"Lethargical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sore but too lethargic to suffer, drifted drearily along, feeling that if Dory Hargrave were not under the influence of that brilliant, vanished past of hers, even he would abandon her as had the rest, or, at least, wouldn't care for her. Not that she doubted his sincerity in the ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... other aspects of the matter, but his determination was assured. He meditated elaborately before he took action, for the drug he had taken inclined him to a lethargic and dignified melancholy. In certain respects he modified details. If he left all his property to Elizabeth it would include the voluptuously appointed room he occupied, and for many reasons he did not care to leave that to her. On the other hand, it had to be left to some one. In his clogged ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... kind, which in a less sincere society restricts its expression to innuendo or forced politeness, left the rustic Ira only dumb and lethargic. He moved slowly and abstractedly around the room, accenting his slight lameness more than ever, or dropped helplessly into a chair, where he sat, inanely conscious of the contiguity of his wife and the deputy, and stupidly expectant of—he knew not what. The atmosphere of ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... the subject of clerical marriage—in fact, he shocked his patron in many ways. He was a large, heavy, pale-faced young man, with strange, sleek qualities that appealed to her through their unaccustomedness. But he was scarcely a sleek man in office, and under his drawling, lethargic manner there was an energy that struck her as shocking and out of place. He was like Lawrence, speaking forbidden words and of hidden things. In church he preached embarrassing perfections—she could no longer feel ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... has become a lethargic state of mind for us. We accepted it from the beginning with green-fly, influenza, margarine, calling-up notices, and death. It is as much outside our control as the precession of the equinoxes. We believed ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... Ferronaise was not dead, but sleeping. Her love of luxury and pleasure—her joy in jewels, equipage, and dress—her woman's elemental weaknesses, second only to the instinct for maternity—all these, grown lethargic from hunger, were ready to awake again at the mere possibility of food. She was forced to confront the fact that, with the same opportunities, she had it in her to go back to the same life. It was a humiliating fact, but it stared her in the face, that experience had shown her a creature ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... when at the same time one of the several doors of the apartment opened, admitting the jestress, Jacqueline, whose long, flowing gown of dark green bore no distinguishing mark of the motley she had assumed the night before. The dreamy, almost lethargic, gaze of the princess rested for a moment upon the ardent eyes of the maid who stood motionless ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... eyes into the detection of an oversight which argues a sudden Lethean forgetfulness on the part of Milton; and in many generations of readers, however alive and awake with malice, a corresponding forgetfulness not less astonishing. Two readers only I have ever heard of that escaped this lethargic inattention; one of which two is myself; and I ascribe my success partly to good luck, but partly to some merit on my own part in having cultivated a habit of systematically accurate reading. If I read at all, I make it a duty to read truly and faithfully. I profess allegiance for the time to the ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... as they dealt with the social and political tendencies that fanned the revolution into flame two years later, their success was instantaneous. His true representations of Hungarian life and character, his passionate love of liberty, his lofty idealism for his crushed and lethargic country, aroused a great wave of patriotism like a call to arms, and consecrated him to work with his pen for the freedom of the common people. ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... at his feet The world passed on—the surging crowd Of men and women, passionate, turgid, dense, Keenly alert, lethargic, or ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... influence that no one can appreciate who has not observed their effects. Children who are slow, dull, and lethargic; who observe but little of what goes on around them; who react slowly to external stimuli; who are, in short, slow to see, to hear, to observe, to think, and to do, may be completely transformed in these ways ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... 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 did ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... those mentioned in medical books. Sometimes, without any apparent cause, I sank, little by little, into a condition of hemi-syncope, or half swoon; and, in this condition, without pain, without ability to stir, or, strictly speaking, to think, but with a dull lethargic consciousness of life and of the presence of those who surrounded my bed, I remained, until the crisis of the disease restored me, suddenly, to perfect sensation. At other times I was quickly and impetuously smitten. I grew sick, and numb, and chilly, and dizzy, and so fell prostrate at once. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Just as the governor had opened his court to give a hearing to all parties, it pleased God, for our sins, and to our great misfortune, that he was suddenly taken ill of a fever. He remained four days in a lethargic state; after which, by the advice of his physicians, he confessed and received the sacrament with great devotion, and appointed Marcos de Aguilar, who had come with him from Spain, to succeed him in the government. On the ninth ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... the pool of a slimy eel or a blundering bullhead or a lethargic sucker is bad enough, but the rush in of the pickerel is the advent of the devil himself. Until he is got rid of, all the delicate machinery for the calculation of chances is hopelessly disturbed; and no one could tell what would ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of a scrivener's business to verify the accuracy of his copy, word by word. Where there are two or more scriveners in an office, they assist each other in this examination, one reading from the copy, the other holding the original. It is a very dull, wearisome, and lethargic affair. I can readily imagine that to some sanguine temperaments it would be altogether intolerable. For example, I cannot credit that the mettlesome poet Byron would have contentedly sat down with Bartleby to examine a law document of, say ...
— Bartleby, The Scrivener - A Story of Wall-Street • Herman Melville
... strange that one 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 ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... were awakened from their lethargic sleep by the far-away crash of the avalanche. Their faces blanched as they thought of the hunters. "The hill spirits have smitten! Ioh! Ioh!" they moaned. In her igloo Annadoah, who had waited with sleepless anxiety, wept alone. Of all in the village only the heart of one, Maisanguaq, ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... had been left behind on account of illness, was attacked with a strange disease, of which several of the team eventually died before the winter came to an end. It was seized with spasms, and, after a few wild paroxysms, lapsed into a lethargic state. In this condition the animal functions went on apparently as well as usual, the appetite continued not only good but voracious. The disease was clearly mental. It barked furiously at nothing, ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... seized with anxiety, and went up to the dying woman, who was in the same state, lethargic and impassive, her eyes open and her hands clutching the counterpane. The nurse perceived that this might go on thus for two days, four days, eight days, even, and her avaricious mind was seized with fear. She was excited to fury ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... complaints were heard on all hands of the want of enterprise of the Hudson's Bay Company in not seizing the opportunities afforded by the charter. Its trade was lethargic, its traders were timid or slothful, its people possessed none of that audacity and adventure which had sent Frenchmen like Du Lhut and La Verendrye into the wilds intent on territory or trade. They yawned ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... of distinction and regard to which his constant and indefatigable zeal in support of the American cause, as well as his signal service, gave him such just pretnesions. The intelligence which he brought gave new impulse both to Congress and to the State Legislatures. The lethargic slumbers into which they seemed to be sinking yielded to resolutions ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... lethargic patients are given ants to swallow, and to eat lion's flesh will make a coward brave; but people abstain from eating the hearts of fowls, lest thereby they should be rendered timid. When a child is late in learning to speak, the Turks of Central ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... his age." She then went on, after a longer pause: "'Music and dancing: music, rather weak ... dancing, a steady worker.' That's very good, isn't it? ... 'Map-drawing: very slovenly.'" (She read this rather proudly.) "'Conduct: lethargic and unsteady; but a fair speller.' Excellent, isn't it? Of course they're frightfully severe at that school. ... Oh yes, and there's 'Bible good, but deficient in general knowledge. Has a little ability, but rarely uses it. ...' It's dreadfully difficult to please them, really! ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... in the first place these so-called cherished beliefs have no foundation in fact, and no influence on the lives of the persons who cherished them, no real connection with Christianity? What would you have me do, as a man? Continue to preach them for the sake of the lethargic peace of which you speak? leave the church paralyzed, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... comforts and the superficial interest he felt in such prattle as this. His bodily health improved before his mental activity; perhaps it was owing to the freedom from worry consequent upon this lethargic state of mind that he was able ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... or inaccuracy, and promising them for faithfulness a passport to the glories of heaven. This shows that the author at least took the work seriously. That there is not a trace of humor in the book would doubtless recommend it to the dignified and lethargic orientals for whom it was written. Bokhari seemed to consider himself prophet, priest, and poet-laureate in one. The work has a high position in the Malayan Peninsula, where it is read by young and old. The "Crown of Kings" is written ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... a small fracture, the contemplation of which aroused considerable interest in all present, with the exception of the patient. Don Mike was still dizzy; because his vision was impaired he kept his eyes closed; he heard a humming noise as if a lethargic bumble bee had taken up his residence inside the Farrel ears. Kay, observing him closely, realized that he was very weak, that only by the exercise of a very strong will had he succeeded in sitting up during the journey in from the ranch. His brow was cold and wet with perspiration, his breathing ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... should think it might be redde with great effect to a man dying without much pain, in preference to all the stuff that ever was said or sung in churches. But you are a deacon, and I say no more. Ah! you will marry and become lethargic, like poor Hal of Harrow, [2] who yawns at 10 o' ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... the bees consume very little food indeed; and still less during severe cold weather. Mr. White (with many other apiarians) is of opinion, that a greater degree of cold than is commonly imagined to be proper for bees is favourable to them in winter, for the bees during that period, are in so lethargic a state, that little ...
— A Description of the Bar-and-Frame-Hive • W. Augustus Munn
... has heard of that Irish clerk who used to snore so loudly during the sermon that he drowned the parson's voice. The old vicar, being of a good-natured as well as a somewhat humorous turn of mind, devised a plan for arousing his lethargic clerk. He provided himself with a box of hard peas, and when the well-known snore echoed through the church, he quietly dropped one of the peas on the head of the offender, who was at once aroused to the sense of his duties, ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... Rienzi", lib. ii. c. 23.) 'In him was concentrated every thought for every want of Rome. Indefatigably occupied, he inspected, ordained, regulated all things; in the city, in the army, for peace, or for war. But he was feebly supported, and those he employed were lukewarm and lethargic.' Still his arms prospered. Place after place, fortress after fortress, yielded to the Lieutenant of the Senator: and the cession of Palestrina itself was hourly expected. His art and address were always strikingly exhibited in difficult ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... politics, literature, or the arts, that I write rather to prove to you my desire of nourishing your correspondence than of being able to give you any thing interesting at this time. The political world is almost lulled to sleep by the lethargic state of the Dutch negotiation, which will probably end in peace. Nor does this court profess to apprehend, that the Emperor will involve this hemisphere in war by his schemes on Bavaria and Turkey. The arts, instead of advancing, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... 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 ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... and at last fell asleep; when she awoke it was 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? Were it not better gently to withdraw the dead child and ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... prevail With all its rhet'ric, nor the jail, To keep from flaying scourge thy skin, And ankle free from iron gin? Which now thou shalt — But first our care 970 Must see how HUDIBRAS doth fare. This said, he gently rais'd the Knight, And set him on his bum upright. To rouse him from lethargic dump, He tweak'd his nose; with gentle thump 975 Knock'd on his breast, as if 't had been To raise the spirits lodg'd within. They, waken'd with the noise, did fly From inward room to window eye, And gently op'ning lid, the casement, 980 Look'd out, but yet with ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... sisters be like? Desmond and Pamela say very little. All I know is that Alice—that's Mrs. Gaddesden—is to have a fire in her room all day, though the weather now is like July. To judge from her photographs, she is fair, rather pretty, stout and lethargic. Whereas Margaret is as thin almost as her father, and head-over-ears in war charities. She lives, says Pamela, on arrowroot and oatcake, to set an example, and her servants leave her ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 with ourselves that nine-tenths of our miseries really ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... believed, that Henry was sincere in subscribing conditions so humiliating; nor can his easy and lethargic temper account for his so readily relinquishing the pretensions of the Princess Joanna, whom, notwithstanding the popular imputations on her birth, he seems always to have cherished as his own offspring. ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... I didn't 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, I should ask you to marry me. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... drugged, Rudyard Byng made his way through the streets, oblivious of all around him. His brain was like some engine pounding at high pressure, while all his body was cold and lethargic. His anger at those he left behind was almost madness, his humiliation was unlike anything he had ever known. In one sense he was not a man of the world. All his thoughts and moods and habits had been essentially ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... stretched on a palanquin. His coming brought a ray of comfort to the unhappy mothers; the tears, which had been till then restrained through excess of sorrow, now began to flow, and, nature being thus relieved, all the three bereaved ones fell into a lethargic repose. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... 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 ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... slightest hint of a rich man's patronage. Death, however, in its fiercest shape, had now put an abrupt end to any such benevolent scheme, whether or not it might have been feasible,—and, absorbed in a kind of lethargic reverie, he again and again asked himself what use he was in the world?—what could he do with the brief remaining portion of his life?—and how he could dispose, to his own satisfaction, of the vast wealth which, like a huge golden mill-stone, hung ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... December, he introduced a stranger queen into a glass hive, in his cabinet, and confined her there. The bees had no opportunity of going out. This stranger was well received; her presence awakened the workers from their lethargic state, into which they did not relapse; she excited no carnage; the number of dead bees on the board of the hive did not sensibly increase; and no ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... deals with powerful human passions in no lethargic way. It may horrify by its brutality, and its assault on ordinary morality may well be considered startling: yet it counts for something that M. Artzibashef does not display the common ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... which composed this military temperament is not to be recalled. No fighting men have been more ready for war, yet so indifferent to military glory, more imbued with patriotism, yet so prone to fight for themselves alone, more courageous, yet so careful of their lives, more lethargic, or even languid by nature, and yet so capable of the most strenuous activity. Such were the Boers of the veld. In one particular they had never been surpassed by any troops. No Boer but was a bold horseman and a skilled horsemaster, who kept his mount ready ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... when the 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 ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... followed him in, and was standing just behind his chair, head hanging, ears lopping, lethargic patience showing in every contour ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... down and jump off the dock when this counter-irritant blistered me and her tonic bitters were poured into my lethargic circulation. Stimulation brought a reaction of brighter views, however. Mrs. Dewey's old-fashioned drubbing held the mirror so that I could behold a life-sized burro every time I looked into it. There never can be any use ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... of technique as Walter Pater and Henry James. From his mother's Norman ancestry he inherited the physique of a giant, tainted with epilepsy; a Viking countenance, strong- featured with leonine moustaches; and a barbaric temper, habitually somewhat lethargic but irritable, and, when roused, violent and intolerant of opposition. He had a private education at Rouen, with wide desultory reading; went to Paris, which he hated, to study law, which he also hated; frequented the theatres and studios; travelled in Corsica, the Pyrenees, ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... as are displeased with themselves for some infirmity. In this latter case we have a member of our club, that, when Sir Jeffrey falls asleep, wakens him with snoring. This makes Sir Jeffrey hold up for some moments the longer, to see there are men younger than himself among us, who are more lethargic than he is. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... Lisle spoke almost in a whisper, her lips, close to the ear of Mrs. Dexter. The words, or at least some of them, had the effect to rouse the latter from her half lethargic condition. Lifting her face from the bosom of her friend, she looked up ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... with green undergrowth the girl stretched herself on her back, for she was tired, and began in a monotonous tone to sing a few words, repeating the same ones over and over again; the boy crouched close beside her, half inclined, he also, to stretch himself at full length on the ground, so lethargic did he feel. The sun shone into the girl's open mouth as she sang, lighting up her glistening white teeth, and gleaming on her full red lips. The boy caught sight of her teeth, and, holding the girl's head and eagerly ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... which we discovered trying to make pancakes, and pancakes, which we discovered trying to make Yorkshire pudding. Worcester Sauce and the invaluable curry powder were never wanting. After dinner we smoked a lethargic pipe. ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... soporiferous, somniferous, soporific, dormitive, narcotic, somnific, hypnotic; dormant, sluggish, lethargic, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... become darker, and in the middle of it, a tall emaciated figure moved about. The old woman stood upright, and in awakening from her lethargic sleep, before even full consciousness had returned to her, in turning upon her side, and raising herself on her elbow, she had extinguished three of the candles which burned near the mortuary bed. Then, recovering her strength, she got out of bed and began to seek for her things. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... In conscience, in the sense of personal dignity, in the ultimate inability of man to deny the self which he is, we have always an appeal against such tendencies, which cannot fail; but it needs to be made resolutely when conscience is lethargic and the whole bias of the mind is to the ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... that Christobal, and perhaps Mr. Boyle, would be on the bridge, keeping the lookout, and she was not inclined for talk at the moment. The doctor would have understood at once that the girl was below par, owing to the strain of the preceding days, and the lethargic rest which exhaustion had imposed on her. Yet, there are times when science does ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... buildings in this city, and the churches are inferior to many erected by the Spaniards in the smallest villages. Nevertheless, the whole place exhibits a business like appearance, much more so than most cities in this lethargic part of the world. In Costa Rica is a volcanic mountain, Cartago (now quiet), from the top of which the traveller can view the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans at one glance. In a right line over the tops of the mountains, neither is more than twenty miles distant, and from the great ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... the lethargic, the brainless, everything that savours of enthusiasm is a craze. The politician who throws himself heart and soul into a political contest is "off his head," is seized with a craze. The philanthropist who builds and endows hospitals ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... into a kind of lethargic musing, and as Cosmo had not yet made up his mind to show her the paper he had found in the top of the cane, and ask her opinion concerning it, for the present he bade her good-night—little thinking he was not to see her again in this ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Gorgonian head: Or lurk in the port of serrated teeth In white triple tiers of 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, Pale ravener ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... 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 together in the daytime at their tiny farm; at night sitting in the gloomy kitchen, ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... bed again, if she liked. Hour after hour passed. He threw himself on the sofa, but it was not to close his eyes. And yet all seemed going well in the sick-room. Both the doctor and he had convinced themselves that Lionel was now asleep—no lethargic stupor this time, but actual sleep, from which everything was to be hoped. Maurice would not speak; he wrote on slips of paper when he had anything to say. And so the long night went by, until the window-panes slowly changed from black to blue, and ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... may perhaps awaken some few of these who are less lethargic than the rest, from the sleep of sense, and enable them to elevate their mental eye from the dark mire in which they are plunged, and gain a glimpse of this most weighty truth, that there is another world, of which this is nothing more ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... his Khouan followers were dashing along at a rapid pace on the fleet Arab coursers with which they were provided. One of the party bore Esperance before him on his saddle. The boy had not been aroused from his lethargic sleep by the abduction and subsequent flight. ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... which office, in December 1882, he passed to the war office. His administration was memorable for the expeditions of General Gordon and Lord Wolseley to Khartum, and a considerable number of the Conservative party long held him chiefly responsible for the "betrayal of Gordon." His lethargic manner, apart from his position as war minister, helped to associate him in their minds with a disaster which emphasized the fact that the government acted "too late"; but Gladstone and Lord Granville ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... or for the sake of making an example of them, to inspire terror in other runaways; that they have a still stronger motive, which is, to humiliate the North; to make them feel that no latitude limits their mastership. Have we no honest pride, that we so tamely submit to this? What lethargic disease has fallen on Northern souls, that they dare not be as bold for Freedom as tyrants are for Slavery? It was not thus with our fathers, whose sepulchres we whiten. If old Ben Franklin had stood as near Boston Court House as his statue ...
— The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 9, An Appeal To The Legislators Of Massachusetts • Lydia Maria Child
... that, alone and without resources, he could not successfully carry on a contest with his brother. He then endeavoured to gain Adelaide to his cause; an accusation lodged by her might have serious consequences. But, at Antoine's first suggestion of it, the poor, lazy, lethargic creature firmly refused to bring ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... altogether he showed by a series of psycho-physiological acts that he was a living being, possessing a stomach, a will, and a mind—but his soul was dead, or, to be more exact, it was absorbed in lethargic sleep. The sound of human speech reached his ears, his eyes saw tears and laughter, but all that did not stir a single echo, a single emotion in his soul. I do not know what space of time had elapsed. It may have been one year, and it may have been ten years, for the length of such ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... 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 by tribal wars. Sometimes ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... Aleck, his companion's words fully rousing him from his lethargic state. "Well, of all the cowardly things for ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... was all 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 ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... that the young man needed looking after, 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 whist that she ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... fields and topping the lake with a silvery effulgence. Mrs. Sohlberg was being inoculated with the virus Cowperwood, and it was taking deadly effect. The tendency of her own disposition, however lethargic it might seem, once it was stirred emotionally, was to act. She was essentially dynamic and passionate. Cowperwood was beginning to stand out in her mind as the force that he was. It would be wonderful to be loved by such a man. There would be an eager, vivid life between them. It frightened and ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... education. He divides trades into two classes, which he calls energizing and enervating. In those which are energizing there is an element of individual expression and opportunity for self-direction. The enervating trades are wholly automatic, and induce a lethargic state of mind and body. His comment on the situation is: "We are rapidly dividing mankind into a staff of mental workers and an army of purely physical workers. The physical workers are becoming more and more lethargic. The work itself is not character building; on the contrary, it is ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... I would 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 warn thee to keep away from that house. Men whisper ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... to-day, and women must wake up to the consideration that they, too, have duties as well as rights in the State. A splendid audience greeted me in the Opera House, and I gave "Our Girls," bringing many male sinners to repentance, and stirring up some lethargic femmes coverts to a state of rebellion against the ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... fashions them and as emotions replace passions; but throughout the treading of the Path of Forthgoing, the "desire for fruit" is the necessary and blameless motive for exertion. Without this, the man at this stage of evolution becomes lethargic and does not evolve. Desire subserves Evolution, and it is Right. The gratification of Desire may lead a man to do injury to others, and as soon as he has developed enough to understand this, then the gratification becomes wrong, because, forgetting the Unity, he has inflicted harm on one who ...
— The Basis of Morality • Annie Besant
... kept several frogs in the center of a lump of ice for two years, and, although they became dry, rigid, almost friable, and gave no external appearance of being alive, it was only necessary to expose them to a gradual and moderate heat to put an end to the lethargic ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... heavy stupor that deadened every sense bore him down, and took away the power of speech. His eyes closed, and in another moment he had dropped off into a deep, lethargic sleep. ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... was very blue, and the ruminating silence was broken only by the honk-honk of a distant motor. The carp, impeded in his lethargic progress by the thick stem of a water-lily, had stood still (if a fish can be said to stand) for a century—nearly five minutes—his silly old nose pointing ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... from Mercury," exclaimed Jim in surprise as he showed me the sketch. "That accounts for a good many things; why they are so lethargic, for one thing. Mercury is much smaller than the earth and the gravity is much less. According to Mercurian standards, they must weigh a ton each. It is quite a tribute to their muscular development that they can move and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... towards the Cafes Maures smoking cigarettes. Circles of grave men bent over card games, dominoes and draughts—called by the Arabs the Ladies' Game. Khodjas made their way with dignity towards the Bureau Arabe. Veiled women, fat and lethargic, jingling with ornaments, waddled through the arches of the arcades, carrying in their painted and perspiring hands blocks of sweetmeats which drew the flies. Children played in the dust by little heaps of refuse, which they stirred up into ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... languidly opened her eyes. I saw no prospect of being able to impress upon her comatose mind the awful truth I had come to communicate; yet I had no alternative but to make the attempt; and I accordingly proceeded, with as few words as possible, and in a tone of voice suited to the lethargic state of her mind and senses, to inform her that the medicines she was getting from the hands of her husband were fraught with deadly poison, which was alone the cause of all her sufferings and agonies, and would soon be the means of a painful death. These ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... He was no lethargic Eastern, unpractical, though deviously subtle, taking no thought for the morrow, uselessly imaginative, submissive, ready to cringe genuinely to authority, then turn and kick the man below him. He was no stagnant pool with only the ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... that the gloom, the silence, and the cold were gradually conquering him. The feverish activity of his brain brought on a reaction. He grew lethargic, he sunk down on the steps, and thought of nothing. His hand fell by chance on one of the pieces of candle; he grasped it and devoured it mechanically. This revived him. "How strange," he thought, "that I am not thirsty. Is it possible that the dampness of the walls, which I must inhale with every ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... irritated he was a veritable torrent, a wild beast that could only be stopped by the death of himself or his foe. So many affronts, so many pinpricks, day after day, had made his heart quiver, lodging in it to sleep the sleep of lethargic vipers, and they now were awaking to shake and hiss with fury. The hisses resounded in his ears with the jesting epithets of the professor, the phrases in the slang of the markets, and he seemed to hear blows and laughter. A thousand schemes for revenge rushed ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... radiant in her own happiness, entered her aunt's room, she was surprised to find that all Ellen's recent anger had apparently vanished, and that she had dropped into a lethargic mood from which it was difficult to rouse her. It was not so much that the elder woman was out of temper—that was to be expected—as that she seemed to be turning over in her mind some problem which ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... refined, lethargic metropolitan, with here and there a missionary's son from the Golden Horn or the isles of the Pacific or even a Chinese, long-queued and meta-physical, are to be divided between the two rival literary Societies.[4] These having during the last term with great excitement ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the deaths annually amount to no less than eighty-six. Yet even the former comparatively low mortality; of which the counsel speaks with so much satisfaction, as a proof of the kind and compassionate treatment of the slaves, even this indolent and lethargic destruction gives to the march of death seventeen times its usual speed. It is a destruction, which, if general but for ten years, would depopulate the world, blast the purposes of its creation, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... plumped 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 of fire. But Rome, if more normal in its daily life than Naples ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... always in the same feverish lethargic oppression which baffled medical skill, and kept the sick mind beyond the reach of human aid; and so uniform were the days, that her illness seemed to last for months ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... always 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 governments appear to be so strong, and laws so stable, men do not perceive the dangers which may accrue from a union of Church and State. ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... diseases. It is so even in animals. When a sheep has become fat, the butcher knows it must be killed or it will rot and decline. It is rare indeed for the corpulent to be long-lived. They are at the same time sleepy, lethargic, and short-breathed. Even Hippocrates says, 'Those who are uncommonly fat die more ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... he must have fallen into a deep, lethargic sleep, for he never heard the distant strains of the organ and the melodious chanting of gruff voices. The strange, unquiet melody hovered over him in the little cell, following him as he glided away from earth upon the blessed wings of sleep, ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... or trees spake but one language, and her skies never brightened except in color. She came out strong on the Catholic saints, and would toss you up a cleanly-shaven Aloysius, sweetly destitute of expression, or a dropsical, lethargic Madonna that you couldn't have told from an old master, so bad it was. Her faculty of faithful reproduction even showed itself in fanciful lettering,—and latterly in the imitation of fabrics and signatures. Indeed, with her eye for ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... serpent.—Ver. 693. This is, most probably, the asp, a small serpent of Egypt, which is frequently found represented on the statues of Isis. Its bite was said to produce a lethargic sleep, ending in death. Cleopatra ended her life by the bite of one, which she ordered to be conveyed to her in a basket of fruit. Some commentators have supposed that the crocodile is here alluded to; but, as others have justly observed, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... asleep, dead asleep, sound asleep; in a sound sleep; sound as a top, dormant, comatose; in the arms of Morpheus, in the lap of Morpheus. sleepy, sleepful^; dozy^, drowsy, somnolent, torpescent^, lethargic, lethargical^; somnifacient^; statuvolent^, statuvolic^; heavy, heavy with sleep; napping; somnific^, somniferous; soporous^, soporific, soporiferous^; hypnotic; balmy, dreamy; unawakened, unawakened. sedative &c 174. Adv. inactively &c adj.; at leisure &c 685. Phr. the eyes begin to ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... cold-shouldered. That high moralist, Mrs Flint, edged her chair away from the poor lady of set purpose, and Miss Joliffe found herself at last left isolated from all, except Mrs Purlin, the builder's wife, who was far too fat and lethargic to be anything but ignorantly good-natured. Then, in a fit of pained abstraction, Miss Joliffe had made such a bad calculation as entirely to spoil a flannel petticoat with a rheumatic belt and camphor pockets, which she had looked upon as something ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... ensued at court, and the fatigue of attending a long cabinet-council on this event, had such an effect upon the queen's spirits and constitution, that she declared she should not outlive it, and was immediately seized with a lethargic disorder. Notwithstanding all the medicines which the physicians could prescribe, the distemper gained ground so fast, that next day, which was the thirtieth of July, they despaired of her life. Then the committee of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... another cheer, wild and thrilling, ran along the line; a hundred answering flags were hauled up through the fleet; the ships of war saluted with full broadsides; and the guns of San Juan, now for the first time waking from their lethargic silence, poured ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... 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 both diseases, none disputed, Were unmedicinably rooted; Yet, so it chanc'd, by Heaven's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... His zeal and 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 it lethargy. Respecting the other word, "dogrogation," ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... wholly extinct. But her virtue was without a blemish—some said from pride, some said from coldness. Her wit was keen and court-like—lively, yet subdued; for her French high breeding was very different from the lethargic and taciturn imperturbability of the English. All silent people can seem conventionally elegant. A groom married a rich lady; he dreaded the ridicule of the guests whom his new rank assembled at his table—an Oxford clergyman ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... stumbled the butler and a favourite groom, bearing between them the young laird, motionless, senseless, his dress dishevelled, but unscathed by flame, and unstained by blood; still breathing, but his marked imperious features were unconscious, heavy, and lethargic. ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... of a week, I commenced giving stimulants, selecting, as the chief article, sound old Maderia wine. The effect was soon apparent, in a firmer pulse and a quickened vitality. The lethargic condition in which she had lain for most of the time since the commencement of the attack, began to give way, and in a much shorter period than is usually the case, in this disease, we had ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... a couple of unexpected wickets for altering the atmosphere of a game. Five minutes before, Sedleigh had been lethargic and without hope. Now there was a stir and buzz all round the ground. There were twenty-five minutes to go, and five wickets were down. Sedleigh was on ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... that it could be induced in him by suggestion. She had only to say to him, "Steven, you're thoroughly worn out," and he was thoroughly worn out. She had more pleasure, because she had more confidence, in this lethargic, middle-aged Rowcliffe than in Rowcliffe young and energetic. His youth had attracted him to Gwenda and his energy had driven him out of doors. And Mary had set herself, secretly, insidiously, ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... walk in their sleep from custom—as the young and inexperienced betray the influence of some more seductive charm. The very bell that called the drowsy student from his bed seemed to rise and fall in accordant sympathy with the lethargic humour that prevailed, tolling in slow and half-sounding notes scarcely audible beyond the college gates. The broken light, that shed its misty hue through the monastic aisle of painted windows and clustered columns, gave an increased appearance of drowsiness to the scene; ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... time, gets very muddled; so much so, that, when daylight appears, he finds, to his utter astonishment, he has enjoyed a sweet sleep on the floor, some of his quizzical friends having disfigured his face very much after the fashion of a clown's. He modestly, and mechanically, picks up his lethargic body, views his constitutional self in the glass, and is much horrified, much disgusted with those who ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... is the only way for a man to keep alive. When I've got a hoe in my hand—" He could not quite explain it. He had always had a flow of words on paper, but since he had believed his life was finished his tongue had been more and more lethargic. It would not obey his brain because, after all, what could the brain report of his distrustful heart? Lydia had a moment of bitter mortification because she had not seemed to understand. Anne ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... escape, and without any desire to risk such conditions of danger of their own free will. It is a blot on our civilization that these things are necessary from time to time, to arouse those responsible for the safety of human life from the lethargic selfishness which has governed them. The Titanic's two thousand odd passengers went aboard thinking they were on an absolutely safe ship, and all the time there were many people—designers, builders, experts, government officials—who knew there ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... himself into a chair in a paroxysm of frenzied agony. For more than an hour he sat in the same posture, until he became gradually hardened into a stiff, lethargic insensibility, callous and impervious to feeling, reason, or religion—an awful transition from a visitation of conscience so terrible as that which he had just suffered. At length he arose, and by walking moodily about, relapsed into his ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... but the houses were ever poor, and the windows grew smaller and smaller and were without glass. At the junction of the Kolashin road, from the north, we picked up a jolly Montenegrin with a big dog. He was a driver by profession, and he hurried our lethargic progress a little. Then the front spring broke. It was mended with wire and a piece of tree; when we started ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... did not close his shutters, he even left his inner window partially open, because, unaccustomed to a stove, he felt oppressed by its heat. When he threw himself down, he slept deeply, as men sleep after days among snowfields, when a sense of entire security is the lethargic ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... all this rapidly, as if the business of the day had begun, and cantered down the sloping field. Arrived near the starting-point, I heard her give what seemed almost a yell, and lethargic Nathan, well awake, burst into the same tremendous pace, going faster and faster every moment, until he attained a speed which seemed positively terrific, a woman being in the saddle, and then Lillie ceased urging him, and rode unflaggingly, as she only could, over ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... slumber. And whether it was simply the slumber of utter exhaustion, or whether it was the sweet oblivion which results from a sense of peace long denied, or perhaps the union of both these conditions, the result was that she lay wrapped in an almost lethargic sleep for many hours. Twice Thomas came with the carriage, and twice Griselda sent him away. And the man shook his head ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... 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 same room slept a young negro girl, whose duty it was to carry ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... 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 gun that could be spared under Buren to the front. Taking advantage of his enemies' delays, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... ever changing; its population is composed 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 ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... excitement caused by the advent of this new and very late comer had subsided, the Sunday-school resumed its former lethargic condition, and then I heard my own name whispered ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... off his lethargic manner and entered the girl's mood of appreciation of the lavish loveliness of the June. Yet, as Phoebe alighted from the carriage at the little gate of the Metz farm, and after she had thanked him and started through the yard to the house, she ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... the dull and lethargic appearance of the people, I was struck with surprise that they have been able to manage successfully complicated machinery, and to carry on several branches of manufacture profitably. Their machine shop makes and repairs all their own machinery; their gristmills have to compete with those ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... overfed her with pommes de luxe. On her return home—where the restoration of her child might have helped matters, but it doesn't know who she is and refuses to part from its foster-mother—we find her lethargic, off her feed, indifferent to the claims of menial toil, and clamorous (as I have shown) for her rights ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... ethereally white in the 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 had established themselves, and the town was a hotbed ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... 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, ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the grass, and overcome by fatigue and the many violent emotions he had that day experienced, soon fell into a lethargic slumber. ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... even attractive face, but dreadfully emaciated, bloodless and sallow. He lay quite motionless except for the scarcely perceptible rise and fall of his chest; his eyes were nearly closed, his features relaxed, and, though he was not actually asleep, he seemed to be in a dreamy, somnolent, lethargic state, as if under the influence of ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... enter, and the Duke of Vicenza was obliged to inform him of the Marshal's presence. "Sire," said Caulaincourt, "the Duke of Tarantum has brought for your signature the treaty which is to be ratified to-morrow." The Emperor then, as if roused from a lethargic slumber, turned to Macdonald, and merely said, "Ah, Marshal! so you are here!" Napoleon's countenance was so altered that the Marshal, struck with the change, said, as if it were involuntarily, "Is your Majesty indisposed?"—"Yes," answered Napoleon, "I have ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... you, who have ever taken part in a gold rush can understand and appreciate the wild excitement that prevailed when the flashing lights revealed the rock of the cave to be seamed and studded with yellow veins and patches. It aroused even the most lethargic of the cowboys. And, truth to tell, none of them were very strongly of that type. They were accustomed to live amid excitement of one kind or another, and this was ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... there is no better evidence of the character and influence of Washington upon the American mind than what has transpired during and since the war. Look, sir, at the South of which you spoke! She was largely a lethargic people prior to the war. She lived in luxury; she was in the midst of a condition which yielded to her abundant support, and eliminated from her life the necessity of hard labor and earnest effort. The war came. We were bound around with a cordon ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... 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, ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... their children: it is of at least equal importance that they should train themselves. It is desirable that children, as they grow up, should be alive to this necessity, and consciously assist in the process, since they are in closer touch with a new world of activities to which their more lethargic parents are often blind and deaf. For every fresh stage in our lives we need a fresh education, and there is no stage for which so little educational preparation is made as that which follows the reproductive period. Yet at no time—especially in women, who present all ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... 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
... wrong, was never admitted within the house doors, but Lady Adela insisted on seeing Mary every day, and was assured that she should be a welcome assistant in case of need; but at present there was no necessity of calling in other help, the form of fever being lethargic with much torpidity, but no violence of delirium, and requiring no more watching than the ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... complain 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; ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... These are 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, or the tale; and the mind, like the body, is disposed ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... therefore, an erroneous standard and a lethargic peace, which principally caused the weakness of the British official staff for battle service at the period of lowest descent, which was reached in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, but was prolonged and intensified by a protracted ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... forced to take a near view of the sufferings, the privations, the efforts, the difficulties of others. If we ourselves live in fulness of content, it is well to be reminded that thousands of our fellow-creatures undergo a different lot; it is well to have sleepy sympathies excited, and lethargic selfishness shaken up. If, on the other hand, we be contending with the special grief,—the intimate trial,—the peculiar bitterness with which God has seen fit to mingle our own cup of existence,—it is very ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... her tomb In torpor one dark night; When fitful tremours shook the doom Of cold lethargic settled gloom, ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... 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 was ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... of Baby Bunting pawing around the grub pack. Hunger was his next conviction, for the heavenly rest in the medicine bath had taken every vestige of weariness away. He felt lethargic from the sulphur fumes, and more sleep was an enticing thought, yet he put it from him and got into his clothes after the use of a handkerchief as a bath towel. Miguel still slept and Kit bent over ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... "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 what goes on around him—and many times in the street one ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... the red sunset light, and her great wings had a suggestive shining of dull fire about them. She checked her swoop just before reaching Eurypelma, and made a quick dart over him, and then a quick turn back, intending to catch the tarantula in the rear. But lethargic and owly as Eurypelma had been a moment before, he was now all alertness and agility. He had to be. He was defending his life. One full fair stab of the poisoned javelin, sheathed but ready at the tip of the flexible, blue-black body hovering over him, and it would be ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... he would say. "I've got to make some speeches myself. Repeat that, now. 'Sins of omission are as great, even greater than sins of commission. The lethargic citizen throws open the gates to revolution.' How ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... fish-like and lethargic eye We should endeavour to efface, And foster visual orbs that vie With those of eagles in its place; While belladonna's artful use An extra brilliance ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various
... threats so far as to undergo the "initiation" he proposed, at the time we were helpless in his hands—of that I have little doubt. I cannot suppose that he would have wasted much time over me, once I had fallen lethargic. When Hewitt burst in he would have found me lying dead, with the Red Triangle on my forehead. It would have saved Mayes a lot of ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... campaign which may be all very well when it is intended to rouse the somewhat lethargic Briton to fight against a race of which he knows next to nothing otherwise; but was doubly dangerous when applied to one's fellow-countrymen in the name of a party, and were it employed, say, against Wales or Scotland would soon prove disastrous, for Scotchmen and Welshmen would ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... 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 In old Thermopylae, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... once the robber chief roused himself from his lethargic state, and carefully scanned my face with his lack-lustre eyes. I met his gaze without flinching, and perhaps the bushranger read pity in my looks, for he merely uttered a sigh, and I heard ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... excess of anguish had till now dried up at the source, began to flow. Paul mixed his tears with theirs; and nature having thus found relief, a long stupor succeeded the convulsive pangs they had suffered, and afforded them a lethargic repose, which was in truth, ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... Desdemona to death, has taken the step, without consulting Iago, of testing her in the matter of Iago's report about the handkerchief; and, on the other hand, he now seems to have fallen into a dazed lethargic state, and must be stimulated to action. Iago's plan seems to be to remind Othello of everything that would madden him again, but to do so by professing to make light of the whole affair, and by urging Othello to put the best construction on the facts, or at any rate to ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... he was to remain till he died, which was an event expected every moment; but passing from an atmosphere heated, stagnant, and filled with miasma, into fresher and purer air, which was renewed every instant, he gradually revived from his lethargic state. His recovery dated from the day when he quitted the middle deck; and as it often happens in medicine that the same facts are cited in support of systems diametrically opposite, this recovery confirmed our doctor in his idea of the inflammation of the blood, and the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... all his dewlap and his two hundred pounds of lethargic beefiness, felt a vague and inward stirring as he finally lifted his head and looked at her. He looked into the shadowy eyes under the level brows. He could see, as he had seen before, that they were exceptional eyes, with iris rings of deep gray about the ever-widening and ever-narrowing pupils ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... 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 glow ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... view Of superstition, prophesying still, Though still deceived, some stranger's near approach. 'Tis thus the understanding takes repose In indolent vacuity of thought, And sleeps and is refreshed. Meanwhile the face Conceals the mood lethargic with a mask Of deep deliberation, as the man Were tasked to his full strength, absorbed and lost. Thus oft reclined at ease, I lose an hour At evening, till at length the freezing blast That sweeps the bolted shutter, summons home The recollected powers, and, snapping short The glassy ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper |
