"Somnolency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we are moving. True, and at the last Review, the 'march past' was performed before a mounted generalissimo profoundly asleep, head on breast. Our English military 'moving' may now be likened to Somnolency on Horseback. 'Oh, come, no rancour,' said the colonel; 'you know he's a kind old boy at heart; nowhere a more ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the sing-song words of encouragement of their driver, monopolised the thoughts of sleepy minds. It seemed to Estella that life was all journeys, and that she had been on the road for years. The swing of the carriage, the little varieties of the road, but served to add to her somnolence. She only half woke up when, about ten o'clock, a halt was made to change horses, and the General quitted the carriage for a few minutes to talk earnestly with two horsemen, who were apparently awaiting their arrival. No time was lost here, and the carriage ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... state, his yellow hair shorn, his eyes dilated and yet stupid, life kept in him by a spoonful of milk, a lump of ice, a drink of lemon-water; always muttering, when he spoke at all, "Moufflou, Moufflou, dov' e Moufflou?" and lying for days together in somnolence and unconsciousness, with the fire eating at his brain and the weight lying on it like ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... during which he was awakened by the accidental fall of a rod in the canopy of his bed, which touched him on the neck. Thus even a prolonged interview with a ghost may conceivably be, in real time, a less than momentary dream occupying an imperceptible tenth of a second of somnolence, the sleeper not realising that he ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... more than one had tried to sleep. It was also true that in consequence the saloon breakfast had been abrogated, that even the saloon lunch lacked vicacity, and that at least one passenger was at that moment dozing in his cabin. But not on account of fatigue and somnolence was Audrey remaining in the saloon instead of taking the splendid summer afternoon on deck under the awning. She felt neither tired nor sleepy. The true secret was that she feared the crowd of village idlers, quidnuncs, ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... which I might look forward if I remained in the company of my present owners; and accordingly when my sable companions disposed themselves to sleep, I apparently did the same, but summoned all my energies to aid me in the task of resisting the tendency toward somnolence that I felt ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... after the excitement of the two opening speeches, which was now running its course through the crowded lobbies outside, had sunk into somnolence within the House itself, the fair-haired youth on whom her eyes were bent was sitting erect on the edge of his seat, papers in hand, his face turned eagerly toward the speaker on the other side of the House. His attitude gave the impression of one ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the exercises until a slip of a new moon, like a wistful girl, sank and darkness hid the countryside. A palpitating chorus of frogs rose from the invisible streams. Somnolence again overtook Janin; the violin slipped into the fragrant grass by the fence, but his fingers still ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... hat well down on his brows, and put himself into one of those numerous attitudes of torture with which "outsides" were wont to beguile the weary hours of night in coaching days. When the sun rose next morning, Will was still in that state of semi-somnolence which causes the expression of the countenance to become idiotic and the eyes owlish. At last the chimneys of his native town became visible, and in a short time he found himself standing before the well-remembered house tapping at the old door, whose panels—especially near the foot—still ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... indiligence[obs3]; dawdling &c. v. ergophobia[obs3], otiosity[obs3]. dullness &c. adj.; languor; segnity|, segnitude|; lentor[obs3]; sluggishness &c. (slowness) 275; procrastination &c. (delay) 133; torpor, torpidity, torpescence[obs3]; stupor &c. (insensibility) 823; somnolence; drowsiness &c. adj.; nodding &c. v.; oscitation[obs3], oscitancy[obs3]; pandiculation[obs3], hypnotism, lethargy; statuvolence heaviness[obs3], heavy eyelids. sleep, slumber; sound sleep, heavy sleep, balmy sleep; Morpheus; Somnus; coma, trance, ecstasis[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... noise, she follows me as we descend the staircase and cross the garden full of sunshine, where the dwarf shrubs and the deformed flowers seem, like the rest of the household, plunged in warm somnolence. ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... them towered the overflowing hay loft. Through the wide-open doors behind them the barn lot blazed in the afternoon sun. The somnolence of a farmyard mid-afternoon brooded over the scene. Only the boy, peering through the knothole, ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... For a while not a sound came from the deserted street or the old empty mansion, mute and dreamy like a tomb. But all at once the soft somnolence, instinct with all the sweetness of a dream of hope, was disturbed by a tempestuous entry, a whirl of skirts, a gasp of terror. It was Victorine, who had gone off after bringing the lamp, but now returned, scared and ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... whipped and whizzed past, or plopped into the heaps of debris above. Now that there was sufficient military reason for laziness on his part, Mac, recognizing, of course, that he would have worked had it been at all possible, sank with an easy conscience into somnolence. ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... she had to be content with so much of the gentleman's biography, for her husband relapsed into somnolence again. A few days later she saw a picture of Mr. Brent, in polo costume, in one of the magazines. She thought him good-looking, and wondered what kind of a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... rhythmic gait lulled to semi-somnolence, made no objection, and their rapture began afresh. They now went on more slowly, fearing the moment when they would have to retrace their steps. So long as they walked onward, they felt as though they were advancing to the eternity of their mutual embrace; the ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... to him before—he suggested that they consult a specialist in somnolence. But she would not hear of it; there was nothing wrong with her; all she wanted was to be left alone. In a short time hubby began to consider her in the light of a "white man's burden," and had distorted visions of himself laboring through life with ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... the next morning. The fatigues and excitements of the evening and the preparation for it were followed by a natural collapse, of which somnolence was a leading symptom. The sun shone into the window at a pretty well opened angle when the Colonel first found himself sufficiently awake to address ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... gratify for years. The islands are very quiet. One sees them lying about, clothed in their dark garments of leaves, in a great hush of silver and azure, where the sea without murmurs meets the sky in a ring of magic stillness. A sort of smiling somnolence broods over them; the very voices of their people are soft and subdued, as if afraid to break some ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... And whether from the newness of the parson, or the love of the service, certainly a congregation more intent, or more responsive, a clergyman will hardly find. But, as I had feared, it was different in the afternoon. The people had dined, and the usual somnolence had followed; nor could I find in my heart to blame men and women who worked hard all the week, for being drowsy on the day of rest. So I curtailed my sermon as much as I could, omitting page after page of my manuscript; and when I came to a close, was rewarded by ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... her drink, put the glass on a table, and wandered over to the couch. She stretched out on it. A drowsy somnolence enveloped her almost instantly. She closed ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... he completes his hundredth year. At present (January, 1884), he reads without spectacles, hears well, stands nearly erect, although six feet three in height, and has nothing of the somnolence of old age. He drives out every day, gets up at eleven, and goes to bed at nine. His diet is chiefly milk and old port wine, with occasionally a little soup or bread and butter. He still enjoys the delights of beneficence, which ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... the moment, not merely evoked from Whistler himself some imperishable dicta on art and the relation of critics to art, but really did something towards the long-drawn awakening of that mysterious somnolence called the public consciousness on the strange mission of beauty in this world, and, incidentally of the status of those "eccentric" ministers of it ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... toward the cavities of the head, chest, and abdomen; it causes, in the circulation of the lungs, and in that of the venous system of the head, an embarrassment that disturbs the function of the brain and concurs to produce somnolence. The probability of this explanation is strengthened by the flowing of the blood from the nose to the ears, spontaneous haemoptysis, also by preternatural redness of the viscera, engorgements of the cerebral vessel, and bloody effusion, all of which conditions ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... wasn't that he found an actual analogy between the pig and life, individuals, on a higher plane, so much as that he was vaguely disturbed by the impression that there was an ultimate similitude between him, Lee Randon, and a fattened somnolence of existence. ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... newspaper is as imperious as a Russian Ukase; it will be had, and it will be read. To this all else must give place. If we must go out at unusual hours to get it, we shall go, in spite of after-dinner nap or evening somnolence. If it finds us in company, it will not stand on ceremony, but cuts short the compliment and the story by the divine right of its ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to sleepiness, he has to ask permission of Hikuli, through the shaman, to go off and rest for a while, and must properly notify Hikuli of his leaving and returning to duty. Toward morning all the assistants are struggling hard to overcome somnolence, while the shaman sings and rasps as ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... slept, only some of them had fallen into drowsy somnolence, heavy and nerve-racking, worse indeed ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... feel proud of her awakening; and since it seemed an assured fact that her boys could do things worth while, there was reason to hope the town on Lake Constance would never again allow herself to sink back into her former condition of somnolence. So long as Jack Winters lived there, it might be understood first and last that such ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... from semi-somnolence, would pull herself together with a little jerk, would straighten her shoulders and lift her chin, whilst a quickly smothered sigh of weariness ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... am now speaking only of the early developments of physical phenomena exhibited by the first magnetizers and mesmerizers—the conjurers by passes and somnolence and other purely physical processes; the crazy and idiotic performances of their successors, the so-called spiritualists, with their grotesque and disgusting pretence of intercourse with the spirits of the dead through the legs of their tables and chairs, seemed to me the most melancholy testimony ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... that Monck would smoke his cigarette and suffer himself to be lulled into somnolence by such melody as she was able to extract from the crazy old instrument; ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... and Perk even dozed, lying there amidst his "Palm Sunday greens," as he fancifully called the camouflage stuff, for the climbing sun kept getting warmer, and induced somnolence, especially after such an eventful night as the one he and ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... thoughtful and was silent. Madame Nanteuil began to nod. Then, being aroused from her somnolence by the servant, who brought in the salt-cellar and the ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... and glided up to her bedroom. And, the moment she got there, and could gratify her somnolence without offense, need we say she became wide-awake? She sat down and wrote long letters to three other young ladies, gushing affection, asking questions of the kind nobody replies to, painting, ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... the water in twos, and that the lions walk the fields in twos, and in the warm redolence of that Saturday afternoon he falls off into slumber; and as if by allegory to teach all ages that the greatest of earthly blessings is sound sleep, this paradisaical somnolence ends with the discovery on ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... field in which self-suggestion is of definite value. Everyone appreciates the effect on sleep of the "state of mind" when he has passed a succession of sleepless hours followed by a sudden tendency to somnolence at the time for rising. The problem is to acquire the frame of mind without waiting for circumstances. To demonstrate the effect of faulty suggestion combined with restlessness on awaking in the ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... town of Steenberg. The faithful Roger Williams had strongly seconded the proposal. "We wish to show your Excellency," said he to Leicester, "that we are not sound asleep." The Welshman was not likely to be accused of somnolence, but on this occasion Sidney and himself had been overruled. At a later moment, and during the siege of Neusz, Sir Philip had the satisfaction of making a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... where the ground was covered with blueberries, and every eye would be on the lookout for bears; but all was still and motionless—even the grasshoppers chirping sleepily and lazily, as if they too were about to yield to the somnolence which seemed ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... three in the afternoon of the next day, and house and garden alike wore a rather uncomfortable air of heat fatigue and somnolence. The blinds were down in all the windows that faced south and west, with the object, no doubt, of keeping them cool—a most desirable condition of things, but one, on the present occasion, but imperfectly realized. Nor were things much better to the east of the house, ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... that lent an element of luxury to the simple meal. The warm room, the excellent food, better cooked than any they had had for seven months, produced a gentle somnolence. The thought of the inviting look of the white-covered bed upstairs lay like a balm on the spirits of men not born to roughing it. As the travellers said an early and grateful good-night, the Boy added sleepily something ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... The usual discreet somnolence of the chapel had been disturbed as by some indecorous but formidable awakener; the air was electric; anything might occur. Ezra was astounded by the mere volume of the singing; never had he heard such singing. At the end of the hymn the congregation sat down, ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... because a relation was involved. But if the scamps were not at Mere Cognette's every night, they always met during the day, enjoying together the legitimate pleasures of hunting, or the autumn vintages and the winter skating. Among this assemblage of twenty youths, all of them at war with the social somnolence of the place, there are some who were more closely allied than others to Max, and who made him their idol. A character like his often fascinates other youths. The two grandsons of Madame Hochon—Francois Hochon and Baruch Borniche—were ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... when the yellow corn waves, and the great oxen ascend the hills again with the ploughshares on their necks. Travellers dreamed of cisterns, hunters of their forests, veterans of battles; and in the somnolence that benumbed them their thoughts jostled one another with the precipitancy and clearness of dreams. Hallucinations came suddenly upon them; they sought for a door in the mountain in order to flee, and tried to pass through it. Others thought that they were sailing ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... this state of somnolence, awakened as if by a blow in the chest, and imperiously forced to fix our attention on what we saw, for amidst this whirl of strange sights, one stranger than all attracted our eyes and seemed to say to us: "Look ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... is! There was supposed to be a fair there when I was at Valence, but even that could not wake it up. But the fair was in a condition of the utmost somnolence itself. Why—I did not suspect till I reached Vienne, when I found that this latter place had drawn to it all that was enterprising, startling, attractive, and left only the very dregs of fairings to ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... coat, a vest of white pique, black satin small-clothes, ribbed silk stockings, and a white stock with a steel buckle; and he arranged his hair, and he tied his queue, all the while being in that strange somnolence which walks, which moves, which FLIES sometimes, which sees, which is indifferent to pain, which OBEYS. And he put on his hat, and he went forth from his cell: and though the dawn was not yet, he trod the corridors as seeing them. And he passed into the cloister, and ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... climbed the stairs, lighted only by the flickering candle-light, Peter's feelings were a curious mixture of uneasiness and a strange unthinking somnolence. Some part of him, somewhere, was urging him to an active unrest—"Norah ... what does she want interfering? I'll just go and see her and come back.... No, I won't, I'll just stay here ... never to bother again ... never to ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... had not produced the effect which it appeared to have done; instead of healthful sleep, it had brought on a kind of light-headed somnolence, in which the mind, preternaturally restless, wandered about its accustomed haunts, waking up its old familiar instincts and inclinations. It was not sleep,—it was not delirium; it was the dream-wakefulness which opium sometimes induces, when every nerve grows ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... drastic weeding out which Night imposes upon her wooers—so as to cull and choose only the truly meritorious lovers—experience supreme delights which are unknown to their snoring fellows. When the struggle with somnolence has been fought out and won, when the world is all-covering darkness and close-pressing silence, when the tobacco suddenly takes on fresh vigour and fragrance and the books lie strewn about the table, then it seems as though all the rubbish ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... helps to bring out the close relation between waking and sleeping illusion. The mind does not pass suddenly and at a bound from the condition of dream-fancy to that of waking perception. I have already had occasion to touch on the "hypnagogic state," that condition of somnolence or "sleepiness" in which external impressions cease to act, the internal attention is relaxed, and the weird imagery of sleep begins to unfold itself. And just as there is this anticipation of dream-hallucination ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... that would have shaken an older and heavier man to pieces; for going downhill is, contrary to the popular idea, much harder on the human frame than going up. He broke into camp and roused McHale from a state of somnolence and tobacco. ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... quick movement, she released herself from his arm and sprang to the ground. He, too, immediately dismounted. She felt very wide-awake now, as though the sudden consciousness of that encircling grasp, or something in his glance before she slipped from him, had startled away the torpor of somnolence. ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... appearance—by such an accident; but this particular sea-dog was tough in the skin—he was only awakened by it—nothing more. He yawned, raised himself lazily, and gazed round with that vacant stare of unreasonable surprise which is common to man on passing from a state of somnolence to that of wakefulness. ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... answerable ideas and images; church-going children and the pealing of the high organ; children afield, bathers by the brookside, ramblers on the brambly common, kite-flyers in the windy and cloud-navigated sky; and then, at another cadence of the hymn, back again to church, and the somnolence of summer Sundays, and the high, genteel voice of the parson (which he smiled a little to recall), and the painted Jacobean[17] tombs, and the dim lettering of the Ten Commandments in ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... me; or may Sylvia's nearness soothe, as her voice has brought me calm! Quiet I may some day enjoy, but slumber again, never! I see that souls in hades must ever have their misdeeds before them. Happy man in this world, the repentant's sins are forgiven! You lose your care in sleep. Somnolence and drowsiness—balm of aching hearts, angels of mercy! Mortals, how blessed! until you die, God sends you this rest. When I recall summer evenings with Sylvia, while gentle zephyrs fanned our brows, I would change ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... exceeds six hours ( eighteen to twenty miles). Even this, if kept up day after day, is hard labour for our montures, venerable animals whose chests, galled by the breast-straps, show that they have not been broken to the saddle. Accustomed through life to ply in a state of semi-somnolence, between Cairo and the Citadel, they begin by proving how unintelligent want of education can make one of the most intelligent of beasts. They trip over every pebble, and are almost useless on rough and broken ground; ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... deftly they ascended. In her father's office they gathered rugs and chairs, and he wrote a note and laid it on the desk; then they ascended to the roof and he made her comfortable. For a while she rested and sank to dreamy somnolence, watching the worlds above and wondering. Below lay the dark shadows of the city and afar was the shining of the sea. She glanced at him timidly as he set food before her and took a shawl and wound her in it, touching her reverently, yet tenderly. She looked up ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... abruptly, as though at a signal, to recommence as abruptly a few minutes later. These sounds were commonplace enough, and after an hour or two to allow the ear to become accustomed to them, would of themselves have been soothing and conducive to somnolence rather than the reverse, but they were constantly being broken into by others so strange, and in some cases so weird, that the night threatened to be a sleepless one for at least the two white men of the party. For instance, at pretty ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... recognizes the changes in physical objects. Between Time and Invention we have System, lying between Order below and Planning above. Between Invention and Ideality we have Composition or Literary Capacity, and in Ideality a region of Meditation (not marked) running into Somnolence, the region of Dreaming and of Transcorporeal Perception or Impression. This runs into General Physical Sensibility, through Impressibility (not marked), and anteriorly into the sense of Hearing (adjacent to Language and Tune). ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... his hut asleep. The man was soon up, apologizing for his somnolence, and preparing tea for his master's entertainment. "It is not Christmas like at home at all; is it, Mr. 'Eathcote? Dear, no! Them red divils is there ready to give us a Christmas roasting." Then he told how he had boldly ridden up to Boolabong ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... into matters occult gave to Etienne's life the apparent somnolence of meditative genius. He would spend long days lying upon the shore, happy, a poet, all-unconscious of the fact. The sudden irruption of a gilded insect, the shimmering of the sun upon the ocean, the tremulous motion of the ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... an easy prey during its hours of somnolence. Every Cigale encountered by the ferocious grasshopper on its nocturnal round must miserably perish. Thus are explained those sudden squeaks of anguish which are sometimes heard in the boughs during the hours of the night and early morning, although the cymbals ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... cabin. At length he reappeared, took up the candle, stood awhile listening, then moved cautiously to the edge of the counter, behind which the woman slept in her lair. He peeped over to assure himself of her complete somnolence. Satisfied that Mex would not likely be roused by any slight disturbance, he stole to the front door and undid the fastenings so softly that not a creak of the bolt sliding from its staple was heard even by his own quick ear. ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... seem, at this date, to have been hardly worth the ammunition. But the explosion cleared the muggy air like a thunder-storm and denned many an issue that it was well to have defined. Writers of every ilk were shaken out of their somnolence and compelled to look in the direction of Weimar; and when it was a question of taking sides, where was the force that could hope to make headway against the combined strength of Goethe and Schiller? The odds were too great; there was nothing to do but to grumble a little and then—acquiesce ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... mutton sandwich and a mountain stream. You wish it even although you hate mutton sandwiches and like meringues filled with Alpine strawberries and whipped cream; for the clatter and the clack going on around you, and the asphyxiating air, bring on a demoralising somnolence that you despise and cannot easily throw off. You sit about as lazily as anyone else half through the golden afternoon, drink a cup of coffee at four o'clock, look at mountains of cake, and then start for the restaurant, which is said to be eine ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... which takes windmills for giants, and carriers for knights, and Rosinante for a Bucephalus, has fixed upon Sancho Panza—the crowning proof of its mania—as the fitting squire of a knight-errant. To him—to this compound of somnolence, shrewdness, and good nature—to this creature with no more tincture of romantic idealism than a wine-skin, the knight addresses, without misgiving, his lofty dissertations on the glories and the duties of chivalry—the squire responding after ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... waking somnolence, lulled by the familiar, profound, withdrawn repose of the valley. He could distinguish Clare's form weaving back and forth in a low rocker; the moonless, summer night embraced, hid, all; there were no lights in the house at his ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... more than usual drowsiness marked the afternoon service. The choir plumped down into their places when the Psalms were finished, and abandoned themselves to slumber with little attempt at concealment, as Mr Noot began the first lesson. There were, indeed, honourable exceptions to the general somnolence. On the cantoris side the worn-out alto held an animated conversation with the cracked tenor. They were comparing some specially fine onions under the desk, for both were gardeners and the autumn leek-show was near at hand. On the decani side Patrick ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... up to the inn was in its middle-day emptiness and somnolence. Where Anna-Felicitas and Elliott had been sitting cool and shaded when he passed before, there was only the pressed-down grass and crushed flowers in a glare of sun. She had gone home long ago of course. She said she was going to be very busy. Secretly he wished she hadn't gone home, ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... Diplomatic Dance of Europe, suddenly brought to a whirl by such changes of the music]; a new arena (CARRIERE) came to open itself,—and one must have been either without address, or else buried in stupid somnolence (ENGOURDISSEMENT), not to profit by an opportunity so advantageous. I had read Bojardo's fine Allegory: [Signifies only, "seize opportunity;" but ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... year. At the first sound of the bell the ploughmen went into kirk a solid mass, distributing themselves in the servants' pews attached to the farmers' pews, and maintaining an immovable countenance through every part of the service, any tendency to somnolence being promptly and effectually checked by the foreman, who allowed himself some ease when alone on other days, but on Sacrament Sabbath realised his charge and never closed an eye. The women and children proceeded to their ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... Mr. Iden in the commencement assumed this posture of slumber, and commanded silence. But thought which has been cultivated for a third of a century is apt to tone down to something very near somnolence. ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... is quite unnecessary. The proper test of magnetic susceptibility is either to excite the organ of somnolence and observe if the eyes are disposed to close, or to pass your fingers over the outstretched hand of the subject, within one or two inches, and observe if he feels any impression. A distinct feeling of coolness is sufficient proof ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... would be to dull the ear, And one would be to dim the eye, So whispered love they'd never hear, And glance coquettish never spy; They'd be taught somnolence, and how Ofttimes closed eye for sleep atones; Had I a million, I'd endow A regular school ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... network of ideas remains and forms as it were a moving cobweb in which repose wriggles and tosses, incapable of finding a stable equilibrium. When sleep does come at last, it is often but a state of somnolence which, far from suspending the activity of the mind, actually maintains and quickens it more than waking would. During this torpor, in which night has not yet closed upon the brain, I sometimes solve mathematical difficulties with which I struggled unsuccessfully the day before. A brilliant ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... my noble Son of the Prophet of God! He has replaced the stone! He would not slay an aged man. The yellow ray of his eye, it is but the gleam of the great thinker, not—not—the gleam of the assassin. Again, as I lay in semi-somnolence, I saw him enter my room, this time more distinctly. He went up to the cabinet. Shaking the chalice in the dawning, some hours after he had left, I heard with delight the rattle of the stone. I might have known he would replace it; I should not have ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... church. With folded hands and eyes fixed on the golden Virgin rising planet-like amid the verdure, he sought the drowsiness of ecstasy, the appeasement of the strange discomfort he had felt that day. But he failed to find the semi-somnolence of prayer with the delightful ease he knew so well. However glorious and pure Mary might reveal herself, her motherhood, the maturity of her charms, and the bare infant she bore upon her arm, disquieted him. It seemed as if in heaven itself there were ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... item or wondered how far he dared to "pad" his expense account so that it would "get by" the lynx-eyed head of the firm. In the smoking-room a languid game of cards was being played, in an effort to beguile the tedious monotony of the trip. Over all there brooded a spirit of somnolence and relaxation. ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... across the boards of the porch. They cursed, imprecated, shook their fists, and threatened, as they surged into the road and looked down it toward the approaching driver. The men in the shade got quickly to their feet, interested spectators, and the burros awoke from their drowsy somnolence, and turned inquiring, ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... while before, and my suspicions were aroused without my knowing exactly how to define them; therefore, with the excuse of writing, I determined to keep watch. Until about four o'clock in the morning I was able to resist the somnolence which weighed down my eyelids but at last, exhausted with so many hours' march, with the high tension to which my nerves had been pitched and weakened by the abundant blood-letting in the swamp, my body triumphed over my will ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... Nevertheless, there can be but few of us who had never known one of these rare moments of awakening when we see, hear, understand ever so much—everything—in a flash—before we fall back again into our agreeable somnolence. I raised my eyes when he spoke, and I saw him as though I had never seen him before. I saw his chin sunk on his breast, the clumsy folds of his coat, his clasped hands, his motionless pose, so curiously ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... entertainments peculiar to Foxden; and as there is to be one this evening to which we are all invited, any anticipation of the diversion seems likely to diminish whatever of satisfaction may be in prospect. I will, however, remark, that some of the Doctor's guests are grievously oppressed by somnolence during his scholastic expositions; as a protection against which infirmity of the flesh, I do commend an after-dinner nap. It has been the fashion of the house since the days of my grandfather; and as he lived to a ripe ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... he shrieked, with intense self-assertion, and, instantly ruffling up his feathers, assumed an air of puffed-up somnolence behind the glittering wires. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... his head vigorously, which was one of his preliminaries of awakening, and then mournfully raised himself in bed, a pillar of somnolence. ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... your blind, wondering letter; many wishes, lastly, for your swift recovery. Insomnia is the opposite pole from my complaint; which brings with it a nervous lethargy, an unkind, unwholesome, and ungentle somnolence, fruitful in heavy heads and heavy eyes at morning. You cannot sleep; well, I can best explain my state thus: I cannot wake. Sleep, like the lees of a posset, lingers all day, lead-heavy, in my knees and ankles. Weight on the shoulders, torpor ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Duck Bank into the hollow. On the right, opposite the lighted Dragon Hotel, lay Duck Square in obscure somnolence; at the corner of Duck Square and Trafalgar Road was a double-fronted shop, of which all the shutters were up except two or three in the centre of the doorway. Framed thus in the aperture, a young man stood within the shop under a bright central gas-jet; he was gazing intently ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... out across the table, suddenly waking from her somnolence; she had overheard the baroness in spite of the low tone in which the dialogue had been carried on; her voice was so mellifluously sweet, one instinctively scented a touch of hidden poison in it—"Mees Gay, there is a question being put at this side of the table you alone can answer. Pray ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... over the saddling and harnessing department; for some of us are to bestride horses. The ladies and children are to drive; and mules, and carts drawn by oxen, are reserved for the conveyance of the luggage and the domestics. By way of dispelling our lingering somnolence, and fortifying us for the heavy journey before us, cups of strong coffee are handed round; and, with a view to getting over as much ground as possible before blinding daylight shall appear, we start at three o'clock ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... observed in conclusion; which, as it caused a desire for the morrow to spring within his bosom, sent his eyes at Master Gammon, who was half an hour behind his time for bed, and had dropped asleep in his chair. This unusual display of public somnolence on Master Gammon's part, together with the veteran's reputation for slowness, made the farmer fret at him as being in some way an obstruction to the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... upon this post, advancing with head erect and light elastic tread, no one could have recognised Pepe the sleeper— Pepe, habitually plunged in a profound state of somnolence—Pepe, of downcast mien and slow dragging gait—and yet it was he. His eyes, habitually half shut, were now sparkling in their sockets, as if even the slightest object could not escape ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... by 168 votes to 32, protested strongly against the proposal to extinguish the Irish Parliament. Eloquent speakers like Plunket warned that body that suicide was the supreme act of cowardice, besides being ultra vires. The neighbouring towns and counties joined in the clamour. The somnolence of Cornwallis, his neglect to win over opponents by tact or material inducements, and the absence of any Ministerial declaration on the subject, left all initiative to the Opposition. On 24th December Cooke wrote to Auckland ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... of this tender idyl, which, even if I am a confirmed bachelor, set my heart beating within my breast, produced no other effect upon the new author than an insolent somnolence which would not disappear until he suddenly raised his imperious voice to admonish some one of ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... grasp on her hand. Its dearness and magnetism affected her. Her feeling of somnolence vanished. Things became ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... not an expert swimmer, but he could keep above water, and was particularly fond of floating. One summer day as he lay on the surface of the tepid sea quite unconcernedly, the sense of comfort led to a slight somnolence. All at once he felt the water heaving under him as if suddenly parted by some heavy body, and then seething against his person. In an instant he thought of a shark, and turned quickly to swim away from the monster; ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... western land—a land that now remained in his memory as a pool of gold beneath a turquoise sky. He was lying there in the wild oats, upon his back, and above him in the sky a hawk circled free. He watched it long thus, relaxed in a sort of droning somnolence; then suddenly, to a particularly fine spiral of the bird in the air, something like a convulsion had shot through his body, and he had found himself erect, head back and chest forward, his ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... was almost night. The sea-gulls, shrieking, retired to their hiding-places in the rocks. The sea commenced to disappear beneath a thin mist. The lighthouse of Europe shone like a diamond from afar in the heavens above the Strait, which were still clear. A sweet somnolence seemed to arise from the dying day, enveloping all Nature. The two human atoms, lost in this immensity, felt themselves invaded by the universal tremor, oblivious to all that but a short time before had constituted their lives. They forgot ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... because its mood is already established. It is the business of the composer to create music which will supplement the poem. A lullaby should not have a martial melody, neither should an exhortation to lofty patriotism be given a melody which induces somnolence. ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... felt years ago, when Caddie, who had been "a great reader," as the neighbors said, before the avalanche of household cares had overwhelmed her, propounded to him, while he was drawing off his boots for an hour of twilight somnolence before going to bed, problems that, he knew, no man could answer. Neither were they to be illumined by Holy Writ, for he had offered that loophole of exit, and Caddie had shaken her head at him disconsolately, and implied that the prophets would not do. But when she had ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world. The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night. Little is to be expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some servitor, are not awakened ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... there occur in bacterial diseases symptoms to which the correlated structural changes have not yet been demonstrated. Amongst these the most important is fever with increased protein metabolism, attended with disturbances of the circulatory and respiratory Systems. Nervous symptoms, somnolence, coma, spasms, convulsions and paralysis are of common occurrence. All such phenomena, however, are likewise due to the disturbance of the molecular constitution of living cells. Alterations in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... secured a double, as you know, and placed him in a position where his kidnapping would be an easy matter. I was sure that the victims were being taken away by air and that lethane was being used to reduce the neighborhood to a state of profound somnolence, so I hid myself near my double with a gas detector which would find even minute traces of lethane in ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various |
