"Listless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... theory is only to make things easier for boys; and they add that, if any boy's education is an entire failure (they admit a few incapables are to be found), it is the boy's own fault; he has been idle and listless; if he had worked properly it would have been all right; he would have been fortified; and anyhow, they say, it doesn't matter what you teach such boys—they would ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... James went murmuring down its muddy banks, where the blue cranes waited solemnly for the ebbing tide; where the crows cawed hoarsely in their busy, reeling flight, and the buzzards swung high above the marshes. Yet even in this waste of listless desolation came the echoed boom of heavy guns far down the river, where the "Rebs" and "Yanks" were pounding one ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... to admit, since first he began to come within sight of manhood; but she had always looked to the time when growing sense would make him cast aside young-mannish ways; and this was the outcome of her cares and hopes and prayers for him! Her husband went about listless and sullen. He wrote no more. How could one thus disgraced in his family presume to teach the world anything! How could he ever hold up his head as one that had served his generation, when this was the kind of man he was to leave behind him for the life of the next! Cornelius's ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... which had formed the scene of John's adventure on the previous night. I had never been in this part of the house before, as it contained no facilities for heating, and so often remained shut in the winter months. I found a listless pleasure in admiring the pictures which lined the walls, most of them being portraits of former members of the family, including the famous picture of Sir Ralph Temple and his family, attributed to Holbein. I had reached the end of the gallery ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... who have had occasion to stop at Pocock for water or for harbor shelter during eastern cruises, will remember a long, listless figure, astonishingly attired in blue army pants, rubber boots, loose toga made of some bright chintz material, and very bad hat, staggering through the little settlement, followed by a rabble of jeering brats, and pausing to strike uncertain blows at those within reach of ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... impending storm, they hung down their heads in a listless manner, and sighed heavily, a circumstance that to our minds presaged calamity, and which, I may add, was altogether unlike the usual indication of fatigue in animals which have travelled a great distance. Had ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... Most of the tram-lines were running, and the metro gave full service until eleven at night, employing many young women as conductors—and they made neat, capable workers. Many of the shops, especially along the boulevards, were open for a listless business, although the shutters were often up, with the little sign on them announcing that the place was closed because the patron was mobilized. And there was a steady stream of people on the sidewalks of all main thoroughfares,—at ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... had tossed himself awake, had listened thankfully to the soft breathing beside him, had kissed the fragrant braid across his face, and sunk again into heavy, sultry nightmare, doomed to live that shameful day through every clock-tick. And now his brain was cloudy with it. His hand lay listless on her shoulder. ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... return homewards till they cross the Line, and so having no experience of the breadth of them) being thus possessed with a conceit that we could not sail from hence till September; this made them still the more remiss in their duties, and very listless to the getting things in a readiness for our departure. However I was the more diligent myself to have the ship scrubbed, and to send my water casks ashore to get them trimmed, my beer being now out. I went also to the governor to get my water filled; for here ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... his lordship at once and managed to keep him. She was a woman who could talk pretty well, and perhaps Lord Walderhurst was amused. Emily Fox-Seton was not quite sure that he was, but at least he listened. Lady Agatha Slade looked a little listless and pale. Lovely as she was, she did not always collect an audience, and this evening she said she had a headache. She actually crossed the room, and taking a seat by Miss Emily Fox-Seton, began to talk to her about Lady Maria's charity-knitting ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... education might be supposed to train become irretrievably starved and stunted in the over-educated school child; till at last, when the time comes for him to leave the school in which he has been so sedulously cared for, he is too often thrown out upon the world, helpless, listless, resourceless, without a single interest, without ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... things, that though they ought to have a better, yet, considering human nature, that principle is to be encouraged and cherished, in consideration of its effects. Where that desire is wanting, we are apt to be indifferent, listless, indolent, and inert; we do not exert our powers; and we appear to be as much below ourselves as the vainest man living can desire to appear above what he ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... for sweepers. From one end of the room to the other they ply their coarse wooden brooms. Some officers are remarkably neat, and will scrape their floor space with pieces of glass from the broken windows; a few are listless, sullen, utterly despondent, regardless of surroundings, apparently sinking into imbecility; the majority are taking pains to keep up ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... listless perplexity; it was quite evident this person could tell him nothing. Doubtless their change of plans had been communicated to him by post, but he had not waited to send for letters. There was nothing for it but to obtain from the woman the address of the house-agent, get Mr. Markham's ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... She loathes the listless strain And peril of his plight. Beseeching Heaven to send him home again, She prays ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... Carlin had been listless for a day or two. This was several weeks after her forty-two hours on Mitha Baba. They were still living in Malcolm M'Cord's bungalow. Skag woke in the night, not with a dream, but rather with a memory. He was broad awake and recalled an incident that had ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... which still survived in the nineties— resembled very much the border forays for which Northumberland is still famous; and, walking through the palm-groves towards the Arab village, they talked of the Arab race, listening all the while to the singing of doves and of streams, Owen listless ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... sake of his German he had been accustomed on Sunday mornings to attend the Lutheran service, but when Hayward arrived he began instead to go with him to Mass. He noticed that, whereas the Protestant church was nearly empty and the congregation had a listless air, the Jesuit on the other hand was crowded and the worshippers seemed to pray with all their hearts. They had not the look of hypocrites. He was surprised at the contrast; for he knew of course ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... get there only by earnestness. Lagging is a disgrace to the one who travels and to the one to whom we go. It shows his laziness on the one hand, and his misunderstanding of the master on the other; for if he understood he would take no listless step. ...
— Music Talks with Children • Thomas Tapper
... as he fell back again into his former listless attitude, "it's not creditable for an old salt like me to go mistakin' sea-gulls for sails, as I've bin doin' so often of late. I'm out o' practice, that's where ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... results of this survey were tabulated by the author Hyrummetricus. The Professors of this Science [of land surveying] are honoured with a more earnest attention than falls to the lot of any other philosophers. Arithmetic, Theoretical Geometry, Astronomy, and Music are discoursed upon to listless audiences, sometimes to empty benches. But the land surveyor is like a judge; the deserted fields become his forum, crowded with eager spectators. You would fancy him a madman when you see him walking along the most ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... would come to him. He began to lose his spirits and to be dull without it, and to hate the hours when he could not see it; and all the time it grew or seemed to grow stronger and sleeker; his mother soon began to notice that he was not well; he became thin and listless, but his eyes were large and bright; she asked him more than once if he were well, but he only laughed. Once indeed he had a fright; he had been asleep under a hawthorn in the glen on a hot July day; ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... natural to think that agriculture was receding from the country, leaving the green hills once more to be brown and barren, as hills once green have become in other countries? And when men were falling in the highways, and women would sit with their babes in their arms, listless till death should come to them, was it not natural to think that death was making a huge success—that he, the inexorable one, was now the ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... think I am beaten, but I am just beginning to fight." As the days wore on his self-absorption became more and more marked. All his morning hours were spent at his writing, and when he came to Helen he was cold and listless, and talked of nothing but Enid and her troubles. Even as they rode in the park his mind seemed forever revolving lines and scenes. In the midst of her attempt to amuse him, to divert him, he returned to his theme. He invited her judgments and immediately forgot to listen, ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... The workgirls gave listless heed to these hundred times repeated narrations, but Mavra was never tired of hearing them; it was like receiving a sort of gospel into her heart. Her good and revered protectress made all things dear and venerated that touched her nearly; and this only son, loved, adored, longed for, became ...
— The Little Russian Servant • Henri Greville
... and he had deprived her of her husband, of her friends and of her country, and had brought her here—to the heat, to fever, and to boredom; and from day to day she was bound to reflect, like a mirror, his idleness, his viciousness and falsity—and that was all she had had to fill her weak, listless, pitiable life. Then he had grown sick of her, had begun to hate her, but had not had the pluck to abandon her, and he had tried to entangle her more and more closely in a web of lies. . . . These ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the steamboat to distract our attention from the study of physical geography. All the fashionable travelers had gone on the previous boat or were waiting for the next one. The passengers were mostly people who belonged in the Provinces and had the listless provincial air, with a Boston commercial traveler or two, and a few gentlemen from the republic of Ireland, dressed in their uncomfortable Sunday clothes. If any accident should happen to the boat, it was doubtful if there were persons on board who could ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the sweet joy of having ministered to his wants. She put up the little treasure, intending to devote it all to Warner; and after bathing her heavy eyes, that no sorrow of hers might afflict the student, she passed with a listless step ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with the driver, in the midst of his belongings. He spent a week with us in the first American home he had known, and we found him an amiable and unobtrusive gentleman. He was a vigorous walker and explored the city well. His listless, seemingly inattentive eyes somehow scanned everything, and he judged well what he witnessed. He was an accomplished scholar and had a quiet humour. A little daughter half-playfully and half-wilfully, announced her intention to follow her own pleasure in a certain case. "Milicent is ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... not improbable that many of the apparently forgotten images of persons and places which return with such vividness in dreams are excited by a mode of stimulation which is for the greater part confined to sleep. I say "for the greater part," because even in our indolent, listless moments of waking existence such seemingly forgotten ideas sometimes return as though by a spontaneous movement of their own and by no discoverable play ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... take her place. Miss Burgoyne did not at all appear to regret the disappearance from the theatre of Antonia Rossi. She was kinder to this young man than ever; she showered her experienced blandishments upon him, even when she rallied him about his gloomy looks or listless demeanor. All the time he was not on the stage, and not engaged in dressing, he usually spent in her sitting-room; there were cigarettes and lemonade awaiting him; and when she herself could not appear, at all events she could carry on a sort of conversation ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... exhausted and bewildered as though they had suddenly awakened from a strange dream. They felt as if a wave had cast them beside the highway, then ebbed back and left them stranded. Irresistible reaction plunged them into listless stupor; they forgot their enthusiasm; they thought no more of the men whom they had to rejoin; they surrendered themselves to the melancholy sweetness of finding themselves alone, hand in hand, in the midst of the ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... must away to the wooded hills and vales, Where broad, slow streams flow cool and silently And idle barges flap their listless sails. For me the summer sunset glows and pales, And green fields ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... working on the veil, and the brocade of white and gold for her wedding-gown was on the loom. She was the pale center of a riot of finery. Dressmakers stood back and raised delighted hands as, one by one; their models were adjusted to her listless figure. ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the swan was still in the yard. The ducks talked to it, but its sad, wondering eyes and listless wings spoke louder than words of its weariness and woe. Scores of boys came to see it that day, and the evening brought Benson's father. After hearing the story all he could say was: "It's a good thing for me that I was not there. I'm a pretty big fellow, and can lick chaps that are even bigger ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... the Gothic hordes, That Rome's proud walls might fall before their swords; Exhausted, wet with brothers' blood, Alone sat Brutus, in the dismal night; Resolved on death, the gods implacable Of heaven and hell he chides, And smites the listless, drowsy air With his fierce cries of ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... was finished Katherine led the way to the living-room. To his unspeakable pride, Rhoda took Billy Porter's arm and he guided her listless footsteps carefully, casting pitying glances on his less favored friends. Jack wheeled a Morris chair before the fireplace—desert nights are cool—and John DeWitt hurried for a shawl, while Katherine gave every one orders that no one ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... with a deep sigh, it was still dark. This was fortunate, for he could not see whose hand administered the physic, and was too listless and weak to inquire. It was bright day when he awoke the second time and looked up inquiringly ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... on her face, and, with the aid of a chair, she reseated herself in her former listless, drooping attitude ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... begin to earn my living. And I don't see her settling down to afternoon tea and respectability again. I think I'll have to set her up as a gipsy with a caravan and a snarling tyke for company. How a creature with her physical energy has managed to lie listless for all these months I can't imagine. It shews strength of character anyway. But I don't see her putting in another ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... itself out without wounds for some and utter weariness for all. War mad, yet half-dazed in all other respects, Weldon had watched the reinforcements come swarming up the hill to his relief, had heard their cheers mingling themselves with the sound of his name. Then, listless, but with his arm still about Paddy's shoulders, he had seen the fight move to its destined finish. He came down from the hilltop, feeling that something had taken yet one more turn in the evertightening coil of his brain. For one instant, as they were laying ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... place, for which he was to receive his meals, sundry old clothes, and 25 cents a day in cash. For the first two or three days he did very well, and he was paid 50 cents on account. He did not spend the money, but he began to grow listless and sad, and at the end of the week he ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... listless in bed for many days. How could she meet Savignon, who haunted the place hourly, to inquire, and begged to see her? One day she told Wanamee to send him in, and braced herself for ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... every one rose to his feet, incoherently echoing the last words of the speaker. . . . Still with the filmy wistfulness about his eyes and a tired, weary smile, Dick Durwent sat in his chair beating a listless tattoo on the table ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... subconsciously aroused a feeling of antagonism in her, some secretly amused her, some irritated her, some made her feel under a strain, and some even had the queer, vampirish effect of leaving her washed out and listless—psychological puzzles which she had never been able to solve. But with Archey she always felt restful and contented, smiling at him and talking to him without exertion or repression and—using one of those old-fashioned ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... nervous—it is really true—really, wretchedly, ridiculously, fine-ladically, nervous. I can neither read, write, nor amuse myself, or any one else. My days are listless, and my ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... the other hand it is equally clear that the doctrine of "every man for himself," as it used to be applied, is done with forever. The time has gone by when a man shall starve asking in vain for work; when the listless outcast shall draw his rags shivering about him unheeded of his fellows; when children shall be born in hunger and bred in want and broken in toil with never a chance in life. If nothing else will end these things, fear will do it. The hardest capitalist that ever gripped his property ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... night, for it was that which has hurried on the last scene of my tragedy, which else might have dwindled on through long years of listless sorrow. I was very ill when I arrived and quite incapable of taking off my wet clothes that clung about me. In the morning, on her return, my servant found me almost lifeless, while possessed by a high fever I was lying on the floor of ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... was sure of it—I couldn't tell you, but I was sure you must see!" Her pen was thrown aside and she drooped in her chair, her hands listless in her lap. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... far as I am aware, by contemporary writers, foreign or domestic, and would seem to owe its chief celebrity to the apocryphal version of Cines Perez de Hyta, whose "Milesian tales," according to the severe sentence of Nic. Antonio, "are fit only to amuse the lazy and the listless." (Bibliotheca ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... that breast with ardour glow, With me alone it joy could know, Or feel with me the listless woe, Which racks my heart when ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... supported on wooden pillars. High walls surround a rather commodious courtyard. There are mysterious little doors, through which you can get a peep of crooked little stairs leading to the upper rooms or to the roof, from dusky inside verandahs. Half-naked, listless, indolent figures lie about, or walk slowly to and from the yard with seemingly purposeless indecision. In the outer verandah is an old palkee, with evidences in the tarnished gilding and frayed and tattered hangings, that it once had ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... plainly; yet I found a clearer proof of the slavery in which the man held them in the perfect indifference with which they regarded my arrival—though a guest with two servants must have been a rarity in such a place—and the listless way in which they set about attending to my wants. Keenly remembering that not long before this my enemies had striven to prejudice me in the King's eyes by alleging that, though I filled his coffers, I was grinding the poor into the dust—and even, by my exactions, provoking a rebellion I was ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... told what deeds of night Were done; the web had vanished quite; With it the strange opposing pair; And listless waved on vacant air, For her adieu to heart's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... listless wings, Careless vagabond of the sea, Little thou heedest the surf that sings, The bar that thunders, the shale that rings,— Give me ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... interruptions of field labor, wood-chopping, and such other toils as were imposed on his brothers. Elnathan was indebted for this exemption from labor in some measure to his extraordinary growth, which, leaving him pale, inanimate, and listless, induced his tender mother to pronounce him a sickly boy, and one that was not equal to work, but who might earn a living comfortably enough by taking to pleading law, or turning minister, or doctoring, or some such like easy calling. Still, there ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... India gives an interesting account of the monkeys that live in that far-away country. He says that in the morning, during the cold season, the monkeys are always very listless, but as soon as they are warmed with the rays of the sun, they are as playful as kittens. They will jump over each other's backs, slap each other's faces, pull each other's tails, and even make pretense ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... clusters. From his pipe the smoke ascending Filled the sky with haze and vapor, Filled the air with dreamy softness, Gave a twinkle to the water. 240 Touched the rugged hills with smoothness, Brought the tender Indian Summer To the melancholy North-land, In the dreary Moon of Snow-shoes. Listless, careless Shawondasee! 245 In his life he had one shadow, In his heart one sorrow had he. Once, as he was gazing northward, Far away upon a prairie He beheld a maiden standing, 250 Saw a tall and slender maiden All alone upon a prairie; Brightest green were ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... a few last pansies, looked at them, and as idly flung them away, goes on her listless way through the gardens. A whole long month and not one word from him! Are his social duties now so numerous that he has forgotten he has a ward? "Well," emphatically, and with a vicious little tug at her big white hat, "some people have ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... there on the beach, basking in the sun, and far too idle to read, her listless gaze became fastened upon a trim, smart-looking little schooner which, under all the canvas she could possibly spread, was creeping slowly up from the westward before the light summer breeze. The glance of indifference with which the fair girl at first regarded ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... children know Of grief or sin they could not name or think of Yet sooth or shrink from, so I saw and longed To heal her tender wound and yet said naught. The energy of bygone joy and pain Had left her listless figure charged with magic That caught and held my idleness near hers. Resentful of her power, my spirit chafed Against its own deep pity, as though it were Raised ghost and she the witch had bid it haunt me. What's more I ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... events, I hope the Senate will make this investigation, so that our citizens in every state may understand how far the national government will protect them in the enjoyment of their rights, or, if it is helpless or listless, that, no longer relying upon the barren declarations of the constitution, each man for himself may appeal to the right of self-defense, or to the boasted American right of migration to ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... previous to the rising of the curtain—how she nursed the wounded Tristan, found him to be the slayer of her betrothed, took his sword and was about to kill him, when he opened his eyes, and the sword dropped from her listless fingers. Brangaena is sufficiently astonished; Isolda works herself up into a paroxysm of fury; and now the drama is indeed on foot. Brangaena has a long, lovely, soothing passage to sing, and in her over-anxiety to serve her mistress ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... moved than he was willing to have it appear, trying, in his turn, to hide all his artistic and patriotic anxieties under that firm exterior which his colleague of the Department of Foreign Affairs wore, a dull-eyed, listless face, and cheeks that might ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... whispered to him; he turned upon me a listless gaze from over his fur collar, and bowed languidly, without rising from his easy chair. Yes, it was Mr. March—the very Mr. March we had met! I knew him, changed though he was; but he did not know me in the least, as, indeed, was ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... indifferent, listless, irritable, which Odette now adopted with Swann, undoubtedly made him suffer; but he did not realise how much he suffered; since it had been with a regular progression, day after day, that Odette had chilled towards him, it was only by directly ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... wind Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered on, Day after day a weary waste of hours, 245 Bearing within his life the brooding care That ever fed on its decaying flame. And now his limbs were lean; his scattered hair, Sered by the autumn of strange suffering Sung dirges in the wind; his listless hand 250 Hung like dead bone within its withered skin; Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone As in a furnace burning secretly From his dark eyes alone. The cottagers, Who ministered with human charity 255 His human wants, beheld with wondering awe Their fleeting visitant. The mountaineer, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... felt heavy. I seemed to be growing more listless. But I could not help but note the prairie: the limitless expanse of heavy grass, here and there brightened by brilliant blossoms. All the houses along the way were built of logs. The inhabitants were a large breed for the most part, tall and angular, dressed sometimes in buckskin, coonskin caps. ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... was done when the food had been consumed. Now and then one or the other would use the shovel in a listless way for a few moments at a time, but each had become so weak that any prolonged exertion was out of ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... entering while he slept, Spied in his listless hand a handkerchief Spotted with red. Cold with dismay, she stood, Scared, motionless. But catching in the glass The sudden glimpse of a white ghostly face, She started at herself, and he awoke. He understood, and said with smile unsure, "Bright red was evermore my master-hue; And see, I have it ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... and angular and rather awkward. The brown of out-of-doors was upon his skin. His eyelids dropped at the corners in rather a listless way, but the eyes beneath were gray and steady. He was young, not more than twenty-five, so Whittaker judged at his ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... thither we met her—when the tourist was of that sex—young, gay, gathering the red leaves of the Virginia-creeper from the lakeward terraces of the highway; we met him, old, sick, pale, munching the sour grapes, and trying somehow to kill the time. Large listless groups of them met every steamboat from which we landed, and parties of them encountered us on every road. "A hash of foreigners," the Swiss call Montreux, and they scarcely contribute a native flavor to the dish. The Englishman no longer characterizes ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells
... of one of them, looked up at the windows, thought of all those great tiers, those moulds and blocks of learning on the shelves; and have you never watched the weary people that dribble in from the streets and wander coldly about, or sit down listless in them—in those mighty, silent empires of the past? have you never thought that somewhere all about them, somewhere in this same library, there must be some white, silent, sunny country of the future, full of children and of singing, full of something very different from these iron ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... he dropped his spade. He tumbled down beside it, and lay fast asleep. One after the other each of the troop dropped his pickaxe or shovel from his listless hands, and lay ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... protracted is protracted woe. Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy, And shuts up all the passages of joy: 260 In vain their gifts the bounteous seasons pour, The fruit autumnal, and the vernal flower; With listless eyes the dotard views the store— He views, and wonders that they please no more. Now pall the tasteless meats and joyless wines, And Luxury with sighs her slave resigns. Approach, ye minstrels! try the soothing strain, Diffuse the tuneful ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... another feast, and afterwards we sought our state barge and the perils of the return journey. The newly married couple came down to see us off, still bearing themselves with a preoccupied and listless air. The orchestra remained until the next day, and we threaded the water lanes in quiet, emerging at last on the full-breasted river. The home journey consumed only three hours, and was comparatively uneventful. The wife of the Presidente gathered her family about her ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... them quick of wit and deft of hand, and they mostly fell to presently at their cunning, both of husbandry and handicraft. Moreover, they had great love of the kindreds, and especially of the Woodlanders, and strove to do all things that might pleasure them. And as for those who were dull and listless because of their many torments of the last ten years, they would at least fetch and carry willingly for them of the kindreds; and these last grudged them not meat and raiment and house-room, even if they wrought but little for it, because they called to mind the evil days of their thralldom, ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... mountain's brow, When nipping frosts, and the keen biting blasts Of the dry parching east, menace the trees With tender blossoms teeming, kindly spare Thy sleeping pack, in their warm beds of straw 370 Low-sinking at their ease; listless they shrink Into some dark recess, nor hear thy voice Though oft invoked; or haply if thy call Rouse up the slumbering tribe, with heavy eyes Glazed, lifeless, dull, downward they drop their tails Inverted; high on their bent backs erect Their pointed bristles stare, or 'mong the tufts ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... slow, heavy, listless, eddying, lingering, moving—the same apparently as for days past. It splashed very softly and murmured low and gurgled faintly. It gave forth fitful little swishes and musical tinkles and lapping sounds. It was flowing water, yet the proof was there of tardiness. Now it was ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... inquiries on this point, Mr. C. informed me that he had obtained the raps on the handle of his umbrella out of doors, when the child was by his side; and that the music-master complained of raps proceeding from inside the piano whenever the child was listless or inattentive at her music lesson. Mrs. C. told me that almost every night she heard the raps by the bedside of the child when she went to bid her good-night; and that after she had left the room and partially closed the ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... upon that they receive. One would think, where one class does all the thinking and the other all the working, that masters would be active thinkers and slaves ready workers; but neither result seems to happen—both are listless and inactive. ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... to her bosom, and dropped on the bench to recover herself. Fleshy people, overcome by agitation, are rather disagreeable objects. Randall stood looking at her with a singular expression of aversion on his listless face. But, after panting a few times, the woman recovered her vivacity and began to ply him vigorously with exclamations and questions, beaming the while with delighted interest. He answered her like a schoolboy, too destitute of presence of mind ...
— Lost - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... being examined in the schools; and had plumply refused to leave a tribunal that named its day and kept it—for Westminster, until his counsel should have actually opened the case. He did not believe trial by jury would ever be allowed him. Julia was there, but sad and comparatively listless. One of those strange vague reports, which often herald more circumstantial accounts, had come home, whispering darkly that her father was dead, and buried on an island in the South Sea. She had kept this report from ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... from Governor Lopez. It is true that the presidente of Yajalon, at our request, had telephoned Hidalgo that we came highly recommended, and that everything possible must be done for our assistance. The agente was an old man, suffering from headache, who showed but listless interest in our work. In a general way, he gave us his endorsement, and we, therefore, took the management into our own hands. He had kept the people in town, so that we had subjects, though fewer than we had hoped. We measured twenty-seven men, ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... should do something for him, Barbara rose with him in her arms. The mother sat down, and Barbara laid him in her lap. But the mother felt him lie listless and dead; no arm came creeping feebly up to encircle her neck. One of her babies died unborn, and she knew the moment the strange sad feeling of the time came back to her now; she felt through all her sensitive ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... could bring him reassurance. But meanwhile his appetite was meagre, the rare half-hours he slept were broken with evil dreams, from which he awoke whimpering. He did not care any more about the little beautiful things he had collected and grouped about him, but sat for hours listless and blank; his appearance a grotesque parody of the trim and dapper Dickie Maybury of the past—what could it matter how he looked with death slicing so ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... them go, nailing a piece of old crested tapestry across the press to hide her books and needlework inside. They usually sat there together, Marcella reading or dreaming, Aunt Janet sewing or sitting listless, not even dreaming. But into Marcella's dreams had come frequent movements of her aunt's hand going in behind the curtain. Several times when she had spoken to her, Aunt Janet had waited a few seconds before answering, ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... basement, and was presented to us as Hippolyto Thucydides, the son of Mrs. Johnson, who had just arrived on a visit to his mother from the State of New Hampshire. He was a heavy and loutish youth, standing upon the borders of boyhood, and looking forward to the future with a vacant and listless eye. I mean that this was his figurative attitude; his actual manner, as he lolled upon a chair beside the kitchen window, was so eccentric, that we felt a little uncertain how to regard him, and ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... torrent up stream, and pushes back the hurrying waters. With no less calm and solemn footsteps, nor less certainly, does a great mind bear up against public opinion, and push back its hurrying stream. Therefore should every man wait;—should bide his time. Not in listless idleness,—not in uselesspastime,—not in querulous dejection; but in constant, steady, cheerful endeavours, always willing and fulfilling, and accomplishing his task, that, when the occasion comes, ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... her memory, throbbing there like points of pain. Was it indeed this man under her eyes—so listless, so unconscious—who had said them to her with a passion of devotion it shamed ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... still hardly realize to himself the certainty of Constance's approaching death. He tried to fix his thoughts on this till a heavy, listless torpor, like drowsiness, began to steal over him. He roused himself impatiently, and began to think how slow they were going. Nevertheless, the green coteaux that swell between Rouen and the sea were flying past rapidly, and they arrived at Havre, as Mohun had ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... then with a flying step he sped through the street next to the square, then more swiftly still through the side streets and alleys, till he reached the gate that led out to the street of Versailles. Outside of this there was a young man in a blue blouse, who, in an idle and listless manner, was leading a bridled horse up and ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... Her listless resignation had in it something piteous, and the lever of compassion impelled him to further efforts ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... I looked at him hard and, presently, I saw that his eyes were no longer listless, as they had been a little before, but keen and attentive and that they seemed to be watching, somewhere, in space, a ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... once ironic and listless, in which she put this question, showed that strange and vital things had happened to Sophia in the four years which had elapsed since her marriage. It did really seem to her, indeed, that the Sophia whom Gerald had espoused was ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... few things so annoying to a sailor at sea as a calm. A gale of wind, even a hurricane, with its life, its energy, its fury, though it may bring the conviction of danger, is preferred by an old sailor to the dull, listless monotony of ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... "Well, run along to a shop and buy some." He gave them half a crown, and bundled them out of the room amid shrieks of delight, then he shut the door and went back to where Faith sat by the window, her listless eyes ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... gate and hastily seated herself upon a stone bench against the Haddon side of the wall. She quickly assumed an attitude of listless repose, and Dolcy, who was nibbling at the grass near by, doubtless supposed that her mistress had come to Bowling Green Gate to rest because it was a secluded place, and because ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... last took his rifle and ventured out alone—the others were too listless to stop him—and before the noon hour he found a buffalo bull, some outcast from the herd which had gone southward, struggling in the snow. The bull was old and lean, and it took two bullets to bring him down, but his death ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the valley crept that low shiver of dread; the pale sun shed its listless light on the gray rocks and dusky cedars; the silent unexpectant earth seemed to have paused; all things were wrapt in vague awe and dim apprehension; some inexpressible fatality seemed to oppress ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... around with broken lobster-pots and nets and discarded tin cans and rubbish. The folks they met, and they met them all, from babes in arms to a ninety-eight-year-old great-grandmother, looked sad and listless and run-to-seed. Even the children seemed too old for their years. It was all rather depressing, in spite of the evident kindliness of the people, and the boys were glad to get away again. They bought some lobsters and nearly a gallon of blueberries ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... his scattered hair, Sered by the autumn of strange suffering, Sung dirges in the wind: his listless hand Hung like dead bone within his withered skin; Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone As in a furnace burning secretly From his dark ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... either on horseback, or on foot when they cannot afford to purchase steeds. In the latter case, two men alone hunt together. They follow the tracks of an elephant which they contrive to overtake about noon, when the animal is either asleep or extremely listless and easy to approach. Should the elephant be asleep, one of the hunters will creep towards its head, and with a single blow sever the trunk stretched on the ground, the result being its death within an hour from ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... been away so long, then cajoled him and kissed him. He felt pathetic, listless, out of breath, out of place, for he had no genuine desires. He finally flung himself on a couch and, enervated to the point of crying, he went through the back-breaking motions mechanically, like ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... and her counsels might bring some comfort. Mrs. Mountain yielded a ready assent, and the old lady went up to the girl's room, and entering on the languid summons which followed her knock, saw Julia seated at the window, listless, dejected, and tearful The tears flowed even more freely at the sight of her, and the girl sobbed on her old friend's breast in full abandonment to the first great grief of ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... morning I walked through the town and talked to people who had been living there; and it was when I talked to the people that I began to realise what had been happening. The few ruined buildings and riddled walls conveyed little to me. But when one found man after man thin, listless, and (in spite of the joy of salvation) dispirited; talking with a tired voice and hopeless air, and with a queer, shifty, nervous, scared look in the eye, one ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... had shown both loyalty and spirit, when these were rare qualities in the dispirited party about the king; and the praise he got elevated him not a little in his wife's good opinion, and perhaps in his own. He wakened up from the listless and supine life which he had been leading; was always riding to and fro in consultation with this friend or that of the king's; the page of course knowing little of his doings, but remarking only his greater cheerfulness and ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... been reassuring enough at the time. But that was six months ago. And now here was the Tessie who sat on the back porch, evenings, surveying the sunset. A listless, lackadaisical, brooding Tessie. Little point to going downtown Saturday nights now. There was no familiar, beloved figure to follow you swiftly as you turned off Elm Street, homeward bound. If she went downtown ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... face that haunts your pillow, or the light Scarce visible over leagues of labouring sea! O thus through use to reign again, to drink The cup of peradventure to the lees, For one dear instant disimmortalised In giving immortality! So dream the gods upon their listless thrones. Yet sometimes, when the votary appears, With death-affronting forehead and glad eyes, Too young, they rather muse, too frail thou art, And shall we rob some girl of saffron veil And nuptial garland for so slight a thing? And so to ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... me tell you about my friend Peter, Rebecca Thatcher's half-witted grandson. You know how painfully we were both struck by the poor fellow's listless hopeless manner when we were at the cottage on the moor. I thought of it a great deal afterwards, and it occurred to me that our head-gardener might find work for him in the way of weeding, and rolling the gravel paths, ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... Amelia, but in such a graceful, airy way as I never saw. She has dark hair, nearly black, and brown eyes with a sort of tawny light in them,—large eyes which gleam out on you just when you are not expecting it, for she generally looks down. Amelia appears more listless and affected than ever by the side of her, and Charlotte's hoydenish romping ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... broken, and the conversation started afresh. But the girl who had passed the Yorkshire relish sat silent and listless, her food untouched, and her wine untasted. She was small and thin; her face looked haggard. She was a new-comer, and had, indeed, arrived at Petershof only two hours before the table-d'hote bell ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... it says, "Be dull and soulless, like a beast of the field - a brainless animal, with listless eye, unlit by any ray of fancy, or of hope, or fear, or love, or life." And after brandy, taken in sufficient quantity, it says, "Now, come, fool, grin and tumble, that your fellow-men may laugh - drivel in folly, and splutter in senseless sounds, and show what a helpless ninny is poor man whose ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... took on a look of discouragement and failure, and he sat for a time as though seeking a loophole of escape from his ultimatum. At last he lifted his head and looked at the cowman with a listless eye. ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... ordering the driver to take them out around the golf links, since it was still very early. Then, settling back with what purported to be a sigh of bliss, he regarded Marie sitting small and still and listless beside him. The glow of the chrysanthemums had already faded. Marie, with all the girlish prettiness she had ever possessed, and with an added charm that was very elusive and hard to analyze, seemed to have lost all ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... in a listless, toneless voice. "You have not yet told me what this man Chigmok proposed ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... to leave the station, his eye encountered a face and figure which attracted him, and made him almost involuntarily come to a standstill. It was Milly Harrington, Lettice's maid, who, having posted her mistress' letter to Alan Walcott, had turned her listless steps in this direction. ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... our great commercial cities of Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, are not listless or unenterprising men. They are accustomed to the interests, the bustle, the excitement of business. They have heretofore seen their stores crowded with buyers. During the day the interiors of their ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... father was unsuspicious and easily hoodwinked about family matters; so when Quincy grew listless and on certain occasions fell asleep at his desk his renowned and indulgent father decided it was due to overwork and sent him down to Eastborough for a month's rest and change ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... pens, and ink, would have to be of the best quality. But hear yonder father praying for his children's conversion. His son is old enough to have rejected the gospel, and is condemned already; but how listless the prayer! "Offer it to thy Governor." Would the Queen be expected to deign to notice such a petition? Is it any ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... went alone among the sights: there were lotteries going on, mountebank shows, places for eating and drinking, and for shooting with the cross-bow. I have always been struck by the spirit of these out-of-door festivities. In drawing-room entertainments, people are cold, grave, often listless, and most of those who go there are brought together by habit or the obligations of society; in the country assemblies, on the contrary, you only find those who are attracted by the hope of enjoyment. There, it is a forced conscription; here, they are volunteers for gayety! Then, how easily they ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... by the fender An old man sits dreaming to-night, His withered hands, licked by the tender Warm rays of the red anthracite, Are folded before him, all listless; His dim eyes are fixed on the blaze, While over him sweeps the ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... and they were in December, and he had not seen her. After having recovered somewhat under the influence of the drug strophanthus, he now became depressed, listless, easily fatigued. ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... with Mrs. Stidger, that the balsamic odors of the firs "did her chest good," for certainly her slight cough was less frequent and her step was firmer; perhaps she had learned the unending lesson which the patient pines are never weary of repeating to heedful or listless ears. And so, one day, she planned a picnic on Buckeye Hill, and took the children with her. Away from the dusty road, the straggling shanties, the yellow ditches, the clamor of restless engines, the cheap finery of shop windows, the deeper glitter ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... the rough-and-tumble of battle that lifts one above one's self. One's legs and arms are not the same listless limbs that were crying for rest only a short hour ago. One is envigoured; the excitement stimulates. One feels great, magnanimous, superb. The difficulty lies not in forcing oneself to be brave, but in ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... curiosity, I replaced them in the hole for a future survey. I covered the hole with the board, and put back the gravel and the feathers into the bed-place. This occupied me about two hours, and then I again took my former position on the rocks, and remained in a state of listless inactivity of body and mind the remainder of ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... hopes of obtaining a part, and of the husband whom she was obliged to leave; we have bid each other good-night, she has gone up the creaky staircase. I have returned to my room, littered with MS. and queer publications; the night is hot and heavy, but now a wind is blowing from the river. I am listless and lonely.... I open a book, the first book that comes to hand ... it is Le Journal des Goncourts, p. 358, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... whimsical nerves, peevish tempers, indolent minds, and depraved morals. They become but wrecks of what they were when they first entered the school. This has been called "the stiff and starched system of muslin education," and is the nursery of pale, sickly, listless, ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... currents of the world, he might forget that there existed other and more pressing interests than that of art. But, in such a place, it was hardly possible to write; he could not drug his conscience, like the painter, by the production of listless studies; he saw himself idle among many who were apparently, and some who were really, employed; and what with the impulse of increasing health and the continual provocation of romantic scenes, he became tormented with the desire to work. He enjoyed a strenuous idleness, full of visions, hearty ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Shrill mothers cursed; wan children wailed; sharp coughs Rang through the crazy chambers; hungry eyes Glared dumb reproach, and old perplexity, Too stale for words; o'er still and webless looms The listless craftsmen through their elf-locks scowled; These were my people! all I had, I gave— They snatched it thankless (was it not their own? Wrung from their veins, returning all too late?); Or in the new delight of rare possession, Forgot the giver; one did ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... I think—of the two—I had rather not; I had rather have a course of empty bags and blank days than snuff out any poor, little, happy lives; but the occupation that these amusements would entail would displace and hinder the minute mental torments I now daily, in my listless, luxurious idleness, endure. I am thinking these thoughts one morning, as I turn over my unopened letters, and try, with the misplaced ingenuity and labor one is so apt to employ in such a case, to make ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... list—was a young diplomatist from a Continental Embassy, a man slightly tainted with the Oxford manner, and erring upon the side of unnatural and inhuman refinement, but full of interesting talk and cultured thought. He had a sad, handsome face, a small wax-tipped moustache, a low voice and a listless manner, which was relieved by a charming habit of suddenly lighting up into a rapid smile and gleam when anything caught his fancy. An acquired cynicism was eternally crushing and overlying his natural youthful enthusiasms, and he ignored what was obvious while expressing keen appreciation ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... distract the mind; put out of one's head; disconcert, discompose; put out, confuse, perplex, bewilder, moider^, fluster, muddle, dazzle; throw a sop to Cerberus. Adj. inattentive; unobservant, unmindful, heedless, unthinking, unheeding, undiscerning^; inadvertent; mindless, regardless, respectless^, listless &c (indifferent) 866; blind, deaf; bird-witted; hand over head; cursory, percursory^; giddy-brained, scatter-brained, hare-brained; unreflective, unreflecting^, ecervele [Fr.]; offhand; dizzy, muzzy^, brainsick^; giddy, giddy as a goose; wild, harum-scarum, rantipole^, highflying; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... himself, Indian that the community deemed him, or "breed" of badly mixed blood that he probably was, made his loitering way along the street toward the Mission. A thin, yellowish-brown cigarita dangling from his lips, his wide, dilapidated conical hat tilted to the left side of his head in a listless sort of concession to the westering sun, he was, as was customary with him, utterly at peace. Ten minutes ago he had had twenty cents; two minutes after the acquisition of his elusive wealth he had exchanged the two dimes for whiskey at the Casa Blanca; the remaining eight minutes ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... computing, writing in the huge volumes, and filing various papers away. Sometimes, while he yet held the leaves in his hands and the pen in his mouth, with the appearance of the utmost abstraction in his task, his eyes wandered in to the inner office, and dimly saw his employer sitting silent and listless at his desk. For many years he had been Boniface Newt's clerk; for many years he had been a still, faithful, hard-worked servant. He had two holidays, besides the Sundays—New Year's Day and the Fourth of July. The rest of the year he was in the office by nine in the morning, and did not leave before ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... himself in the affair, and obtained from the Baron a promise to avow his marriage; but the death of both Julian and his injured bride, together with the Abbot's resignation, his ignorance of the fate of their unhappy offspring, and above all, the good father's listless and inactive disposition, had suffered the matter to become totally forgotten, until it was recalled by some accidental conversation with the Abbot Ambrosius concerning the fortunes of the Avenel family. At the request of his successor, the ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... was placed the blue ribbon with the cross of the Holy Ghost in diamonds, and that of St. Louis tied with red. To one to whom the sight was new, it might have seemed strange to see the little man, listless, passive, with his eyes fixed thoughtfully on the burning logs, while this group of men, each with a historic name, bustled round him, adding a touch here and a touch there, like a knot of children with a favourite doll. The black undercoat was drawn on, the cravat of rich lace adjusted, ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... kindred. He has a preference for dense woods of beech and maple, moves slowly amid the lower branches and smaller growths, keeping from eight to ten feet from the ground, and repeating now and then his listless, indolent strain. His back and crown are dark blue; his throat and breast, black; his belly, pure white; and he has a white spot ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... anguish to his? They dare not leave him alone lest he do himself an injury. He is perfectly mute and listless; he cannot weep, he can neither eat nor sleep. He sits like one in a horrid dream. "Oh, my poor, poor brother!" Maren cries in tones of deepest grief, when I speak his name to her next day. She herself cannot rest a moment till she hears that Louis ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... months the border was quiet. The rangers lolled, listless, in camp. And then—bringing joy to the rusting guardians of the frontier—Sebastiano Saldar, an eminent Mexican desperado and cattle-thief, crossed the Rio Grande with his gang and began to lay waste the Texas side. There were indications that Jimmy Hayes would soon have ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... To tell the truth, his listless, dawdling way rather provokes me, and I have not been sorry to see less ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... at Kokstad. When he was near the place, he lay down on the hillside and exclaimed: 'Oh, how I wish they would let me alone—let me stay here!' However, he had to go down to be feted. He was listless, and bored by the banquet, until the present mayor began to attack him violently in his speech, and to complain about the Cape Government, and to express a desire that Natal would take them over. Then Rhodes woke up with a vengeance ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... in the woman. She no longer seemed small or insignificant. Twenty years were gone from her age. Her eyes were shining, a tinge of color had come into her sallow cheeks, her whole figure had expanded. So I have seen a dull-eyed, listless lad change in an instant into briskness and life when given a task of which he felt himself master. She looked down at Agatha with an expression which I resented from the bottom of my soul—the expression with which a Roman empress might have ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in the full season, when all the world is in St. James's Street, and the carriages are cutting in and out among the cabs on the stand, and the tufted dandies are showing their listless faces out of 'White's,' and you see respectable grey-headed gentlemen waggling their heads to each other through the plate-glass windows of 'Arthur's:' and the red-coats wish to be Briareian, so as to hold all the gentlemen's horses; and that wonderful red-coated ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the railroad station, a lazy, listless, bareheaded, dark-skinned crowd of men, women, and children welcomed us with staring eyes to Mexican soil. The first idea which strikes one is that soap and fine-tooth combs are not yet in use on the south side ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... sun is sinking down Are those of outside toilers and the idlers of the town, Save here and there a face that seems a stranger in the street, Tells of the city's unemployed upon his weary beat — Drifting round, drifting round, To the tread of listless feet — Ah! My heart aches for the owner of that sad ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... pleasure. Her face proved that at all events the physical influences of this day in the open air were beneficial. The soft breeze had brought a touch of health to her cheek, and languid inattention no longer marked her gaze at sea and shore; she was often absent, but never listless. When she spoke, her voice was subdued and grave; it always caused Mallard to glance ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... have followed your instructions to the letter. My hero is as listless as I fear my readers will be, and he is not yet in love. In fact, he is only captivated with himself. I have ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... words was no trace of rebellion or even of self-pity, but merely there was the dead weight and numbness of a hopeless resignation to make the words sound flat and listless. ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... as he walked. He was listless and hopeless, but he could not help feeling an interest in the city he had heard so much of and which he had been so busily ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... back among his pillows and listened to the nurse's listless voice. But he was watching me from under his heavy eyebrows, for when the reading was over, and we were alone, he indicated the ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... collected in augmented proportions, lost its head and was swept off its feet. But it must also be said that, having gorged itself with plentiful bribes, it resembled a sated python, willy-nilly drowsy and listless. People were killed for anything and nothing, just so. It happened that men would walk up to a person in broad daylight somewhere on an unfrequented street and ask: "What's your name?" "Fedorov." "Aha, Federov? Then take this!" and they would slit his belly with a knife. They nicknamed ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... of a real king, and an orderly government. In 1422 King Henry died; a few weeks later Charles VI. died also, and the face of affairs began to change, although, at the first, Charles VII. the "Well-served," the lazy, listless prince, seemed to have little heart for the perils and efforts of his position. He was proclaimed King at Mehun, in Berri, for the true France for the time lay on that side of the Loire, and the Regent Bedford, who took the reins at Paris, was a vigorous and powerful prince, who was not likely ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... brink Where the cattle came to drink. They trilled and piped and whistled With the thrush and bobolink, Till the kine in listless pause, Switched their tails in mute applause, With lifted heads and dreamy ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... to have very much the same feeling that we mean by joy, in fun and frolic. There was, perhaps, in the sight of a bird asleep and listless in broad daylight, something amusing. He was in the habit of seeing the feather-folk scatter at his approach. If he understood why, that didn't bother him any. He was used to it, and there is no doubt he liked the power he had of making ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... who see me colourless? Surely every live man fades among the dead. Evil to the lonely man, and burdensome to the single, remains every dwelling in the world. Hapless are they whom chance hath bereft of human help. The listless night of the cavern, the darkness of the ancient den, have taken all joy from my eyes and soul. The ghastly ground, the crumbling barrow, and the heavy tide of filthy things have marred the grace of my youthful countenance, and sapped my ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... wandering life and give it direction is not an easy task, but a life which has no definite aim is sure to be frittered away in empty and purposeless dreams. "Listless triflers," "busy idlers," "purposeless busybodies," are seen everywhere. A healthy, definite purpose is a remedy for a thousand ills which attend aimless lives. Discontent, dissatisfaction, flee before a definite purpose. An aim takes the ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... patted his brown hands. She knew then the bitterness of his defeat, and she made no comment. She was tired of the fight. A compromise with Carey or a sale of the water right was their only hope, and when Bob spoke of compromise she was too listless to dissuade him. Since that eventful night when he had first ridden into San Pasqual she had been more or less of a stormy petrel; woe and death and suffering had followed his coming, and if Donnaville was to be purchased at such a price, ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... hour, a day, but through blighted youth, through listless manhood,—you suffered me to nurse the remorse that should have been your own; her life slain, mine wasted,—and shall neither of us ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... up, still a stranger to affairs, solely occupied with the pleasures of the chase, handsome, elegant, with noble and regular features, a cold and listless expression. In the month of February, 1725, he fell ill; for two days there was great danger. The duke thought himself to be threatened with the elevation of the house of Orleans to the throne. "I'll not be caught so again," he muttered between ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... let the detectives know when her nephew was well enough to be seen, but as time went on she doubted whether he would ever recover. Although the delirium which had followed his seizure had passed away, he was slow in regaining health, and remained in bed, listless and indifferent to everything, sometimes reading a little, but oftener lying still, staring at the wall. He was passive and quiet, and obedient as a child. He seemed to have no recollection of the events of the night ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees |
