"Languor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... face of nature smiled upon him in her smile of welcome. Archie's slow pace was quickened; his legs hasted to her though his heart was hanging back. The girl, upon her side, drew herself together slowly and stood up, expectant; she was all languor, her face was gone white; her arms ached for him, her soul was on tip- toes. But he deceived her, pausing a few steps away, not less white than herself, and holding up his hand with a gesture ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... all trace of this autonomy is exteriorly effaced. The animal nature is alone visible upon his visage; the eye is watery and languishing, the mouth rapaciously open, the voice trembling and muffled, the breathing short and rapid, the limbs trembling with nervous agitation: the whole body by its languor betrays its moral degradation. Moral force has renounced all resistance, and physical nature, with such a man, is placed in full liberty. But precisely this complete abandonment of moral independence, which occurs ordinarily at the moment ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... voice, and instinctively her brain noted every detail of the view outspread before her. The golden stillness of morning rested on hill and valley like a benediction. Green cornfields, white watercourses, granite promontories, and black patches of forest—all were bathed in warmth and light without languor. The breath of the snows was still ice-cool, and exhilarating as wine; its freshness penetrated and enhanced by the faint sweet scent of Banksia roses, that clothed the rickety woodwork in a fairy garment of green and ivory-white. Each ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... outlines of purple hills breaking the vacant curve of the horizon. A delicious fragrance from tropic flowers fills the air—the perfumes of the jessamine, the magnolia, the cereus. A sweet, delicious languor creeps over me. I feel a vague sense of rest and happiness, which, to my onlooking self, seems almost unaccountable; for, there am I, still all alone on the ocean, swept onward towards the purple hills in the distance, over the smooth-flowing surface of ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... did something like it—for the latter had quite recovered, and was fit to hold his own, almost, with any one; the charming confusion of mind with which Fred Jenkins intermingled the sailor's hornpipe with it; the inimitable languor with which La Certe condescended to go through it; the new-born energy with which Slowfoot footed it; the side-splitting shrieks with which Old Peg regarded it; the uproarious guffaws with which the delighted old Duncan hailed it; the sad smile with ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... Her languor was not a feebleness but rather a fullness of life, like that of a child half awake; she seemed to stretch herself and enjoy everything without noticing anything. She passed the wood, into the gray huddle of which a single white path vanished through a black hole. Along this part of ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... see him show anger, but he nursed his silk-clad ankle with the same insolent languor. He might have been a priest after the confessional for all the ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... first of May, and the sun had passed the noon line in a bright sky, causing the shadow of Peter Taylor to fall east of north and infusing his substance with the delightful languor called Spring Fever. Leaning upon an idle spade, Peter watched the lazy motions of a negro slave whom he had directed to trim a level lawn ornamented with flowerbeds. The English origin of the overseer was revealed by his ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... shuffled out of everything, unless it were the correspondence with Fontenoy. As to the notion that all the languor could be due merely to an unsatisfied craving for Letty Sewell's society, when it presented itself he still fought with it. The Indian climate might have somehow affected him. An English winter is soon forgotten, and has to be ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... drops of toil and languor, lo! a chariot-driver came, Loosely hung his scanty garments, and a ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... coolly, but certainly made herself more agreeable after it was given. She dressed up Cecile and set her dancing in the evenings, weird dances of a Spanish type, alternating between languor and a sort of 'possession,' which had been taught the child by a moustached violinist from Madrid, who admired her mother and paid Louie a fantastic and stormy homage through her child. She also condescended to take an interest in Lucy's wardrobe. The mingled temper and avidity with ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... modest creature was loved by Johnson, who could warm into unusual eloquence in singing his praises. The doctor, however, was rather fond of discussing with Boswell the faults of his friend. They seem to have chiefly consisted in a certain languor or sluggishness of temperament which allowed his affairs to get into perplexity. Once, when arguing the delicate question as to the propriety of telling a friend of his wife's unfaithfulness, Boswell, after his peculiar fashion, ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... a note of exclamation, set ironically, Mahony felt constrained to second Turnham's enthusiasm. And it was indeed a lovely picture: the gracious, golden-haired woman, whose figure had the amplitude, her gestures the almost sensual languor of the young nursing mother; the two children fawning at her knee, both ash-blond, with vivid scarlet lips.—"It helps one," thought Mahony, "to understand the mother-worship ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... direction . . . THERE'S NO PEACE IN THIS WORLD." {355a} A cold contracted by his wife distressed him to the point of complaining that "there is little but trouble in this world; I am nearly tired of it." {355b} Exercise failed to benefit him. He was suffering from languor and nervousness. And through it all that Spartan woman who had committed the gravest of matrimonial errors, that of marrying a genius, soothed and comforted the sick ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... as she was wont to term them. It was a genuine October afternoon, cool and sunny. The delicious haze of Indian summer wrapped every distant object in its soft, purple veil; the dim vistas of the forest ended in misty depths; the very air, in its dreamy languor, resembled the atmosphere ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... turned a variety of colours, his languid eyes lost all trace of languor. Those who knew his nature might have expected that he would now deliver himself with that sneering sarcasm, that indolent cynicism, which he used upon occasion. But he was too deeply stirred for acting. His ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... and a little abstinence now and then, he can subdue head-aches, catarrhs and digestive troubles, and by exercising an intelligent will, can generally prevent their recurrence. If one finds himself in the morning in a state of languor and lassitude, be sure he has abused some physical function, and apply a remedy. An invalid will make a poorly equipped librarian. How can a dyspeptic who dwells in the darkness of a disease, be a ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... Melbourne rather than with Sydney. Adelaide is a thoroughly modern town, with all the merits and all the defects attaching to novelty. It does not possess the spirit of enterprise to so adventurous a degree as Melbourne, but neither does it approach to the languor of Sydney. In this respect it has discovered a very happy middle course. There is certainly something very provincial about the attitude of the town towards the rest of the world, but this helps to make it the more distinctive, and conduces largely to its progress. It 'goes ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... which Mr. Oakhurst bent over him,—a face so ghastly, with haunting doubts, and a hopeless presentiment of coming evil,—a face so piteous in its infinite weariness and envy of death, that the dying man was touched, even in the languor of dissolution, with a pang of compassion; and the cynical ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... And they say also, that men eat their flesh for to deliver them out of pain; for if the worms of the earth eat them the soul should suffer great pain, as they say. And namely when the flesh is tender and meagre, then say their friends, that they do great sin to let them have so long languor to suffer so much pain without reason. And when they find the flesh fat, then they say, that it is well done to send them soon to Paradise, and that they have not suffered him too ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... by imitation and reflection,—and thus far may genius be educated; but there are others which are entirely the result of native sensibility, which often secretly torment the possessor, and which may even be lost from the want of development, dissolved into a state of languor from which many have not recovered. Clairon, before she saw the young actress, and having yet no conception of a theatre—for she had never entered one—had in her soul that latent faculty which creates a dramatic genius. "Had I not felt like Dido," she once exclaimed, "I ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... has all the intensity and passion of the earliest schools, together with a grace of repose which even in Ghiberti's beautiful Nativity, founded upon it, has scarcely been increased, but rather lost in languor. The motive of the design is the frequent one among all the early masters; the Madonna lifts the covering from the cradle to show the Child to one of the servants, who starts forward adoring. All the ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... body with labour, or with sitting, debilitated by the long continuance of our religious exercises, and depressed in feelings by our miserable and hopeless condition. Nothing but the humors of mad Jane Ray, could rouse us for a moment from our languor and melancholy. ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... hurt my poor admirer," said the lady, in a tone of languor and condescension that was unusual to her. Breaking from his captives, Helwyse ran back and begged her to cast her mantle into the fire. She replied by throwing a fold of it above her head and smiling as she said, "Farewell. Remember me ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... have been easy to the girl, for she had naturally a quick grasp of knowledge, but her failing health and her almost unconquerable languor made it hard for her to work as usual. However, she persisted. It became evident that she would stand first among the girls of her class, and only second to one boy, who had a large brain and little emotion, and ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Batouch with intense vivacity in Arabic, at the same time shooting glances half-obsequious, half-impudent, wholly and even preternaturally keen and intelligent at Domini. Batouch replied with the dignified languor that seemed peculiar to him. The colloquy continued for two or three minutes. Domini thought it sounded like a quarrel, but she was not accustomed to Arabs' talk. Meanwhile, the stranger in front had slackened ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... concertos, and pieces of music, as they are called, do plague and embitter my apprehension.—Words are something; but to be exposed to an endless battery of mere sounds; to be long a dying, to lie stretched upon a rack of roses; to keep up languor by unintermitted effort; to pile honey upon sugar, and sugar upon honey, to an interminable tedious sweetness; to fill up sound with feeling, and strain ideas to keep pace with it; to gaze on empty frames, and be forced to make the pictures ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... at the French court, where she felt herself a desolate alien. Her death at the age of twenty was possibly due to slander. "Fie upon life," she said on her deathbed, when urged to rouse herself to resist the languor into which she was sinking. "Talk to me no ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... and death in the village had crept in to him through Noll's and Hagar's talk, and a sudden fear chilled him lest his nephew, too, was to be stricken down with the lingering fever. What if it should be so? What if even now the boy was oppressed with the languor and depression which precedes illness? With this thought torturing him, he called to Noll one afternoon from the library window, as the boy was idly walking up and down the frozen sand. After a few minutes of waiting, Noll made his appearance at the library ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... 2569. Symptoms.—Languor and restlessness, hoarseness, wheezing, and short, dry cough, with occasional rattling in the throat during sleep, the child often plucking at its throat with its fingers; difficulty of breathing, which quickly becomes hard and laboured, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... with languor when you came. Not bad, that feint—but dangerous, because of the possibility of misjudging the attack. Learn the paroles he affects to-morrow by quick, simple thrusts, and then you will know what feints to attack him with. Time in octave—you ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... me if I had met Isabel when I first knew Dorothy? This woman of white flame talking of art, of travel, of Rome, of religion, of beauty; giving way to girlish chuckles and laughter. Was she not closer to me, as temperate genius of the North, than Dorothy, out of the languor and the romanticism of the South? Was not Douglas closer to the North, which Isabel seemed to me now to symbolize, than to that South with which his fate had now so long ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... And as for that languor which the situation might breed, care must be had that hardships which the site does not enforce, shall be enforced by the laws; and that the example of those wise nations be imitated, who, inhabiting most fruitful ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... child," said the affectionate governess, "what is the cause of the languor so apparent in your frame? Are ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... warm, with the languor of September, fragrant with the heavy odors of ripening fruit and the late autumn blossoms. There was no moon, but the long summer twilight had not yielded entirely to the darkness and the ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... for the fastidious, for the cerebrally morbid. Only the eighteenth century had succeeded in enveloping woman with a vicious atmosphere, imitating her contours in the undulations and twistings of wood and copper, accentuating the sugary languor of the blond with its clear and lively decors, attenuating the pungency of the brunette with its tapestries of aqueous, sweet, ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... by this air of freedom and joyousness which distinguished Totty. It was a character wholly unlike her own, and her imaginative thought discerned in it something of an ideal; her own timidity and her tendency to languor found a refreshing antidote in the other's breezy carelessness. Impurity of mind would have repelled her, and there was no trace of it in Totty. Yet Lydia took very ill this recently-grown companionship, holding her friend Mary ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... Britons, however, display more ferocity, [51] not being yet softened by a long peace: for it appears from history that the Gauls were once renowned in war, till, losing their valor with their liberty, languor and indolence entered amongst them. The same change has also taken place among those of the Britons who have been long subdued; [52] but the rest continue such as ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... bring him either to read or to work. On the contrary, he ran wild in the forest like one of the Aborigines of the country, and divided his life between the dissipation and uproar of the chase, and the languor of inaction. ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... your duty as a Christian, my dear," he pleaded, with the caressing languor which sometimes made her say, in reprobation of her own pleasure in it, that he was a Rixonite, if there ever was one. "Think of your duty as a woman, ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... crudity of the Roman school are absent; so also is their vigor. But where the grace of form and color is so soft and sweet, where the high-bred calm of good company is so sympathetically rendered, where the atmosphere of amorous languor and of melody is so artistically diffused, we cannot miss the powerful modelling and rather vulgar tours de force of Giulio Romano. The scala of tone is silvery golden. There are no hard blues, no coarse red flesh-tints, no black shadows. Mellow lights, the morning hues ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... the still sunlight; and there was a perfume of roses in the air. Here, at last, was repose. She had said that her notion of happiness was to be let alone; and—now that she had despatched that forbidding letter—she would be able to enjoy a quiet and languor ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... said Venning; and then he closed his eyes again with a feeling of languor. Compton, in the meanwhile growing impatient, walked a few steps in the direction his chum had taken. The rest of the party had moved on, thinking, no doubt, he was following, and he knew that neither he nor Venning could pick up the spoor if they lost touch. ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... Rationalis (1674), was one of the first to attempt to do justice to both sides of the coffee question. At best, he thought it a somewhat risky beverage, and its votaries must, in some cases, be prepared to suffer languor and even paralysis; it may attack the heart and cause tremblings in the limbs. On the other hand it may, if judiciously used, prove a marvelous benefit; "being daily drunk it wonderfully clears and enlightens each part of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... governor, and in a few hours we shall be saved." M. Correard replied in the same tone, and as if he had been in his ordinary condition.—"Have you a pigeon to carry your orders with such celerity?" The cries and the confusion soon roused us from this languor; but when tranquillity was somewhat restored, we again fell into the same drowsy condition. On the morrow, we felt as if we had awoke from a painful dream, and asked at our companions, if, during their sleep, they had not seen ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... reached her ears. They were, however, received by Mad. la Tour with unexpected firmness. She could not, indeed, suppress her uneasiness, but she felt that exertion was necessary, and, from that moment, the languor of disease yielded to the energy of ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... in a few minutes presented, with graceful bow, a basin of broth to his astonished friend. Clare tasted it, and found it delicious. He fancied he had not partaken of anything so nice for months; all the faintness and languor under which he was suffering seemed to disappear as by enchantment. 'This is much better than medicine,' he said, with a look of gratitude to the clever head-cook. 'Medicine? parbleu!' exclaimed Grill; 'do not speak of medicine, mon ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... O come, my life's delight! Let me not in languor pine! Love loves no delay; thy sight The more enjoyed, the more divine. O come, and take from me The pain of being ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... kneeling behind her, she sheathed it with ease in the hot and juicy folds of Lizzie's beautiful cunt. Passing her hand under Lizzie's belly, she frigged her clitoris until again nature gave down her delicious tribute, and they sank in all the voluptuous languor that follows. A third time they renewed their salacious and lascivious raptures, then resumed their dresses so as to be ready to receive us. Miss Frankland begged Lizzie to keep her counsel and not reveal, even to Mary, what had passed. But Lizzie urged Miss F. to admit Mary into the ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... have enumerated. We have left unnoticed the wonderful extent and accuracy of the learning, the compass and profundity of the thought, the inexhaustible spirit, ever preserving the happy mean between mental languor and nervous excitement. In these twenty-seven volumes of criticism, scarcely an error has been detected, scarcely a single repetition is met with; there is scarcely a page which a reader, unpressed for time, would be inclined to skip. Where ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... that it was an absurdity to wash a face which was of necessity always clean. I don't know how much fancy there was in this; but there is no fancy in saying that the lassitude of tired-out operatives, and the languor of imaginative natures in their periods of collapse, and the vacuity of minds untrained to labor and discipline, fit the soul and body for the germination of the seeds ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... established as the doctrine of infant damnation in the good old days of theology. Secretly, however, Skippy adored the first warm contact of the tentative toes, the slow ecstasy of the mounting ripple over the sinking body and the long, drowsy languor of complete submersion. It was the apotheosis of happiness when all the aches and vexations of the day disappeared in a narcotic reverie, when he could forget the scorn of the Roman, flunking him; the jibes ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... knew nothing of love; but he knew that if no ship came, she would learn, and he would teach her. He had loved no woman, but he felt that in this vast solitude he could love Dorthe and be happy with her. In the languor of convalescence he dreamed of the hour when he should take her in his arms and see the frank regard in her eyes for the last time. The tranquil air was heavy with the perfumes of spring. The palms were rigid. The blue ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... She has no longer youth nor beauty, and her talents as an actress are much on a par with her personal attractions. She recites with judgment, but almost always with languor, and betrays a want of warmth. Besides, her powers have declined. However, she sometimes displays energetic flashes of a real tragic truth; but they are borrowed, and it is affirmed, not without foundation, that Mademoiselle ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... the beginning of many happy hours for Tode. Perhaps it was the weakness and languor resulting from his accident that made him willing to sit quietly a whole morning or afternoon in the study beside the bishop's table, when, before this, to sit still for half an hour would have been an almost unendurable penance to him; but there was another and a far stronger ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... you, when have you two dissuaded him? Or when forbidden? Do you teach him shun Languor or luxury? ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... China. The summer heat had just set in, and the inhabitants of Kucheng (Ancient City) were somewhat weary and languid, when a woman brought the news to her neighbour—"A daughter has been born to the Tu family." The news soon spread from door to door. All languor was shaken off, for curiosity got the better of lassitude, and the women, now fully alert, hobbled on their small feet to the little house where farmer Tu lived with his young wife ...
— Everlasting Pearl - One of China's Women • Anna Magdalena Johannsen
... Silesia, confesses himself rather pleased to find even Wusterhausen in such a country of sandy bent-grass, lean cattle, and flat desolate languor. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... that he really needed just such a complete rest and change of scene, soft climate, and freedom from all care and anxiety, to enable him to shake himself free from a strange feeling of dulness and languor that had been stealing over him lately, and a sort of mental depression that was harder to bear than actual illness. But three months away from his pupils and work seemed absolutely out of the question to Mr. Clair, therefore he did not let his mind dwell on it, but returned to the question ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... boys made fun, he never returned them any answer, but sometimes when alone the memory of their thoughtless jeers would cause the tears to start, and then wiping them away, he would wonder if it was wicked to be poor and ragged. One morning when he attempted to rise, he felt oppressed with a languor he had never before experienced, and turning on his trundlebed, and adjusting his blue cotton jacket, his only pillow, he again slept so soundly that Mary was obliged to call him ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... raised kiosk of green marble in a corner of the court; went up again, and brought down a still-snowy yatag to sleep on; and there, by the kiosk-step, ate and passed the night, smoking for several hours in a state of languor. In the centre of the court is a square marble well, looking white through a rankness of wild vine, acacias in flower, weeds, jasmines, and roses, which overgrew it, as well as the kiosk and the ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... cohort of fire! The music charms. The diamonds glitter. The feet bound. Gemmed hands, stretched out, clasp gemmed hands. Dancing feet respond to dancing feet. Gleaming brow bends low to gleaming brow. On with the dance! Flash, and rustle, and laughter, and immeasurable merry-making! But the languor of death comes over the limbs, and blurs the sight. Lights lower! Floor hollow with sepulchral echo. Music saddens into a wail. Lights lower! The maskers can hardly now be seen. Flowers exchange their fragrance for a ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... he had once loved so dearly; for he did not disguise it to himself, he had once loved her to distraction. Even in his prison he trembled, as he thought of some of his first meetings with her, as he saw before his mind's eye her features swimming in voluptuous languor, as he heard the silvery ring of her voice, or inhaled the perfume she loved ever to have about her. She had exposed him to the danger of losing his position, his future, his honor even; and he still felt ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... easier. It is but a moderate distance from here, and if you can moderate your young footsteps, and your American quick walk, to an old man's pace, I would go there with you some day. In this languor and ennui of my life, I spend some time in local antiquarianism, and perhaps I might assist you in tracing out how far these traditions of yours may have any connection with reality. It would be curious, would it not, if you had come, after two hundred ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... mountains were unable to accomplish, was effected by his arrival. The vital energy, which had been almost extinguished, needed some agitation to revivify its action; but for this she must have perished, not from the disease, which had been already subdued, but from languor—as a lamp, not blown out by the wind, but failing for lack of air. Youth at length gained the victory; the crisis was past, and life again arose in the heart of the sufferer. After a long and quiet slumber, she awoke unusually strengthened and refreshed. "I feel myself as light, mother," ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... light, and, finding it hard to set fire to the tobacco, she began to stamp impatiently with her foot. Then a feeling of languor took possession of her; and she remained motionless on the divan, with a cushion under her arm and her body twisted a little on one side, one knee bent and the other ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... in fearless retrospection—absolutely fearless, for courage was hers without effort; peril exhilarated like wine, without reaction; every nerve and contour of her body was instinct with daring, and only the languor of her dark eyes misled the judgment of those ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... an old blue shirt the night that first we met, An old and tattered cabbage-tree concealed his locks of jet; His footsteps had a languor, his voice a husky tone; Both man and dog were spent with toil ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... has had its turn; it has fulfilled its mission; the other end of the balance now comes up. The Northern Muse must sing her lesson to the world. Her fresher, chaster, more intellectual, and (as they only SEEM to some) her colder strains come in due season to recover our souls from the delicious languor of a Music which has been so wholly of the Feelings, that, for the want of some intellectual tonic and some spiritual temper, Feeling has degenerated into mere Sensibility and a very cheap kind of superficial, skin-deep excitability ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... first when we met, being handsome and gay, I felt she had stole my affections away; The mavis sang loud on the sweet hawthorn tree, But her voice was more sweet and endearing to me. The sun spread his rays of bright gold o'er the fountain, The hours glided by without languor or woe, As we pull'd the sweet flowers from the steep rocky mountains— My blessings attend thee, sweet ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... her niece's comment; but there was a languor and indifference in the voice, that might have sent the thermometer of the architect's affection from boiling-point to below blood-heat, if he could have ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... great degree of activity, and I can truly say that I am a stranger to weariness or languor. At the time of entering upon this system, I had a wife and five children, the youngest eight years of age;—they all soon entered upon the same course of living with myself, and soon were all benefited in health. I have now six children—the youngest ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... looking out under the sun-blinds at the dusty green of the park. Though October had begun, the summer was not yet over, and the heat was considerable. It seemed oppressive after the fresh air of the moors, and Hilda watched her cousin's languor with some anxiety. For her face had scarcely more colour than ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... herself, a much travelled, a learned, a brilliant, even a famous woman, had become only lately conscious of a certain jaded weariness in her outlook upon life. Even the best had begun to pall, the sameness of it had commenced its fatal work. More than once lately a touch of that heart languor, which is the fruit of surfeit, had startled her by its numbing and depressing effect. Here at last was a new type—a man with clean pages before him—young, emotional, without a doubt intellectual. But for his awful clothes he was well enough ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... station, where I washed my face and put myself to rights. After all, I was very little the worse, and everybody said I had "gone like a bird." As we returned to London by the fast train, and I sat in that comfortable, well-cushioned carriage, enjoying the delightful languor of rest after fatigue, I half resolved to devote my whole life to a sport which was capable of affording such thrilling excitement as that which I had so recently enjoyed. I had never been so happy, I thought, in my existence as whilst I was leading the field ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... decided to press the question no further. Something in the manner of both girls told him the subject was hardly congenial. He remained a few moments chatting with them, and noted with paternal solicitude the languor and lack of interest in Nellie Bayard's drooping eyes and the unmistakable signs of anxiety and trouble in her sweet face. "My wife is right," he muttered to himself; "she always is, in such things at least,"—for with masculine perversity ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... cascades docile and innocent as infants, laughing all summer long from crag to crag and pool to pool, and the Adige and the Po, the Dora and the Ticino, no more defiled, no more alternating between fierce flood and venomous languor, but in calm clear currents bearing ships to every city and health to every field of all that azure plain ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... my heart that weeps, Like the rain upon the town, What drowsy languor steeps In tears my heart ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons
... picture and letters," said Constantia, lifting her head from Mrs. Mellicent's bosom, where she had sunk, from the extreme languor that succeeded the violent hysterics into which the terrors of this alarming night had thrown her. A more lovely or interesting object could scarcely be conceived than this charming girl, just ripening into woman, ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... climate, but may be supposed to be an elm, which Virgil places near the entrance of the infernal regions, and adds, that a dream was believed to dwell under every leaf of it. Aen. VI. l. 281. In the midst of this group reclines a female figure in a dying attitude, in which extreme languor is beautifully represented, in her hand is an inverted torch, an antient emblem of extinguished life, the elbow of the same arm resting on a stone supports her as she sinks, while the other hand is raised and thrown over her drooping head, in some measure sustaining it and gives ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... superficies of brick against which they were perched. Jaffery said something about a nest midway on a cliff side overlooking the sea. He also, in bass incoherence, formulated the opinion that in such a nest might he found true happiness. The pretty languor of early summer laughed in the air. Their situation, 'twixt earth and heaven, had a little sensuous charm. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... owing to the habitual languor of that long illness. That satirical mumble is the only trouble he will take to lift up his testimony, except when a thing is most decidedly his duty, and then he ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thy clear, keen joyance Languor cannot be; Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee; Thou lovest, but ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... Valmai, although she had received no serious harm from her watery adventure, still felt a little languor and indisposition, which kept her a prisoner in the house. As she lay on the old shabby sofa, her time was fully occupied by reading to her uncle, books of Welsh history or the effusions of the old bards, which interested him ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... and then equally massed as seeing the great light that springs up. The intense pathos of that description and its sad truth to experience should not be unnoticed. They sit in the dark—the attitude of listless languor and constrained inaction, too true an emblem of the paralysis which falls on all the highest activities of the spirit, if the light from God has been quenched. It is only wild beasts that are active in the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... his own imagination. Only music or strange effects of light can carry him swiftly enough out of himself, in the presence of visible or audible things, for that really poetic ecstasy. Then all his languor drops off from him, ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... in it, saw that he must be rowed to land as quickly as possible if he were to be saved. She saved him. When he regained consciousness he found himself propped up before the warm fire in the lighthouse kitchen, with the most delicious feeling of languor stealing through his whole frame, instead of the cruel numbness which had been the last sensation before he became unconscious. And it added materially to his enjoyment that a bright-eyed, dark-haired young woman hovered ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... in a loud and even jovial voice, leaping to his feet with far less languor than usual. "I must be going now, but I should like to see it before I go. Why, I came on purpose to ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... tinge with light. Pale gray filtered into the dusk with grudging slowness. As day approached I saw that a fog enfolded the house in vapor, stealing into the room in coils and swirls like thin smoke. The lamps looked sickly and dim. I forced away my languor, rose and walked to the ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... than the king had foreseen. Fifteen months after these memorable words, Bizarre expired of languor and exhaustion. He had taken the vocation of king in earnest; he fell a victim to royalty. The old countess and Pazza wept their friend and benefactor, but they were the only mourners. Without being a bad son, Charming was engrossed with ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... sometimes the case, a look of languor suited her; and he thought she had grown decidedly better-looking in the last year. At Redsands Miss Brabazon had been a little too buxom, a little too self-possessed, also, for his taste. And yet—and yet how wonderfully ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... Hath mingled with our Polish blood, Dark as above us is the sky; But through it stole a tender light, Like the first moonrise of midnight; Large, dark, and swimming in the stream, Which seem'd to melt to its own beam; All love, half languor, and half fire, Like saints that at the stake expire, And lift their raptured looks on high, As though it were a joy to die. A brow like a midsummer lake, Transparent with the sun therein When waves no murmur dare to make, And heaven beholds her face within. A cheek and lip—but why proceed? ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... that her husband had returned. Presently he opened the room-door, and stood there uncertain whether to come in. His face was gray and pale; he had a timid, fearful look in his eyes; something almost pitiful to see in a man's face; but that look of despondent uncertainty, of mental and bodily languor, touched his wife's heart. She went to him, and threw herself ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... clime, It were not possible for one to take Twenty young beauties and a hundred slaves— Retire to some secluded isle of palms— And live without a thought, a wish, a hope, Drugged with the warmth, the languor and ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... His languor and her excitement went ill together. She doubted he was pretending, and had a hundred ill-defined, half-formed suspicions of him. Was it possible that he—he had dared to contrive this? Or was he employed by others—by another? ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... half roused from her languor by the idea of a change. "Oh, do you think that would be fun? Should we sleep on the ground? But, wouldn't it ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... dight, For lo! her bridegrome was in readie ray 640 To come to her, and seeke her loves delight: With that she started up with cherefull sight, When suddeinly both bed and all was gone, And I in languor left there ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... at the paintings still left in their places as they appear with all the brilliance that Vesuvius has preserved in them, and which the sunlight will soon impair. In the saloon of the house of Proculus notice two pieces that correspond, namely, Narcissus and the Triumph of Bacchus—powerless languor and victorious activity. The intended meaning is clearly apparent, and is simply and vividly rendered. The ancients never required commentators to make them understood. You comprehend their idea and their subject at first glance. The most ignorant of men and the least versed ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... applied to Mr. Pitt's brother. When first lord of the Admiralty, people calling on him as late as even 10 or 11, P.M., were told that his lordship was riding in the park. On this account, partly, but more pointedly with a malicious reference to the contrast between his languor and the fiery activity of his father, the first earl, he was jocularly ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... on a side, loaded with all sorts of devilish stuff, and wore her round, and, keeping as close into the bamboo village as he could, gave them both broadsides, slam-bang into the midst of the houses and people, and stood out to sea! As his excitement passed off, headache, languor, fever, set in,—the deadly coast-fever, contracted from the water and night-dews on shore and his maddened temper. He ordered the ship to Penang, and never saw the deck again. He died on the passage, and was buried at sea. Mr. Channing, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... placing her on her bed, where she lay for an hour in a half-conscious state; but later in the day she began to recover, and moved to the couch near the fire, while Fan sat beside her on the carpet, watching the face that looked so strange in its whiteness and languor, and keeping the firelight ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... barbarously away forward; and one big fellow, half naked, with herculean shoulders, was hanging limply over a winch; another, sitting on the deck, his knees up and his head drooping sideways in a girlish attitude, was plaiting his pigtail with infinite languor depicted in his whole person and in the very movement of his fingers. The smoke struggled with difficulty out of the funnel, and instead of streaming away spread itself out like an infernal sort of cloud, smelling of sulphur and raining soot all ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... farewell.... Upon a happier mortal the star of your eye shall beam. Upon the unhappy Immortal it must, in parting, close. For thus does the god turn away from you, thus does he kiss away your divinity!" He presses a long kiss upon each of her eyes, and the first languor of sleep falling at once upon her, she leans, without strength, against him. He supports her to a mossy knoll beneath a spreading pine-tree, and lays her gently upon it; after a long brooding look at her face, closes her helmet; after ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... Liberalism of the professional classes in Vienna absolutism had now its most efficient instrument; and the Concordat negotiated by Bach with the Papacy in 1855 marked the definite submission of Austria to the ecclesiastical pretensions which in these years of political languor and discouragement gained increasing recognition throughout Central Europe. Ultramontanism had sought allies in many political camps since the revolution of 1848. It had dallied in some countries with Republicanism; but its truer instincts divined ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... the place. Report had it that an earnest seeker after amusement might have a tolerably spacious rag in this modern Byzantium. I thought that a few weeks here might restore that keen edge to my nervous system which the languor of the past term had in a measure blunted. I wished my visit to be a tonic rather than a sedative. I anticipated that on my return the cry would go round Cambridge, 'Psmith has been to New York. He is full of oats. For he on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise. He ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... the door when he entered the little room reserved for him, and barely restrained himself from flinging his hat into a corner and breaking a chair on the table. His languor had vanished. ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... beautiful pose of her body, stretched in the deck-chair, her fine white hands and arms that hung there, slender, inert and frail. He admired these things so much that he failed to see that they expressed not only beauty but a certain delicacy of physique, and that her languor which appealed to him ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... calamity to both. Yet such was the harassed, or rather broken state of his health, that his mental strength and unconquerable courage alone preserved the poor shattered frame from sinking into languor and inertion. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... no need to be ashamed of his pupil. It is full of delightful descriptions of nature and love and youth: the fresh morning as it rises upon the castled heights, the singing of the birds and fluttering of the leaves, the impulse of a young heart even in the languor of imprisonment to start up and meet the sun, with all the springs of new life which at that verdant season come with every new day—the apparition of the beautiful one suddenly appearing in the old immemorial garden with all its flowers, herself the sweetest and the fairest of flowers, all ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... fragrance of the trees, in the soft swinging of the palm leaves, in the multitudinous burgeoning and bloom about her. It lay in the long-drawn music of the men's voices, in the caressing laughter of the women. It lay in the flaming blushes that, even at table, mantled her face; in the delicious languor that pervaded her limbs and seemed to creep into the innermost marrow of ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... that women must be beautiful accounts for the popularity of face-washes, and beauty parlors, and the languor of university extension lectures. Women cannot be blamed for this. All our civilization has been to the end that women make themselves attractive to men. The attractive woman has hitherto been the successful woman. The pretty girl marries a millionaire, travels ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... strange scene progressed, Frank felt his eyes begin to grow dim and an unaccountable languor fill his limbs. His head swam round and he desired nothing so much as to lie down and sleep—-and yet a compelling power forced him to keep his eyes fixed on the column of smoke over which the aged Krooman was ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... exercises, and the uniform sat upon him with a manly grace. There was no braver officer—no more gallant cavalier. Though the expression of his countenance was gentle, rather than energetic and imperious—though there was an habitual languor in his looks, often dashed with thought, no doubt the soldiers would love him for his frank bearing, his honest and hearty speech, his small figure, resembling his uncle's, and the imperial lightning which the passion of the moment kindled ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... morning came, and Philip went to take leave of Charles. Poor Charles was feebler by this time, and too much subdued by pain and languor to receive him as at first, but the spirit was the same; and when Philip wished him good-bye, saying he hoped soon to hear he was ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to enliven a lay, The notes would betray the languor of woe; My heart is o'erthrown, like the rush of the stone That, unfix'd from its throne, seeks the valley below. The veteran of war, that knows not to spare, And offers us ne'er the respite of peace, Resistless comes on, and we yield with a groan, For under the sun is no hope ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... a long while on his bed, a music-book on his knees. He felt as though sweet, unheard melody was haunting him; already he was all aglow and astir, already he felt the languor and sweetness of its presence.. but he could ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... as if the singer felt overcome at the sweetness of life and of his own expression, and languished somewhat at the close; its effect is like that of the perfume of the honeysuckle, infecting the mind with a soft, delicious languor, a wish to lie perfectly still and drink of the same sweetness again and ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... A cloud appeared in the hitherto serene heaven of the royal lovers. Proserpine became unwell. A mysterious languor pervaded her frame; her accustomed hilarity deserted her. She gave up her daily rides; she never quitted the palace, scarcely her chamber. All day long she remained lying on a sofa, and whenever Pluto endeavoured to console her she went into hysterics. His Majesty was quite miserable, and the Fates ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... ladies had very considerable talents for political intrigue, and then natural faculties in this way had not lain dormant or been injured by want of practice. In Pauline this finesse was partially concealed by a languor and indecision of manner and an occasional assumption of 'niaiserie'; or almost infantine simplicity; but this only threw people the more off their guard, and made her finesse the more sure in its operation. Pauline was handsome ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... he seemed to think this a very extraordinary encroachment, had already made such an effort from his general languor in the repulse he had given to Morrice, that he could exert himself no further; but after looking around him with mingled vacancy and contempt, he again seated himself, and suffered Morrice to do the honours without more opposition. Morrice, but too happy in the office, ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... Wollstonecraft, and there are some fresh pictures of youth and childhood in Fleetwood. But St. Leon, besides its historical shortcomings (which, once more, we may postpone), is full of faults, from the badly managed supernatural to an only too natural dullness and languor of general story: nor has Fleetwood anything like the absorbing power which Caleb Williams exercises, in its own way and on its own people. Yet again we may perhaps say that the chief interest of Godwin, from our point of view, is his repeated and further weighted testimony to the importance ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... such a diet; It fires the blood from languor; Ye neighbor's children, have a care, This ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... It had only one peculiarity—a character of malignity—unfathomable malignity. During the first year it looked sullen and sick. But this character of intense malice and vigilance was always underlying that surly languor. During all that time it acted as if on a plan of giving me as little trouble as was consistent with watching me. Its eyes were never off me. I have never lost sight of it, except in my sleep, light or dark, day or night, since it came ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu |
