"Languorous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the waiting automobile to be whirled through the city and out to the romantic hacienda where the languorous past so strangely and sweetly blended with the vital present and the throbbing promise of a future filled ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... was still fair. Her face was thin, but her languorous eyes were expressive and her mouth delicate. A certain shadow about its corners may have meant rigidity of will or only a habit of introspection, but it ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... the stage! Ah! could she have seen the desperate, terrible glance fixed upon her down there in the hall, concealed behind a pillar, her smile would have lost that equivocal placidity, her voice would have sought in vain those wheedling, languorous tones in which she warbled the only song Madame Dobson had ever ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Khandawar, Beloved: thine inheritance—thine for the taking ... even as I am thine, if thou wilt take me.... Look upon it, thy father's kingdom, then upon me, thy queen.... Yea!" she cried, throwing back her head and meeting his gaze with eye languorous beneath their heavy silken lashes. "Yea, I am altogether thine, my king! Wilt thou cast me aside, then, who am faint with love for thee?... Never hast thou dreamed of love such as the love that I bear for thee. How could it be otherwise, when thou hast passed ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... beyond idle concern, lifted the islands afar off out of the water, suspending them in the sky. The languorous breadths of the sea gradually changed to silver, and under the purple islands the silver band extended, bright and gleaming, until it seemed to merge again into the blue of the sky. That was so, for was it not all visible—the purple ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... all languorous with dreams Of her beloved Darkness, rose in fear, Feeling the presence of another near. Outside her curtained casement shone the gleams Of burning orbs; and modestly she hid Her brow and bosom with her dusky hair. When lo! the bold intruder ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the peons, they raced, exultant with life. Slim young Spaniards they were, clothed picturesquely in velvet and braid and gay sashes; with cumbersome, hairy chaparejos, high-crowned sombreros and big-roweled, silver spurs to mark their calling; caballeros to flutter the heart of a languorous-eyed senorita, and to tingle the pulse of the man who could command and see them ride ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... notes of violins wailing despairing love. And Isidro, seated on the bamboo ladder of his house, went through an independent performance. He sang "Good-night, Ladies," the last song given to the school, sang it in soft falsetto, with languorous drawls, and never-ending organ points, over and over again, till it changed character gradually, dropping into a wailing minor, an endless croon full of obscure melancholy of a race ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... by, draped in furs, in satins and velvet and chiffon, tall girls, most of them, with hair carefully dressed, faces delicately tinted and that curious forward thrust at the waist and slight advancement of one shoulder that gave them an air of languorous indifference. ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... her how to guide her mustang by the merest caressing touch of the rein upon its sensitive neck. He had not been sympathetically inclined towards the fair stranger, a rich and still youthful widow, although he could not deny her unquestioned good breeding, mental refinement, and a certain languorous thoughtfulness that was almost melancholy, which accented her blonde delicacy. But he had noticed that her manner was politely reserved and slightly constrained towards the Harcourts, and he had already resented it with ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... in every room, save one, Sleep drew her velvet fingers down recumbent forms; pressed eyelids with her languorous kiss; upon her warm breast pillowed willing heads; about her bedfellows drew ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... the gods. Sacred and soft as lotos-flowers Are those long languorous hands of ours That carry spices to ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... recounted this, there was manifest a nervous expression. Likewise, her features were a trifle flushed. Yet gleaming also through the tears in her languorous eyes there was a sense of relief—one might almost have said a sense ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... and looked, not into his, but over his shoulder, as in a reverie, half meditation, half languorous dreaming. She swayed rather than stepped ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... most beautiful far back from the oiled roads and trimmed hedges, for here were only woodland voices and languorous forest fragrances. Here, too, hid all those wild flowers that in childhood she had known and fancifully christened—and since forgotten, and here two people with the lilt of this abundant June song in their hearts ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... secret of perpetual youth to help her defy the years. No doubt the soft light favored her, but she might have been Ranjoor Singh's granddaughter as she barred his way and looked him up and down impudently through languorous brown eyes. ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... him could bear no more. She gave a little choking cry that betrayed her presence. Jasper Dale sprang up and gazed upon her. He saw her standing there, amid the languorous shadows of August, pale with ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... garden. Overhead against the trunk of a tree a solitary lantern was flickering fitfully. It soon went out. The dazzling lights of the ballroom, glimmering through boughs and vines, shot a few rays into their faces. Music, languorous, torturing the heart, swelled and died on the air, mingled with the murmurings of eager voices. Close around them in the darkness was the heavy fragrance of perishing blossoms—earth dials of yesterday; close around them the clean sweetness of fresh ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... and her eyes grew dreamy as she fell to thinking of the future that lay before her. And as she planned with eager confidence her hand moved soothingly over the dog's head in measure to the languorous waltz ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... flying trip up the mountain for elephant, then returned and went their way. The young Baron Rothschild came on to the plateau for a couple of weeks and then disappeared. And still we lingered on, happy, healthy, generally hungry, and intoxicated with the languorous murmur of Africa. ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... The languorous afternoons invited to slumber. After lunch especially, Manuel would be overcome by stupor and deep depression. Through the doorway of the shop could be seen the fields of San Isidro bathed in light; in the Campillo ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... he softly kissed the great lustrous eyes till they closed as if in sleep. Then he fiercely sought the rich red lips, waiting soft and passive for his caresses, while the fair head fell back upon the bend of his elbow in a languorous, half-conscious sweet surrender to his will. Lord Rutland and I had turned our backs on the shameless pair, and were busily discussing the prospect for ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... "substantial men" of whom Landor speaks. His genius is robust with vigorous blood, and his tone has the cheeriness of intellectual health. The most subtle of minds, his is the least sickly. The wind that blows in his pages is no hot and languorous breeze, laden with scents and sweets, but a fresh salt wind blowing in from the sea. His poetry is a tonic; it braces and invigorates. "Il fait vivre ses phrases:" his verse lives and throbs with life. ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... think of a tiger-cat, and roused that knowledge of danger which adds a tingle to interest. A man could scarce take his eyes from her, though there were other women there and not uncomely ones. Another black wench there was, clad as gayly, but sunk in a languorous calm like a great cat, with Nick Barry, now his song was done, lolling against her, and two white women, one young and well favoured, and the other harshly handsome, both with their husbands present, and ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... rhythm of the dance, were soft and languorous as a July noon. Limply hung the draperies, slowly waved the graceful arms, and at the end, Patty sank slowly, gently, down on a mound beneath the trees, and, her head pillowed on her arm, closed her eyes, while the violin notes faded ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... furnished a royal canopy. A half-moon hung in the sky, whitening a few small clouds that seemed to be painted on the blue-black dome. The air, though not oppressive, was warm enough to make all nature languorous, and the soft breath of the south wind was almost narcotic in its power to soothe. A great forest is never still; even its silence has a note of its own. The trees seem to whisper to each other in the rustling ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... giving due recognition to this crescent spirit, I recall that, in spite of it, Omar Khayyam was the favorite poet of many of us, that introspection, which sometimes deepened into pessimism, was in vogue, and that a spiritual or philosophic languorous disenchantment sicklied o'er the somewhat mottled ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... listen to her voice, with a pleasure he made no effort to conceal. And she, on her part, seemed to surrender herself to the enjoyment of the moment; her eyes remaining longer on his, her tones softening to a slow, tender utterance almost carrying a caress, her face keeping its languorous smile; as if the honey-sweet fragrance from the unseen flowers had invaded ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... man; his delicacy of lung gave him his excuse for playing gentleman farmer. She, half-Spanish, carried bulk for the family and carried it well. The Andalusian showed in her coy yet open air, in her small, broad hand and foot, in a languorous liquidity of eye. Their son, a well-behaved and pretty youth of twelve, and their daughter, two years older, rode behind them on the back seat. The daughter bore one of those mosaic names with which the mixed ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... sacrificed the cover of one of his beloved 'Saturday Evening Posts' for this portrait, and with extreme neatness had scissored it out and fastened it on the wall—a pleasant change from the cocaine and chocolate-box suggestiveness of the languorous Kirchner type that in 1916 and 1917 lent a pinchbeck Montmartre atmosphere to so many English messes ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... illustrations—where I came across apricots as big as my head, and caimans ten yards long. As regards the inhabitants, I recollect Creoles, enervated by the climate, who were as kindly as they were intelligent; pale-faced women, languorous and seductive, with soft low murmuring voices; and lastly, just as I passed through, a negro drum-major of the National Guard, with a great big busby and a ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... the dawn till the gloaming She used to sit combing Her hair in a languorous way. And her suitors would stop To look into the shop, And stand there the rest of the day. She filled them with mute, but with deep despair, For she never glanced up, with a smile, to where They stood about, crushing Each other, and blushing: She simply kept brushing ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... clear. The South of France one winter and Florida this! Simple nervous prostration would seem to the uninitiated better fought in the exhilirating ozone of Colorado, or—the North Pole—than in this languorous atmosphere. 'An inherited tendency.' Is this the pleasant little legacy which my respected ancestor has bequeathed to his only grandson? It skipped the Judge, but it caught poor Uncle Lenox, and now it has nabbed me! What a fool I have been not to surmise what this confounded ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... suffers some injustice from those who would speak thus. The views expressed are often quite foolish and often quite insincere; but the style itself is a manlier and more natural thing than is commonly made out. It is not in the least languorous or luxurious or merely musical and sensuous, as one would gather from both the eulogies and the satires, from the conscious and the unconscious imitations. On the contrary, it is a sort of fighting and profane parody of the Old Testament; and its lines ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... tide in Harding. If you were a freshman, it made you feel sleepy and happy and utterly regardless of the future terrors of the conditioned state in comparison with the present joys of tennis and canoeing or the languorous fascination of a hammock on the back campus,—where one goes to study and remains to dream. If you were a senior it made a lump come in your throat,—the fleeting loveliness of this last spring term, when all the trials of being a Harding girl are forgotten and all the joys grow dearer ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... keen enough on his own house," Gordon answered drowsily from the depths of the hammock, in which he had almost fallen asleep. He felt incapable of thought. For weeks he had looked forward to the match, and now it was so close he felt strangely languorous, tired ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... Hush! If I could but describe her! Languorous, slender and passionate. Sleepy eyes that see everything. An indolent purposeful step. An unimaginable grace. If you were her lover, my boy, you would learn how fierce love can be, how capricious and sudden, how hostile, ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... languorous afternoon in October, and time hung as heavily over the heads of the pupils as the mists hung over the amethyst hollows and sunny hills of Forest Glen. It was Thursday and Miss Hillary was writing ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... to thy sight shall rise, their fond hopes bringing to bridegrooms, Hesperus: soon shall come thy spouse with planet auspicious, Who shall thy mind enbathe with a love that softens the spirit, 330 And as thyself shall prepare for sinking in languorous slumber, Under thy neck robust, soft arms dispreading as pillow. Speed ye, the well-spun woof out-drawing, speed ye, ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... silence between us, yet a silence that was full of leafy stirrings, soft night noises, and the languorous murmur of the brook. Presently Charmian reached out a hand, broke off a twig of willow and began to turn it round and round in her white fingers, while I sought ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... gallant squires. There were times, too, when she wrote, chewing her pencil in the perplexities of vividly colored love scenes; but she always destroyed these manuscripts before the curious sun could spy upon her labors. In such ecstatic flights of fancy the beautiful heroine was a languorous brunette with hair of raven hue and soulful eyes in which slumbered the mystery of a tropic night. She had a Grecian nose, moreover, ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... here, they have a horse to ride and a servant to look after them, things they never would have had had they stayed in Dundee or Glasgow, but though they are proud they are lonely. What does grandeur matter if "the Quothquan folk" can't see it? The peepul trees rustle softly overhead, the languorous soft air laps them round, the scent of the East is in their nostrils, but their eyes are with their hearts, and is this what they see? A night of drizzling rain, a street of tall, dingy, grey houses, and a boy, his day's work done, bounding upstairs ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... This languorous spell disappeared presently, and then the days were full of life and action. Mrs. Beck and Bobby and Boyd, however, did not go in for anything very strenuous. Edith Wayne, too, preferred to walk through the groves or sit upon the grassy promontory. ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... month of April, 1880, an article appeared in the "Le Gaulois" announcing the publication of the Soirees de Medan. It was signed by a name as yet unknown: Guy de Maupassant. After a juvenile diatribe against romanticism and a passionate attack on languorous literature, the writer extolled the study of real life, and announced the publication of the new work. It was picturesque and charming. In the quiet of evening, on an island in the Seine, beneath poplars instead ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... better to focus an opera-glass on the box. The gong solemnly announced the second act, and Alice moved her chair to face the stage. Once more Montani scanned the party with his glass. As the lights faded Alice, with the pretty languorous gesture I so well remembered, opened her fan—the fan of ostrich plumes, that became a blur of white that held my eye through the ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... his arms; and against his heart she lay, shaking with little shivers of delight, looking into the noble face bent so lovingly over hers, her mind floating between unconscious exultation and languorous joy. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... muffled tumult of harp sounds, mellownesses of myriads of wood horns, the subdued sweet shrilling of multitudes of flutes, Pandean pipings—inviting, carrying with them the calling of waterfalls in the hidden places, rushing brooks and murmuring forest winds—calling, calling, languorous, lulling, dripping into the brain like the ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... Strange when the sweet, languorous monologue, punctuated from time to time by a response from himself, or an interjectory remark from one of the others, came to an end, and they proceeded to the ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... whistle and his buoyant step to interrupt this first languorous stage of the siesta which the girls always took during the hot hours. Nell had acquired the habit long before Mercedes came to show how fixed a thing it was in the life of the tropics. But neither girl heard ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... and from shadowy wood, from dewy grass and flower, stole wafts of perfume, while from some thicket near by a blackbird filled the air with the rich note of his languorous song; but Barnabas frowned only the blacker, and his hand clenched itself on the stick he carried, a heavy stick, that he had cut from ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... her languorous voice, "can you not stir a yard without that ugly black dog at your heels? Do you bring him to protect your back? If so, what is the need? Have I not sworn that you are ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... eaten a questionable clam. For two days he was languorous and petted and esteemed. He was allowed to snarl "Oh, let me alone!" without reprisals. He lay on the sleeping-porch and watched the winter sun slide along the taut curtains, turning their ruddy khaki to pale blood red. The shadow of the draw-rope ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... Oisin Sarrasin had seen too much in life—seen too much of life—of places, and peoples, and situations, and so had got his mind's picture painted out. He had started in life too soon, and overclouded himself with impressions. His nature had grown languorous under their too rich variety. His own extraordinary experiences seemed commonplace to him; he seemed to assume that all men had gone through just the like. He had seen too much, read too much, been too much. ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... the poor man forget his troubles and filled him instead with delightful visions of sunny lands and blue skies and red poppies and fair women and languorous luxury. ...
— A Book Without A Title • George Jean Nathan
... rill How oft I've snuffed the Berkshire breezes, Or, prone on some adjoining hill, Thrown off with my accustomed skill The weekly fytte of polished wheezes; How oft in summer's languorous days, With some fair creature at the pole, I Have thrid the Cherwell's murmurous ways And dared with lobster mayonnaise The onslaughts of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... old sweet tone, Though one sits stricken where its billows roll? Will space be dumb, or from the mystic pole Will spirit-messages be backward blown? When our united lives are wrenched apart, And day no more means fond companionship, When fervent night, and lovely languorous dawn, Are only memories to one sad heart, And but in dreams love-kisses burn the lip,— Dear God, how can this same fair ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... its groups of fishermen and women on the soft white sands, or wading into the clear blue water to reach their boats, the surroundings made the place a pleasant oasis in the desert of his life. The rest was sweet and languorous, and he passed his time now strolling out on the dry, warm sands, thinking, now high up on the grassy top of the cliff, where he could look down on people enjoying their ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... mention of the chemist she flew into a passion. He, however, piled up good reasons; it wasn't his fault; didn't she know Homais—did she believe that he would prefer his company? But she turned away; he drew her back, and, sinking on his knees, clasped her waist with his arms in a languorous pose, ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... has taken sail For lands beyond, soft-horizoned: Down languorous leagues I hold the trail, From Marmalada, steeply throned Above high pastures washed with light, Where dolomite by ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... The languorous life of the islands exactly suited Mask Twain. All his life he remembered them—always planning to return, some day, to stay there until he died. In one of his note-books he wrote: "Went with Mr. Dam to his cool, vine-shaded home; no care-worn ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... priceless gifts. Thus my love is incomplete. Sometimes in the enigmatic depth of your sad look, in your playful words mocking at their own meaning, I gain glimpses of a being trying to rend asunder the languorous grace of her body, to emerge in a chaste fire of pain through a vaporous veil of smiles. Illusion is the first appearance of Truth. She advances towards her lover in disguise. But a time comes when she ...
— Chitra - A Play in One Act • Rabindranath Tagore
... that they could hardly swell fast enough, and burst at last into a perfectly riotous fanfare through the shrubberies. It pumped blood, too, as well as sap, and made hearts flutter to strange irregular rhythms with the languorous insolence of its perfumes, and the soft caressing pressures of its ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... and ought to take away the reproach of the inhabitants for a want of industry and enterprise: a century-plant at least could do no more in any air, and it merits praise for its activity in the breath of these languorous seas. One such must be in bloom at this very writing, in the garden of a house which this very writer marked for his own on his first drive ashore from the steamer to the hotel, when he bestowed in its dim, unknown interior one of the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... firmament's halls: Under whose sapphirine walls, June, hesperian June, Robed in divinity wanders. Daily and nightly The turquoise touch of her robe, that the violets star, The silvery fall of her feet, that lilies are, Fill the land with languorous light and perfume.— Is it the melody mute of burgeoning leaf and of bloom? The music of Nature, that silently shapes in the gloom Immaterial hosts Of spirits that have the flowers and leaves in their keep, Whom I hear, whom I hear? ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... the languorous warm night and Boyar's easy stride up the steep, touched his neck with the rein and turned him into ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... had come up over the jagged edge of the eastern hills,—a moon that left the valley in a mystic sheen of gold and blue, and threw their shadows madly into one as they walked. They heard the drowsy chirp of the cricket, now harmless, and the low cry of an owl. They felt the languorous warmth of the night, spiced with a hint of chilliness, and they felt each other near. They had felt this nearness before. One of them had learned to fear it, to tremble for himself at the thought of it. The other had learned to dream of it, and ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... stroke of twelve had ripped apart the clouds and a large, milk-fed moon was fairly crashing its way through, laying out a straight-away course of silver cinders across the harbor, and in all parts of the heavens stars were breaking out like a rash. In two minutes it had become a balmy, languorous night. ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... pines with the drowsy, languorous breeze relaxed his conscience; at all events the contours of the upturned lips were irresistible. Silently he rolled over once—the soft carpet of pine-needles abetting the manoeuvre—until his face was at right angles to her own, and very near. Then cautiously ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... night deepened, hot and languorous, with a sweep of moths to the candle flames, with vagrant odours of flowering vines and vagrant sounds of distant laughter, voices, footsteps down the long street. Jacqueline sat very still, the letter in her lap. The ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... and looked too often into conscious eyes. Ladies rustled by in dresses of stiff cloth, shedding affected smiles and perfume. Carrie noticed among them the sprinkling of goodness and the heavy percentage of vice. The rouged and powdered cheeks and lips, the scented hair, the large, misty, and languorous eye, were common enough. With a start she awoke to find that she was in fashion's crowd, on parade in a show place—and such a show place! Jewellers' windows gleamed along the path with remarkable frequency. ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... been. Here, too, he had seen the hope of restoring his wife's health—for which he had undertaken the overland emigration—more than fulfilled in Mrs. Peyton's improved physical condition, albeit at the expense, perhaps, of some of the languorous graces of ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... ride as fast and far to-night as that hombre will," supplemented Miguel with his brief smile, that was just a flash of white, even teeth and a momentary lightening of his languorous eyes. ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... her image, the glowing, ruddy copper of her hair, the dark mystery of her eyes, so heavy-lidded and languorous in their smile. My spirit conjured her to stand before me all white and seductive as I had known her, and my longings were again upon me ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... well rested by our long and sound sleep; but the pain which was everywhere in our bodies, from our many bruises, and from our wounds, and from the aching stiffness of our muscles, made life for a time almost intolerable. Moreover, the languorous reaction following the undue exaltation that came of our battling and escape was upon us; so that our pain of body was accompanied by a most sombre and melancholy cast of mind. Yet, again, did the more balanced and delicate temperament of Fray Antonio shine out by contrast ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... along the southern sky. Occasionally a sound of voices, the creak of a wooden windlass and grind of a boat's keel upon the pebbles as it was wound slowly up the foreshore, came from the direction of the ferry and of Faircloth's Inn. The effect was languorous, would have been enervating to the point of mental, as well as physical, inertia had not the posturing cormorants introduced a note of absurdity and the tainted breath of the mud-flats a ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... to where their fragrance would reach her delicately-chiseled nose, imperious, haughty.... They looked startlingly red against her cheek—like blood upon the snow.... She was looking at him.... There was no movement, save the even, languorous swing of the crimson blossoms. Lips, vivid red, were motionless, half parted in a little, inscrutable smile.... She was looking at him.... He forgot.... The whistle had been blowing, sounding departure. He had not heard. ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... writes another visitor, "opened her arms to me and bestowed upon me the soft and languorous kiss of the Caribbean." This statement may or may not be true; but in any case it hardly seems the ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... hot July day—not a cloud appeared in the high blue vault of the sky; the trees, the flowers, the grasses, were all motionless, for not even the gentlest zephyr of a breeze was abroad; the whole world seemed lapped in a sort of drowsy, hot, languorous slumber. Even the flowers bowed their heads a little weariedly, and the birds after a time ceased singing, and got into the coolest and most shady parts of the great forest trees. There they sat and talked to one another of the glorious weather, for they liked ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... seen, in a June-tide nooning, A languorous full-blown rose In the arms of the lilies swooning And yielding ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... Would 'The Girl on the Magpie Horse' be all he would see of her to-day—that unsatisfying work, so cold, and devoid of witchery? Better have tried to paint her—with a red flower in her hair, a pout on her lips, and her eyes fey, or languorous. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... trees; then he felt himself being carried into the house to be laid upon a bed. Some one gently unbuttoned his shirt at the neck, removed his shoes, and covered him with a blanket. Before he had fully awakened he was left alone, and quiet settled over the house. A languorous sense of ease and rest lulled him to sleep again. In another moment, it seemed to him, he was awake; bright daylight streamed through the window, and a morning breeze stirred ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... Orleans when the war brought fashion to a stand: coat-waist high, skirt solemnly long; sleeves and trousers small at the hands and feet, and puffed out—phew! in the middle. The whole scheme was dandyish, dashing, zou-zou; and when he appeared in it, dark, good-looking, loose, languorous, slow to smile and slower to ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... towns we had not seen before. Our horn and our siren shrieked a warning as we shot through. And it seemed wrong. They looked so peaceful and so quiet, did those French towns, on that summer's morning! Peaceful, aye, and languorous, after all the bustle and haste we had been seeing. The houses were set in pretty encasements of bright foliage and they looked as though they had been painted against the background of ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... onto the flat roof. Carlotta poured out my coffee at the small table beside the long Madeira cane chair which was my accustomed seat. The starlit night was blue and languorous. From some cafe came the monotonous strains of Moorish music, the harsh strings and harsh men's voices softened by the distance. Carlotta took my coffee-cup when I had finished and set it down in her granddaughterly way. Then she stood in front ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... little summer-house were largely myth, and lattice for the rest. Through the interstices the dim brightness of the moon misted in, and the multitudinous rays from the hotel. There reached them the murmur of voices, the languorous lap of water. A serene and reassuring scene it surely was; there was no menace in the night's silvern calmness, no shadow of ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... winds sweep through Palmetto Town, Bringing with piney tang the old romance Of Pirates and of smuggling gentlemen; And tongues as languorous as southern France Flow down her streets like water-talk at fords; While through iron gates where pickaninnies sprawl, The sound floats back, in rippled banjo chords, From lush magnolia shade where mockers call. Mornings, the flower-women ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... orchards and green meadows, and the river winding along the valley, and the church tower peeping out among the elms, they all make a most effective picture. There's something dreadfully sleepy and languorous about it, though; stagnation seems to be the dominant note. Nothing ever happens here; seedtime and harvest, an occasional outbreak of measles or a mildly destructive thunderstorm, and a little election excitement about once in five years, that is all that we have to modify the monotony ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... grab for the instrument, but Fred raised it above his head and brought it down between his knees with chords that crashed like wedding bells. Then he changed to softer, languorous music, and when he had picked out an air to suit his mood, sat down and turned art ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... expression of my own passion. It was based on pity—the pity which is twin-born with true love. Breathless from our kisses, when presently we released each other, she stood in a glorious rapture, like a white spirit in the moonlight, and as her lovely, starlit eyes seemed to devour me, she spoke in a languorous ecstasy: ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... outside the doorway he held up an unfinished thing before his grieved eyes and devoutly wished it in the place of punishment of the wicked dead. The sincere passion of his tones not only arrested my steps but lured through the open doorway the languorous and yawning Buck Devine, who hung over the worker with disrespectful attention. I joined the pair. To Buck's query, voiced in a key of feigned mirth, Sandy said with simple dignity that it was going to be ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... world seems to be constructed upon a smaller and more delicate scale; the fields are mere paddocks, so reduced that from this height their hedgerows appear a network of dark green threads overspreading the paler green of the grass. The atmosphere beneath is languorous, and is so tinged with azure that what artists call the middle distance partakes also of that hue, while the horizon beyond is of the deepest ultramarine. Arable lands are few and limited; with but slight exceptions the prospect is a broad rich mass of grass and trees, mantling minor ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... them. The girl spurned hers, but absent- mindedly pocketed the pasteboard check that went with it. While yet Pierce's throat was warm from the spirits there began the opening measures of a languorous waltz and the crowd swept into motion again. There was no refusing the invitation ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... grown quite dark, for the moon had not yet risen; but there was a spring-time sweetness in the air, which was not yet enervated by the languorous ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... perfect type of the highly developed, highly educated American girl of to-day, a marvellous compound of intense energy and languorous grace. She had done as brilliantly at Vassar as Nitocris had done at Girton and London, and she had also rowed stroke in the Ladies' Eight, and was champion fencer of the College. Yet as far as her physical presence was concerned, she was just a "Gibson Girl" ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... in the ointment, however. Her languorous surrender to love, her physical confession of defeat at the hands of that inexorable power, her sweet submission to the conquering arms of the besieger, left nothing to be desired; and yet there was something that stood between him ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... death. But my fervour gradually weakened, and I fell insensibly into a reverie. That chamber bore no semblance to a chamber of death. In lieu of the fetid and cadaverous odours which I had been accustomed to breathe during such funereal vigils, a languorous vapour of Oriental perfume—I know not what amorous odour of woman—softly floated through the tepid air. That pale light seemed rather a twilight gloom contrived for voluptuous pleasure, than a substitute for the yellow-flickering watch-tapers which shine by the ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... to fall. How full of restful meditation was this dripping-time, how brooding with half-formed, languorous thoughts that begin as an idea and end as a reverie. Sometimes a soothing spirit which the sun could not evoke from its boundless fields of light comes out of the dark bosom of a cloud. A bright day promises so much, so builds our ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... Cleek met Lady Wilding for the first time. He found her what he afterwards termed "a splendid animal," beautiful, statuesque, more of Juno than of Venus, and freely endowed with the languorous temperament and the splendid earthy loveliness which grows nowhere but under tropical skies and in the shadow of palm groves and the flame of cactus flowers. She showed him but scant courtesy, however, for she was but a poor hostess, and ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... verses: and indeed each one of them was a seduction to the servants of the Lord. Whilst they were thus busied there entered other ten damsels like unto them, high-bosomed maids and of an equal age, with black-eyes and cheeks like the rose, joined eyebrows and looks languorous; a very fascination to every faithful wight and to all who looked upon them a delight; clad in various kinds of coloured silks, with ornaments that amazed man's intelligence. They took up their station at the door, and there succeeded them yet other ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... of the dawning day peeps through the dripping panes. The spark of life glows once more in their languorous bodies. He awakes, Ada's eyes are looking at him. A whole life passes in a few moments: days of ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... Recondite scholars in the physical beauty of the Greeks, from Boston, were there; fair women from Washington, whose charms make the reputation of many a newspaper correspondent; spirited stars of official and diplomatic life, who have moments of longing to shine in some more languorous material paradise, had made a hasty flitting to be present at the ceremony, sustained by a slight feeling of bravado in making this exceptional descent. But the favored hundred spectators were mainly ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to the sight and a nettle to the touch. If a storm arose, a fury that raged and threatened, it presently swept away, and the blue laughed again. When the sun sank, there arose in the east such a moon as might have been sole light to all the realms of faery. A beauty languorous and seductive was most absolute empress of the wonderful ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... One soft languorous September evening, the loneliness promised to be unbearable, and she determined to go alone for a walk. Madame was always too tired for a tramp after school, and she knew no one else ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... beautiful blue bay, with the Andes snowy in the distance, and the islands, like great green gems, to seaward, is lovely beyond words. It was filled with glorious houses, carved and scented, and beautiful with costly things. The merchants lived a languorous, luxurious life there, waited on by slaves, whom they could burn or torture at their pleasure. It was "the greatest mart for gold and silver in the whole world." There were pearl fisheries up and down the bay, yielding the finest of pearls; and ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... down the fragrant street with its cool hose-refreshed pavements, its languorous shadows athwart rose-bush and picket fence, its hopeful weeds already peering through crevices where plank sidewalks maintained their worm-eaten right of way, he was in no dewy- morning mood. He understood what those wise nods had ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... only necessary to say that she could make even "the Boston" look graceful; as witness her now. In that large room, detectives could have found men who thought Sharlee decidedly prettier than Miss Avery. Her look was not languorous; her voice was not provocative; her eyes were not narrow and tip-tilted; they did not look dangerous in the least, unless you so regard all extreme pleasure derived from looking at anything in the nature of eyes. Nor was there anything in the least businesslike, official, ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... more money with the music or as model?" asked Mademoiselle Emilie, the girl-artist from Madrid, with black hair dyed golden, who always swore by Murillo's Virgins, and who did her work dreamily, as if the motions of her hands were timed to the languorous rhythm of some far-off, daintily-touched guitar beneath vine-wreathed balcony and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... and a ruby-red snakelike thing poured its thick length out upon the top of the old desk. It coiled and hesitated, and then began to swim a languorous way down the mahogany slant. At the angle it waved its sizzling molten head to and fro over the closed eyes of the man beneath it. Then, in a moment, with a mystic impulse, it moved again, and the red snake flowed directly down into Johnson's ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... when he was playing cards. Remembering this, Nadyezhda Fyodorovna flushed crimson, and looked round at the cook as though she might overhear her thoughts. The long, insufferably hot, wearisome days, beautiful languorous evenings and stifling nights, and the whole manner of living, when from morning to night one is at a loss to fill up the useless hours, and the persistent thought that she was the prettiest young woman in the town, and that her youth was passing and being wasted, and Laevsky ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... tresses of a cascade; it climbed and heaped itself on wayside trellises and ran nimbly, in a shower of fragile color, up the trunks, along the branches, of the trees. Jack always afterward associated the soft, falling purple, the soft, languorous fragrance, the almost uncanny beauty of the ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... first that George roused himself to the point of asking why he was here and what—now that he was here—he proposed to do. For two languorous days he loafed, sufficiently occupied with his thoughts. He smoked long, peaceful pipes in the stable-yard, watching the ostlers as they groomed the horses; he played with the Inn puppy, bestowed respectful caresses on the Inn cat. He walked down the quaint cobbled ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... in the skins of wolves, hares and stags ran round the tethered bears bearing torches of sweet wood, and a heavy and languorous smoke, like incense, mounted up to the gallery. Viridus' unveiled threat made the necessity for submission come once more into her mind. Other wild men were leading in a lion, immense and lean as if it were a fawn-coloured ass. It roared and pulled at the golden chains ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... many-colored glasses. The ceiling of the room was a soft mass of silken draperies, depending edgewise from above, thousands of yards of the most expensive fabrics of the world. From these, as they were gently swayed by the breath of invisible fans, there floated delicious, languorous perfumes, intoxicating to the senses. On any hand within the great room, removed at some distance from the table, were rich, luxurious couches ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... into the gardens. They sat for a while upon the lawn, drinking their coffee and exchanging greetings with acquaintances. In the distance, the orchestra was playing soft music, with a fine regard for the atmosphere of the pleasant, almost languorous spring afternoon. Everywhere were signs of contentment, even gaiety, and here the alien streak of unfamiliar newcomers was far less pronounced. When the time came for tennis, Chalmers led the way with Maggie. As soon as they were out of hearing of the others, she turned towards ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lifting his hands or moving the mighty stone; his knees totter, his blood freezes cold; the very stone he hurls, spinning through the empty void, neither wholly reached its distance nor carried its blow home. And as in sleep, when nightly rest weighs down our languorous eyes, we seem vainly to will to run eagerly on, and sink faint amidst our struggles; the tongue is powerless, the familiar strength fails the body, nor will words or utterance follow: so the disastrous goddess brings to naught all Turnus' valour as ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... letter to Leonard which would convey at least something of her feelings and wishes towards him. In the depths of her heart, which now and again beat furiously, she had a secret hope that when once the idea was broached Leonard would do the rest. And as she thought of that 'rest' a languorous dreaminess came upon her. She thought how he would come to her full of love, of yearning passion; how she would try to keep towards him, at first, an independent front which would preserve her secret anxiety until the time should come when she might yield herself to his arms and tell him ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... sun shines and is warm because it lights upon them; the air is soft and balmy because it blows upon their skin and ruffles the short hairs on their temples, and the moon is charming because it makes them dream and imparts a languorous charm to love. Every act and action of Paul's has woman for its motive; all his thoughts, all his efforts and hopes ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... and responds to every note of pain borne in upon it from the murmurous trouble of the world,—this is to have inward fitness for the high work of the Kingdom. Yes, and it is the pledge that this work shall be done. There is such a thing as artistic grief. There is the vain and languorous pity of aestheticism. Its robe of sympathy is wrapped about itself and bejewelled with its own tears. And it never goes forth. You never meet it in 'the ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... this,—to move the strong man's heart to woman's tenderness! We have heard tell of poets, who singing of death have persuaded many straightway to die,—but when they sing of sweeter themes, of lover's vows, of passion-frenzies, and languorous desires, cold is the blood that will not warm and thrill to their divinely eloquent allurements. Come hither, fair sir!" and he beckoned to Theos, who mechanically advanced in obedience to the command—"Thou hast thoughts ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... eyes soft and heavy with that languorous look which will quickest befuddle the sense of a man. "You tell; Ramon not hear," she hinted. "Ramon, he got plenty trobles for thinking about." She smiled again. "Ramon plenty long ways off. He got Bill Holmes for talking to. ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... ivies dark and lingering Round her light limbs drag and twine; Round her waist with languorous tendrils Reels and wreathes ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a luxury Of luring blue and wanton gold, Of blanched rose and crimson bold, Of lines that flow voluptuously In tender, languorous curves to fold ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... tailor's equestrian advertisement he came striding down again into the hotel office, only to plunge most inopportunely into Miss Von Eaton's languorous presence. ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... by any chance, in the audience? No. Well, perhaps it was better taste on his part to keep away. The bell rang. All eyes turned toward the blue satin curtains; they moved: the lights were lowered; the violins played a languorous air: with a rustle—not unlike that caused by the movement of wings—the curtains were drawn back and disclosed an empty garden. Then, following the stage direction, the Marquise entered "tristement sur la scene." The entrance was made quietly, and, for a breathless second, no one realised that ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... languorous afternoon in January that a furniture van, accompanied by certain nondescript persons known as United States Police, pulled up at the curb in front of Mr. Carvel's house. Eugenie, watching at the window across the street, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in the west, and the breeze soft and languorous that came up from the south, charged with the seductive odor of the sea. Children freshly befurbelowed, were gathering for their games under the oaks. Their ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... the bank, and in the deeper pools the barbel were rising at the flies. There was no sound but the running water. The spicy smell of aromatic leaves and the honeyed perfume of a great climbing trumpet-flower made the air languorous with sweetness. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... gun and new torpedo—had been ordered by the mightiest in the land. Triumphant in his discovery and wealthy in his own right, Summers was the happiest of men. It was in Paris that he had met Mlle. del Longeon. Exquisitely beautiful, of the alluring and languorous type, quick of wit, tactful, and with great charm of manner, she had completely fascinated the young officer. He had vowed his adoration of her almost before he knew her. His avowals had been repulsed with just that margin of insincerity ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... to gladden the eye. Her figure, tall and full, was of a graceful and abundant perfection of contours; her face, precisely carved and showing the faintly generous rounding of maturity, was warm in colouring, with dark eyes, well shaded and languorous; her full lips betrayed their beauty in a ready and fascinating laugh; her voice was a rich, warm contralto; and her speech bore just a hint of the soft ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... at her most emotionally distracting, now sparkling with an almost feverish vivacity, now drooping into sudden silence, while the lines of her delicately angled face took on a touching, languorous appeal. ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler |
