage ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the length of Ophiuchus huge." Yet this could not be done, but that the image of the comet itself is in a measure indistinct, capable of awful expansion, and full of threatening and fear. Again, in his fall, the imagination binds up the thunder, the resistance, the massy prostration, separates them from the external form, and binds them together by the help of that image of the mountain half sunk; which again would be unfit but for its own indistinctness, and for that glorious addition "with all his pines," ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... of what medical men call malignity in the case of Maurice Kirkwood. The most alarming symptom was a profound prostration, which at last reached such a point that he lay utterly helpless, as unable to move without aid as the feeblest of paralytics. In this state he lay for many days, not suffering pain, but with the sense of great weariness, and the feeling that he should never rise from his bed again. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... appeared to be in a complete state of mental prostration, on account of the distressing circumstances that had occurred so rapidly and so suddenly in his family, which had had quite enough to contend with without having superadded to every other evil the horror of believing that some preternatural agency was at work ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... with such an one I fancy it will fare—very much as it fared with me. It is an established fact, that a few months' confinement within four walls, without stint of food or aggravation of punishment, will bring an athletic Red Indian to the extreme of bodily prostration, if not ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... of adjustment to life at the Hill Top School was a very bewildering one to Isabelle. The excitement over Peggy's accident was soon past, to that heroine's intense regret. She prolonged her nervous prostration as long as possible, and was duly petted and made much of by the girls. Isabelle, full of remorse for the trouble she had brought upon her room-mate, adopted her as ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... on his breast; his strong hands rested listlessly on his knees: his attitude was that of utter despondency and prostration. But in the expression of his face there were the signs of some dangerous and restless thought which belied not the gloom but the stillness of the posture. His brow, which was habitually open and frank, in its defying aggressive boldness, was now contracted into deep furrows, and lowered ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ladies then spoke of religious rites, and asked me if a Christian, when he was buried, was placed on his knees. This notion they have got from our habits of prayer. Moslems never kneel, properly speaking, at prayer. Their attitudes at prayer are in style and essence, prostration. The ladies, growing bolder, began to speak of the "Bad Place," the ultima thule of Moorish discussion with Christians, imitating the fire of perdition with their hands and mouth, wafting the air with those, and blowing and puffing with this, and then asked me how I should like ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... obsessions play a chief role, also somatic phenomena of hysteria which do not need to be acted upon quickly, such as, for example, anorexia. In acute cases of hysteria it is better to wait for a calmer period before applying psychoanalysis. In cases of nervous prostration this manner of treatment, which demands the serious co-operation and attention of the patient, which lasts a long time and at first takes no notice of the continuance of the phenomena, is difficult. This form of psychotherapy places great demands on the physician's patience ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... inhale this vapor with impunity. It stimulates the circulation of the blood and builds up the tissues. Indorsed by the highest authority in the professions, recommended in midwifery and all cases of nervous prostration. Physicians, surgeons, dentists and private families supplied with this vapor, liquefied, in cylinders of various capacities. It should be administered the same as Nitrous Oxide, but it does not produce headache and nausea as that sometimes ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... broke into loud sobs. The ague-stricken men looked on with eyes full of utter prostration, while the sound of the weeping only drew an impatient movement ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... instinctive; and, perhaps, unexpected even to Liubka herself. Never yet in her life had she kissed any man's hand, save a priest's. Perhaps she wanted to express through this her gratitude to Lichonin, and a prostration before him as ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... has worn herself down nearly to the point of prostration. We think we can break this fever without serious consequences, but get the young man as soon as possible. She can not relax and rest, ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... in her chamber, desiring my lord," announced the slave, with much bowing and prostration, but still with that confidence which showed she knew how welcome the news would be to her august listener. Ahmed rose, a fire of joy ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... am sure, will sing some other song—and a better one, I have no doubt," said Tom, with a very humble prostration of his head on the table, and anxious by a fresh song to get out of the dilemma in which Moriarty's question was near ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... approach secure from this our doom, Prostration—and would urge your course with speed, See that ye still to rightward ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... opened the door of his apartment the fit was over, and his bodily fatigue was so great that he had to catch at the backs of the chairs as he crossed the room to reach a low and broad divan on which he let himself fall heavily. His moral prostration was still greater. That brutality of feeling, which he had known only when charging sabre in hand, amazed this man of forty, who did not recognise in it the instinctive fury of his menaced passion. It was the revolt of jeopardised desire. In his mental and bodily exhaustion it got ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... those of acute yellow atrophy of the liver. The earliest signs are a garlicky taste in the mouth and pain in the throat and stomach. Vomited matter luminous in the dark, bile-stained or bloody, with garlic-like odour. Great prostration, diarrhoea, with bloody stools. Harsh, dry, yellow skin, purpuric spots with ecchymoses under the skin and mucous membranes, retention or suppression of urine, delirium, convulsions, coma, and death. Usually there are remissions for two to three ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... had scarcely hoped to escape an attack, he had never before realized how disastrous it would be to the very ones he had come to serve. Who was there to take care of him? Mrs. Poland was almost helpless from nervous prostration. Amy required absolute quiet to prevent the more fatal relapse, which is almost certain to follow exertion made too early in convalescence. He knew that if he were in the house she would make the attempt to do something ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... to his policy that, seventy years later, a tempest was to burst out in France, which was to sweep away the nobility and the crown itself; which was to deluge the soil of France with its best blood, to carry war through Europe, and to end at last by the prostration of France beneath the feet of the nations to whom ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... was easily arranged. A little discreet wire pulling and Esther was once more established as school mistress of District Number Fifteen. People shook their heads, but by the time of the first snowstorm they had ceased to prophesy nervous prostration, and by the time sleighing was fairly established they were ready to admit that the girl had acted ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... "man notoriously timid, and belonging to the class of political weather-cocks." "We now come," says Mr. Forsyth, "to the most melancholy period of Cicero's life, melancholy not so much from its nature and the extent of the misfortunes which overtook him, as from the abject prostration of mind into which he was thrown." Mr. Froude, as might be expected, uses language stronger than that of others, and tells us that "he retired to Macedonia to pour out his sorrows and his resentments in lamentations ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... dog-catcher up with his various sets of teeth, fastened to his collar, coat-tails, and feet respectively, carried him yelling like a trooper to the end of the wharf and dropped him into the Styx. The result of this was nervous prostration for the dog-catcher, another suit for damages for the city, and a great laugh for the State authorities. In fact," Boswell added, confidentially, "I think perhaps the reason why the Prime-minister hasn't got Apollyon to hang the whole city ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... did not die. The fever spent itself at last and there followed long days of utter prostration both of mind and body. Dyce's cheery patience never failed. Her sunny nature diffused a bright hopefulness throughout the sick chamber, until Evadne would lie in a dreamy content, almost fancying herself back in the old ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... creature, while every allusion to the Creator was a magnificat. Lady Huntingdon's hymn has no flattering phrases for the human subject. "Worthless worm," and "vilest of them all" indicate the true Pauline or Oriental prostration of self before a superior being; but there is grandeur in the metre, the awful reverence, and the scene of judgment in the stanzas—always remembering the mighty choral that has so long given the lyric its voice in the church, and is ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... caught Kitty Tynan's eyes by accident, and there was the same look of understanding in both. They both knew that here was the real tragedy of Crozier's life. If he had had less reverence for his wife, less of that obvious prostration of soul, he probably would never ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of his attendance at the Grammar-school, young Lockhart, though naturally possessed of a sound constitution, was seized with a severe illness, which, it was feared, might terminate in pulmonary consumption. After a period of physical prostration, he satisfactorily rallied, when it was found by his teacher that he had attained such proficiency in classical learning, during his confinement, as to be qualified for the University, without the usual ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... dear," she remonstrated. "You must relax a little when you are away from the office, or you'll have—oh, brain-fag, or nervous prostration, or ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... rubber-like substance, and nothing short of an operation for appendicitis was likely to put me in possession of the missing exhibit. So I went on to the hotel, and ten minutes later found myself in the presence of an interesting case of nervous prostration. Poor Goward! When I observed the wrought-up condition of his nerves, I was immediately so filled with pity for him that if it hadn't been for Maria I think I should at once have assumed charge of his case, and, as his personal counsel, sued the family for damages on his behalf. ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... revolution in this country as well as Mr. Cobbett;" and, to say the truth, by degrading the person of the sovereign, exalting the power of the French armies and the wisdom of their counsels, holding forth that peace (which they allow can only be purchased by the humiliating prostration of our honour) is indispensable to the very existence of this country, I think that for these two years past they have done their utmost to hasten the fulfilment of their own prophecy.' Yet, he adds, 9,000 copies are printed quarterly, 'no genteel family can pretend to be without it,' and ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... elevation whence only can the understretching regions of an impassive mutability be satisfactorily contemplated; and if, in our heterogeneous ambition, aspirant above self-capacity, we approach too near the flammiferous Titan, and so become pinionless, and reduced again to an earthly prostration, what marvel is it, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... had given her the change and passed on, still disgruntled, Patsy allowed herself what she called a "temporary attack of private prostration." ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... sight the truth that the real quality of the Renaissance was intellectual—that it was the emancipation of the reason for the modern world—we may inquire how feudalism was related to it. The mental condition of the Middle Ages was one of ignorant prostration before the idols of the Church—dogma and authority and scholasticism. Again, the nations of Europe during these centuries were bound down by the brute weight of material necessities. Without the power over the outer world which the physical sciences and useful arts communicate, without the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Canova; and never shall I forget the enthusiasm with which he was received—it is impossible to describe the shouts of triumph and of rapture sent up to heaven by every voice. And when he gave his benediction to the people, there was an universal prostration, a sobbing and marks of emotions of joy almost like the bursting of the heart. I heard, everywhere around me, cries of "The holy Father! The most holy Father! His restoration is the work of God!" I saw tears streaming from the eyes of almost all the women about me, many ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... the complete financial, moral and political prostration of France-a prostration from which only a Napoleon ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... is assuredly one of the most costly instruments that exist, but his place is in the hand of one who is more powerful He is only an instrument, we may say, he is a MIRROR—he is no "purpose in himself" The objective man is in truth a mirror accustomed to prostration before everything that wants to be known, with such desires only as knowing or "reflecting" implies—he waits until something comes, and then expands himself sensitively, so that even the light footsteps and gliding-past of spiritual beings may not be lost on ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... off sharply, let her beautiful head droop with a movement of deep prostration upon ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... sleep that steals upon us sometimes, which, while it holds the body prisoner, does not free the mind from a sense of things about it, and enable it to ramble at its pleasure. So far as an overpowering heaviness, a prostration of strength, and an utter inability to control our thoughts or power of motion, can be called sleep, this is it; and yet, we have a consciousness of all that is going on about us, and, if we dream at such a time, words ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... mother in a condition of utter prostration. For a little while after coming out of the swoon into which her first wild fears had thrown her, she had been able to maintain a tolerably calm exterior. But the very effort to do this was a draught on her strength, and in a few hours, under the continued suspense of waiting and hearing nothing ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... is precisely what is involved if we adopt this mischievous suggestion of 'a new way to pay old debts.' Our fate in attempting such a course may be easily read in the history of similar follies both in Europe and in our own country. Prostration of credit, financial disaster, widespread distress among all classes of the community, would form the closing scenes in our career of gratuitous folly and national dishonor. And from such an abyss of sorrow and humiliation, ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... brain's giddiness—the utter prostration of strength—the Oh! I never shall forget the death-like feel!—Fat men rolling on the deck, like fresh caught porpoises; little children floundering about; and white muslins and parasols vanishing below! The smoking-hot dinner ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... highly recommended. Frequent gargling of the throat and mouth, with a solution of lactic acid, strong enough to taste sour, will help to keep the parts clean, and correct the foul breath. If there is great prostration, with the nasal passage affected, or hoarseness and difficult breathing, a physician should ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... scholars at Mota. The season had been unfavourable, and the crop of yams in some islands had almost failed. However, in another fortnight I was again at Mota with some six or seven tons of yams. I found things lamentably changed. A great mortality was going on, dysentery and great prostration of strength ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... by his wound, which had been a much more serious one than that inflicted upon Ellen; and in his then state of prostration, was not as well prepared to scorn the motives of Durant, or penetrate his designs, as he might have been under more favorable auspices; and having no reason to doubt the sincerity of the seemingly repentant man, he entered into his plans at once, with all ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... any government with the well-being of the General Government, and with as much reason as the committee had for their opinion, to assign the power to Congress, although the consequence must be the prostration ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... bitterly; and Kyu[u]bei wept with her—bitterly. "Like the mother! The Buddhas of Daienji[5] would indeed weep at the appearance of such a monster." This was his thought; not expressed with the humble gratitude, prostration, and promises which he fully intended to keep. Kyu[u]bei reverentially accepted the mirror, the goods, the money. Taking his leave of Yotsuya—a long one he feared—with sighs he set out for Kanda. ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... leaves and boughs. I was thoroughly exhausted, and flung myself on the ground, scarcely able to move. All that afternoon I lay in the shade by the side of the stream, and those bright woods and sparkling waters are associated in my mind with recollections of lassitude and utter prostration. When night came I sat down by the fire, longing, with an intensity of which at this moment I can hardly conceive, for ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... fain write to you in my own hand, but really cannot. [These words, which are hardly legible, and probably the last poor Boswell ever wrote, afford the clearest evidence of his utter physical prostration.] Alas, my friend, what a state is this! My son James is to write for me what remains of this letter, and I am to dictate. The pain which continued for so many weeks was very severe indeed, and when ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... friends. I know Geraldine Jerrold pretty well, and if I's Hannah I wouldn't run to every beck and call, when nothing under the sun ails her but hypo. She has had everything, I do believe—malary, cancers, spinal cords, nervous prostration, and now it's her heart. Humbug! More like hysterics. Burton Jerrold has got his hands full, and I pity him. Why, he looks like an old, broken-down man, and his hair is ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... new, Light as the feather feet of Perseus flew, Long as the seven leagued boots in tales gone by, This shall bestride the sea and ride the sky. Thus shall he fly, and beat above your nation The clashing pinions of Apocalypse, Ye shall be deep sea fish in pale prostration Under the sky foam of his ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... occurred at Leipsic in 1847. In September, while listening to his own recently composed "Nacht Lied" he swooned away. His system, weakened by overwork, succumbed, nervous prostration followed, and on November 4 he died. Sudden death had carried off his grandfather, father, mother and favorite sister; and he had a presentiment that his end would come about in the same way. During ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... statement, never volunteering a word of their own. She could recall a long, hot afternoon when her aunt and Annie had essayed alternate remarks upon the weather, the crops, the garden, church, Sunday school, and the last sermon, to the verge of nervous prostration without varying their visitors' echoing responses by so much as one syllable. Elizabeth felt that Miss Kendall deserved all the discomfort she could give her. She folded her hands more primly and waited. Her victim glanced along ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... earliest who come with eager inquiries, and begs to see the sufferer. But she is confronted by the indefatigable spinster, who, cloaking her denial under ceremonious form, declares that her state of nervous prostration will not admit of it. Madame withdraws, sadly; but the visit and the claim are repeated from time to time, until the stately civility of Miss Johns arouses ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... because my speech is getting worse, and I have noticed that the boss has mentioned it to me a couple of times now, and it almost breaks my heart to know that my position is going to get away from me. No one realizes how much one suffers, and I'm afraid I'm going to break down with nervous prostration soon. When one day is over with me, I wonder how I am going to get through ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... Reverence. It should be interwoven with all our Thoughts and Perceptions, and become one with the Consciousness of our own Being. It is not to be reflected on in the Coldness of Philosophy, but ought to sink us into the lowest Prostration before him, who is so ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... describing a mourner when quiescent, he says: "The sufferer sits motionless, or gently rocks to and fro; the circulation becomes languid; respiration is almost forgotten, and deep sighs are drawn. All this reacts on the brain, and prostration soon follows with collapsed ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... great inroads in it, Delaherche opened his budget of news for their benefit. His wife, the Lord be praised! was very well, but he was greatly alarmed for the colonel, who had sunk into a condition of deep prostration, although his mother continued to bear him ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... dejection after his narrow escape. Dr. Brown said it was nervous prostration, and Doll rode into Southminster and returned laden with comic papers. Who shall say whether the cause was physical or mental? Hugh had seen death very near for the first time, and the thought of death haunted him. He had not realized ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... a hard blow," muttered Gotzkowsky; and as his wandering eye met Ephraim's, he added with an expression of complete prostration: "Enjoy my suffering; you have ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... ever the same in all nations; but the mode in which they are dressed is continually varying. The general idea of showing respect is by making yourself less: but the manner, whether by bowing the body, kneeling, prostration, pulling off the upper part of our dress, or taking away the lower, is a matter of habit. It would be unjust to conclude that all ornaments, because they were at first arbitrarily contrived, are therefore undeserving of our attention; ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... however, to the impressiveness of the whole scene is the same as mars all Papal pageants,—I mean the length and monotony of the performance. One chant may be fine, one prostration before the altar may be striking, one burst of the choral litany may act upon your senses; but, when you have chant after chant, prostration after prostration, chorus after chorus, each the twin brother to ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... in the corral, and although I was momentarily delayed by the servants at the gateway, I was surprised to find Enriquez himself lying languidly on his back in a hammock in the patio. His arms were hanging down listlessly on each side as if in the greatest prostration, yet I could not resist the impression that the rascal had only just got into the hammock when he ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... find language to express the degree of mental prostration to which such an adventurous wight would be reduced in the keen encounter with Tim Linkinwater, so Tim gave up the rest of his declaration in pure lack of words, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... design, was indeed given her head in the weeks that followed, for Mrs. Salisbury steadily declined into a real illness, and the worried family was only too glad to delegate all the domestic problems to Justine. The invalid's condition, from "nervous breakdown" became "nervous prostration," and August was made terrible for the loving little group that watched her by the cruel fight with typhoid fever into which Mrs. Salisbury's exhausted little body was drawn. Weak as she was physically, ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... patient is not allowed to take any nourishment while the fever lasts, and if he keeps quiet, avoids sudden changes of temperature, and does not fret, he generally recovers in a week or ten days. He suffers from languor and prostration, however, for a fortnight or more, and if he overeats, moves about in the sunshine, or exposes himself to the night air, he is liable to have another chill, with a relapse, in which the fever is higher and more obstinate, perhaps, than at first. Under ordinary circumstances ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... occasions when the women when naked revolted me, my prick refused to stand, and I departed without copulating, but those occasions with this class of women are not worth noting. I have been subject to this sudden revolt and prostration, sometimes even when the woman was most beautiful. Nervousness, fear, some sudden dislike, and even most ridiculous reasons have ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... new city, Pienza, with a cathedral, archbishop's palace, town hall and Papal residence (the P.Piccolomini), which are interesting if not strikingly original works. Pisa possesses few early Renaissance structures, owing to the utter prostration of her fortunes in the 15th century, and the dominance of Pisan Gothic traditions. In Lucca, besides a wealth of minor monuments (largely the work of Matteo Civitali, 1435-1501) in various churches, anumber of palaces ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... strange thing that had already befallen them in the obsession of this silent woman, who sat so still, so suddenly endued with vigor, so brilliant with health and freshness, out of a state of mental anguish bordering on nervous prostration? Was it all fictitious?—and was there something terrible to ensue when it should collapse? And what action was incumbent on her hostess, left to face this problem in this lonely country house in the dead hours ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... territory of the enemy. The capital itself, in the event of war, would be constantly exposed to insult. In truth there was hardly a politician or a soldier in Europe who doubted that the conflict would be terminated in a very few days by the prostration of the House ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... care, however, and all the alleviations which she used, the sick child suffered and moaned terribly. The awful state of the throat, the terrible prostration caused by this form of blood poisoning, were no light foes to have to beat and conquer. But unceasing care presently produced a happy result, and toward evening the high temperature went down a couple of degrees, and the child's ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... off such a success as Barnum did; but we had no kick coming when we counted up the receipts for the next week. Merritt's lecture was a work of art and he manufactured language at a rate which would have given Noah Webster nervous prostration when he christened the python 'Old Glory,' and told about its combining the venomous qualities of the cobra and the strength of the boa-constrictor. The python was so stuck on its new colors that it nearly broke its neck turning around to admire ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... "perhaps other notions of art than picture admirers have in general. I looked on pictures as things to be avoided, connoisseurs looked on them as things to be imitated; and that, too, with such a deference and humbleness of submission, amounting to a total prostration of mind and original feeling; as must serve only to fill the world with abortions." But he was very agreeable, and I endured the visit, I trust, without the usual ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... our last, our best, our dearest, That right to fluttering female hearts the nearest, Which even the Rights of Kings in low prostration Most humbly own—'tis dear, dear admiration! In that blest sphere alone we live and move; There taste that life of life—immortal love.— Smiles, glances, sighs, tears, fits, flirtations, airs, 'Gainst such an host ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... on the Nervous System. That the use of tobacco produces a pernicious effect upon the nervous system is obvious from the indignant protest of the entire body against it when it is first used. Its poisonous character is amply shown by the distressing prostration and pallor, the dizziness and faintness, with extreme nausea and vomiting, which follow its ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... know times of prostration at the outset of life. Lucien had sunk to the depths at the blow, but he struck the bottom with his feet, and rose to the surface again, vowing to subjugate this little world. He rose like a bull, stung to fury by a shower of darts, and prepared to obey Louise by declaiming Saint John in Patmos; ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Domicil'd at the farm-house of my friends, the Staffords, near by, I lived half the time along this creek and its adjacent fields and lanes. And it is to my life here that I, perhaps, owe partial recovery (a sort of second wind, or semi-renewal of the lease of life) from the prostration of 1874-'75. If the notes of that outdoor life could only prove as glowing to you, reader dear, as the experience itself was to me. Doubtless in the course of the following, the fact of invalidism will crop out, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... has been said it were best to come and see. Spend a season where no dreary winters will engender melancholy while waiting for a lingering spring, and where no sizzling heat will threaten prostration. Come to a state that is as free as possible from the ills of unfriendly phenomena, and where one beautiful day passes into the next as a pleasant dream shades into the sweetest realities ...
— The Beauties of the State of Washington - A Book for Tourists • Harry F. Giles
... and have hurled them with unexpected explosion into the midst of all manner of educational, reformatory, religious and political assemblies, sometimes to the pleasant surprise and half welcome of the members; more often to the bewilderment and prostration of numerous victims; and in a few signal instances, to the gnashing of angry men's teeth. I know of no two more pertinacious incendiaries in the whole country; nor will they themselves deny the charge. In fact, this noise-making ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... interesting lady guilty if they had fed upon starchless food. For this is the creed of the new teaching. All starch foods are chiefly digested in the intestines instead of in the main stomach, and hence are unnatural and morbiferous, and the chief cause of the nervous prostration and broken-down health that abound on all sides. (Herr Nordau gives quite a different explanation of the general breakdown, but no matter.) "The 'Natural Food Society,'" says its official organ, "is founded in the belief ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... Perouse visited this island, he found the inhabitants clothed in blue nankin, and "the form of their dress differed but little from that of the Chinese; their pipes were Chinese, and of Tootanague; they had long nails; and they saluted by kneeling and prostration, like the Chinese. If," continues the navigator, "they have a common origin with the Tartars and Chinese their separation from these nations must be of very ancient date, for they have no resemblance to them in person, and ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... disqualification; inefficiency, wastefulness. telum imbelle[Lat], brutum fulmen[Lat], blank, blank cartridge, flash in the pan, vox et proeterea nihil[Lat], dead letter, bit of waste paper, dummy; paper tiger; Quaker gun. inefficacy &c. (inutility) 645[obs3]; failure &c. 732. helplessness &c. adj.; prostration, paralysis, palsy, apoplexy, syncope, sideration|, deliquium|[Lat], collapse, exhaustion, softening of the brain, inanition; emasculation, orchiotomy [Med], orchotomy[Med]. cripple, old woman, muff, powder puff, creampuff, pussycat, wimp, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... perfectly aware, that in 1841 and 1842, before the discovery of copper-mines, South Australia was universally in a state of bankruptcy. Never was a country so thoroughly smitten with ruin. Almost all the original settlers sank in the general prostration of the settlement, and never again held up their heads. The inhabitants slunk away from the colony in numbers; and property even in Adelaide was almost worthless. The holders of the eighty-acre sections produced far more of the necessaries of life than the non-producing ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... hurried work, to be using days for walking, and little things that since I was a grown woman have been crowded into odds and ends of time, or omitted for want of enough of it. I am gaining strength, however, and realize how complete the prostration was, and how radical the reconstructive processes had to be. The seclusion in which I live, surrounded by pine woods, a mile and a half from the nearest post office (tho' a postman brings our letters) and an equal distance from such supplies ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... to Sir Reginald Elphinstone, for it very soon became evident to him that Barker's daring attempt at piracy had inflicted a very severe shock upon Lady Olivia, which quickly developed into an attack of nervous prostration, that rendered an immediate return home exceedingly desirable; the more so that Ida was also suffering from shock, although not to nearly so serious an extent as her mother. The whole question was fully discussed by the men ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... found the Princess alone on the dais, receiving the company. "Nervous prostration" had made it impossible for the Prince to be present. He was confined to his bed-chamber; and the Doctor was in attendance ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... then nearly a conviction, and I went on my way not alone without remonstrance or regret on her part, but with intense encouragement. She had heard of Mr. O'Brien's disaster, and a rumour of his arrest, had witnessed the prostration of the people, had heard I had means of escape proposed for me, and came with what money could be provided. We spent that night together at the house of a woman who had been lately confined. She endeavoured to provide ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... is not highly contagious. Children old enough to complain of symptoms usually first complain of an intense headache with frequent vomiting and very high fever. Great prostration is seen, the pulse is weak, the respirations are irregular, the child may have convulsions, or it may have chills and fever, and rigidity of the body may be present. The position of the child is very characteristic. It does not want to lie on its back but usually rests on one ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... be serviceable when it arises from a temporary prostration of spirits: during which the mind is insensibly healing, and her scattered power silently returning. This is better than to be the sport of a teasing hope without reason. But to indulge in despair as a habit is slothful, cowardly, short-sighted; and manifestly tends against Nature. Despair ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... only an interlude. Scarcely had Bessie and Margaret been settled at Ivy Lodge when there came anxiety about Colin—tidings of his prostration by a bad attack of fever; then, when he was able to write of his recovery, little Fitz broke his leg, and had to be brought home at the cost of much expense as well as distress to be nursed well again. And worst of all, through these many weeks a terrible ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... pitiable ignorance. Conscious of superior power, we can bear to hear our Sovereign described as a tributary of the Celestial Empire. Conscious of superior knowledge we can bear to hear ourselves described as savages destitute of every useful art. When our ambassadors were required to perform a prostration, which in Europe would have been considered as degrading, we were rather amused than irritated. It would have been unworthy of us to have recourse to arms on account of an uncivil phrase, or of a dispute ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... two months she had raised the thousand; but she wrote Miss Grant, "I do not recollect being so fatigued, even to prostration, as I have been for a few weeks past." She often quoted a remark of Dr. Lyman Beecher's, "The wear and tear of what I cannot do is a great deal more than the wear and tear of what I do." When she became quite worn, her habit was to sleep nearly all the time, for two or three ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton |
