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More "Languid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for Mr. Atkins, after one languid glance in his direction, had sprung from the truck and was gazing at him as if he was some apparition, some figure in a nightmare, instead of his blase self. And he, as he looked at the lightkeeper's astounded countenance, ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... while at college in Paris, the evil spirit was permitted by God to insinuate into his mind the terrible idea that he was one of the number of the damned. This delusion took such possession of his soul that he lost his appetite, was unable to sleep, and day by day grew more and more wasted and languid. His tutor and director noticing how his health was affected and how pale, listless, and joyless he had become, often questioned him as to the cause of his dejection and evident suffering, but his tormentor ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... five days Isobel was in a high state of fever; it passed off as the Doctor had predicted it would do, but left her very weak and languid. Another week and she was ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... man in civilian's dress entered into conversation with me. He stood at my side as we faced the upper part of the suite of rooms, and taking it to be a casual talk merely to pass the time, I paid rather languid attention to it and to him as he began with some complimentary remarks about the army and its recent work. He spoke quite enthusiastically of McClellan, and my loyalty to my commander as well as my personal attachment to him made me assent ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... pursuits fill her mind; budding childhood has become blooming womanhood. Now, if ever, must be laid the foundation of physical vigor and of a healthy body. Girls should realize the significance of this fact. Do not get the idea that men admire a weakly, puny, delicate, small-waisted, languid, doll-like creature, a libel on true womanhood. Girls admire men with broad chests, square shoulders, erect form, keen bright eyes, hard muscles and undoubted vigor. Men also turn naturally to healthy, robust, well-developed girls, ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... was—as he began it. But under his deft hands it grew, and blossomed, and spread—oh, beyond imagination. At the end of half an hour he finished; finished with the remark, uttered in an adorably languid manner: ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... barbarous and borrowed art was organizing itself into strength and consistency. The reader must therefore consider the history of the work of the period as broadly divided into two great heads: the one embracing the elaborately languid succession of the Christian art of Rome; and the other, the imitations of it executed by nations in every conceivable phase of early organization, on the edges of the empire, or included in its now ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... determined, intriguing policy of worming Popery into the hearts of a Protestant nation, and then we realize that Drake's methods were the "invention" of an inevitable alternative either to fight this hideous despotism with more desperate weapons and greater vigour than the languid, luxury-loving Spaniards had taken the trouble to create or succumb to their tremendous power of wealth and wickedness. Drake was the chosen instrument of an inscrutable destiny, and we owe it to him that the divided England of that ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... sun was bright that day, unseen forces were gathering in the sky above town, mesa and mountains, not of weather but of fate, to loose their lightnings. Sunday peace seemed to reign, the languid summer Sunday peace of tranquil nature. Yet even through this there was a faint breath of impending events, a quiver or excitement in the air, an increasing expectation on the part of men, who sensed but did not realize ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... its origin from the body, which it also naturally resembles and participates in its passions, being placed in it and mixed up with it, as is proved by the impulses to bodily delights, which are always fierce or languid according to the changes of the body. And so it is that young men are keen and vehement in their desires, being red hot and raging from their fulness of blood and animal heat, whereas with old men the liver, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... because those members who owed subscriptions were unable or unwilling to pay them. Such had been the case before the accession of the new President. It hung its drooping head; had almost withered away. Mr. Freddy Parker tended the languid flower, and watered it—with whisky ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... her at once, and she declined just as the others did. With that I turned the tables on her, reproached her for her coldness, told her that I had given her the highest possible mark of my regard, and bade her adieu. We shook hands. Hers was very languid, and she looked at me quite indifferently. I told her that she'd feel differently to-morrow, and she said perhaps she might And so I ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... sitting-room opened upon a balcony. He lifted the sash, and stepped out into the chill night air. He saw the figure of a woman moving a way from the pavement before the hotel very slowly, with a languid, uncertain step. Presently he saw her totter and pause, as if scarcely able to proceed. Then she moved unsteadily onwards for a few paces, and at last sank down upon a door-step, with the helpless ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... a languid and tedious negotiation [79] between the Franks and Moslems was started, and continued, and broken, and again resumed, and again broken. Some acts of royal courtesy, the gift of snow and fruit, the exchange of Norway ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... His fame would fire you, but his manners freeze; Like or dislike, he does not care a jot; He wants your vote, but your affections not. Yet human hearts need sun as well as oats; So cold a climate plays the deuce with votes. But see our hero when the steam is on, And languid Johnny glows to Glorious John; When Hampden's thought, by Falkland's muses drest, Lights the pale cheek and swells the generous breast; When the pent heat expands the quickening soul, And foremost in the race the wheels of ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... paralysing. The days had passed, since the little Italian doctor had pronounced him out of danger, in one unending languid quietude. He expressed interest in no single thing. He was ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... passions, his reason alone has the power of keeping them within the bounds of moderation; if then we have less of the passions in old age, or rather, if they seem wholly extinguished in us, we ought to have a greater share of reason than before; whereas, on the contrary, reason itself becomes languid in the length of years, as well as the passions, it is supposed to have subdued: it is therefore meerly the imbecility of the organical faculties, and from no other cause, that we see the aged and infirm dead, in appearance, to those sensations, ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... of her, the languid slap of great wings opening and shutting. She had not gone to the lake. Instead, she had chosen for her resting-place one of the tiny pools which, like pendants of a necklace, partially encircled the main body. She was sitting on a ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... and sweets that had been consumed steadily since dejeuner. And at ten o'clock, dinner over and the theatre begun, Petersburg began to grow really wide awake and to enjoy itself. For of all nations in the world, the Russian is the latest. Your true Slav nobleman is always a night-owl. Languid at luncheon, he endures his drive, enjoys his dinner, enthuses at the opera, scintillates at supper, and is then roused to a full sense of the real business of life: dancing, gambling, or prolonged calls upon his friends; after which there is usually some sleighing-party to the ice-palace on ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... again thine eyes! Turn again thine eyes, love's true mercy learn. Breathe, O! breathe to me, as these love-languid skies To yon twilight star breathe, Return, return! Turn again thine eyes, maiden passing fair. O maiden passing fair, turn again ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... intelligent, vital, conscious recognition of it. Nor is this law confined to mind alone; all nature attests its presence. All effects are the result of properties or susceptibilities in one thing, solicited by external contact with those of others. The fire no doubt may smoulder in the dull and languid embers; it is when the external breeze sweeps over them, that they begin to sparkle and glow, and vindicate the vital element they contain. The diamond in the mine has the same internal properties in the darkness as in the light; it is not till the sun shines ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... as a matter of fact, all I say is, consider first and shoot after. In the first place, suppose you kill one or both and you are not yourself killed—for you know, dear boy, the deuce is that sometimes does happen. What then? Justice is so languid nowadays. Certainly you would have to inhabit for six, eight—perhaps ten months—a drafty, moist jail, without exercise, most indigestible food abominably cooked, limited society. You are brought to trial. A jury—an emotional ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... chair, a man of thirty sat reading or chatting in a subdued voice with the young woman. He was short, delicate, and in manner languid. With his fair hair devoid of lustre, his sparse beard, his face covered with red blotches, he resembled a sickly, spoilt ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... to flavor the walnut trees may be divided into three different groups. Those which bear nuts of sweet kernel are the best. Those nuts which have some bitter flavor are not bad, but those which are languid or tasteless are no ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... a carriage to secure my entrance into the town. We were cheered in the hurry of quitting our rural abode, by the arrival of some thousands of British troops; many of the poor fellows, heated and languid, entered asking for water to quench their thirst. From them I learnt that they had returned to England from America, and, without being permitted to land, were immediately ordered to Ostend. I felt what ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
... little Lizzie Twiggs, before January was quite past, was an event that shed light and joy in at least two dwellings. It seemed as if she belonged to all of us, and as she increased in size and beauty it was hard to say who, among us all, was most proud of her. If we had ever felt any languid hours before, we could have none now—she was the pet, the darling, the joint property ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... the window over the languid little patch of front lawn, more gray than green from the scourge of heat. Insect life hung midair like a curtain of buzzings. Directly opposite the dusty, unmade street, she could see her parents' home standing unprotected except for one sapling ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... pleasures are but few; For every want that stimulates the breast, Becomes a source of pleasure when redrest. Whence from such lands each pleasing science flies, That first excites desire, and then supplies; 216 Unknown to them, when sensual pleasures cloy, To fill the languid pause with finer joy; Unknown those powers that raise the soul to flame, Catch every nerve, and vibrate through the frame. Their level life is but a smould'ring fire, 221 Unquench'd by want, unfann'd by strong desire; Unfit for raptures, or, if raptures ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... out twenty years before for my vice-royalty in Yucatan. But the air of the hall was different to what it had been in those old days. Then it was pure and sweet. Now it was heavy with some scent, and I found it languid and oppressive. ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... glad it is no worse," said she with a languid smile, and without exhibiting the least indication ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... you do, Frances.— Very well, Gladys, but I don't want you to worry me. You must play in the other room." Mrs. Bowen spoke in a languid tone, and returned to her book, but she looked up again to say, "That is a pretty dress ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... of the ground The hot air trembles. In pale glittering haze Wavers the sky. Along the horizon's rim, Breaking its mist, are peaks of coppery clouds. Keen darts of light are shot from every leaf, And the whole landscape droops in sultriness. With languid tread, I drag myself along Across the wilting fields. Around my steps Spring myriad grasshoppers, their cheerful notes Loud in my ear. The ground bird whirs away, Then drops again, and groups of butterflies Spotting the path, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... in the Indian Ocean, and it is a bright day with a certain freshness in the air, instead of that horrible muggy heat that made us feel so languid when we were in the Red Sea. Look over the ship's side and watch the rainbow in the spray; that is one of the prettiest things to see on board. As the vessel cuts through the water she raises a frill of foam on either side—what the sailors call "a bone in her ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... "You are better than nothing," she said, speaking to it with a girl's fanciful tenderness. "I can sit and look at you sometimes, till I almost think I am looking at Frank. Oh, my darling! my darling!" Her voice faltered softly, and she put the lock of hair, with a languid gentleness, to her lips. It fell from her fingers into her bosom. A lovely tinge of color rose on her cheeks, and spread downward to her neck, as if it followed the falling hair. She closed her eyes, and let her ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... through the meadows of brit, the Pequod still held on her way north-eastward towards the island of Java; a gentle air impelling her keel, so that in the surrounding serenity her three tall tapering masts mildly waved to that languid breeze, as three mild palms on a plain. And still, at wide intervals in the silvery night, the lonely, alluring jet ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... him, no less than braid straw, embroider, draw, paint, and read innumerable books,—this race of women, pride of olden time, is daily lessening; and in their stead come the fragile, easily fatigued, languid girls of a modern age, drilled in book-learning, ignorant of common things. The great danger of all this, and of the evils that come from it, is that society by-and-by will turn as blindly against female ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... songs, To cheer each languid heart; For now some feeble spirit longs Thy blessings to impart. And thus thou keepest the Master's will, And showest all thy worth, Through loving kindness thou art still The ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... of the skin, when not symptomatic of any primary disease, generally arises from debility, or from the languid circulation of the blood at the surface of the body; often, also, from insufficient or improper food, want of outdoor exercise, and the like. The main treatment is evident. Warm baths, friction, and stimulating lotions and cosmetics ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... little shoals of fish spluttered, raising tiny tempests. Languid jelly-fish floated near, tremulously waving a thousand legs. A row of porpoises trundled along like a procession of cog-wheels. The sky became greyed save where over the land ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... hangs from the brow of the hill, Concealing the course of the dark winding rill; How languid the scenes, late so sprightly, appear! As Autumn to Winter resigns the pale year. The forests are leafless, the meadows are brown, And all the gay foppery of summer is flown: Apart let me wander, apart let me muse, How quick Time is flying, how keen ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... with a languid foreign accent, and with an emphatic and bountiful use of adjectives, that gave to our severer generation an impression of insincerity. Yet it was said with truth that Giulia Petrucci had never forgotten a friend nor ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... drifted, faintly swaying the great, unwhipped banana leaves, rustling the palms, and fluttering and setting up a whispering among the lace-leaved algaroba trees. Only intermittently did the atmosphere so breathe—for breathing it was, the suspiring of the languid, Hawaiian afternoon. In the intervals between the soft breathings, the air grew heavy and balmy with the perfume of flowers and the exhalations of fat, ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... the motions of the ship under him—motions which at length became erratic and even alarming. For the Good Intent was not only heaving up and down, but seemed to be tearing forward in a series of vehement rushes, with intervals of languid indecision. Tristram's stomach soon began to abhor these intervals, and in a little while he found himself wondering to what end he had set aside half a loaf from his breakfast. For, as it seemed to him, he was going to die, and the ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Marco couldn't help slapping on the climax while the thing was hot; so he said with what was meant for a languid composure but was a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hour's waiting one of the Roman candles went off with vast eclat, and after it two crackers simultaneously gave chase to the operator half-way round the lawn. One of the Catherine-wheels was also prevailed upon to give a few languid rotations on its axis, and some of the squibs, which had unfortunately got damp, condescended, after being inserted bodily into the lantern, to go off. Presently, however, the wind got into the lantern, and the matches being by this time ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... accusation with languid interest, dimpled into a smile which acknowledged its correctness. "Yes, you're right, Amy," she admitted. "And, if you want to know the reason, it's only that my thoughts were wandering. The fact is, girls, I'm ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... solid cash, it was believed, was far the greater portion of the consideration which the elder sister accepted for having successfully borne Nita away from the dangers and fascinations of the Point—having guarded her, drooping and languid, against the advances of good-looking soldier lads at headquarters, and finally having, by dint of hours of argument, persuasion and skill, delivered her into the arms of the elderly but well-preserved ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... few men were yawning and apparently meditating a retreat to the smoking-room. No one seemed particularly energetic, but the entrance of that tall soldierly figure struck a new note of interest in the languid assemblage. He seemed to bring—as it were—a breeze of vitality, a sense of freshness and energy along with him from the starlit air and the pine-scented woods. His head was erect, his eyes shone with the radiance of happiness, a certain sense of pride—of triumph—and ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... blossoms screen. Who loves it, now rejoices for its sake, And those are glad who sleep, and those who wake. When cool-breathed evening visiteth the world, In flower and leaf the beaded dew is pearled, Reviving all that droops at length, And to the languid giving strength. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... waiting-woman, Arabella, came in. She minced in the manner of her mistress, but, being a foot shorter, with different effect. She stood before Sir John, who had the largest chair, and stared at him, with languid insolence. "Ods my life, don't ogle me, woman," ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... the retreating figures until they disappeared into Miss Arabella's gateway. Instantly Tim's languid air changed ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... whom you have noticed nothing beyond an exchange of the childish pleasantries characteristic of their age, are on the point of setting up as man and wife." The Baroness spoke with a certain exaggerated volubility which was in contrast with the languid grace that had characterized her manner before Clifford made his appearance. It seemed to Acton that there was a spark of irritation in her eye—a note of irony (as when she spoke of Lizzie being never away from her mother) in her voice. If Madame ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... we won't. It gets the morning sun, and it'll be too hot today." Already she regretted clearing out the men. On such a morning she would have liked to drive, but her third animal had gone lame. She feared, too, that Miss Pembroke was going to bore her. However, they did go to the arbour. In languid tones she pointed out the ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... pursuit of Rich Hilary. Until Allys came on the scene it had seemed the pursuit must be successful. They had gone abroad on the same steamer the year before, dawdled through a London season, and come home simultaneously—he rather bored and languid, she of a demure and downcast, but withal possessive, air. She had said they were not engaged—"oh, dear no, only excellent friends," but looking all the while a contradiction of the words. Then unwisely she had taken Hilary to that tiresome tea for the little Rhett girl—and ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... the couch. For a moment they neither of them spoke. She, too, had been suffering, then, he thought, recognising the signs of ill-health in her colorless cheeks and languid pose. ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... They are evidently extremely languid and indolent, and wanting in strength and agility. Looking at them squatting down, standing or walking, with their long hair flowing down their backs, one would take them for the women of a harem rather than savages used to enduring the inclemency of the weather ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... culture than moral principle; but I acknowledge no aristocracy except one of service and self-sacrifice, in which he that is chief shall be servant, and he that is greatest of all, servant of all. And it is surely time to notice the threepenny braggadocio of caste which makes the languid Captain Vemon de Vere (or words to that effect) an overmatch for half-a-dozen hard-muscled white savages, any one of whom would take his lordship by the ankles, and wipe the battlefield with his patrician visage; which makes the pale, elegant aristocrat punch Beelzebub out of Big ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... around, as light and unreal as any one who ever walked the tight-rope in a dream. The blood leaped in torrents through his veins, and yet his movements, as he fumbled aimlessly with his knife, fork, and glass, were slow and languid. ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... bringing her mistress with her. Ts'ui, this time, was languid and flushed, yielding and wanton in her air, as though her strength could scarcely support her limbs. Her former ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... of many a waterfall, And the brook's chatter; 'mid whose islet-stones The dingy kidling with its tinkling bell Leaped frolicsome, or old romantic goat Sat, his white beard slow waving. I moved on 15 In low and languid mood:[315:3] for I had found That outward forms, the loftiest, still receive Their finer influence from the Life within;— Fair cyphers else: fair, but of import vague Or unconcerning, where the heart not finds 20 History or prophecy of friend, or child, Or gentle maid, our first and early ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... judgments were over, that those two comets passed directly over the city, and that so very near the houses that it was plain they imported something peculiar to the city alone. That the comet before the pestilence was of a faint, dull, languid color, and its motion very heavy, solemn, and slow; but that the comet before the fire was bright and sparkling, or as others said, flaming, and its motion swift and furious; and that accordingly one foretold a heavy judgment, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... it to last? He himself began to wonder, for he had long felt his life as if ebbing away. At length he became languid, weary, and unfit for work; even the writing of a letter cost him a painful effort, and he felt "as if to lie down and sleep were the only things worth doing." Yet shortly after, to help a Sunday school, he wrote his "Five Gateways of Knowledge," as a lecture, and afterward ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... fluctuations in the marriages of England are the results of peace after war, abundance after dearth, high wages after want of employment, speculation after languid enterprise, confidence after distrust, national triumphs after ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various
... Freudian has found characteristic of the English) in the movements of the English conductor, some psychic element holding the nervous play in check, and producing a stiff wooden embarrassed rigidity or an ostentatiously languid and careless indifference. At the extreme remove from this is Birnbaum, that gigantic and feverishly active spider, whose bent body seems to crouch over the whole orchestra, his magically elongated arms to stretch out so far that his wand touches ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... words of any kind between Violet and Mrs. Tempest at this time. The girl kept herself as much a possible apart from her mother. The widow lived her languid drawing-room life, dawdling away long slow days that left no more impression behind them than the drift of rose-leaves across the velvet lawn before her windows. A little point-lace, deftly worked by slim ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... buxom girl, while the fire roared a heartier welcome still. Then was there a dance indeed—no soft swish of lace and muslin, but the active swing of linsey and simple homespun; no French fiddler's bows and scrapings, no intricate lancers, no languid waltz; but neat shuffling forward and back, with every note of the music beat; floor-thumping "cuttings of the pigeon's wing," and jolly jigs, two by two, and a great "swinging of corners," and "caging the ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... political or other; the Ministers are all come, Spain and Portugal potter on with their civil contests and create uneasiness, though of a languid kind. I came to town for a meeting at the Council Office, the first under Brougham's new Bill, to make rules and regulations for the proceedings of the Court. All the lawyers attended, not much done, but there do not seem to be any great difficulties. ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... their vast grand-stand, were a number of pitiful vestiges of the Waterloo of women-kind. There was a shattered Elswick bicycle, about sixteen yards and a half of nun's veiling, and fifty-three tortoise-shell side-combs. I gazed on the debris with apathy mingled with contempt. My movements were languid, my plans of the vaguest. I knew that I wished to avoid my wife, but had no clear idea how the ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... is a languid satisfaction to compare St. Peter's with St. Paul's to the disadvantage of the former, and to think there is nothing in Switzerland to equal the Trossachs, Loch Maree and the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various
... was in his element, and he provided fun for the children and entertainment for the older guests, until even languid Gertrude was stirred ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... waiter and ordered fine champagne. Everything seemed languid this torrid afternoon, except the British or American tourists who passed by with Baedekers under their arms. The cab-horses in the file opposite us dropped their heads and the glazed-hatted cabmen regarded the baking ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... Surrey, More, Erasmus, Aretino, their historical character, and he gives to his fictitious ones caprices and qualities which make of them distinct and living beings like those of every-day life. He gives us no more languid shepherds, no more romantic disguises, no more pretended warriors whose helmets cover, as in Ariosto, a woman's fair locks. His style is flexible, animated, suited to the circumstances, free from ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... hid her face on the cushioned arm of the settee, and sobbed. A moment after she sat erect again, but languid and red eyed, saying, as if ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... contraction, and the sensorial power ceases to act, the last situation or configuration of it continues; unless it be disturbed by the action of some antagonist fibres, or other extraneous power. Thus in weak or languid people, wherever they throw their limbs on their bed or sofa, there they lie, till another exertion changes their attitude; hence one kind of ocular spectra seems to be produced after looking at bright objects; ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... languid eye, Flushed his pale cheek, with bright, tho' fleeting flame; Leap'd forth his voice with energetic cry, And thus, to me ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... stranger," said Ikey, offering a languid hand. Shock grasped it warmly. A slight tremour ran over Ike's lanky frame as Shock's hand ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... proportion which the night bears to the day, the winter to the summer, thought to experience. There will be so much the more air and sunshine in our thoughts. The callous palms of the laborer are conversant with finer tissues of self-respect and heroism, whose touch thrills the heart, than the languid fingers of idleness. That is mere sentimentality that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from the tan ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... pale primrose hair, with bluish tones in it, very soft and fine, so that it lay smooth however she dressed it, and pale-blue eyes, with blond eyebrows and long, dark lashes. She would have been a little too remote and languid even for the fastidious Percy had it not been for her hard, practical mouth, with lips that always kept their pink even when the rest of her face was pale. Her employers, who at first might be struck by her indifference, understood that anybody with that sort ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... fragrant heath. It was the Beach of Shadows, and the inhabitants of the island never ventured on it for fear of the serpents that lodged in the hollows of the rocks and lest they might encounter the souls of the dead who resembled livid flames. To the south, orchards and woods bounded the languid Bay of Divers. On this fortunate shore old Mael built a wooden church and a monastery. To the west, two streams, the Clange and the Surelle, watered the fertile valleys of Dalles ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... have a wish to leave it. The breaking up of this happy, innocent, and simple-minded little society, by some summary process, and consigning them to those sinks of infamy on New Holland or Van Diemen's Land, or to mix them up with the dram-drinkers, the psalmsingers, and the languid and lazy Otaheitans, would, in either case, be a subject of deep regret to all who take an interest in their welfare; and to themselves would be the inevitable loss of all those amiable qualities which have obtained for them the kind and generous sympathy ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... conflict between them, which seemed inevitable after this last episode; but she was minded to let her husband begin the attack. In her turn, she sought a chair, into which she sank gracefully, and rested in a pose of languid indifference that was fascinating in itself, but at this moment for some inexplicable reason peculiarly aggravating to the man. It may be that her apparent ease at a critical period in their fortunes appealed to him as hatefully incongruous; it may be that the gracious femininity of her, her desirability ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... of loathing expressed by Meeus in that sentence. He had spoken almost angrily at rubber and tusks, but his languid, complaining voice had ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... subject, they suggested it with a simplicity that presupposes a scientifically exact study of forms. It was by no means the splendid image which they sought to grasp but the soul itself; at one time the flower barely open in all its enchanting freshness, at another the softened petals drooping in languid fashion, revealing a splendor still present but soon to fade; at times the dew moistening the leaves, the snow shrouding them with its purity, or the slow monotonous rain beneath which they drip, motionless. These paintings are always instinct with ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... like those voyagers in the land of streams, Glide through its languid air, its languid wave, To learn that Here and There are but two dreams, That end ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... nights, she slept in the forest; and when at length she came out upon the plain beyond, she was pale and wan, her dark eyes drooped, her slender figure was bowed and languid, and only the mark upon her brow, where the coronet had fretted its whiteness, betrayed that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... court grouped about him, and Flora began to dance. It was such a dance as only a Spaniard trained in the gypsy school could dance—a dance whose traditions go back to days when the Roman Empire was old, to days when the Roman Empire was young. Now active, now languid, by turns passionate, daring, defiant, alluring, a wonderful medley of exquisite contradictions, the girl leaped hither and thither, clicking her castanets and sending her bright glances like arrows towards ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... driven back into my inner consciousness by the entrance of Zenobia. She came with the welcome intelligence that supper was on the table. Looking at herself in the glass, and perceiving that her one magnificent flower had grown rather languid (probably by being exposed to the fervency of the kitchen fire), she flung it on the floor, as unconcernedly as a village girl would throw away a faded violet. The action seemed proper to her character, although, ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Ursula de Vesc. Then he leaned against it like one interested but indifferent in his interest. The girl was pitifully pale. Double lines of care creased the smoothness of the forehead; the weariness she had plead had been no pretence, but was written plainly in the languid gait, the drooped lids, and the dark patches beneath the eyes. By her side walked Charlemagne, and half a yard behind the three puppies trotted sleepily, Charlot lagging last; even in his anxious preoccupation La Mothe noticed it was Charlot, the best beloved of ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... outside the church of S. Chiara, asked whether we should not like to view the body of the saint. This privilege could be purchased at the price of a small fee. It was only necessary to call the guardian of her shrine at the high altar. Indolent, and in compliant mood, with languid curiosity and half an hour to spare, we assented. A handsome young man appeared, who conducted us with decent gravity into a little darkened chamber behind the altar. There he lighted wax tapers, opened sliding doors in what ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... its languid air and the hard round of work, with often a call to watch when overcome with weariness, or to do some unaccustomed task that tried her undisciplined soul. But the papers were full of the coming Assembly, and at last ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... level with the ground. Some fling themselves prostrate beside the corpse and sob as if their very hearts would break. They take the dead man by the hand, they stroke him, they straighten out the poor feet which are already growing cold. They coo to him softly, they lift up the languid head, and then lay it gently down. Then in a frenzy of grief one of them will leap to his feet, shriek, bellow, stamp on the floor, grapple with the roof beams, shake the walls, as if he would pull the house down, and finally hurl himself on the ground and roll over and over howling as if ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... I had once hoped, that this time, the year's end might see my father and mother come again. That hope had faded and died a natural death a long while ago. Letters spoke my father's health not restored: he was languid and spiritless and lacked vigour; he would try the air of Switzerland; he would spend the winter in the Pyrenees! If that did not work well, my mother hinted, perhaps he would have to try the effect of a long sea voyage. Hope shrunk ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... apprehension that some new-distress or calamity had befallen the Cooleen Bawn, to whom they all felt almost as deeply attached as she did herself. After the first affectionate salutations were over, she said, with a languid smile: ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... life, and in the path along which he must hew his way lay many fresh worlds to conquer. To-night he told himself that he was equal to them all. There was something out here in the dim moonlight, something suggested by the shadows, the rose-perfumed air, the delicate and languid stillness, which crept into his veins and coursed ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... marshal whose feet refused their office, less in consequence of military fatigues and marches than from halts made with the ladies of the Opera, or of the Comedie Italienne. Sometimes it was a lady carried in by her servants with drooping head and languid eye, who, weakened by late hours and an irregular life, came to demand from Doctor Mesmer the health she had ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... less interested in these things than in the display of photographs, picture-cards, and figures of saints that adorned the walls, carefully arranged in patterns to show to the best advantage. Here were colored reproductions of actresses in languid attitudes, of peasants dancing, of babies smiling, of elaborate young people with carefully dressed hair making love with "Molti Saluti!" "Una stretta di Mano!" "Mando un bacio!" "Amicizia eterna!" and other expressions of friendship and affection, scribbled ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the evening, put on a languid air: gee, her mother would have shaken her for less in the old days! Lily put it on still more, to show them all that times were changed. But she did the troupe the honor of going to see their performance at the Castle. It was a great success ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... morning, with a languid breeze stirring the curtains in the open windows of the street, a hansom cab, drawn by a lean gray beast, appeared near the curate's door. What with his wild career, the nature of his errand, the extraordinary character of his fare, the driver was all elbows and eyes—a perspiring, ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... the wages of a criminal silence. Even the former soon repented their compliance. The people, who had been accustomed to hear them rail against their superiors, and preach to the times, as they termed it, deemed their sermons languid and spiritless when deprived of these ornaments. Their usual gifts, they thought, had left them, on account of their submission, which was stigmatized as Erastianism. They gave them the appellation, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... were gone on their errand of helpfulness Roy and Jimsy were seated on the porch of the hotel watching, with more or less languid interest, the inhabitants of the town passing back and forth. Many of them lingered in front of the hotel, for aviators were not common objects in that part of the country, and already the party ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... that now advances in his robe of gauze? He comes when the rosy morn first trembles in the east. Slow and languid is his step; he seeks the damp cavern and the impervious shade. It is the heat of noon, and the kine no longer low. Not a breeze stirs: the foliage of the groves, all—is still, except the insect world, who dimple the stream, or, buzzing round the head ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... stairs, where they found themselves among groups of students arriving from all parts of the place, and pausing for Synthesis gossip, which Cornelia could not have entered into yet if she had wished. She escaped, and walked home to her boarding-house with rather a languid pace, and climbed to her little room on the fifth story, and lay down on her bed. It was harder work than teaching, and her back ached, and her heart was heavy with the thought of five years in the Synthesis, when she barely had money enough for one winter. She was not afraid of the work; ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... two or three days passed without any incident of interest occurring to move the languid calm and excite the fleeting interest of the fashionable English and European visitors who were congregated at the Gezireh Palace Hotel. The anxious flirtations of Dolly and Muriel Chetwynd Lyle afforded subjects of mirth to the profane,—the wonderfully youthful ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... comprehension of what took place after Vanderbilt had begun buying the stock of the New York and Harlem Railroad. The stock was then selling at $9 a share. This railroad, as was the case with all other railroads, without exception, was run by the owners with only the most languid regard for the public interests and safety. Just as the corporation in the theory of the law was supposed to be a body to whom Government delegated powers to do certain things in the interests of the people, so was the railroad considered ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... what she said or whom she addressed, used to bring choice bits of this gossip to Mrs. Lee. She always affected a little stammer when she said anything uncommonly impudent, and put on a manner of languid simplicity. She felt keenly the satisfaction of seeing Madeleine charged with her own besetting sins. For years all Washington had agreed that Victoria was little better than one of the wicked; she had done nothing but violate ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... student De Maistre was indefatigable. He never belonged to that languid band who hoped to learn difficult things by easy methods. The only way, he warned his son, is to shut your door, to say that you are not within, and to work. 'Since they have set themselves to teach us how we ought to learn the dead languages, you can find nobody who knows them; and it is ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... can say how much he gained or lost by quitting so early this world of the living, which he knew how to set before us in the terms of his own artistic vision? Perhaps he did not lose a great deal. The recognition he was accorded was rather languid and given him grudgingly. The worthiest welcome he secured for his tales in this country was from Mr. W. Henley in the New Review and later, towards the end of his life, from the late Mr. William Blackwood in his magazine. For the rest I must say that during ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... you, old tunes familiar, I hold. I hold you as a dying darling child, Languid and glowing with the fever's heat, Holds on to his dear plaything, with white wings New-grown for his long journey, even I, The child unskilled, ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... aloud,— Augment your tide, O streams, with fruitless tears, For the beloved Bion is no more. Let every tender herb and plant and flower, From each dejected bud and drooping bloom, 5 Shed dews of liquid sorrow, and with breath Of melancholy sweetness on the wind Diffuse its languid love; let roses blush, Anemones grow paler for the loss Their dells have known; and thou, O hyacinth, 10 Utter thy legend now—yet more, dumb flower, Than 'Ah! alas!'—thine is no common grief— Bion the [sweetest ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... beast is the great god Pan,'" this tall, languid-looking man murmured to himself, as he was vacuously staring at those paints and brushes and cosmetics; and then he got up and began to walk indeterminately about the room, his hands behind ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... now from the gilt sea maid upon the prow, I laugh too. Sometimes a space was cleared for him, and he played to them as to the pit at Blackfriars. They laughed and wept and swore with delight,—all save the Spaniard, who was ever like a thundercloud, and Paradise, who only smiled like some languid, side-box lord. There was wine on board, and during the long, idle days, when the wind droned in the rigging like a bagpipe, and there was never a cloud in the sky, and the galleons were still far away, the pirates ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... without ejaculation as very dangerous, and compares its effects with the phenomena of fatigue. The nervous discharge occurring in the orgasm may certainly explain the depressed state of many masturbators, also their tired appearance, dilated pupils, and languid movements. We note also mental disturbances as well as physical, especially diminished powers of attention and memory, and somnolence up to the point of narcolepsy. According to Fere, the physical and the mental symptoms alike ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... delicious, stammering monosyllables, it was with great gravity that she realized that motherhood was approaching her again, that at Thanksgiving she would have a second child. She was wretchedly languid and ill during the entire spring, and found her mother-in-law's and Alice Valentine's calm acceptance of the situation ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... utterly refused to blow; on the contrary, it was growing more languid every minute, while our speed had dwindled down to a bare two knots; and the thunder-clouds were piling up overhead blacker and more menacing every minute. At length, when we were a bare three miles from the brig, the helmsman reported that we no longer had steerage-way, and ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... head and sighed. It was a soft, languid, fluttering sigh—and, upon my life, it quite upset me. For the moment I forgot business, and burned ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... newspapers when they arrived, and commented freely on their contents. "It is amusing," he would say, "to see the sage measures resorted to by the Allies to make people forget my tyranny!" On one occasion he felt more languid than ordinary, and lighting on the 'Andromache' of Racine; he took up the book, began to read, but soon let it drop from his hands. He had come to the famous passage where the mother describes her being allowed to see her son once ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... try the air of Derbyshire, but hope to see you before I go. Let me, however, mention to you what I have much at heart. If the Chancellor should continue his attention to Mr. Boswell's request, and confer with you on the means of relieving my languid state, I am very desirous to avoid the appearance of asking money upon false pretences. I desire you to represent to his Lordship, what, as soon as it is suggested, he will perceive to be reasonable,—That, if I grow much worse, I shall ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... which somewhat resembles that of Pamela, the French novelist produced a very refined study of emotion, which will probably be one day more largely read than it now is, and which should be looked through by every student of the English novel. This book is prolix and languid in form, and undoubtedly bears a curious resemblance to Richardson's novel. The English printer, however, could not read French,[29] and there is sufficient evidence to show that he was independent of any influences save those which he took from ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... were new, and the Persian pattern-birds flying among bluish reeds—produced the effect of a dream in summer, ethereal figures floating before one's languid eyes. The lowered blinds, the matting on the floor, the Virginia jasmine clinging to the trellis-work outside, produced a refreshing coolness which was enhanced by the splashing in the river near by, and the lapping of its wavelets ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... ecstasies. We each retained the dear object of our mutual caresses within our lips and our fingers remained within the delightful recesses that had so much contributed to the excessive raptures we had enjoyed. We lay for some time in this sweet languid enjoyment. Miss Frankland then rose from ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... two natives hit by a shrapnel at the railway station; a railway guard and a native died. Languid shelling during morning. ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... realism in pictorial art, which holds ugliness and beauty in equal esteem; or against aestheticism gone to seed in languid affectations; or against the enthusiasm of a social life which wreaks its religion on the color of a vestment, or sighs out its divine soul ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger
... be charming!" replied Molly, with a sweet though languid smile. "We'd live in a wooden hut, roofed with palm-leaves, and while you and Fred were away hunting for dinner, I would milk the buffaloes, and ...
— The Thorogood Family • R.M. Ballantyne
... sitting constantly still, impair their health. Not but that she was greatly pleased with their innocent and instructive manner of employing their leisure hours; but this wise woman knew that the faculties of the mind grow languid and useless, when the health of the ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... titter of talk, the tissue paper of unpacking outside my door, and the miawling of "Minnie" the cat, prevented me from resting upon my arrival in the morning, and when I went to the Senate after lunch I could hardly keep awake. The Four Power Treaty was being discussed, but the debate was languid, and more seats ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... over the birth of children conduct the queen to her couch, and the sorrowful resignation depicted on her face, together with the languid grace of her whole figure, display in this portrait of her a finished work of art. The child enters the world amid shouts of joy, and the propitious genii who nourish both her and her double constitute themselves her nurses. At the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... emitted by these centres subdue all minor and local circulations: the slow rhythm of fairs merges into the faster one of weekly markets, and in the chief centres of distribution, weekly markets merge into daily markets; while in place of the languid transfer from place to place, taking place at first weekly, then twice or thrice a week, we by-and-by get daily transfer, and finally transfer many times a day—the original sluggish, irregular rhythm, becomes ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... collected a large group of common scrub cut-worms, early Swedish cut-worms, dwarf Hubbard cut-worms, and short-horn cut-worms, all doing well, but still, I thought, a little hide-bound and bilious. They acted languid and listless. As my squash bugs, currant worms, potato bugs, etc., were all doing well without care, I devoted myself almost exclusively to my cut-worms. They were all strong and well, but they seemed melancholy with nothing to eat, day after day, ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... day of bitter anguish and wild, heart-broken farewell? This cruel anxiety, kept all to herself, was killing the girl. She grew restless and feverish; sometimes she sat up half the night at the window listening to the moaning of the dark sea outside; she became languid during the day, pale, and distraite. But it ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... d'Orleans; I was three-quarters of an hour with him in his cabinet, where I had found him alone. We walked to and fro there, talking of affairs of which he was going to give an account to the King that day. I found no difference in him, his state was, as usual, languid and heavy, as it had been for some time, but his judgment was clear as ever. I immediately returned to Meudon, and chatted there some time with Madame de Saint-Simon on arriving. On account of the season we had little company. I left Madame de Saint-Simon in her ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... unregarded, because of the ungraceful contrivances, and heavy movement of his narrative. The same may be said, in our own times, of some parts of Montgomery's writings. His bursts of sacred poetry, compared with his Greenland, remind us of a person singing enchantingly by ear, but becoming languid and powerless the moment he sits ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... notes rang higher and higher, filling the languid air, and drowning the trill of the mockingbirds. Patricia, filling her apron with midsummer flowers, sang with a careless passion, her mind far away in the midst of a Whitehall pageant, described to her the night before by that ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... be faithfully complied with, he seemed to care for nothing more. Even when they proposed, in the hope of rousing him to an exhibition of something like pleasure, that the girl should read to him for an hour every day out of one of his favorite books, he only showed a languid satisfaction. Weeks passed away, and still, do what they would, they could not make him so much ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... monthly; and so on. It is well that he should know the best time of the magazine's business year in which to seek to arrange with them. To a certain degree magazines actually "lay in stock" for a coming season and after that, for a time, are languid buyers. ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... find themselves not ill repaid for conquering any ill-habit of false delicacy and sloth, to which so many, otherwise fine young ladies, owe the disorders of their stomach, their pale sickly hue, and that languid state of health which must poison all their pleasures, and even endanger their lives. These are not ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... to interrupt the silence of that solemn moment,—at least none worthy of being mentioned. The slightest ripple of the water, stirred by a zephyr breeze, as it played against the bodies of the languid swimmers, might have been heard, but was not heeded. No more did the scream of the sea-mew arrest the attention of any of them, or if it did, it was only to add to the awe which reigned above and ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... stimulate than gratify the languid desires of her brother for fresh feminine novelty, the Duchess of Orleans, with finished finesse, appeared not to perceive the attention which the piquant charms and almost childish grace of her young maid-of-honour won from the captivated King. Nor did she, at her departure, ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... Strong-Heart and eat raw dog. (While sojourning for a day in a camp of Sioux Indians we were informed that the warriors of the tribe were accustomed to eat raw dog to give them courage previous to going to battle. Artemus was greatly amused with the information. When, in after years, he became weak and languid, and was called upon to go to lecture, it was a favorite joke with him to inquire, "Hingston, have you got any raw dog?") It don't agree with me. I prefer simple food. I prefer pork-pie—because then I know what I'm eating. But as raw dog was all they proposed to ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... 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 ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... have been classifying MSS.... The sun came in through the loft uncurtained windows; and, during my reading, often very interesting, I could hear the languid bumblebees bump heavily against the windows, and the flies intoxicated with light and heat, making their wings hum in circles around my head. So loud became their humming about three o'clock that I looked up from the document I was reading—a document containing very precious materials ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... He was all eyes in the dusk, standing in a languid pose just clear of the shaft of light that fell through the scuttle in ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... passes measure. Woman, being the less childish animal, is less relaxed by servile conditions. Even in the king's absence, even when they were alone, I have seen Apemama women work with constancy. But the outside to be hoped for in a man is that he may attack his task in little languid fits, and lounge between-whiles. So I have seen a painter, with his pipe going, and a friend by the studio fireside. You might suppose the race to lack civility, even vitality, until you saw them in the dance. Night after night, and sometimes day after day, they rolled out their ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I was feasting on these insubstantial glories, my meat was being cut down and my coat hung ever more loosely over my ribs. Pale and languid I longed for spring, for sunshine, with all the passion of a prisoner, and when at last the grass began to show green in the sheltered places on the Common and the sparrows began to utter their love notes, I went often of an afternoon to a bench in ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... but not too closely. He was at times a little too careless in this respect to be a safe guide to the bird-student. Even the saunterer to the Holy Land ought to know the indigo bunting from the black-throated blue warbler, with its languid, midsummery, "Zee, zee, zee-eu." ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... mouth drew down at the corners, adding a number of years to her face. She did not allow this condition of perplexity to appear in public, reserving her "heavy thinking," as Tom Cairy called these moments, for the early morning hours of privacy. This languid spring day while Conny turned over her mail that lay strewn in disorder on her bed, she apparently had one of her worst fits of dubitation. She poked about in the mass of letters, bills, and newspapers ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... and escape, alternate famine and feast, of the savage and the robber, after a time render all course of slow, steady, progressive, unvaried occupation and the prospect only of a limited mediocrity at the end of long labour, to the last degree tame, languid, and insipid. The interesting nature of their exploits may be conceived from ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... now grew with every stroke he plied. At sound of sea and men, Death's clammy sweat Was changed for drops that told of health again, While through his languid frame life's current swept, It only made him feel how nearly he ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... self-possessedly amiable, that any one would immediately have felt himself at home in her presence; moreover, from the whole of her enchanting person, from her smiling eyes, from her innocently-sloping shoulders and faintly-rosy hands, from her light and, at the same time, rather languid gait, from the very sound of her voice, which was low and sweet,—there breathed forth an insinuating charm, as intangible as a delicate perfume, a soft and as yet modest intoxication, something which it is difficult to express in words, but which touched and excited,—and, ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... His unassisted strength awhile withstood, With desperate energy, th' invading flood, As the pale victim of all-conquering death With one faint effort struggles yet for breath. His courage soon beneath th' encounter bent, Languid before, and now by efforts spent; He yielded—his brave chief to death betray'd, And Stenon's ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... lost her first position at the dressmaker's (for Mr. Mantalini had thrown away his wife's money on race-horses until the sheriff had seized the business), and she was acting now as companion to a Mrs. Wititterly, a pale, languid lady who considered herself a very fashionable person indeed, and was always suffering from imaginary ailments. Lord Frederick and Sir Mulberry Hawk came often to the house, pretending to flatter Mrs. Wititterly, but really to see Kate, who ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... self-consciousness with Griffiths' friends, some of whom were now friends of his, when he realised they knew of his quarrel with Griffiths and surmised they were aware of the reason. One of them, a very tall fellow, with a small head and a languid air, a youth called Ramsden, who was one of Griffiths' most faithful admirers, copied his ties, his boots, his manner of talking and his gestures, told Philip that Griffiths was very much hurt because Philip ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... had been content with the plain fare, and had never cried out for dainties. But, like all young folks, she liked a pleasant change, and her grandmother, who had thought her looking pale and somewhat languid with the summer heat in town, was glad that she should have the enjoyment. She knew she might ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... my young Muse! since we now can ne'er meet; If our songs have been languid, they surely are few: Let us hope that the present at least will be sweet; The present—which seals our ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... strange heraldic shields and curious visors, leaning from shell-shaped chariot over rearing steeds: the gods seated at the feast or working their miracles: the heroes in their victory or in their pain. Sometimes he would etch in thin vermilion lines upon a ground of white the languid bridegroom and his bride, with Eros hovering round them—an Eros like one of Donatello's angels, a little laughing thing with gilded or with azure wings. On the curved side he would write the name of his friend. ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... spring, the farmer repairs to their bordering of maples to make sugar; in July and August women and boys from all the country about penetrate the old Barkpeelings for raspberries and blackberries; and I know a youth who wonderingly follows their languid stream casting for trout. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... wait. Before the radiant sun, a glimmering lamp, Adulterate measures to the sterling stamp, Appear not meaner than mere human lines, Compared with those whose inspiration shines: These, nervous, bold; those, languid and remiss; There cold salutes; but here a lover's kiss. Thus have I seen a rapid headlong tide, With foaming waves the passive Saone divide; Whose lazy waters without motion lay, While he, with eager force, urged ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Regent Street, with a slight and rather more refined-looking companion, is the obscure Samuel Johnson, quite unknown to fame. He is walking with Richard Savage. As Signor Handel, 'the composer of Italian music,' passes by, Savage becomes excited, and nudges his friend, who takes only a languid interest in the foreigner. Johnson did not care for music; of many noises he ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... in a languid tone, and attracted his attention to a young man lying on a couch, drawn before the chimney-piece, with the back towards the door. A meagre scanty stove, pinched and hollowed like a sick man's cheeks, and ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... Vane," answered Clinton, with a languid shudder. "I never thought it was such a bore, crossing the ocean, don't you know. I've a great idea of offering the captain a handsome sum to land somewhere, I ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... alike by the defection of Osmyn, and by the zeal of Caled: thy life may yet be preserved; but it can be preserved only by a charm, which HAMET must apply.' ALMORAN, who had raised his eyes, and conceived some languid hope, when he heard that he might yet live; cast them again down in despair, when he heard that he could receive life only from HAMET. 'From HAMET,' said he, 'I have already taken the power to save me; I have, by thy counsel, given him the instrument of ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... and trained all her attention to the chatter among the girls around her. She admired Jane D'Arcy very much; she was so "elegant." Everything that Jane wore became her slim straight body, and her pale pointed face was always a little languid in expression, as though daily life were an exhausting affair and not intended for superior persons. She had been told, from a very early day, that her voice was "low and musical," so she always spoke in whispers which ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... even that she was afraid to put them to herself. Then, when was it that she felt herself unable to tie up her work in order to take it home, and that her mother, seeing the reacting effect of the prior sleepless nights in her languid frame, did this little duty for her, even as while she was doing it she looked through her tears at her changed daughter? But Mysie would do so much. While the mother should go to Miss Allardice, Mysie would proceed to Miss Anabella; and so it was arranged. They went forth together, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... o'clock, when she handed in her last paper, and was told by Miss Rowe that she might go and join the other girls in the grounds. Very much relieved that her ordeal was over at last, she put on her hat and strolled across the quadrangle under an archway into the garden beyond. She felt tired out and languid. It was a warm September day, and the unwonted exertion of answering so many questions had made her head ache. She wandered aimlessly along the paths, pausing for a few moments at the tennis courts, where a little crowd of spectators stood watching ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... surface, then vanishing again, once more to appear in a different direction as the light currents of air, precursors of the main body of the wind, touched the surface. The effect on our fainting party was magical; even the poor boys tried to lift up their languid eyes to look around. Another shout from Kelson a few minutes afterwards roused us all still more. "A sail! a sail! ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... in his most extravagant dreams. The gods had evidently not intended Amyntas for single blessedness.... The young persons appeared not to have noticed him. Two of them were seated on rugs playing a languid game of chess, the others were ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... have ventured to come before the public if he had not counted among his resources certain papers belonging to the records of the Pansophian Society, which he can make free use of, either for the illustration of the narrative, or for a diversion during those intervals in which the flow of events is languid, or even ceases for the time to manifest any progress. The reader can hardly have failed to notice that the old Anchor Tavern had become the focal point where a good deal of mental activity converged. ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... luscious and refreshing, and when heat alone prevails, the wonder is that the whole patch of luxuriant greenness does not collapse and wither. But the broad leaves woo the cool night airs, and while the thin, harsh, tough foliage of the wattles becomes languid and droops and falls, the banana grove retains its verdancy, each plant ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... began to stammer some excuses; But words are not enough in such a matter, Although you borrow'd all that e'er the muses Have sung, or even a Dandy's dandiest chatter, Or all the figures Castlereagh abuses; Just as a languid smile began to flatter His peace was making, but before he ventured Further, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... beneath the devastating influence of the slow fever so prevalent among dwellers by the ponds of Aiguemortes and the marshes of Camargue. She remained nearly always in her second-floor chamber, shivering in her chair, or stretched languid and feeble on her bed, while her husband kept his daily watch at the door—a duty he performed with so much the greater willingness, as it saved him the necessity of listening to the endless plaints ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... place enough and to spare, Signori," said the old man, pointing with a languid and wearylike gesture to the huge pile of half-dilapidated conventual buildings on the southern side of the church; "you can put horse and carriage as they stand into the old barn there, without undoing a buckle. I will open the door for ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... Buxton's dressing-room. The misfortune had made them friends. Mrs. Buxton lay on the sofa; so fair and white and colorless, in her muslin dressing-gown, that when Maggie first saw the lady lying with her eyes shut, her heart gave a start, for she thought she was dead. But she opened her large languid eyes, and called them to her, and listened to their story ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... sir, but just a bit piny and dwiny from the heat. Our place is like the Black Hole of Calcutta for stuffiness. She is that languid and fretty that we can't get her to eat, so my wife made me take ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... rather well believe that among the tearful eyes of the weeping women that followed the innocent Victim along the "Dolorous way," not the least anguished were the two Bethany mourners; and that as He hung upon the cross, and His languid eye saw here and there a faithful friend lingering around him while disciples had fled, Lazarus would be among the few who soothed and smoothed that awful death-pillow! Perhaps even when death ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... Victoria had arrived, Lady Benyon and Aunt Grace Mary called. Mrs. Caldwell had recovered her good-humour by that time, and was all smiles to everybody, including Beth, when she came sauntering in, languid and heavy-eyed, with half a sheet of notepaper ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... was consumed in securing his final loss of self-control. At last, however, this curious phenomenon was presented, and there before us stood the two swaying figures, the heads dropped back, the lifted hands, with thumb and finger-tips pressed lightly together, the eyelids languid and half closed, and the features, in appearance, ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... surroundings. But poverty brought worse stings than these. The small house in Kentish Town was hot and stifling in the months of July and August; the children grew pale and pined for the fresh country air which could not be given to them; Lottie herself grew weak and languid, and her husband's pale face seemed to grow more ethereal day by day. At all such times as these did Charlotte Home's mind and thoughts refer back to her mother's story, and again and again the idea returned that a great, ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... one hand he saw the man as he appeared to men: on the other he saw the woman as she appeared to men, beautiful to the last; fragile, with the low voice, so beautiful in any woman, so more especially beautiful in an Irish woman; with a languid face which insured compassion while never asking for it; with the appearance of a martyr, and the tone and the manner of a ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... . . . BUT after all, the great point is, that magazines are more read than any other kind of publications. They just adapt themselves to the leisure of the business man, and the taste of the idler; to the spare half hours of the notable housewife and the languid inertia of the fashionable lady. They can be dropped into a valise or a carpet-bag as a welcome provision for the wants of a journey by steam-boat or rail-road, when the country through which the traveller passes offers ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... music justly find fault with Socrates for forbidding the youth to be instructed in gentle harmony; as if, like wine, it would make them drunk, whereas the effect of that is to render men bacchanals, and not make them languid): these therefore are what should employ those who are grown old. Moreover, if there is any harmony which is proper for a child's age, as being at the same time elegant and instructive, as the Lydian of all others seems chiefly ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... century he rode as a northern barbarian of the first might have disported before the Roman populace, but harmlessly, of his own free will, and of some little profit to himself. He threw his lasso under the curious eyes of languid men and women of the world, eager for some new sensation, with admiring plaudits from them and a half contemptuous egotism of his own. But outside of the arena he was lonely, lost, and ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... pleasantly dejected air he ushered the ladies into the darkened sick-room. The Baron, striving to conceal his exultation under a rueful semblance, greeted them with a languid yet happy smile. ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... negro's cause much to my mind. Lord Auchinleck and dear Lord Hailes were on the side of liberty. Lord Hailes's name reproaches me; but if he saw my languid neglect of my own affairs, he would rather pity than resent my neglect of his. I hope to mend, ut ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... admitted to see her. One fine March morning, when the wind was blowing freshly and tossing the big, bare branches, I was taken to her room. I should not have known her; a pale, languid lady lay there in the place of my laughing, beautiful mother; two large blue eyes full of tears looked at me; two thin, white arms clasped me, and then I was lying on my mother's heart. Oh, my darling, if we could have ...
— My Mother's Rival - Everyday Life Library No. 4 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... to flourish in this in-between-seasons time. Wise Miss Meredith marshalled her forces and took counsel with the Heads of Houses; the gymnasium staff put on extra dancing classes, and indoor basket-ball matches, but in spite of all their efforts many of the girls seemed languid and uninterested. ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... mentioned a little saweiety sheet, published in New York, under the title of Town Topics, because it afforded me a kind of languid pleasure to kick the feculent sewer-rat back into the foul cloaca from which it had crawled to beslime the ICONOCLAST. I must beg the patient reader's pardon for again soiling my sandal-shoon with what should only ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... can: you feed him in his tender youth with ashes and dishonour; and then you come to him, obsequious, but too late, with your sharp laurel crown, the dew all dried from off its leaves; and you thrust it into his languid hand, and he looks at you wistfully. What shall he do with it? What can he do, but go and lay it on his ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... sat on the broad veranda of her cottage looking wistfully out to sea. She was pale and languid from the weight of many anxious days and sleepless nights. Before her lay the treacherous ocean, now calm and peaceful, rippling laughingly in the summer sunshine. The white sails of tiny pleasure craft skimmed lightly over its placid surface, and in striking contrast ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... of resorting to every proper and becoming expedient in order to place the Treasury on a footing of the highest respectability is entirely obvious. The credit of the Government may be regarded as the very soul of the Government itself—a principle of vitality without which all its movements are languid and all its operations embarrassed. In this spirit the Executive felt itself bound by the most imperative sense of duty to submit to Congress at its last session the propriety of making a specific pledge of the land fund as the basis for the negotiation of the loans authorized ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... difference between the men of this modern period and the Florentines or Venetians, that whereas the latter never exert themselves fully except on a sacred subject, the Flemish and Dutch masters are always languid unless they are profane. Leonardo is only to be seen in the 'Cena'; Titian only in the 'Assumption'; but Rubens only in the 'Battle of the Amazons'; and Vandyck only at court; and he adds, his indignation mounting as he proceeds, 'absolutely now at last we find ourselves without sight of God ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... word. Even Allen brightened to enjoy that lamb-like March day; and John, with his little sister on his knee, was most joyously felicitous. Indeed, the tall, athletic, handsome fellow looked as if it were indeed spring with him, all the more from the contrast with Allen's languid, sallow looks, savouring of the fumes in ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... waiting, the aged Laborde had been brought up on deck, and placed there on a seat. This was done from a hope which Mimi had that he would be benefited by the excitement of the change. The sight of the ship, however, produced but little effect of any kind upon the languid and worn-out old man. He gave an indifferent glance at the frigate and the surrounding scene, and then subsided into himself, while Mimi in vain strove to ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... half an hour afterward that Amory's languid voice from somewhere in the sky broke in upon their talk. As he came toward them across the terrace St. George saw that he was ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... they are—at a club, in a ball-room, at a dinner-table, at the top of Chimborazo. Some of the young barristers appear as bucks with uncommon splendor, and dance and hang about the ladies. But they have not the easy languid deuce-may-care air of the young bucks of the Hicks and Kicklebury school—they can't put on their clothes with that happy negligence; their neck-cloths sit quite differently on them, somehow: they become very hot ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... morning as he left his own house to proceed to the office in which he pursued his studies, he saw before him at some distance, yet without any intervening object to interrupt his view of her, a form and face resembling hers, though thinner and paler. The lady was approaching him, with slow and languid steps; but as her eyes were fixed upon the ground she did not perceive him, and just as his throbbing heart exclaimed, "It is Lucy," and he sprang forward to greet her, she entered a house and the door ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... in Hooker's motorcycle—more interest than the languid, indifferent fellow had seemed to show over anything else except his cigarettes. Even one rather severe fall from the machine, which sadly soiled his elegant and immaculate clothes, did not deter him from continuing to practice upon it whenever ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... time the boat had run her bows up on to the white, sandy beach, and the straw-hatted, tweed-suited gentleman jumped lightly out Taking off his hat with a graceful, circular sweep, which included every one on the beach, white and native, he said with languid politeness— ...
— The Tapu Of Banderah - 1901 • Louis Becke
... down the winding road to the valley at old Dan's languid pace. Charity felt herself sinking into deeper depths of weariness, and as they descended through the bare woods there were moments when she lost the exact sense of things, and seemed to be sitting beside her lover with the ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... the dusty lane, lifted the Pepper gate and swung it back on its one hinge, shooed away the three or four languid and discouraged-looking fowls that were taking a sun bath on the clam-shell walk, and knocked at the front door. No one coming in answer to the knock, he tried again. Then he discovered a rusty bell pull and gave it a sharp tug. The knob came off in his hand and ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... meditations sweet, and schools the heart For prophecy. In the o'erpeopled world We seem like babes that cannot walk alone, But fasten on the skirts of other men, Their creeds, conclusions, and vain phantasies, Too languid, or too weak to poize ourselves; But here the crutch is shattered at a blow, Dependence made a thing for winds to blast, ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... after long illness is languid, passive, receptive of sweetness, but too weak to contain it. The tears well and fall as the dog barks in the hollow, the children skim after hoops, the country darkens and brightens. Beyond a veil it seems. Ah, but draw ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... Tom, trying hard to restrain his eagerness. "Might I have a run to-morrow? I have felt very languid to-day." ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... the cruel sky, Can only utter fond complaints and vain. "Why sank I not in ocean," (was her cry), "When first I reared my sail upon the main?" Zerbino, who on her his languid eye Had fixt, as she bemoaned her, felt more pain Than that enduring and strong anguish bred, Through which the suffering youth was ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... each other. The profile in the picture which is best known is pretty, innocent, and piquant, though rather insignificant: there are other pictures, however, in which we see a face more powerful, though less prepossessing. In these the features are full and languid. The eyes are large; but the expression, though remarkable, is not pleasing, and indicates cunning more than thought, passion more than feeling; while the heavy lips and massive chin wear a look of sensuality ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... said her daughter, with a languid air, "that I am full up. I could break one engagement, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... attack of gout in the night and the nervous exhaustion left by it, Kistunov went in the morning to his office and began punctually seeing the clients of the bank and persons who had come with petitions. He looked languid and exhausted, and spoke in a faint voice hardly above a whisper, as though ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... in a gallery all aflare, Approached by some dark palace stair, He lay in languid mood, And naked women, mad with wine, Did cruelty and lust combine ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... under a blazing mid-day sun, of "fatigues" of all sorts, when we harnessed ourselves in teams to things, or made and un-made mountains of ammunition boxes—a constant round of sultry work, tempered by cool bathes on white sand, grapes from peripatetic baskets, and brief intervals of languid leisure, with al fresco meals of bully-beef and dry ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... vault of heaven was filled with a dim lustre, which quietly penetrated everything in this serene night. Slowly they walked along on the borders of the Chevrotte, which crossed the park; but it was no longer the rapid rivulet rushing over a pebbly descent—it was a quiet, languid brook, gliding along through clumps of trees. Under this mass of luminous vapour, between the bushes which seemed to bathe and float therein, it was like an Elysian stream which unfolded itself ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... in the parlor or—No, the gentleman would have it right in his bedroom; but first, where were his cigarettes? He hoped above all things that the waiter had not forgotten his cigarettes. Some people began their days with cold showers—nothing less than a cruel shock to a languid nervous system. An atrocious practice, the speaker called it—a relic of barbarism—a fetish of ignorance. Much preferable was a hygienic, stimulating cigarette which served the same purpose and left ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... of female slaves, scarcely less voluptuous, attend to sing to them, to fan them, and to rub their bodies; an exercise which the Easterns enjoy, with a sort of placid ecstasy, as it promotes the circulation of their languid blood. ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... presence of water at all at a distance of more than a few yards from the ship. The Aurora was still rolling sluggishly on the sleepy swell; her dazzling white canvas flapping and the slings and trusses of the yards creaking with the roll; the men, rendered languid by the heat, were making such show as they were able of being busy on various odd jobs about the decks or aloft; and the man at the wheel had lashed it and was leaning upon it more than half-asleep. Ritson, apparently for want of something better to do, was seated on the main-topmast cross-trees, ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... bright as the rays of the sun, decked with gold, diamonds, and other precious gems, capable of piercing the body of his assailant, and irresistible as the stroke of Indra's thunder. His body pierced therewith, Vrikodara fell, with languid limbs and like one deprived of life and with outstretched arms, upon his own excellent car. Recovering his senses, however, he began to ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... while, spoke hopefully of a change of air, and the sea-side; but he could not long so cheat himself with false hopes. The restlessness and irritability, which they had said to one another were hopeful signs, passed away. His smiles were more languid and constrained, and he soon failed to recognise the anxious, loving friends who ministered ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... found them pretty, very pretty, but nothing more,—a sort of Ashby Sterry done into very neat prose. He is vulgar, as Henry James is refined; he is more domestic; girls with white dresses and virginal looks, languid mammas, mild witticisms, here, there, and everywhere; a couple of young men, one a little cynical, the other a little over-shadowed by his love, a strong, bearded man of fifty in the background; in a word, a Tom Robertson comedy faintly ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... eyes languid with the fever sought out Margery, who would not come anigh whilst I was ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... to his appointment, and found his host and Miss Maitland, whom he knew; and he was in languid conversation with them, when a side-door opened, and in walked Fanny Dover, fair and bright, in Cambridge blue, her hair well dressed by Zoe's maid in the style of the day. Lord Uxmoor rose, and received his fair country-woman with respectful zeal; he had met her once before. She, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... horrid indulgences was exactly what we might suppose, that even such scenes ceased to irritate the languid appetite, and yet that without them life was not endurable. Jaded and exhausted as the sense of pleasure had become in Caligula, still it could be roused into any activity by nothing short of these murderous luxuries. ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... time passed, however, these painful seizures grew gradually less frequent, and his friends strove to divert his mind into fresh channels. But his interest in other matters did not seem to revive, and he grew apparently languid and depressed. ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... and their books, but all day the flowers in the vase on the table prattled of days gone by; of purple sunsets streaming through golden starred acacia boughs; of long, languid, luxurious Southern afternoons dying slowly on beds of heliotrope and jasmine, spicy geraniums and gorgeous pelargoniums; of dewy, delicious summer mornings, for ever and ever past, when standing beside a quivering snowbank of Lamarque roses, she had watched ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... especial to the Black Prince, who there laid the foundation of the disorder which destroyed his health. Week after week passed on, each adding heat to the summer, and increasing the long roll of sick and dying in the camp, while Gaston still lay, languid and feeble by day, and fevered by night; there were other patients among the men-at-arms, requiring scarcely less care; and the young Knight himself, though, owing to his temperate habits, he had escaped the prevailing sickness, was looking ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hail a convalescent. Lydia looked across the estrangement of the past days with a sort of inquiry, and Hicks chose to come forward and accept a cold touch of the hand from him. Staniford saw, with languid observance, that Lydia was very fresh and bright; she was already equipped for the expedition, and could never have had any doubt in her mind as to going. She had on a pretty walking dress which he had not seen before, and a hat with the rim struck sharply upward behind, and ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... youth. I had never seen a man of genius look so passive, a man of experience so off his guard. At the period I made his acquaintance this freshness was all un-brushed. His foot had begun to stumble, but he was full of big intentions and of sweet Maud Stannace. Black-haired and pale, deceptively languid, he had the eyes of a clever child and the voice of a bronze bell. He saw more even than I had done in the girl he was engaged to; as time went on I became conscious that we had both, properly enough, seen rather more than there was. Our odd situation, that of the three of us, became ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... His subject is set off by a dazzling veil of poetic diction, like a wreath of flowers gemmed with innumerous dewdrops, that weep, tremble, and glitter in liquid softness and pearly light, while the song of birds ravishes the ear, and languid odours breathe around, and Aurora opens Heaven's smiling portals, Peris and nymphs peep through the golden glades, and an Angel's wing glances over ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... elsxipigxi. Land (soil) tero. Landgrave landgrafo. Landing (place) platajxo. Landlord bienulo, landsinjoro. Landmark terlimsxtono. Landscape pejzagxo. Landslip terdisfalo. Lane strateto. Language lingvo. Language (speech) lingvajxo. Languid malfortika. Languish malfortigxi. Lank maldika. Lantern lanterno. Lap leki, lekumi. Lapis lazuli lapis lazuro. Lapse (of time) manko, dauxro. Larceny sxtelo. Larch lariko. Lard porkograso. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... everybody; and everybody was very nice to her. The professional elocutionist, Mrs. Evans, came and chatted with her, telling her that she had a charming voice and "interpreted" her selections beautifully. Even the white-lace girl paid her a languid little compliment. They had supper in the big, beautifully decorated dining room; Diana and Jane were invited to partake of this, also, since they had come with Anne, but Billy was nowhere to be found, having decamped ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... rewards or sums of money are paid for the taking or destroying them, no advantages are gained, except where there are sufficiently ample and proper regulations entered into and enforced, the whole district, parish, or township, becomes partakers in the business. No languid or half measures will do any thing useful, or to the purpose, in this sort of undertaking. It is not improbable, but that these destructive birds might be greatly extirpated and thinned down in their numbers, by the use of some tasteless ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... at him, in awed stupefaction. His rather languid indecision as to whether half a million was going to be enough, impressed her more powerfully than had any detail of ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... become mere matters of indifference during the worst part of her illness. But as yet her bodily strength was not sufficient to be an agent to her energetic mind, and the difficulty of driving the ill-matched pair of body and will—one weak and languid, the other strong and stern,—made her ladyship often very irritable. Mrs. Gibson herself was not quite strong enough for a 'souffre- douleur; and the visit to the Towers was not, on the whole, quite so happy a one as she had anticipated. Lady Cuxhaven and Lady Harriet, each ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... but she is weak and languid, so I told her she must stop in bed for to-day. Do not look anxious. I have no doubt that she will be well enough to be up to-morrow. She has been sleeping ever since she went to bed yesterday, and when she woke she had a basin of broth. I think by to-morrow she will be ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... excitement, like some frantic soul wandering unsuspected in the vast stillness of the coast, had seized upon the body of the lascar at the lead. The languid monotony of his sing-song changed to a swift, sharp clamor. The weight flew after a single whir, the line whistled, splash followed splash in haste. The water had shoaled, and the man, instead of the drowsy tale of fathoms, was calling ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... something of the same cool friendliness of deportment, and, being used to the unexpected advent of guests at all hours, was quite ready to welcome him. He had the same faculty for making noticeable speeches, too, and was amiable, though languid and debonnaire, and by no means prone to ceremony. In ten minutes after he had entered the room Ralph Gowan understood, as by magic, that, little as the world was to these people, they had, in their Bohemian fashion, ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... probably held that his postulate was a close approximation to the facts. Looking at the actual state of things at the worst time of the poor-law, and seeing how small were the prospects of stirring the languid mind of the pauper to greater forethought, he thought that he might assume the constancy of an element which varied so slowly. The indifference of the Ricardo school generally to historical inquiry had led them no doubt to assume such constancy too easily. Malthus, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... can art be found guilty when it is judge in its own cause? So it is but a device for exempting ignorance from ignominy. Now for those things which are delivered and received, this is their condition: barren of works, full of questions; in point of enlargement slow and languid; carrying a show of perfection in the whole, but in the parts ill filled up; in selection popular, and unsatisfactory even to those who propound them; and therefore fenced round and set forth with ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... his room behind me. Once alone in the passage, the sense of high elation and contentment that had just possessed me began gradually to decrease. I had not become actually dispirited, but a languid feeling of weariness oppressed me, and my limbs ached as though I had walked incessantly for many miles. I went straight to my own room. I consulted my watch; it was half-past one, the hour at which the hotel luncheon was usually ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... opposite her, and I was surprised by the strange startled look in her face as she repeated the name of Egerton. That look passed away in the next moment, and left her with her usual air of languid indifference; a placid kind of listlessness which harmonised very well with her pale complexion and delicate features. She was not a woman from whom one expected ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... fit, and shut up her senses that she might live in the anticipation of meeting Miss Dale; and, long before the approach of the hour, her hope of encountering any other than another dull adherent of Sir Willoughby had fled. So she was languid for two of the three minutes when she sat alone with Laetitia in the drawing-room before the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was declined with thanks: and perhaps he was not sorry; being weak and languid and in no danger of suffering from ennui with horses to ride and ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... mention it," sighed Elnora. "I wonder how it would seem to be a pale, languid lady and ride ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... in the garden of the Caynsard farm. The excitement of the last twenty-four hours had left her languid. For once she lay and watched with idle, almost with indifferent eyes, the great stretch of marshes riven with the incoming sea. She saw the fishing boats that a few hours ago were dead inert things upon a bed ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... third sitting-room which confers such an immense superiority over houses of but two sitting-rooms—"Such a convenience in so many ways" as those newly promoted from two to three nowadays remark with languid triumph to visitors still immured in two. Houses—new, two sitting-roomed houses—extended beyond it and around it, and now stretch miles beyond and about, but Mrs. Sturgiss told Rosalie that when they first ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... resentment vanished and she felt a languid sense of well-being in this enveloping atmosphere of the tactless imperious male, so foreign to her experience; of freedom from the necessity for independent action; and the prospect was certainly enchanting. Moreover, she would be able to avoid seeing Hohenhauer ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... she's all right!" said Kane Salisbury, his kind, concerned face just above her own. Mrs. Salisbury shifted heavy, languid ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... looking over the blue waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence in clear weather, you might think that you saw a lonely sea gull, snow-white, perching motionless on a cobble of gray rock. Then, as your boat drifted in, following the languid tide and the soft southern breeze, you would perceive that the cobble of rock was a rugged hill with a few bushes and stunted trees growing in the crevices, and that the gleaming speck near the summit must be some kind of a building,—if you were on the coast of Italy or Spain you ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... him that the handkerchief was soaking, nay dripping, and when he issued at length into the free air of the church, the face was deadly white. No one was near, and Leonard laid him on a bench. He was still conscious, and looked up with languid eyes. 'Mayn't I go home?' he ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... they have been always employed, more or less openly, upon schemes of dominion, though with frequent interruptions from domestick troubles, and with those intermissions which human counsels must always suffer, as men intrusted with great affairs are dissipated in youth, and languid in age; are embarrassed by competitors, or, without any external ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... an awakening thrill seemed to run through the group of officers and shook them from their lethargy; the languid poses straightened up, faces became animated and ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... went to dinner at his Second Avenue boarding-house, Mrs. Scott introduced him to a new boarder, a young lady, Miss Conway. Miss Conway was small and unobtrusive. She wore a plain, snuffy-brown dress, and bestowed her interest, which seemed languid, upon her plate. She lifted her diffident eyelids and shot one perspicuous, judicial glance at Mr. Donovan, politely murmured his name, and returned to her mutton. Mr. Donovan bowed with the grace and beaming smile that were rapidly ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... almost a year since I saw them, the Over Lords of the World, and I had forgotten their appearance. Sprawled on the glowing silks of their cushioned couches, eyes closed in languid boredom, they were like huge white slugs. Swollen to tremendous size by the indolent luxuriousness of their lives, the flesh that was not concealed by the bright hued web of their robes was pasty white, and bagged and folded where ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... buildings which the hands of man have constructed, become impatient of temples which are hardly older than the Christian era. Ruins which would be gazed upon with wonder and veneration in any other country are hardly noticed in Egypt. The tourists viewed with languid interest the half-Greek art of the Nubian bas-reliefs; they climbed the hill of Korosko to see the sun rise over the savage Eastern desert; they were moved to wonder by the great shrine of Abou-Simbel, where some old race ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cotton-mills in Massachusetts—a gentleman who had accumulated a considerable fortune in the exercise of this industry. Caspar at present managed the works, and with a judgement and a temper which, in spite of keen competition and languid years, had kept their prosperity from dwindling. He had received the better part of his education at Harvard College, where, however, he had gained renown rather as a gymnast and an oarsman than as a gleaner of more dispersed ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... breviary. At other times we talked on subjects that interested us both, especially about the work of the Church Army, and sometimes I sang hymns to him—among others, "Brief life is here our portion," "Art thou weary, art thou languid?" and "Safe home in port." At such times the expression of his face was particularly sweet and tender. One day I asked him if he would like to send a message to Cardinal Manning. He said that it was not for such as he to send a message to so great a dignitary, but after a moment's hesitation ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... the houses are brick—which was unoccupied until two days ago, when it was rented furnished. I live just across the street and hence I notice these things—casually of course, as one does. I watched the cab with languid interest; saw the driver descend from the box, which seemed a bit peculiar; but when, instead of going to the door of the cab, he went up the front steps and into the house—the door of which he opened with a key that he took from his pocket—my curiosity was aroused. A moment ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... step-mother's house!—how it stops when he reaches the door of that back drawing-room, where, knowing the ways of the establishment, he hopes to find his treasure alone! The colour returns to his face. There she is in her usual place, her usual attitude, languid, graceful, indolent, yet glad to see ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... and clearness of conception; and these, as a natural consequence, are comparatively free from those tawdry spangles which deface the greater part of the poem. And, moreover, in the episode of "The Indian and the Lady," there is throughout a "keeping in the tone," as painters say, sultry and languid, yet rich and full of life, like a gorgeous Venetian picture, which augurs even better for Mr. Smith's future success than the two scenes just mentioned; for consistency of thought may come with time and training; but clearness ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... and Pope must come, if he has not come already, to a peculiarly defined and strictly apportioned place on the shelf. He was unquestionably the poet of his age. But his age was far from being one of a lofty order: it was a low, languid, artificial, and lazily sceptical age. It loved to be tickled; and Pope tickled it with the finger of a master. It liked to be lulled, at other times, into half-slumber; and the soft and even monotonies ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... another, and taking her to be a fairy (as indeed she was), he conceived at once a great affection for her. The next morning, before the Sun, like a chief physician, went out to visit the flowers that are sick and languid, the unknown fair one rose and disappeared, leaving the Prince filled with ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... time, Pao-yue felt tired and languid and inclined for his midday siesta. "Take good care," dowager lady Chia enjoined some of them, "and stay with him, while he rests for a while, when he can come back;" whereupon Chia Jung's wife, Mrs. Ch'in, smiled and said with eagerness: "We got ready in here a room ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... that temporary derangement of the thinking powers which arises from too great a degree of excitement: but let us see what happens the next day; the animal spirits are exhausted, and the person thus situated, finds himself languid and enervated to a great degree; for it seems a law of the human body, that the spirits are never artificially raised, without being afterwards proportionably depressed; and to shew clearly that in this ...
— A Lecture on the Preservation of Health • Thomas Garnett, M.D.
... it," Coleyard drawled out, with languid reluctance, "I'll play, of course. I won't spoil your evening. But remember, I'm a poet; I ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... never been struck. Some day another light should shine in those wonderful eyes. I saw her before me transformed, saw color in her still, marble cheeks, saw her lips drift into a softer curve, heard the tremor of passion in her quiet, languid tone. ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... cross fretted her—the loss of her ring. This indeed cried desertion upon her. Prosper had never seemed so far, nor his love so faint and ill- assured. It would seem that kindness really killed her by drugging her spirit as with anodyne. As she had fallen at Gracedieu, so she fell now into a languid habit where tears swam in flood about the lids of her eyes, where the eyes were too heavy for clear sight and the very blood sluggish with sorrow. She grew pale again, hollow-eyed, diaphanous—a prism for an unearthly ray. Her beauty took on its elfin guise; she walked a ghost. ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... sometimes read with him. He eagerly turned over the newspapers when they arrived, and commented freely on their contents. "It is amusing," he would say, "to see the sage measures resorted to by the Allies to make people forget my tyranny!" On one occasion he felt more languid than ordinary, and lighting on the 'Andromache' of Racine; he took up the book, began to read, but soon let it drop from his hands. He had come to the famous passage where the mother describes her being allowed to see ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... reaching the low valley of the Shire from the higher grounds, the change of climate was very marked. The heat was oppressive below, the thermometer standing at from 84 degrees to 103 degrees in the shade; and our spirits were as dull and languid as they had been exhilarated on the heights in a temperature cooler by some 20 degrees. The water of the river was sometimes 84 degrees or higher, whilst that we had been drinking in the hill streams was only ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... wrote two or three art essays that happened to find much more favor than his abstruse philosophies. After all, he was young, and the whole world lay before him. Surely he could carve out some kind of fortune. The light of earnest endeavor shone in his eyes, the languid step quickened into one of courageous elasticity. He had dawdled away years enough: he would put a purpose into his manhood, that some distant eyes, seeing, might not relegate him entirely to the regions ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... corruption. Candidates have not, therefore, the notice that may be necessary for their claims; and as the possession of the office to which the survivors are to succeed seems remote, all inquiry into the qualifications and character of those who are to fill it will naturally be dull and languid. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... although cut off from their auxiliaries, the Amazons had both shelter and food. At first they appeared to pay some little attention to the young; this soon ceased, and they neither traced out a dwelling nor took any food; in two days one-half died of hunger, and the other remained weak and languid. Commiserating their condition, he gave them one of their black companions. This little creature, unassisted, formed a chamber in the earth, gathered together the larvae, put everything into complete order, and preserved the lives of those ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... to conceal the dark rings underneath, which only increased their luminosity. A magnificent string of turquoises hung from her bare neck, a curious star shone in her hair. Her dress was of the newest mode. Her voice, languid but elegant, had in it that hidden quality which makes it one of a woman's most attractive gifts. By her side was a great black-moustached giant, a pale-faced man, with little puffs of flesh underneath his eyes, whose dress was a little too perfect and his ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... administered with such success. As she approached this deplorable object of pity, her ears were surprised with an ejaculation in the English tongue, which he fervently pronounced, though with a weak and languid voice, recommending his soul to God, and his family to the protection of Heaven. Our Amazon's purpose was staggered by this providential incident; the sound of her native language, so unexpectedly heard, and so pathetically ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... into his chosen paths. The people listened to the fathers, and obeyed trembling. Miranda, who had struggled against and overcome the material power of his enemies, was impotent when confronted by spiritual terrors; and after a few languid combats, his troops deserted, leaving Monteverde to triumph once more in the assertion of Spanish authority over every province of Venezuela. His headquarters were established at Caracas, and there, as well as elsewhere, his troops revelled ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... long, loose jointed, languid actin' gents, Marmaduke is; the kind that can drape themselves careless and comf'table over almost any kind of furniture. He's a little pop eyed, his hair is sort of a faded tan color, and he's whopper jawed on the left side; but beyond that he didn't have any striking points of facial beauty. ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... on the ship; but the faint zephyrs, which had coquetted with our languid sails for an hour or two, at length took their leave, first of the courses, then of the topsails, and lastly of the royals and the smaller flying kites aloft. In vain we looked round and round the horizon for ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... really believe in existence after death—in a meeting again, in some dim other scene, if they were violently parted now? He had been confirmed while at school. His parents were Church people of a rather languid type, and it seemed the natural thing to do. Since then he had occasionally taken the Communion, largely to please an elder school-friend, who was ardently devout, and was now a Chaplain on the Western front. But what did it really mean to him?—what would it mean to her—if she were left alone? ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... him as he pillowed his charming head on his mother's breast, dropping his little crimson silk legs from her lap, I somehow didn't think security was. He made no attempt to walk about; he was content to swing his legs softly and strike one as languid and angelic. ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... effusion, which may be detected from the dullness of the sounds, on applying the ear to the lower part of the lungs. The febrile symptoms disappear; the animal for a few days appears to improve, but soon becomes weak, languid, and often ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... sultriness, its sudden evening storms shot through with flaming lightning and reverberant with the drums of thunder, brought to Annie a cessation of her purpose. She was languid, subject to whimsical desires and appetites, at times a prey to sudden nervous tears. The household work slipped back into Aunt Dolcey's faithful hands, save now and then when Annie felt more buoyant and instinct with life and energy ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... aware of it during that languid autumn at Cassicium—that autumn heavy with all the rotting of summer, but which already promised the great winter peace. The yellow leaves of the chestnuts were heaped by the roadside. They fell in the brook which flowed near the baths, and the slowed water ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... first sound of the other voice, I sank down sick with fear lest the man should, in some way, find me out. Sitting there, I heard him say, in the half fretful, wholly languid tones that I knew so well, 'It's easy to talk as you do; show me wherein it will be to my advantage, if you don't want me to knock down your pretty story. Curse you, what did you try to murder ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... epoch in the life of Mrs. Morton. She had always been too languid to encounter any excitement of any sort, but she had watched the events of this day with an interest which was as new to herself as it was to all who knew her. And when the young folks declared that they must see the end of the matter, come what might, nothing could dissuade ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... the second morning, not only the novel, but the mere idea of my ever having contemplated writing one, was a thing with me to feebly marvel over. And from that time I set myself down to exist and broil only, doling out a languid interest to the locality, the shimmer of whose baking hill-sides made all life a quivering, glaring phantom ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... resorted to ought to be reversed. Instead of straining to the utmost the already irritable powers of the precocious child, and leaving his dull competitor to ripen at leisure, a systematic attempt ought to be made, from early infancy, to rouse to action the languid faculties of the latter, while no pains ought to be spared to moderate and give tone to ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... presence of mind with which all women seem to be gifted, Clemence fell back into her chair, and, assuming a languid, suffering tone, mixed with an appearance ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... laboratory was full of healing virtue. Her sleepless night had left her languid but not stupefied, and for an hour or so the work distracted her ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... said, as we appeared. He jerked a thumb towards the classroom. 'I've locked dem in. What's doin', Buck?' he asked, indicating me with a languid nod. ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... air trembles. In pale glittering haze Wavers the sky. Along the horizon's rim, Breaking its mist, are peaks of coppery clouds. Keen darts of light are shot from every leaf, And the whole landscape droops in sultriness. With languid tread, I drag myself along Across the wilting fields. Around my steps Spring myriad grasshoppers, their cheerful notes Loud in my ear. The ground bird whirs away, Then drops again, and groups of butterflies Spotting the path, upflicker as I come. At length I catch ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... us. Two more natives, one of them a young man, and the other his sister, a girl of fourteen years old, were brought in by the governor's boat, in a most deplorable state of wretchedness from the smallpox. The sympathy and affection of Arabanoo, which had appeared languid in the instance of Nanbaree and his father, here manifested themselves immediately. We conjectured that a difference of the tribes to which they belonged might cause the preference; but nothing afterwards happened to strengthen or confirm such a supposition. The young man died at the end of three ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... cost me something. Dismayed by the extent of my loss, racked with headache, languid, pale, and full of remorse for last night's folly, it needed but this humiliation to complete my misery. What! appear before my instructor for the first time with such a tale! I could have bitten ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... flesh or venison, the evening pipes, and slumber beneath the stars: and when in the morning they embarked again, the mist hung on the river like a bridal veil; then melted before the sun, till the glassy water and the languid woods basked breathless in the sultry glare. [Footnote: The above traits of the scenery of the Wisconsin are taken from personal observation of the ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... deep bulwarks overshadowed by the break of the poop and frowned upon by the front of the warehouse. I plumped down on to my chest near the after hatch as if my legs had been jerked from under me. I felt suddenly very tired and languid. The ship-keeper, whom I could hardly make out hung over the capstan in a fit of weak pitiful coughing. He gasped out very low 'Oh! dear! Oh! dear!' and struggled for breath so long that I got up ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... scattered round the desolate shores of the Northern bay like beads on a string; but the languid Company never attempted to penetrate the unknown lands beyond the coast. It was unnecessary. The Indians came to the Company. The company did not need to go to the Indians. Just as surely as spring cleared the rivers of ice and set the unlocked torrents ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... regal three, Most gracious, too, and liable to love: For Bertha was betrothed; and she, the third, Giselia, would not look upon a man. So, bending his whole heart unto this end, He watched and waited, trusting to stir to fire The indolent interest in those large eyes, And feel the languid hands beat in his own, Ere the new spring. And well he played his part,— Slipping no chance to bribe or brush aside All that would stand between him and the light: Making fast foes in sooth, but feeble friends. But what cared he, who had read of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... candle on the floor, and appropriated the chair. He might, from his tone, have been thanking her for some priceless boon. He wore a boutonniere. His clothes fitted him like gloves. He exuded a certain studied, almost languid fastidiousness—that was wholly out of keeping with the quick, daring, agile wit that he had exhibited the night before. She found her hand toying unconsciously with the weapon in her pocket. She was aware that she was fencing ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... leat. But his apprehensions were presently distracted by the motions of the ship under him—motions which at length became erratic and even alarming. For the Good Intent was not only heaving up and down, but seemed to be tearing forward in a series of vehement rushes, with intervals of languid indecision. Tristram's stomach soon began to abhor these intervals, and in a little while he found himself wondering to what end he had set aside half a loaf from his breakfast. For, as it seemed to him, he was going to die, and the ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
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