"Lethargical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... San Juan was to capture cannibals there, and Las Casas looks upon this lethargical attack as a judgment upon the admiral for so unjust a manner of endeavouring to introduce Christianity. The mariners turned the fleet homewards to Isabella, where they arrived the 29th of September, 1494, bearing with them ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... An old divine of our own country says:—"I look upon it as a special piece of providence, that there are, ever and anon, such fresh examples of apparitions and witchcraft as may rub up and awaken their" [the people's] "benumbed and lethargic minds into a suspicion at least, if not assurance, that there are other intelligent beings besides those clothed in heavy earth or clay. In this, I say, methinks the divine providence does plainly interest the powers of the dark ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... the changing and shifting movements, and for the obvious hesitation of opinion, so unusual with Washington at any time. Be it remembered, moreover, that it was an awful doubt which went to bed and got up and walked with him through all those long nights and days. If Howe, the dull and lethargic, should awake from his dream of conquering America by taking now and again an isolated town, and should break for the north with twenty thousand men, the fortunes of the young republic would ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... Grantham. "Such meetings as these," she told her audience, "are valuable because they call attention to the cruelty which exists in such forms as the decrepit horse traffic, of which the general public has little or no knowledge. To be ignorant may save trouble; but if it makes us indifferent and lethargic with regard to suffering, when we ought to be helpers in the cause of humanity, the sooner we increase our knowledge the better we shall be able to stop this great evil and rouse public opinion on the valuable work done by the officers of ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... and Grace Carden had lost all her feverish energy, and remained passive, lethargic, fearing every thing, hoping nothing, but quivering all day with expectation of the next blow; for what had she left to expect now but sorrow in ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... lethargic. Occasionally a canvas-covered wagon rumbled over the frozen windrows of the town's one street, and rumbled out again, loaded with supplies for a distant ranch; or a group of cowboys, in search of diversion, came into town for a night. But these visitations were so infrequent ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... said, "to tell you that all is safe. Also to bid you good-bye. As soon as I can get employment I shall go down to Thorn to stir them up there. They are lethargic ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... at sunset, and at 9 P.M., and once or twice before morning. The sleep was deep, and nothing seemed to arouse her. Gairdner mentions the case of a woman who, for one hundred and sixty days, remained in a lethargic stupor, being only a mindless automaton. Her life was maintained by means of the stomach tube. The Revue d'Hypnotisme contains the report of a young woman of twenty-five, who was completing the fourth year of an uninterrupted trance. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... one drugged, Rudyard Byng made his way through the streets, oblivious of all around him. His brain was like some engine pounding at high pressure, while all his body was cold and lethargic. His anger at those he left behind was almost madness, his humiliation was unlike anything he had ever known. In one sense he was not a man of the world. All his thoughts and moods and habits had been essentially primitive, even in the high ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... long wait, had he seen so much as one specimen of that invariable concomitant of all screen journalism, the long-haired poet with his flowing tie and neatly ribboned manuscript. Even the office "boy," lethargic, neutrally polite, busy writing on half-sheets of paper, was profoundly untrue to the pictured type. Banneker wondered what the managing editor would be like; would almost, in the wreckage of his preconceived notions, have accepted a woman or a priest in that manifestation, when ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... But Beaudoin's persistently lethargic condition evidently alarmed him. He inspected the contrivance that had been applied by the field attendant to check the flow of blood, which was simply a cord passed around the leg outside the trousers and twisted tight with the assistance ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... different messes was taking place as the individuals suffered more or less from the cold. Plethoric ones, who became red-hot with a run up the ladder, exclaimed against fires, and called zero charming weather; the long and lethargic talked of cold draughts and Sir Hugh Willoughby's fate; the testy and whimsical bemoaned the impure ventilation. A fox or two was occasionally seen scenting around the ships, and a fox-hunt enlivened the floe with men and officers, who chased the unlucky brute as if they had all come to ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... overgrown creatures he was top-heavy and lethargic and very humble-minded. Still, there was a kind of respectful pertinacity about him. It requires some strength of character, for instance, to wade along the bottom of a pond to dry land, accompanied by a brick as big as yourself. It was quite impossible, too, short of ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay
... conscious that the gloom, the silence, and the cold were gradually conquering him. The feverish activity of his brain brought on a reaction. He grew lethargic, he sunk down on the steps, and thought of nothing. His hand fell by chance on one of the pieces of candle; he grasped it and devoured it mechanically. This revived him. "How strange," he thought, "that I am not thirsty. Is it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... all—yes, even, I believe, about Semyonov—there was an air of suppressed excitement, rather the excitement that schoolboys have, when they have prepared some secret forbidden defiance or adventure. Trenchard, whom I had left in the depths of a lethargic depression, was most curiously preoccupied. He looked at me first as though he did not perfectly remember me. He, assuredly, was not well. His eyes were lined heavily, his white cheeks had a flush of red that burnt there feverishly, ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... are said to be by Giovanni D'Enrico; they will not bear comparison with Tabachetti's St. Joseph. The benefactor was Count Pio Giacomo Fassola di Rassa, a collateral ancestor of the historian. People who have become lethargic in their self- indulgence, or who are blinded through some bad habit, will find relief at this chapel. I have met with nothing to show that there was any earlier chapel with the same subject, and in the 1586 edition of Caccia it is expressly mentioned as one ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... healthy, contagious fervor which permeates the blood swiftly once it gets a hold, and like electricity it vivifies and stirs the spirit with renewed energy day after day, year after year. Once it wins us it will stick with us. The success of those about us will shake our lethargic limbs and stimulate us to a desire to do as they do. We will be in a world of clean thought and action and our lives will mirror their lives, our thoughts will be filled with wholesome things and with good health. We will win in spite of ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... one in his frame of mind should sleep, but nature was at last exhausted, and yielding to the influence of the peculiar atmosphere slowly pervading the room, he fell away into a kind of lethargic slumber, while the work of destruction his own hand had prepared, went silently on around him. First the crimson curtain turned a yellowish hue, than the scorched threads dropped apart and the flame crept into the ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... of dilettantism and half-hearted enthusiasm. True, Short was there, much the same as in the old days; even his dog could be heard snarling and growling when the policemen administered to him some sly kick; but as I looked at the squalid and lethargic figure with its sallow, unhealthy, repulsive face, I was overcome by a feeling of almost physical nausea. I realised fully how loathsome this gutter Iago had become to me during the past few months, during which I had had ample opportunity ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... Rudolph to have a care that nothing was done in Germany to interfere with the great design upon England. The King gave warning that he would suffer no disturbance from that quarter, but certainly the lethargic condition of Germany rendered such threats superfluous. There were riders enough, and musketeers enough, to be sold to the highest bidder. German food for powder was offered largely in the market to any foreign consumer, for ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... slumber of utter exhaustion, or whether it was the sweet oblivion which results from a sense of peace long denied, or perhaps the union of both these conditions, the result was that she lay wrapped in an almost lethargic sleep for many hours. Twice Thomas came with the carriage, and twice Griselda sent him away. And the man shook his head ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... of you, who have ever taken part in a gold rush can understand and appreciate the wild excitement that prevailed when the flashing lights revealed the rock of the cave to be seamed and studded with yellow veins and patches. It aroused even the most lethargic of the cowboys. And, truth to tell, none of them were very strongly of that type. They were accustomed to live amid excitement of one kind or another, and this was but ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... try to deny it," answered Jacob, in his calm, lethargic way, still regarding Cuthbert with a look of admiration and curiosity, somewhat as a savage regards a white man, scarce knowing from moment to moment what his acts will be. "Yet for all that I would warn thee to keep away from that house. Men whisper ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... care about him, he is so superficial, and Miss Barker says he is very lethargic in conversation. I asked him because—don't breathe a word of it—but because, as a married woman, one ought to help others, and—do you remember how he stood up for Hester ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... success, he hurries his guests away from their meal, they are in no condition to appreciate a serious performance. The pressure has been too high all day for the overworked man and his énervée wife to desire any but the lightest tomfoolery in an entertainment. People engaged in the lethargic process of digestion are not good critics of either elevated poetry or delicate interpretation, and in consequence crave amusement ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... tears, no acuteness of sensation. A weight as heavy as the world lay on her, crushing out struggle and resistance. She knew that he was dying. When they told her there was no doctor in the camp her flickering hope had gone out. Now she was prepared to sit by him and wait with a lethargic patience beyond ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... Sir George Stephen,[15] after describing the long struggle in England against the West Indian interest and other obstacles, says, that, for some time, "worst of all, we found the people, not actually against us, but apathetic, lethargic, incredulous, indifferent. It was then, and not till then, that we sounded the right note, and touched a chord that never ceased to vibrate. To uphold slavery was a crime against God! It was a NOVEL DOCTRINE, but it was a cry that ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... their own veins to draw the vital tide; Perhaps, by cooler calculation shown, Create materials to construct a throne, Dazzle her guardians with the glare of state, Corrupt with power, with borrowed pomp inflate, Bid thro the land the soft infection creep, Whelm all her sons in one lethargic sleep, Crush her vast empire in its brilliant birth, And chase the goddess ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... and suffer the ideas of our minds, like unregarded shadows, to make their appearances there, as it happened, without attending to them. In which state man, however furnished with the faculties of understanding and will, would be a very idle, inactive creature, and pass his time only in a lazy, lethargic dream. It has therefore pleased our wise Creator to annex to several objects, and the ideas which we receive from them, as also to several of our thoughts, a concomitant pleasure, and that in several objects, to several degrees, that those faculties which he had ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... shone ethereally white in the distance, with a narrow fringe of flashing surf between it and the vivid blue of the Caribbean. It was a thriving place, as the black dots of steamers in the roadstead showed, for of late years American enterprise had broken in upon its lethargic calm. The population was, for the most part, of Spanish stock that had been weakened by infusions of Indian and negro blood, but there were a number of Chinamen, and French Creoles. Besides these, Americans, Britons, and European adventurers had established themselves, and the ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... altogether accurate, it is neatly said enough. But I am afraid that the facts of the case go farther than one would wish to believe toward bearing out the severe critic's judgment. Assuredly, the arts if not fast asleep, are but beginning to arouse themselves from a very long and lethargic nap in their classic cradle-land. But I think that signs are not wanting that they are beginning to shake off their slumber, and that when they shall have effectually done so, it will once again become evident to the world that this Italian race is very specially endowed with those gifts and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... which in a less sincere society restricts its expression to innuendo or forced politeness, left the rustic Ira only dumb and lethargic. He moved slowly and abstractedly around the room, accenting his slight lameness more than ever, or dropped helplessly into a chair, where he sat, inanely conscious of the contiguity of his wife and ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... who knew Miss Elizabeth's will for having all things in running order. Peyton's drowsiness wrapped him closer and closer. Presently he was remotely aware of the opening of the door, the tread of light feet on the floor, the swish of skirts. But he had now reached that lethargic point which involves total indifference to outer things, and he did not even ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... self-consciousness, the fringed petticoats of affectation which he wears, give him the kennel, the collar, the muzzle, the whip, weapons of power to bring the dog to subjection. And Julian, as he watched Rupert and Mab wrapped in large lethargic dreams, found himself pitying them, as civilized man vaguely pities all other inhabitants of the round world. Poor old things! Sombre agitations were not theirs. They had nothing to aim at or to fight against. No devils and angels played at football with ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... connoisseurs of technique as Walter Pater and Henry James. From his mother's Norman ancestry he inherited the physique of a giant, tainted with epilepsy; a Viking countenance, strong- featured with leonine moustaches; and a barbaric temper, habitually somewhat lethargic but irritable, and, when roused, violent and intolerant of opposition. He had a private education at Rouen, with wide desultory reading; went to Paris, which he hated, to study law, which he also hated; frequented the theatres ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... become darker, and in the middle of it, a tall emaciated figure moved about. The old woman stood upright, and in awakening from her lethargic sleep, before even full consciousness had returned to her, in turning upon her side, and raising herself on her elbow, she had extinguished three of the candles which burned near the mortuary bed. Then, recovering her strength, she got out of bed and began to seek for her things. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... and Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice were unequally yoked with the lethargic Secretary of State for War. Lord Fitzmaurice has vivid recollection of Lord Hartington's entry at one sitting half an hour late, after his fashion. The question turned on the probable action of some Afghan chiefs, whereupon Lord Hartington broke silence by observing ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... the morphia tabloids was still apparent in the greater steadiness of his hand and eye, the regained quiet of his susceptibilities, but the respite was temporary and lethargic. The early days—the days of six years ago, when these tabloids meant an even sweep of thought, lucidity of brain, a balance of judgment in thought and effort—were days of the past. As he had said of Lexington and his vice, ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... tried to say blindly that he believed what she believed. But, in a sense, he was powerless: the blade of his adversary was quicker than his own; his will was very nearly dormant; his heart was entirely lethargic, and his intellect was clear up to a ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... fanciful specimens of the tattoo artist's genius. A third man, similarly habited, lay stretched out, apparently sleeping on one of the cots that were arranged around the room. Opening his eyes he greeted the newcomer with a lethargic "'Lo, Redmond!"; then, turning over on his side, he relapsed once more into the arms of Morpheus—his nasal organ proclaiming ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... to remain till he died, which was an event expected every moment; but passing from an atmosphere heated, stagnant, and filled with miasma, into fresher and purer air, which was renewed every instant, he gradually revived from his lethargic state. His recovery dated from the day when he quitted the middle deck; and as it often happens in medicine that the same facts are cited in support of systems diametrically opposite, this recovery ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... the papers were overhauled; the tale of Topelius and the trade was told in appreciative ears and cemented their acquaintance. Trent's suspicions, thus finally disposed of, were succeeded by a fit of profound thought, during which he sat lethargic and stern, looking at ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the eastern sky, and all the multitudinous sounds in the neighbourhood of the water-hole had long subsided into complete silence, that the watchers felt at liberty to cease their vigil and snatch an hour or two of much-needed rest. Meanwhile, Grosvenor remained completely sunk in the lethargic sleep which had resulted from the saturation of his system ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... seemed to sink back into a lethargic state. Robert tried his pulse, but could hardly feel its beat. In a half hour he roused ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... much so, that, when daylight appears, he finds, to his utter astonishment, he has enjoyed a sweet sleep on the floor, some of his quizzical friends having disfigured his face very much after the fashion of a clown's. He modestly, and mechanically, picks up his lethargic body, views his constitutional self in the glass, and is much horrified, much disgusted with those who ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... diseases. It is so even in animals. When a sheep has become fat, the butcher knows it must be killed or it will rot and decline. It is rare indeed for the corpulent to be long-lived. They are at the same time sleepy, lethargic, and short-breathed. Even Hippocrates says, 'Those who are uncommonly fat die more quickly ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... astral vehicle almost invariably withdraw from the body, and hover in its immediate neighbourhood, practically almost as much asleep as the latter. In some cases, however, this astral vehicle is less lethargic, and floats dreamily about on the various astral currents, occasionally recognizing other people in a similar condition, and meeting with experiences of all sorts, pleasant and unpleasant, the memory of which, hopelessly ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... man, they are very rapid in their movements and consume a large amount of food proportionate to their weight. They live, as it were, at high pressure. Serpents, on the other hand, have a low body temperature, they are lethargic and can live a long while without food. There is no obvious reason why some animals excrete urea and others uric acid. As uric acid is a satisfactory and unirritating form in which waste nitrogen is expelled from the body of the active alert bird, as well as from the slow moving reptile, ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... threats so far as to undergo the "initiation" he proposed, at the time we were helpless in his hands—of that I have little doubt. I cannot suppose that he would have wasted much time over me, once I had fallen lethargic. When Hewitt burst in he would have found me lying dead, with the Red Triangle on my forehead. It would have saved Mayes a lot of noise and struggle, ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... influenced some people for good and influenced others for evil is beyond all doubt. During the first two years it was a distinct tonic to the intellect and conscience of the people. The sense of national peril quickened the dull and lethargic, steadied the weak drifters, furnished ballast to all the people, made the strong stronger, made the brave more heroic. The first sign of national decay is the note of frivolity. The sure sign of greatness in a generation is the note of seriousness. ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... And like the block, unmoved lay: but ours, As much too active, like the stork devours. Is there no temperate region can be known Betwixt their frigid and our torrid zone? Could we not wake from that lethargic dream, But to be restless in a worse extreme? And for that lethargy was there no care, But to be cast into a calenture? Can knowledge have no bound, but must advance So far, to make us wish for ignorance, And rather in the dark to grope our way, Than, led by a false guide, to err by day? Who ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... very graceful - even so graceful as that of the German Sugar Bakers, whose assembly, by the Minories, we stopped to visit - but there is watchful maintenance of order in every house, and swift expulsion where need is. Even in the midst of drunkenness, both of the lethargic kind and the lively, there is sharp landlord supervision, and pockets are in less peril than out of doors. These houses show, singularly, how much of the picturesque and romantic there truly is in the sailor, requiring to be especially addressed. All the songs ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... moment, Marius slowly opened his eyes, and his glance, still dimmed by lethargic ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... of the clock crept on. It was half-past nine. Hannah sat lethargic, numb, unable to think, her strung-up nerves grown flaccid, her eyes full of bitter-sweet tears, her soul floating along as in a trance on the waves of a familiar melody. Suddenly she became aware that the others had risen and that her father ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... shutters, he even left his inner window partially open, because, unaccustomed to a stove, he felt oppressed by its heat. When he threw himself down, he slept deeply, as men sleep after days among snowfields, when a sense of entire security is the lethargic brain's lullaby. ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... marriage—in fact, he shocked his patron in many ways. He was a large, heavy, pale-faced young man, with strange, sleek qualities that appealed to her through their unaccustomedness. But he was scarcely a sleek man in office, and under his drawling, lethargic manner there was an energy that struck her as shocking and out of place. He was like Lawrence, speaking forbidden words and of hidden things. In church he preached embarrassing perfections—she could no longer feel that she ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... and those of them who could darted away like frightened rabbits, each to his own burrow. An old man who was sitting in the warm afternoon sun on the little bamboo platform before his hut was aroused from his lethargic repose by the scampering away of the children. He arose, trembling upon his tottering limbs, all drawn and twisted, and hobbled away into ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... remained alive—that is, he ate, drank, walked, borrowed money and did not return it, and altogether he showed by a series of psycho-physiological acts that he was a living being, possessing a stomach, a will, and a mind—but his soul was dead, or, to be more exact, it was absorbed in lethargic sleep. The sound of human speech reached his ears, his eyes saw tears and laughter, but all that did not stir a single echo, a single emotion in his soul. I do not know what space of time had elapsed. It may have been one year, and it ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... when not driven from his usual course, but once irritated he was a veritable torrent, a wild beast that could only be stopped by the death of himself or his foe. So many affronts, so many pinpricks, day after day, had made his heart quiver, lodging in it to sleep the sleep of lethargic vipers, and they now were awaking to shake and hiss with fury. The hisses resounded in his ears with the jesting epithets of the professor, the phrases in the slang of the markets, and he seemed to hear blows and laughter. ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... filling Tim's biggest chair. Tim prized this volume most, for when Silas began to talk, the sheepish look would fade out of his placid face, his little pig eyes would vanish, and the listener would discover to his astonishment that not only was this lethargic lump of flesh a delightful conversationalist but that he had spent every hour he could spare from his custom-house in a study of the American system of immigration—and had at his tongue's end a mass of statistics about which ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... on the other hand, there is the genuinely lethargic saleswoman whose mind doesn't seem to register a single syllable that you have said to her; who, with complete indifference to you and your preferences, insists on showing what you distinctly say you do not want, and who caps the climax ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... zealot finds the gymnasium insufficient long before he has learned half the moves. To some temperaments it becomes a treadmill, and that, strangely enough, to diametrically opposite temperaments. A lethargic youth, requiring great effort to keep himself awake between the exercises, thinks the gymnasium slow, because he is; while an eager, impetuous young fellow, exasperated because he cannot in a fortnight draw himself ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... gone through pangs of suffering and fierce regret. Her whole nature had revolted, and it had taken all her strength to quell it. But that was long, long past. She had ceased to feel anything now, but a dumb and even placid acquiescence in this lethargic existence, and Ralph Dacre was amply satisfied therewith. He had always been abundantly confident of his power to secure her happiness, and he was blissfully unconscious of the wild impulse to rebellion which she had barely stifled. He had ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... must have been lying dormant. Humboldt has related the strange accident of a hovel having been erected over a spot where a young crocodile lay buried in the hardened mud. He adds, "The Indians often find enormous boas, which they call Uji or water serpents, in the same lethargic state. To reanimate them, they must be irritated or wetted ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... "help," or "God," or "oh!" commencing with a loud spasmodic cry, and continuing the same word till it died away in cadence. The act of calling seemed to lull the pain. Many were unconscious and lethargic, moving their fingers and lips mechanically, but never more to open their eyes upon the light; they were already going through the valley and the shadow. I think, still, with a shudder, of the faces of those who were told mercifully that they could not live. The unutterable agony; ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... her, and seem to seek some fruitless remedy against the violent blow, which had thus suddenly destroyed the child in whom she had not only placed her greatest hopes, but so much of her maternal pride. While engaged in the latter incomprehensible manner, the lethargic Abner turned aside, and swallowing the unwonted emotions which were rising in his own throat, ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... deferred till she had, as it were, gained courage to make effectual use of them. She had a sense of acquiescing in this plan with the passiveness of a sufferer resigned to the surgeon's touch; and this feeling of almost lethargic helplessness continued when, after the departure of the guests, ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... he arrived at Ippenburen, he was quite lethargic; his hand fell down as if lifeless, and his tongue hung out of his mouth. He gave, however, signs enough of life by continually crying out, as well as he could articulate, ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... would watch them as they sat by their doorway, squatting on their heels, as their custom is—grave, monotonous, motionless, the smoke from their pipes almost the sole sign of life. For the Flemish peasant is a strangely inert creature, his work once done—as languid and lethargic as the canal that passes by his door. There was one cottage into which the boy would often peep on his way home from school, the home of seven brothers and one sister, all old, toothless, worn—working together in the daytime at ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... eyes into the detection of an oversight which argues a sudden Lethean forgetfulness on the part of Milton; and in many generations of readers, however alive and awake with malice, a corresponding forgetfulness not less astonishing. Two readers only I have ever heard of that escaped this lethargic inattention; one of which two is myself; and I ascribe my success partly to good luck, but partly to some merit on my own part in having cultivated a habit of systematically accurate reading. If I read at all, I make it a duty to read truly and faithfully. ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... with powerful human passions in no lethargic way. It may horrify by its brutality, and its assault on ordinary morality may well be considered startling: yet it counts for something that M. Artzibashef does not display the common fear ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... is so comfortably regulated at the present day that Robin Greve, looking back at his trip by air from Croydon Aerodrome to the big landing-ground outside Rotterdam, acknowledged that he had more excitement in his efforts to stir into action a lethargic Dutch passport official in London, so as to enable him to catch the air mail, than in the smooth and uneventful voyage across the Channel. He reached Rotterdam on a dull and muggy afternoon and lost no time in depositing his bag at ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... and regard to which his constant and indefatigable zeal in support of the American cause, as well as his signal service, gave him such just pretnesions. The intelligence which he brought gave new impulse both to Congress and to the State Legislatures. The lethargic slumbers into which they seemed to be sinking yielded to resolutions of the most ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... most intense symptoms of white scour are complicated by great dullness, weakness, and prostration, sunken eyes, retracted belly, short, hurried breathing, and very low temperature, the calf lying on its side, with the head resting on the ground, lethargic and unconscious or regardless of all around it. The bowel discharges are profuse, yellowish white, and very offensive. As a rule death ensues within 24 to ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... would be there, one and all. Even the lethargic mother would so far bestir herself on such an occasion. They had only just arrived. The card was at the residence waiting for them. No one in Barchester had seen them. What better opportunity could they have of showing ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... national horizon, ever since Austria plumped her brutal ultimatum upon little Serbia. There were no vivid debates, no pronounced current of opinion one way or the other, not much public interest in the prolonged discussions at the Consulta; just a lethargic iteration of the belief that sooner or later war must come with its terrible risks, its dubious victories. Given the Italian temperament and the nearness of the brink toward which the country was drifting, one looked for flashes of fire. But Rome, if more normal in ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... the Hon. Bunning-Ford's life was excitement. His temperament bordered on the lethargic. He felt that unless he could obtain excitement life was utterly unbearable. He had sought it all over the world before he had adopted the life of a rancher. Here in the West of Canada he had found something of what he sought. There was the big game shooting ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... well-known banner swung out upon the breeze, another cheer, wild and thrilling, ran along the line; a hundred answering flags were hauled up through the fleet; the ships of war saluted with full broadsides; and the guns of San Juan, now for the first time waking from their lethargic silence, poured forth ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... letter of mine, which was meant to convey an apology for my incapacity to write, seems to have been taken by you in too serious a light. It was only my way of telling you I had a severe cold. The fact is I have been insuperably dull and lethargic for many weeks, and cannot rise to the vigour of a Letter, much less an Essay. The London must do without me for a time, a time, and half a time, for I have lost all interest about it, and whether I shall recover it again I know not. I will bridle my pen another time, & not teaze and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... that fanned the revolution into flame two years later, their success was instantaneous. His true representations of Hungarian life and character, his passionate love of liberty, his lofty idealism for his crushed and lethargic country, aroused a great wave of patriotism like a call to arms, and consecrated him to work with his pen for the freedom of the common people. Henceforth ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... they had all taken some kind of sleeping-powder, which made them lethargic; they did not recover themselves until they got out into the street again, and then they had plenty to say. There was quite a long line of them, reaching from the town gates up to ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... commencement of the racing campaign seemed to foreshadow a complete fulfillment of the doctor's prophecy should success smile upon this modern Joan of Arc; for the bustle of preparation was music to the ears of the stricken man, and he fought the lethargic fever of discontent that was over him until his eyes brightened and his face took on ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... situation in which he is placed." This statement is big with meaning for all who have a true conception of pedagogy and of life. In this sentence we see the finger-board that points toward high achievements in teaching. If the hurdles are too low, the boy becomes flaccid, flabby, sluggish, and lethargic. The hurdles should be just high enough to engage his full strength, physical, mental, and moral. They should ever be a challenge to his best efforts. But they should never be so high that they will invite discouragement, disaster, and failure. The ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... instances, it is the chief determining factor which materially influences the outcome of the case. A nervous, excitable animal, that is kept at hard work, may, under some conditions, be expected to experience disturbances which more lethargic subjects escape. Nervous subjects, it is known, are more prone to azoturia than are those of lymphatic temperament. Furthermore, the lymphatic subject often recovers from certain bone fractures which are successfully treated only when the animal is sufficiently resigned by nature to remain ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... they stole through the deserted house to get into the street by the atrium. Medius saw them, but he made no attempt to detain them; he had sunk into lethargic indifference. It was not an hour since he had taken stock of his life and means, setting the small figure of his average income against his hospitality to Dada and her little companion; but then, again, he had calculated ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... than light to awake him from his almost lethargic sleep, and Boone threw bone after bone at him, till the brute woke up, growled with astonishment at the unusual sight before him, and advanced lazily to examine it. The young man had caught up his ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... multiplied its agents. The present generation is not only carried forward, but is excited in every quarter. The activity and versatility of the intellect would appear to be inexhaustible. Instead of getting overstrained, or becoming lethargic, it never was so powerful, never had so many resources, never was so wide-awake. Men are busy turning over every stone in their way, in the hope of finding something new. Nothing would seem too small for human attention, nothing too great for human undertaking. The government Patent-Office, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... of Vassili Petrovitch, which his lethargic, sober-minded friend regarded as indicating temporary insanity in the speaker, represented fairly the mental condition of very many Russian nobles at that time, and were not without a certain foundation. The idea ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... back to my recital of what passed between us three. A strange lethargic calm seemed to have fallen upon Paul. He turned to me without even a single trace of the passion which had lit up his face ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... as only a woman so liberally endowed could suffer, and over a long period of years. She had known despair and humiliation and bewilderment, lethargic hopelessness, and finally a complete sacrifice of self. His imagination, in spite of his rebellious soul, had furnished the background for ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... enjoyed a few minutes lethargic sleep. Occasional cold shivers ran through her delicate little body. At last she ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... the reaction from the stormy excitements of the Great Awakening, nothing had seemed to arouse the New England churches from a lethargic dullness; so, at least, it seemed to those who recalled those wonderful days of old, either in memory or by tradition. We have a gauge of the general decline of the public morals, in the condition of Yale College at the accession of President Dwight in 1795, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... there might again be means to support them. Diane de la Ferronaise was not dead, but sleeping. Her love of luxury and pleasure—her joy in jewels, equipage, and dress—her woman's elemental weaknesses, second only to the instinct for maternity—all these, grown lethargic from hunger, were ready to awake again at the mere possibility of food. She was forced to confront the fact that, with the same opportunities, she had it in her to go back to the same life. It was a humiliating fact, but it stared her in the face, that experience had shown her a creature for a man ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... where he lived with his parents, though small, was neat and comfortable. We found him lying in bed, awake. He looked languid and lethargic; but his skin was moist and cool; his face displayed no paleness, and no injury of any kind. He had just eaten a good dinner of rabbit-pie, and was anxious to be allowed to sit up in a chair, and amuse himself by looking out ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... too thick and violent for further utterance; she panted and wrought strongly, until at length she lay with locked teeth and clenched hands struggling in a fit which eventually, by leaving her, terminated in a state of lethargic insensibility. ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... on alternate nights, this night it being the father's regular turn to perform that duty; but his trip of twenty-five or thirty miles had fatigued him so much that it was judged best for his wife to relieve him,—his slumbers being usually so profound as to be almost lethargic, so that, when once fairly asleep, the loudest noises even in the same room would fail to arouse him, and it being feared, therefore, that the little patient might suffer, if left to his care in his present state of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... recourse to the only means that are congenial to guilt: I will compel you to be silent." Freedom in this matter, as in all others, will engender activity and fortitude; positive institution (Godwin's term for law and constraint) makes the mind torpid and lethargic. It is hardly necessary to reproduce Godwin's vigorous arguments for unfettered freedom in political and speculative discussion, against censorships and prosecutions for religious and political opinions. Even were we secure from the possibility ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... was the one who wrested the most fun from the situation, for while the rest soon grew weary of the monotony, and lethargic with the heat, groaning aloud every time they had to seek the siding in order to let some great train of laden boats go by, he found fresh enjoyment in every stop, and in blouse and knickerbockers, with bare feet, paddled about on the moist banks, making friends ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... showing a sort of lethargic reluctance towards effort which extended even to the muscles of his almost expressionless face. To some he might have appeared dull and stupid, but Esther knew this was not true. There was life in the flicker of his small eyes, deep-set, bilious in tinge, and as ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... because they have no voice; if they don't revolt, it is because they are lethargic; if you say they do not suffer, it is because you have not seen their heart's blood. But the day will come when you will see and hear. Then woe to those who base their strength on ignorance and fanaticism; woe to those who govern ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... door of the comtesse—all was still;—she opened it and went in. The comtesse, exhausted by long watching, had fallen asleep in her chair, with her little girl in her arms. The child had sunk into a dull lethargic state never to be broken. Alas! Monsieur—alas! the little one was dead! Agathe ran and called me. I came in. What a spectacle!... Which of us should arouse the unhappy comtesse? or should we disturb her? Were it not better gently to withdraw the dead child ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... influence that no one can appreciate who has not observed their effects. Children who are slow, dull, and lethargic; who observe but little of what goes on around them; who react slowly to external stimuli; who are, in short, slow to see, to hear, to observe, to think, and to do, may be completely transformed in these ways by the playing of games. The sense perceptions ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... indifferent to her, and that she, to use my friend's expression, "went off," by which I suppose he meant that she faded. There happened in those days to live near Butts a small squire, married, but with no family. He was a lethargic creature, about five-and-thirty years old, farming eight hundred acres of his own land. He did not, however, belong to the farming class. He had been to Harrow, was on the magistrates' bench, and associated with the small aristocracy of the country round. He ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... beyond hope and beyond pity—overshadows, like a ghastly image of doom seated upon a remote throne in the chill twilight of some far Ultima Thule, all the events, so curious, so ironic, so devastating, which happen to his lethargic and phlegmatic son. It is this imaginative element in his work which, in the final issue, really and truly counts. For it is a matter of small significance whether the scene of a writer's choice be the uplands of Wessex ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... Pendulous, and foreboding in the view Of superstition, prophesying still, Though still deceived, some stranger's near approach. 'Tis thus the understanding takes repose In indolent vacuity of thought, And sleeps and is refreshed. Meanwhile the face Conceals the mood lethargic with a mask Of deep deliberation, as the man Were tasked to his full strength, absorbed and lost. Thus oft reclined at ease, I lose an hour At evening, till at length the freezing blast That sweeps the bolted shutter, summons home The recollected ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper |
