"Sluggish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sails followed their bad example. The captain gave a stamp of impatience on the deck. The breeze was falling, even the topsails and courses no longer bellied out as before. Still, the frigates glided on, but the sluggish eddies astern showed how greatly their ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... lost more and more of of its rapidity as it came out into a still wider valley, and became quite sluggish. We picked red berries that grew on bushes that overhung the water. They were sour and might have been high cranberries. One day I killed an otter, and afterward hearing a wild goose on shore, I went for ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... suburbs, when the air has more of nature in it, especially that portion of the walk which lay upon the bridge. More life than was usual upon the bridge moved there on Sunday. Then the cars were crowded with people seeking the parks. Many crossed on foot, stopping to look idly down at the dark and sluggish water. ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... sword—stigmatize the sword? No, my Lord; for it swept the Dutch marauders out of the fine old towns of Belgium—scourged them back to their own phlegmatic swamps—and knocked their flag and scepter, their laws and bayonets into the sluggish waters of the Scheldt. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... not loath, and even the horses, seeming to have renewed hope, changed their sluggish walk to a trot. They had no hesitation in seeking shelter at that hour, entire strangers though they were, such an act being in perfect accordance with the laws of ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... on stiff pennons, and of war's alarms, And trophies won, in loftiest numbers sings. 'Tis thou the hero's breast to martial acts, And resolution bold, and ardor brave, Excit'st: thou check'st inglorious lolling ease, And sluggish minds with generous fires inflam'st. O thou! that first my quickened soul didst warm, Still with thy aid assist me, that thy praise, Thy universal sway o'er all the world, In everlasting numbers, like the theme, I may record, and ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... it was like any other day of useful work, innocent pleasure, and dreaming dozes on Auld Jock's grave to wee Bobby. As years go, the shaggy little Skye was an old dog, but he was not feeble or blind or unhappy. A terrier, as a rule, does not live as long as more sluggish breeds of dogs, but, active to the very end, he literally wears himself out tearing around, and then goes, little soldier, very suddenly, dying gallantly with his ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... months. Nothing of her past awakened more keen regret in this young girl's heart than the thought of her undutiful, unsisterly life. It was all to be different now. She thanked God that he had let her come back to that very kitchen and dining-room to undo her former work. The old sluggish, selfish spirit had gone from her. Before this every thing had been done for Ester Ried, now it was to be done for Christ—every thing, even the mixing up of that flour and water; for was not the word given: "Whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... eye of the old warrior was dancing in his head with a wild animation, and the sluggish repose in which his aged frame had been resting in the canoe was now changed to all the rapid inflections of practiced agility. The canoe whirled with each cunning evolution of the chase, like a bubble ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... cars leaping and twisting like a herd of frightened buffaloes, we charged down the western slope, down into a level land of ripened grass, where blackbirds chattered in the willows, and prairie chickens called from the tall rushes which grew beside the sluggish streams. ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... window-pane—which has smelt out Governor Pyncheon, and alights, now on his forehead, now on his chin, and now, heaven help us! is creeping over the bridge of his nose, toward the would-be chief magistrate's wide-open eyes! Canst thou not brush the fly away? Art thou too sluggish? Thou man, that hadst so many busy projects yesterday! Art thou too weak, that wast so powerful? Not brush away a fly? Nay, then, we give ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... dull concourse in yonder closed space, With visages sluggish and red; How calmly they sit, each one in his place, While their lungs ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... transmission by key is not in excess of forty to fifty words a minute. Stated very briefly, Edison's principal contribution to the commercial development of the automatic was based on the observation that in a line of considerable length electrical impulses become enormously extended, or sluggish, due to a phenomenon known as self-induction, which with ordinary Morse work is in a measure corrected by condensers. But in the automatic the aim was to deal with impulses following each other from twenty-five to one hundred times as rapidly as in Morse lines, and to attempt ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... tear me limb from limb, were now leaping and licking my hands, and rolling on the leaves around me. I listened awhile in the fear of hearing the voices of men following the dogs, but there was no sound in the forest save the gurgling of the sluggish waters of the creek, and the chirp of black squirrels in the trees. I took courage and started onward once more, taking the dogs with me. The bell on the neck of the old dog, I feared might betray me, and, unable to get it off her neck, I twisted ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... regions, the feeding of the salts to the ocean arises from the slower work of meteorological and organic agencies attacking the molecular constitution of the rocks; processes which best proceed where the drainage is sluggish and the quiescent conditions permit of the development of abundant organic ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... this old raft is ever going to float any more than the mill itself," he remarked pettishly to his sister Elta one day in October, as they sat together on the Venture and watched the sluggish ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... Almeneches, whence the Duke's followers first troubled Abbess Emma. But yet more, here is Joanne's "beau tumulus" thrown in along with it. A plan is almost needed to set forth what we see. Here is a piece of slightly elevated ground girded by a ditch on all sides except where the sluggish river Don—how many Dons are there in Europe?—which in times past clearly supplied the ditch with water, itself flows. Here then is the castle; at least here are its essential features. And they are all clearer, ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... thou him who did me harm On my horse by yonder farm? Even such an one was he, Sluggish yet a thief to see; From the neighbours presently Doom of thief shall he abye And a blue skin shall he wear, If ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... Gwalchmai "and their sweet voices in the lulling songs of the wood"; he watches at night beside the fords "among the untrodden grass" to hear the nightingale and watch the play of the sea-mew. Even patriotism takes the same picturesque form. The Welsh poet hates the flat and sluggish land of the Saxon; as he dwells on his own he tells of "its sea-coast and its mountains, its towns on the forest border, its fair landscape, its dales, its waters, and its valleys, its white sea-mews, its beauteous ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... sensation, a passing paroxysm. What the soul desires to-day is a condition of fixity; and happiness alone is permanent, and consists in absolute tranquillity, in the regularity with which eating and sleeping succeed each other, and the sluggish organs perform their functions. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... went on, and told their journey over the sluggish northern main, and through the shoreless outer ocean, to the fairy island of the west; and of the Sirens, and Scylla, and Charybdis, and all the wonders they had seen, till midnight passed and the day dawned; but the kings never ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... gone on, had captured the construction-company once owned by the Dodsworths, best-known pioneer family of Zenith. He built state capitols, skyscrapers, railway terminals. He was a heavy-shouldered, big-chested man, but not sluggish. There was a quiet humor in his eyes, a syrup-smooth quickness in his speech, which intimidated politicians and warned reporters; and in his presence the most intelligent scientist or the most sensitive ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... been taken from the river, dragged from the sluggish pools of mud or dug out of the sand about Kernville during the day. Three hundred of them were spread out upon the dry sand along the river's bank at one time this afternoon. The sight is one that cannot be described, and is one of the most distressing ever witnessed. A crowd of at least ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... good actors at his theatre, to turn his attention to the improvement of the whole system of Post-Office conveyance, and of locomotive machinery generally, in the British Islands. The result was a scheme for superseding, on the great roads at least, the then existing system of sluggish and irregular stage-coaches, the property of private persons and companies, by a new system of government coaches, in connexion with the Post-Office, carrying the mails and also a regulated number of passengers, with clockwork precision, at a rate of comparative speed, which he hoped ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... on a cul-de-sac of nocturnal emptiness. Scarcely does a human footstep come to rouse the petroleum-sluggish echoes. A padding pussy makes a note of cheery liveliness in the lukewarm monotony ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... O'Callaghan's showy, off-hand manner, his civilities, and his flatteries, felt, for the first time in her life, that she had been taken in; and being a peculiarly prudent, cautious personage, of the slow, sluggish, stagnant temperament, which those who possess it are apt to account a virtue, and to hold in scorn their more excitable and impressible neighbours, found herself touched in the very point of honour, piqued, aggrieved, mortified; and denouncing the father as the greatest deceiver that ever ...
— Honor O'callaghan • Mary Russell Mitford
... 'Ugly,' however, was so sluggish in his movements through the corvette rolling a bit and the ratlines being none too steady, that Lieutenant ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... inhabitants of woodland only, the nymphs of the poplar and the pine, but the whole satyr circle, intervening between the headship of the vine and the mere earth, the grosser, less human [15] spirits, incorporate and made visible, of the more coarse and sluggish sorts of vegetable strength, the fig, the reed, the ineradicable weed-things which will attach themselves, climbing about the vine-poles, or seeking the sun between the hot stones. For as Dionysus, the spiritual form ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... working the log in toward shore. It moved slowly, but the current was sluggish, the space brief, and he was certain to ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... the snug little oak-wainscoted parlour at the Grange, while his passion grew day by day, until it did really become a very absorbing feeling, second only to his love of money and Wyncomb Farm. These dull sluggish natures are capable of deeper passions than the world gives them credit for; and are as slow to abandon an idea as they ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... civil compact. Together with these aims of those who were put into places of authority, they were obliged daily to use their endeavors to bring the restive and quarrelsome into proper subordination; to keep the sluggish and lazy diligently employed, and to teach the thriftless to ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... well known to the reading circles, for his works were translated into their tongue. Lyttleton, Clarke, Sherlock, and Bentley received no less favor. Leland enjoyed a cordial introduction by the pen of Professor Bonnet, while Tillotson had his readers and admirers among even the boatmen in the sluggish canals of Leyden, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam. But the Deists of England gained more favor in Holland than their opponents were able to acquire. The former were bold, while the latter were timid and compromising. ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... its side a little below the clearing where squat the thatched huts of the Negroes. The river life was ever fascinating to the ape-man. He found pleasure in watching the ungainly antics of Duro, the hippopotamus, and keen sport in tormenting the sluggish crocodile, Gimla, as he basked in the sun. Then, too, there were the shes and the balus of the black men of the Gomangani to frighten as they squatted by the river, the shes with their meager washing, the balus ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the underworld, the night-wanderer, to be propitious to her enterprise. And Aeson's son followed in fear, but the serpent, already charmed by her song, was relaxing the long ridge of his giant spine, and lengthening out his myriad coils, like a dark wave, dumb and noiseless, rolling over a sluggish sea; but still he raised aloft his grisly head, eager to enclose them both in his murderous jaws. But she with a newly cut spray of juniper, dipping and drawing untempered charms from her mystic brew, sprinkled his eyes, while she chanted her ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... your estimate of my capacities and of the sluggish manner in which my blood courses through my veins. Doing nothing was all very well in dead-alive, by-gone days, but it does not suit the present age of activity and progress. In our time everything that has heart and spirit feels that labor is a law ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... longing for woman's sweet companionship that leads these to rear happy homes—sacred shrines from which incense mounts night and day to the throne of Omnipotent God—goads those to lawless love. The empurpled juice that warms the cold heart and stirs the sluggish blood that gives to the orator lips of gold, to the poet promethean fire abused doth breed the hasty quarrel and make ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... like boiling water outside and as if air were being pumped out of some receptacle, and the vessel began to move up and down in a lithe sort of fashion and to bend tortuously from side to side like a great sluggish fish. Through the partitions of glass they saw one of the men closing the door, and in a moment the vessel glided away from the shore. The men all sank into easy positions on the couches, and delightful ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... on Rome. Behold,—this realm—though proud and powerful It seems—totters upon the edge of doom. Therefore the stoutest hand must seize the helm. Rome must be cleansed,—cleansed to the very roots; The sluggish we must waken from their slumber,— And crush to earth the power of these wretches Who sow their poison in the mind and stifle The slightest promise of a better life. Look you,—'tis civic freedom I would further,— The civic spirit that in former times Was regnant here. Friends, I shall ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... a man of commonplace appearance, with dull, expressionless eyes, sluggish movements, and slow, affected manner of speech. His technique is not astonishing, but he has a full, penetrating, sympathetic tone. There is no charlatanism or trickery in his playing, nor any virtuoso effects, but the charm ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... a double row alongside a small stream which made its way across the meadow to the lake. In the middle of their village the stream rippled over shallows, and here they had placed stepping-stones for their convenience in crossing. Below it was sluggish and deep, and here they kept their canoes. These Kakisas used both dug-outs, for the lake, and bark-canoes for the river. The main body of the lake stretched to the west and south: off to Stonor's right it gradually narrowed down to the ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... Jefferies has accomplished an artistic feat also in drawing the relations of the Idens, father, mother, and daughter. How true, how unerringly true to human nature is this picture of the Iden household; how delicately felt and rendered to a hair is his picture of the father's sluggish, masculine will, pricked ineffectually by the waspish tongue of feminine criticism. Further, we not only have the family's idiosyncrasies, their habits, mental atmosphere, and domestic story brought before us in a hundred pages, ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... the Chinese leadership began moving the economy from a sluggish, inefficient, Soviet-style centrally planned economy to a more market-oriented system. Whereas the system operates within a political framework of strict Communist control, the economic influence of non-state organizations and individual citizens ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... body up And cast it in a stream— A sluggish water, black as ink, The depth was so extreme. My gentle boy, remember this Is nothing but ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... off the sand into the water. Slone studied the river and shore. The water ran slow, heavily, in sluggish eddies. From far up the canyon came the roar of a rapid, and from below the roar of another, heavier and closer. The river appeared tremendous, in ways Slone felt rather than realized, yet it was not swift. Studying the black, rough wall of rock above him, he saw marks where the river ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... died on the 27th of March 1625. The new king and Buckingham were at one in their aims and objects. Both were anxious to distinguish themselves by the chastisement of Spain, and the recovery of the Palatinate. Both were young and inexperienced. But Charles, obstinate when his mind was made up, was sluggish in action and without fertility in ideas, and he had long submitted his mind to the versatile and brilliant favourite, who was never at a loss what to do next, and who unrolled before his eyes visions of endless possibilities in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... herself fearfully isolated between two perils. No one to defend her but her lord, or rather the money they pay him: but then to find that money, to spur on the peasant's slowness, and overcome his sluggish antagonism, to snatch somewhat even from him who has nothing, what hard pressure, what threats, what cruelty, must be employed! This was never in the goodman's line of business. The wife brings him to the mark by dint of much pushing: she says to him, "Be rough; at need be cruel. Strike hard. ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... which gives the truest inspiration to the foreign-born in his endeavor to serve the people of his adopted country. He is mentally sluggish, indeed, who does not discover that America will make good with him if he makes good ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... down a hill, and, very soon, to a wooden bridge which spanned a creek some twenty feet below. The colonel paused for a moment beside the railing, and looked up and down the stream. It seemed narrower and more sluggish than his memory had pictured it. Above him the water ran between high banks grown thick with underbrush and over-arching trees; below the bridge, to the right of the creek, lay an open meadow, and to the left, a few rods away, the ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... buttress! the touch of a pin on this or that spot of his mortal house, will change him from a leader of armies, or a hunter of tigers in the jungle, to one who shudders at a centipede! That courage also which is mere insensibility crumbles at once before any object of terror able to stir the sluggish imagination. There is a fear, this for one, that for another, which can appall the stoutest who is not one ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... with mine," he remarked meditatively, "because at a crisis in my life I haven't had an inspiration. It is sluggish. I ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... days before there had been heavy rains which had raised the Chickahomeny river from a low, sluggish stream into a broad, deep, swift running river. As soon as the army got into its then position; by which it was divided by the river, several bridges were built to more effectually reunite the army. The Second Corps had two such bridges, Richardson's being some distance below Sedgwick's. Each division ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... arose. Their black figures sank and disappeared from against the sky. They were as two horns which the sluggish heath had put forth from its crown, like a mollusc, and had now again ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... Miller, 'you are very lazy. Really, considering that I am going to give you my wheelbarrow, I think you might work harder. Idleness is a great sin, and I certainly don't like any of my friends to be idle or sluggish. You must not mind my speaking quite plainly to you. Of course I should not dream of doing so if I were not your friend. But what is the good of friendship if one cannot say exactly what one means? Anybody can say charming ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde
... spirits in the metempsychosis imagined by Fourier, had returned to the brilliant sphere from which death had driven him in temporary exile. I was at first enchanted, intoxicated. The mental activity which had seemed so intense in the sluggish province, needed to be quickened fourfold to keep abreast of the intellects with which I entered into relation, and the consciousness of the quickening affected me as with new wine. But, as I grew accustomed ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... asked drowsily, his small, gray-blue eyes blinking in the yellow sun-glare and still sluggish from the nap disturbed by the noise ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... of his is as tender as a baby's, and he is snuffed out by a blow that would hardly bewilder for a moment any other forest animal, unless it be the skunk, another sluggish non-combatant of our woodlands. Immunity from foes, from effort, from struggle is always purchased with ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... theoretically static form would not strikingly alter its actual shape. The actual form of a highly dynamic society hovers relatively near to its static model though it never conforms to it. In the case of sluggish societies this would not be true; for if in one of them we stopped the forces of growth and waited long enough to let the static influences produce their full effects, the shape to which they would ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... standing staring at them; they feel hundreds of inquisitive looks upon them; are conscious of them. No; I would prefer to see animals that didn't know one observed them; shy creatures that nestle in their lair, and lie with sluggish green eyes, and lick ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... what I call a success. I don't care a tinker's darn for the prizes, but the way you boys built up to the girls last night warmed the sluggish blood in my old veins. Even if Cotton did claim a dance or two with the oldest Vaux girl, if Theo and her don't make the riffle now—well, they simply can't help it, having gone so far. And did any of you notice ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... out on the upper land. Deep they dug, deep into the ground till they found the firm bed-rock. With a network of steel they filled this terrific hole. Into the rasping, revolving mixers they poured tons of sand and cement and gravel which steadily flowed in a sluggish stream to strengthen ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... never to be effaced from his sluggish memory, on which the master of the pool had been temporarily routed from his mastership and driven in a panic from his domain. Of these the less important had seemed to him by far the ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... learn, As may, for conscience' sake and of mere sincerity, Being able 'twixt corn and cockle to discern, Apply their study to replenish the bern; That is thy Church, by their doctrines increase, And make many heirs of thine eternal peace. Amen. Amen. But soft, let me see who doth me aspect. First, sluggish Saturn of nature so cold, Being placed in Tauro, my beams do reject, And Luna in Cancro in sextile he behold. I will the effect hereafter unfold: Now Jupiter the gentle, of temperature mean, Poor Mercury the turncoat, he forsook clean. Now murthering Mars retrograde in Libra, With amiable ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... magic of the spacious veld, with its clear sky and the mountains and flat-topped kopjes sharply defined on the horizon, irresistibly lured them on. In the land they had quitted the air was dense with moisture; scarcely a hill was to be seen; they were hemmed in by sluggish rivers and by the sea, which leaned heavily against the dykes and threw its spray angrily down on to the reclaimed pastures which had been stolen ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... the groups must be separated and new separators inserted before they will take charge, and that is where the battery has suffered from lack of water and has sulphated clear through the separators, Fig. 201. The separators will be covered with white sulphate. Chemical action is very sluggish in such cases. ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... a perpetual spring, whose current is so sluggish as scarcely to be perceptible, but which yet has the vitality ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... historian is to point out that with rare exceptions, and those almost wholly on the poetic side, great men of letters rather show in a general, early, and original fashion a common tendency than definitely lead an otherwise sluggish multitude to the promised land. But no investigation has deprived, or is at all likely to deprive, the Essays in Criticism of their place as an epoch-making book, as the manual of a new and often independent, but, on the ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... admirably designed for a battering-ram, was almost half out of the water. The mate made one desperate attempt to get out of his way. Again the helm was put up and the men ran to the braces, but the water-laden ship, already well down by the head, and more sluggish than ever, had fallen off only one point when the whale leaped upon her with demoniac energy, and—so it appeared to the ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... division. Dr. Dewey and his followers advise only two meals a day, and it seems incontestable that many persons find the plan advantageous. These are generally adults with weak digestions, or elderly persons who, on account of their age and the sluggish action of their assimilative functions, require comparatively little food. Children, on account of their vigorous vitality, rapid growth and hearty appetites, ought not to be restricted to this number. Persons who have got into the pernicious ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... night, still and calm, and with a radiance of starlight overhead. There was the busy hum of insect life from the adjacent woods, a deep murmur from the sluggish tide of the great Caribou River which drained the country for miles around. The occasional sigh that floated upon the air spoke of lofty pine crests bending under a light top breeze which refrained from disturbing the lower air. The night left the impression of unbreakable ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... perhaps the lights of a home steamer keeping her unswerving course in the middle, or maybe the elusive shadow of a native craft with her mat sails flitting by silently—and the low land on the other side in sight at daylight. At noon the three palms of the next place of call, up a sluggish river. The only white man residing there was a retired young sailor, with whom he had become friendly in the course of many voyages. Sixty miles farther on there was another place of call, a deep bay with only a couple of houses on the beach. And ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... the door of the alehouse, seven or eight English miles at least lay betwixt Morrison and him. The advance of the former was slow, limited by the sluggish pace of his cattle; the latter left behind him stubble-field and hedgerow, crag and dark heath, all glittering with frost-rime in the broad November moonlight, at the rate of six miles an hour. And now the distant lowing of Morrison's cattle is heard; and now they are seen creeping like ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... timid than the queen. Ravens, screech-owls, and many another bird of evil omen filled the air with harsh cries. Far off could be espied a mountain, from the slopes of which there flowed the tears of all hapless lovers. Its sluggish stream was fed by every ill-starred love. The trees had neither leaves nor fruit, and the ground was cumbered with briars, nettles, and rank weeds. The food, too, was such as might be expected in such a horrid clime. A few dried roots, horse-chestnuts, ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... a consciousness of his surroundings by the wailings of Jim, who, regardless of everything save his own sore affliction, was kneeling by the side of his brother, trying to staunch a sluggish flow of blood, which ...
— Under the Liberty Tree - A Story of The 'Boston Massacre' • James Otis
... behind when the camp went on, so as to give it. She told me to say that she has had enough of your folk and their hair-splitting and their sluggish blood; and that she wants to get back to her own people and be free. 'Tell him,' she said, 'that I am a woman, and that I loved him; and that is why I would not be his harlot any longer.' The lassie was ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... all heard of the lampalagua, a species of boa found in these countries, with a very thick body and extremely sluggish in its motions. It preys on the larger rodents, and captures them, I believe, by following them into their burrows, where they cannot escape from its jaws ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... began to urge the raft toward the shore by means of the pole. It obeyed very well, for the current was more sluggish now, and soon they had reached ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... path through the olives and vines to the bottom of the hill in front of the villa. It was evening now, but the evening was very hot, and though the olive trees stood in long rows, there was no shade. Quite at the bottom of the hill there was a little sluggish muddy brook, along the sides of which the reeds grew thickly and the dragon-flies were playing on the water. There was nothing attractive in the spot, but he was weary, and sat himself down on the dry hard bank which had been made by repeated ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... the whole troop were in motion and making a rush for the bridge. They gained it; they were across it, sweeping Robert Sadler before them, and within the walls before the sluggish old warder had seemed to see what was happening. They were well across the outer court before they noticed the strange air of emptiness that seemed to have fallen on the place. They stormed into the inner court; and here, too, all was silence. And then they turned ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... which have subsisted on this food for some days, when cut open emit a stench that is intolerable, and which taints their flesh to a sickening degree. The insects on which they feed are mostly of two kinds: one a sort of grasshopper with a hard black skin, and the other a soft, brown, sluggish fly. "This last is the most numerous. In some of the lakes such quantities are forced into the bays when the wind blows hard, that they are pressed together in dead multitudes and remain a great nuisance. I have several ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... to the first assertion, I ask them if experience does not also teach that if the body be sluggish the mind at the same time is not fit for thinking? When the body is asleep, the mind slumbers with it, and has not the power to think, as it has when the body is awake. Again, I believe that all have discovered ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... microscopically small, and crowded into the centre of the page with the effect of a decorative panel. He carried the epistle about with him all day, and observed the weather with solicitous attention, but no change occurred. The turquoise sky remained without a cloud. Fires from burning leaves sent up sluggish pillars of smoke, that spread out equilaterally above the trees ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... strictly within bounds. If the claim be not too much of the nature of a truism, we may add that so far as quality is concerned the superiority of our finny tribes is even more strongly marked than in regard to quantity. In the sluggish streams that abound in "ten degrees of more effulgent clime," the fish partake of the slimy properties of their native element; it is only in the limpid waters of the North that they are found of flavor so unexceptionable as to please an epicurean taste, ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... the scent of some flower pressed against his face seemed to pierce into him and reach his very heart, awakening the memory of something past, forgotten. Then, seizing the branches, snapping them in his haste, he dragged the skiff along through the sluggish water, the gnats dancing in his face. She seemed to know where he was taking her, and neither of them spoke a single word, while he pulled out into the open, and over to the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... literary bellicosity is pathological. Men overmuch in studies and universities get ill in their livers and sluggish in their circulations; they suffer from shyness, from a persuasion of excessive and neglected merit, old maid's melancholy, and a detestation of all the levities of life. And their suffering finds its vent in ferocious thoughts. A vigorous ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... time, poison-vending became a profitable trade. Eleven years after this period, it was carried on at Rome to such an extent, that the sluggish government was roused to interference. Beckmann, in his History of Inventions, and Lebret, in his Magazin zum Gebrauche der Staaten Kirche Geschichte, or Magazine of Materials for a History of a State Church, relates that, in the year 1659, it was made known to Pope Alexander VII. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... system among the easily moved races of the south. Many a crime has been avowed, because the paralyzed lips of the criminal were absolutely incapable of pronouncing the lie he fully purposed to speak, while he thus openly appealed to the material figure which had the power of enabling the sluggish southern imagination to realize the ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... we found time to discuss the circumstances—both those in our favour and against us. The water-way taken by the canoe was far from being direct. Both the creek and the larger stream curved repeatedly in their courses; and in ordinary times were of sluggish current. The freshet, however, produced by the late rain-storm, had rendered it swifter than common; and we knew that the canoe would be carried down with considerable rapidity—faster than we were travelling on ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... the moonlight played upon the sluggish waters of the moat. In the distance twinkled the lights of the village of Blentz. From the courtyard and the palace came faintly the sound of voices, and the movement of men. A horse whinnied from ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... clear, while a north-west wind blew away the smoky clouds that hovered over the city like a funeral pall, displaying to our view the silver sinuosities of old Father Thames, as he moved in sluggish grandeur by Westminster, Blackfriars Bridge, the Tower, and to Gravesend, on his way to the channel ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... rather curious fact that, as all our milling knowledge was originally inherited from England, which country is very sluggish in the adoption of new methods, it was not until our improved flour reached that country that the English millers accepted the new method, and have since acted upon it. It is a case of the pupil ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... through the summer haze, coming with his springy stride through the wheat. Yet—the words—mortally wounded! They had burned into her thought so that when she closed her eyes she saw them, darkly red, against the blindness of sight. Pain was a sluggish stream with source high in her breast, and it moved with her unquickened blood. If Dorn were really dead, what would become of her? Selfish question for a girl whose lover had died for his country! She would work, ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... though he was physically, Lupus was mentally a sluggish beast, and not over and above intelligent. In this he favoured his sire, who was slow-moving, sluggish, and, withal, as fierce as any weasel, and immensely powerful. When Lupus caught his first glimpse of the creature he had come to slay, ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... of betrayal and ruin floated upon his sombre indifference as upon a sluggish sea of pitch. But he stepped out from under the wall, and, looking up, saw Dr. Monygham leaning out of ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... watch in a brass case lay near the pistol. De Thou, wrapped in a black cloak, sat motionless with folded arms. Cinq-Mars paced backward and forward, his arms crossed behind his back, from time to time looking at the hand of the watch, too sluggish in his eyes. He opened the tent, looked up to the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... which woke me from my grief and caused my blood which had grown sluggish to run again. For when she knew that she was safe the lady Blanche came out of the cave and addressed me as I stood there leaning against the rock with the red sword Wave-Flame in my hand, as I had drawn it to make ready for the last fight to the death. All sorts of sweet names she ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... The well-known headache of sluggish bowels is an obvious case in point; and one of the early signs of beginning failure of the kidneys, as in Bright's disease, is a headache of a peculiar type due to accumulation in the system of the poisons which it is their duty to get ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... almost without a companion—for the good priest Herman, whose time was divided between his pastoral duties, his prayers, and his studies, saw him but at intervals—found time to hang very heavily upon his hands. He thought the old reaper weary and sluggish, for the scythe flies fast only when we employ or enjoy the moments. The autumn blast was beginning to lend a thousand bright colors to the trees, and the giddy leaves, like giddy mortals, threw off their simple green for the gaudy livery that ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... to have a general word for fish, but he has names for the three varieties found in the river. One, ka-cho', a very small, sluggish fish, is captured during the entire year. In February these fish were seldom more than 2 inches in length, and yet they were heavy with spawn. The ka-cho' is the fish most commonly captured with the hands. It is a sluggish swimmer and is ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... you. I've so many good friends," Val answered, giving him a smile to stir his sluggish blood. "Good-bye, Arline. Don't worry about me, there's a dear. I shall not be back before to-morrow ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... the wilderness to create currents and eddies in the sluggish stream which flowed over the colonists, Victor began to compile a book on Indian lore. He took up the work the very first night of his arrival; took it up as eagerly as if it were a gift from the ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... washed on the one side by the slow stream of the Dorset Stour, and on the other by the no less sluggish flow of the Wiltshire Avon, not far from the place where they mingle their waters before making their way amid mudflats and sandbanks into the English Channel, stands, and has stood for more than eight hundred years, the stately Priory Church which ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... protection to it than venomous fangs are to the deadliest snake. Toads are, in fact, with a very few exceptions, only attacked and devoured by snakes, by lizards, and by their own venomous relative, Ceratophrys ornata. Possibly the cold sluggish natures of all these creatures protects them against the toad's secretion, which would be poison to most warm-blooded animals, but I am not so sure that all fish enjoy a like immunity. I one day noticed a good-sized fish (bagras) ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... consequence, taken pity on the eel, whose tail is so far from its heart, and provided accordingly. Dr. Marshall Hall has discovered near the tip a second, reinforcing heart, so to speak, which has its own pulsations, independent of the pulsations of the one above, and gives a fresh impetus to the sluggish blood, [Footnote: Many observers refer this to the lymphatic system.—TR.] which otherwise, as it would seem, would scarcely be able to accomplish the long return journey. Finally, even with an additional heart in thetail, the ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... only an expert psychologist could explain. She had gone through school mechanically as an unpleasant task to be gotten over with as soon as possible, taking no interest in her work, and when she came out her brain was a sluggish and unresponsive as one might expect. Well aware of her shortcomings, she made light of them, insisting laughingly that she was the dunce of the family and Virginia its genius. She would do the drudgery of housekeeping while her sister ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... much as we do. Where is the joyful buoyancy and expansive power with which the Gospel burst into the world? It looks like some stream that leaps from the hills, and at first hurries from cliff to cliff full of light and music, but flows slower and more sluggish as it advances, and at last almost stagnates in its flat marshes. Here we are with all our machinery, our culture, money, organisations—and the net result of it all at the year's end is but a poor handful of ears. 'Ye ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... Riding on horseback is hard work for one who is stiff in every joint and lame all over; but Don could not think of going into the house and taking a rest. He had been a close prisoner there for a whole week, and now that he had taken a breath of fresh air and stirred his sluggish blood with a little exhilarating exercise, he could not bear to go back to his sofa again. He proposed that they should leave their ponies at the barn and go up to David's in the canoe. They would take their guns with them, he said, and ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon |
