"Lethargy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had dared to hope, and with its appearance the gale broke, the wind perceptibly moderating with the rising of the sun. As soon as it was light enough to permit objects to be distinguished I aroused myself from the lethargy that seemed to have gripped me, and proceeded to search the heaving surface of the ocean as well as ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... arouse himself from his lethargy, and went forward into the forecastle with the sailors. But the breed of sailors seemed to have changed since the days he had lived in the forecastle. He could find no kinship with these stolid-faced, ox-minded bestial creatures. He was in despair. ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... gave me the surname of Mercurial. I know it well; and am amazed at your being cured of that disorder. Why a new disorder expelled the old one in a marvelous manner; as it is accustomed to do, when the pain of the afflicted side, or the head, is turned upon the stomach; as it is with a man in a lethargy, when he turns boxer, and attacks his physician. As long as you do nothing like this, be it even as you please. O my good friend, do not deceive yourself; you likewise are mad, and it is almost "fools all," if what Stertinius insists upon has any truth in it; from ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... first fretful and capricious, then silent and desponding. Finally, he sank into a lethargy of body and mind that seriously alarmed me. On the morning after our return to Fondi he showed a strange tendency to sleep incessantly, which made me suspect the existence of some physical malady in his brain. The whole day he hardly exchanged a word with me, and seemed to be never fairly awake. ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... spell of concentration on these things, Determined now, that long have wasted him, Have left him in a numbing lethargy, From which I fear he may not rouse to strength For speech ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... sleepers. She was on her feet in a moment, tiptoeing her way with exaggerated caution. Amy opening one eye, saw the buoyant little figure trip past, and wondered vaguely what was up, though in her state of comfortable lethargy it seemed altogether too much trouble ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... mere giddiness in the head, accompanied by a total prostration of physical strength, to both of which even the most temperate, and sober, are occasionally liable. The defect of speech, accompanied by a strong tendency to lethargy, we accounted for at the time, by a transient cessation or paralysis of the tongue, and a congestion of blood on the brain, all of which frequently attack persons of the soberest habits. Others might have said it was intoxication, or drunkenness, and so ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... national organization as a fact and as a condition of national safety; but they rejected it as a lesson in political wisdom, and as an implicit principle of political action. By so doing they began that career of intellectual lethargy, superficiality, and insincerity which ever since has been characteristic of ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... this, the King, losing temper, despatched another courier, with orders to Monseigneur de Bourgogne, to lead the army to Lille, if M. de Vendome refused to do so. At this, M. de Vendome awoke from his lethargy. He set out for Lille, but took the longest road, and dawdled as long as he could on the way, stopping five days at Mons ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of the conference when Hamilton at last raised his head from his arms. He looked about him dazedly for a little while, as if endeavoring to put himself in touch once again with the humdrum facts of existence. Then, when his brain cleared from the lethargy imposed by the strain to which it had so recently been subjected, he gave a sudden defiant toss of his head, and muttered wrathfully: "Go broke, or starve your men!" He got out of his chair, and paced to and fro swiftly for a little interval, pondering wildly. But, of a sudden, he reseated ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... scenes. There is an onward sweep of the current of humanity, which is exhilarating in a high degree; there is activity on all sides; and you soon catch the spirit of the place. Men have a purpose in view, something to accomplish; and there is the entire absence of lethargy; there are no drones in the great hive. You realise that you are in a city of distances as well as surprises; and wherever you go you find some object or locality or happening that calls for comment. Hark! there is the fire alarm. The ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... hostile to the kind and degree of civilization which those races so easily attain. His intractable spirit of independence, and the pride which forbids him to be an imitator, reinforce but too strongly that savage lethargy of mind from which it is so hard to rouse him. No race, perhaps, ever offered greater difficulties to ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... he does altogether much better. He writes a good hand, reads fairly well, and promptly does a sum in long division. He claims to have reached the 6th grade. One difficulty in testing him was his prevailing lethargy. We constantly had to fight this by encouragement. Once he insisted he must give up the work because he had not had a smoke for an hour or so. Altogether, including his irregularities, we could not call him lower than poor in ability, possibly subnormal. He did not come ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... look out for means of deliverance. When, however, the moon shone forth, and by the stars I calculated that it was about the eleventh hour, sleep so irresistibly overpowered me that I fell back, involuntarily, behind a cask which stood upon the deck. It was rather lethargy than sleep, for I plainly heard the sea beat against the side of the vessel, and the sails creak and whistle in the wind. All at once I thought I heard voices, and the steps of men upon the deck. I wished to arise and see what it was, but a strange power fettered ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... volume of which is in the State Library in Sacramento, appears the following poem. The second relief party found it written on the leaf of a memorandum book by the side of Denton's lifeless body. The pencil with which it was written lay also by the side of the unfortunate man. Ere the lethargy of death stole away his senses, John Denton's thoughts had been of his boyhood's beautiful home in merry England. These thoughts were woven into verse. Are they not strangely pathetic and beautiful? Judge Thornton, ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... greater than the loss of faith and hope in the possibility of attaining the best things. If men are ever bereft of their instinctive or rational conviction that they have the power ultimately to bring institutions of all kinds into harmony with their higher conceptions, they will sink into the lethargy of despair or the slough of sensualism. The belief in the reality of the Ideal in personal and social life is not only the joy and inspiration of the poet and thinker; it is also the salvation of the race. It is imperishable, ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... intervention of Gabriel Druse and the Monseigneur at the Orange funeral, which had saved the situation. At first he listened to what was said—it was the nurse talking to Jim Beadle with no sharp perception of the significance of the story; though it slowly pierced the lethargy of his senses, and he turned over in the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... at this onslaught, for he was not to be stirred from his lethargy by talk about Slagter's Nek and the missionaries. For a while there was silence, which presently was broken by Jan roaring at me in a loud voice as ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... Gentile?" spluttered Joshua, whereon Orme, waking up from one of his fits of lethargy, ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... no larger than a butterfly's wing on the horizon, of ships drifting on ocean currents, dreaming too! Nothing surely can ever happen here: it is so dumb and quiet, and people speak in hushed thin voices, and move as in a lethargy, dreaming too! No heat, cold, or wind, nothing emphasised or italicised, it is truly a region of endless afternoons, "a land where all things always seem the same." Life is dead, and ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... on landing in the Low Countries were attacked by fever. The younger man succumbed at once. The Earl regained sufficient strength to accompany his son's body to Bergen-op-Zoom, but there, on November 10, he himself died of a lethargy. Father and son were both buried in the chancel of the church of Titchfield, Hampshire, on December 28. Southampton thus outlived Shakespeare by more than ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... was in strange contrast to the lethargy shown by the British Government in the protection of Anglo-Indian trade interests. In the year 1878 the Sultan of Zanzibar, who held a large territory on the mainland, had offered the control of all the commerce of his dominions to Sir W. Mackinnon, Chairman of the British-India ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... from its prosperous lethargy, and began to stir with the ominous hum of bees when rude hands shake the hive. Rich and poor were proud to prove that they loved their liberty better than their money or their lives, and the descendants of the brave old Puritans were worthy of their race. Many said: "It will soon be over;" but ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... and five nights the servant watched by his master, "who lay in a lethargy," and was just beginning to show feeble signs of life when the enemy took the town by assault. On the twenty-eighth, some Catholic soldiers broke into his place of refuge, and finding a pestilent heretic lying ill, they threw him out of a window. Being lucky ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... to the general prosperity, there is no room for doubt and uncertainty. The exclusive policy of the Dutch, the obstacles opposed to commerce, when not carried on under the national flag, have produced a lethargy and stagnation, with which the marvellous growth of free and untrammelled trade at Singapore offers a striking contrast. The Dutch have but a slender hold over the Celebes. The physical configuration of the island is singularly straggling. To this circumstance ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... spiritualist. I have only studied hypnotism. It is true I have studied hypnotism in all its known manifestations; but what is called spiritualism, is entirely unknown to me. When a subject is thrown into a trance, I may expect the hypnotic phenomena known to me: lethargy, abulia, anaesthesia, analgesia, catalepsy, and every kind of susceptibility to suggestion. Here it is not these but other phenomena we expect to observe. Therefore it would be well to know of what kind are the phenomena we expect to witness, and what ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... untroubled, Would flourish, day by day, Let each day of the seven Find coffee on your tray. It will your frame preserve from every malady, Its virtues drive afar, la! la! Migrain and dread catarrh—ha! ha! Dull cold and lethargy. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... upon him had increased. He coughed frequently; his breathing was difficult; though constantly moving, he felt as if, in the absence of excitement, his one wish would have been to lie down and abandon himself to lethargy. Two men who sat with him in the third-class carriage had spread a rug over their knees and amused themselves with playing cards for trifling sums of money; the sight of their foolish faces, the sound of their laughs, ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... end of the Dutch occupation, one lonely congregation had been planted in that region which, at a later time, when the Dutch church in America had awaked from its lethargy, was to become known as "the garden of ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... in low, earnest tones; but as he advanced in his tale, his voice, though still low, had taken on a penetrating, vibrating quality that thrilled his wife, and reached the ears of the old woman on the couch, seeming to rouse her from her lethargy like a voice from the grave. She had stirred restlessly two or three times, striving ever harder to break the thrall of her weakness: it would have moved the heart of any one beholding her efforts to ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... injured! I have been in many hospitals. I have seen pneumonia and typhoid patients lying in the fearful apathy of disease. They are very sad to see, very tragic, but their patience is the lethargy of half consciousness. Their fixed eyes see visions. The patience of the wounded is the resignation ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... had aroused her once more, and he was glad of it. He didn't know at all what to do or say, but he dimly felt that almost any emotion in her would be better than the lethargy she had ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... whisky was of an unusual brand, he fancied. And then inertia suddenly seized him. He lost the use of his limbs, of his tongue, when he tried to call out. He saw the doctor's sardonic eyes watching him as he strove to shake off a lethargy that swiftly ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... was good advice, and it quite agreed with the opinions of others, and my own impressions as to the arrogant lethargy of "the force," as they called themselves, in my father's case. Mrs. Busk had more activity and intelligence in her little head than all the fat sergeants and inspectors of the county, helmet, ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... daylight, when a singular noise drew him out of his lethargy. Some say that shots were at first heard, which had been fired by our own people, in order to draw out of the houses such as had taken shelter in them, that they might take their places; others assert, that from a disorderly practice, too common in our bivouacs, of vociferating to each other, ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... peace of an immeasurable prosperity. If the South shall give to the country a policy derived from her heathen notions of men, there will be such a peace as men have overdrugged with opium, that deep lethargy just before the mortal convulsions and death! All attempts at evasion, at adjourning, at concealing and compromising are in vain. The reason of our long agitation is, not that restless Abolitionists are abroad, that ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher
... their Governments, I had Herr von Tschirsky specially in my mind; his whole temperament and feelings led him to interfere in our affairs with a certain vehemence and not always in the most tactful way, thus rousing the Monarchy out of its lethargy. ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... fitful. Time sped, I don't know how, except that we were in a kind of lethargy, taking no note of time and hanging fast to this our respite from ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... a few, however, who will add their blame to her burden, and they usually invoke the name of justice for their lethargy of spirit. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... aglitter with metallic gleams: gold, emerald, blue and purple. They are the humming-birds of the insect-world, the Chrysis-wasps, or Golden Wasps, another set of exterminators of the larvae overcome with lethargy in their cocoons. In them, the atrocious assassin of cradled children lies hidden under the splendour of the garb. One of them, half emerald and half pale-pink, Parnopes carnea by name, boldly enters the burrow of Bembex rostrata at the very moment ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... now betrayed the greatest distress and agitation, while Edith, on the contrary, maintained, as he judged—for the fire was extinguished, and he saw not her countenance—a degree of tranquillity he had not dared to hope. It was a tranquillity, however, resulting from despair and stupor,—a lethargy of spirit, resulting from overwrought feelings, in which she happily remained, more than half unconscious of what was ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... ridges and foot-hill slopes, and with the green grass came the lank-bodied, big-kneed calves; which meant that roundup time was at hand. Applehead did not own more than a thousand head of cattle, counting every hoof that walked under his brand. And with the incipient lethargy of old age creeping into his habits of life, roundup time was not with him the important season it once had been; for several years he had been content to hire a couple of men to represent him in the roundups of the larger outfits—men whom he could trust to watch ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... glittering sentences flew over the heads of the common people, without any impression upon their hearts. Something might be necessary, he observed, to excite the affections of the common people, who were sunk in languor and lethargy, and therefore he supposed that the new concomitants of methodism might probably produce so desirable an effect.[359] The mind, like the body, he observed, delighted in change and novelty, and even in religion itself, courted new appearances and modifications. Whatever ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... and, making a sign to enjoin silence, added in a low voice, "She is neither dead nor poisoned. Some philtre has been given to her for a bad purpose. Her breathing is even, and she cannot fail to recover from her lethargy." ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the writing. But I could have wished more or earlier movement. Even the motor-car, whose appearance promised a hint, the merest far-off possibility, of farcical developments, shared in the general lethargy and refused to move from its ditch. In spite, however, of this procrastination I wish it to be understood that the story is in some ways one of unusual charm; it has style, atmosphere and a very sensible dignity. But, lacking the confidence ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... of exhaustion. In this for a time the mind joined in the lethargy of the body. But presently, as the vital currents were aroused, the mind began to play its fantastic tricks. He was a seminary student, he was ordained, he was taking his vows before the bishop, he was a robust and consecrated priest performing his first ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... have depressed the spirit of revolt, confirmed the wavering, and attached them to the British interest. It would have opened a passage for supplies to the city, which was in great want of provisions for the inhabitants. It would have shaken off that lethargy in which the British soldiers had been immerged during the winter. It would have convinced the well-affected that the British leader was in earnest. If Washington had retreated the British could have ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... hammering continued and became louder. A sort of deadness and strange weariness seemed to brood in the air, as if the great monster were in a sinister and heavy mood, full of an almost malign lethargy. The orchestral players ceased from tuning their instruments, and talked together in ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... Dutifully re-echoing the words uttered by their masters, the partisans of the Administration console themselves by saying that "this invasion of the North will have the effect of stirring up the North from its lethargy." O, you blasphemers! worse blasphemers than ever have been stoned or burned alive! Is the North not pouring forth its blood and its treasures, and are they not ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... self-destruction were easy. With a spirit so impetuous as hers, to imagine was to determine. She did determine. Yet, even while making so terrible a resolve, a singular calm seemed to overspread her soul. She complained of nothing—wished for nothing—sought for nothing—trembled at nothing. A dreadful lethargy, which made the old mother declaim as against a singular proof of hardihood, possessed her spirit. Little did the still-idolizing mother conjecture how much that ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... pupils their minds should defile, And Maclean was engaged to the duke of Argyll; In a deep fit of lethargy Petit had sunk, And theologist Buxton with Bishop was drunk; Bulteel too, and Dykes, much against their own will, Had been both pre-engaged to a party to mill; And philosopher Jenyns was bent on his knees, To electrify spiders, and galvanize ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... come to the point of postponing through sheer lethargy the onerous duty of lifting the cigarette to my lips, when, with an oath that ripped the air, ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... the grace To look through and behind this mask of me (Against which years have beat thus blanchingly With their rains), and behold my soul's true face, The dim and weary witness of life's race,— Because thou hast the faith and love to see, Through that same soul's distracting lethargy, The patient angel waiting for a place In the new Heavens,—because nor sin nor woe, Nor God's infliction, nor death's neighbourhood, Nor all which others viewing, turn to go, Nor all which makes me tired of all, self-viewed,— Nothing repels thee, ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... utterly neglected. Men of the debtor class were freed from that medieval barbarism which gave the creditor the right to levy on the person of his debtor. Even the public schools were dragged out of their lethargy. When Horace Mann was appointed secretary of the newly created Massachusetts Board of Education in 1837, a new day dawned ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... this spirit of courageous and affectionate fraternity, we need all our forces and all our craft for the friendly encounter. If we love ease and lethargy, let us turn in good time and fly. The interpretation of literature, like the interpretation of Nature, is no mere record of facts; it is no catalogue of the items which make up a book— such catalogues ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... near him, that he should attempt to appreciate it in all its relations. By-and-by would be the season of reckoning, the just and delicate analysis, by nicely critical nature, of all that he had deliberately lost, when he might run desperately before the whips of his own thought; now he felt only the lethargy which succeeds strenuous action, that has been, in a measure, victorious; the physical well-being of walking rapidly, vaguely, through the comfortable shadows, allowing the cold rain to pelt refreshingly upon his face and aching temples. And it was not until they had gone so through several ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... crumbled to ruins abort him. Hawkeye rose from her fright triumphant and rejoicing, and down went Stone's Landing! One by one its meagre parcel of inhabitants packed up and moved away, as the summer waned and fall approached. Town lots were no longer salable, traffic ceased, a deadly lethargy fell upon the place once more, the "Weekly Telegraph" faded into an early grave, the wary tadpole returned from exile, the bullfrog resumed his ancient song, the tranquil turtle sunned his back upon bank and log and drowsed his grateful ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... glaring at each other, Dan was startled and thoroughly aroused from his irresistible lethargy by a loud report. ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... steep ascent, has little skill to snare the souls of men and draw them after her, when all the while their comrades are calling to them on the easy downward way. [25] It is true there are degrees, and where the evil springs only from sloth and lethargy, I look on the creatures as mere drones, only injuring the hive by what they cost: but there are others, backward in toil and forward in greed, and these are the captains in villainy: for not seldom ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... and alarm produced by the practical threat of voudou curses upon Agricola was one thing, Creole lethargy was quite another; and when, three mornings later, a full quartette of voudou charms was found in the four corners of Agricola's pillow, the great Grandissime family were ignorant of how they could have come there. Let us examine these terrible engines of mischief. In one corner was an acorn ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... and popular leader; and the language of his resentment discovers the opinion which he entertained of the courage and abilities of Athanasius. The execution of the sentence was still delayed, by the caution or negligence of Ecdicius, praefect of Egypt, who was at length awakened from his lethargy by a severe reprimand. "Though you neglect," says Julian, "to write to me on any other subject, at least it is your duty to inform me of your conduct towards Athanasius, the enemy of the gods. My intentions ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... nor Phil, and a sharp prick of wonder pierced her lethargy of despair. She turned in her chair, obedient still to that inner force that compelled. Yes, they had gone. Only the native remained—an old, bent man, who humbly awaited her pleasure. His face was almost ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... sun came out again, and the various shades of yellow and of orange that played over the wrinkled earth deepened and glowed. Domini had sunk into a lethargy so complete that, though not asleep, she was scarcely aware of the sun. She was dreaming ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... of events, I believe, that there is a time coming, when the Greek people shall rise, from the lethargy, in which they unnaturally are slumbering, for a long time, and they shall awake and break every fetter, and shake off their feet every chain, and their eyes shall be opened and they shall see things ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... him, on condition that Greece should be independent in all its internal government. Those terms, however, were rejected by the Porte; and after a delay of a year and a half it was forced by the Great Powers, slowly awakening from their long lethargy, to accede to arrangements far more favourable ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... shook off their lethargy and went seal-hunting. I was practically commanded to attend. This attitude had been growing of late: now it began to take a ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... still conversing in low tones, toward the place whence the prisoner had come; HE HAD NOT BEEN SEEN! Amid the horrible confusion of the rabbi's thoughts, the idea darted through his brain: "Can I be already dead that they did not see me?" A hideous impression roused him from his lethargy: in looking at the wall against which his face was pressed, he imagined he beheld two fierce eyes watching him! He flung his head back in a sudden frenzy of fright, his hair fairly bristling! Yet, no! No. His hand groped over the stones: it was the reflection of the inquisitor's eyes, still ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... venting her anguish, she was roused from her lethargy of grief by the chambermaid, who had ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... he exclaimed, startled out of his customary lethargy, 'I never thought of that. The truth is, when I am in my right senses, Smith and all his affairs seem like a dream to me. Any idea connected with him would ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... in their late address to the several states, have given a just picture of our situation. I very much doubt its making the desired impression; and if it does not, I shall consider our lethargy as incurable. The present juncture is so interesting, that if it does not produce correspondent exertions, it will be a proof, that motives of honour, public good, and even self-preservation, have lost their influence upon our minds. This is a ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... exhortation seemed to strike him to whom it was addressed, and, as if awaking from a long lethargy, he suddenly said: 'Why did I not think of that before? I promise,' added he, 'five dollars for the Souls in Purgatory, ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... said, "He may not meet me," she was mad. How could he fail to meet her when the rolling hours hung fire and buzzed about his head like loaded bees, unable to proceed; when in a lethargy of vision he signed his name at the bottom of the typewritten sheet, saying confusedly, "What does she think? Does ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... received with enthusiastic shouts by the warlike part of the populace. Granada once more awoke, as a warrior shaking off a disgraceful lethargy. The commanders and council partook of the public excitement, and despatched a reply to the Christian sovereigns, declaring that they would suffer death ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... a long time in coming, and Canute sat there, still and silent, with his hands clenched on his knees, and the skin of his face seemed to have shriveled up into little wrinkles that trembled when he lowered his brows. His life had been one long lethargy of solitude and alcohol, but now he was awakening, and it was as when the dumb stagnant heat of ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... episode of Christian and Hopeful in the Enchanted Ground, and in that stuffy carriage I presently followed the example of Heedless and Too-Bold and fell sound asleep. I was awakened by the train rumbling over the points of a little moorland junction. Sunk in a pleasing lethargy, I sat with my eyes closed, and then covertly took a glance at my companion. He had abandoned the Missionary Child and was reading a little dun-coloured book, and marking passages with a pencil. His face was absorbed, and it was a new face, not the vacant, good-humoured ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... Others have arrived safely, as from voyages over wide, century-stretching seas. The little ships, the miracles that have buoy'd them, and by incredible chances safely convey'd them, (or the best of them, their meaning and essence,) overlong wastes, darkness, lethargy, ignorance, &c., have been a few inscriptions—a few immortal compositions, small in size, yet compassing what measureless values of reminiscence, contemporary portraitures, manners, idioms and beliefs, with deepest inference, hint and thought, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... Felix Narveo, however, did not share in this lethargy. The streets about the Plaza were full of Conestoga wagons, with tired ox-teams lying yoked or unyoked before them. Most of the traffic borne in by these came directly or indirectly to the house of Narveo. And its proprietor, the same silent, alert ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... lethargy, protested in the name of his gods that no one had been near it. "Ye took it into the station ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... and for so long a time? This mental condition was expressed by a new modulation of the same oath. The first movement of surprise over, resignation follows, and our man decides to wait patiently for the end. A period of half lethargy was easily represented by the slowness and weakness of the man's voice while living up to this decision; but when he comes out of this sleepy condition and hears the fountain again, he is possessed with fear; he cannot understand the flood he is pouring out—he dares not move—he believes ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... temperature suggests the following question: what would happen if I were to chill the creature in its immobile posture? I foresee a more prolonged inertia. The chill, of course, must not be great, for it would be followed by the lethargy into which insects capable of surviving the winter fall when benumbed by ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... she been, that she did not perceive the condition to which Nina was reduced, believing that she was still asleep from simple fatigue, but her eye falling on her, she burst into loud lamentations of grief, which very nearly awoke her from the lethargy into which she had fallen. It was the means, however, of awaking Marianna, by whose aid she was able to make the little girl comprehend the importance of seeking out Paolo, and bringing him to attend on his sister. She was absent ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... emperors of illustrious race, whom their own laches caused to fall from power, succeeded others, at one time similar, at another different; but what dignity could we confer on Charles, who hath not honor for his guide, who is enfeebled by lethargy, and who, finally, hath lost head so far that he hath no shame in serving a foreign king, and in misuniting himself to a woman taken from the rank of the knights his vassals? How could the puissant duke ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... throat seemed burning up. The water he drank only partially allayed his frantic thirst. It was with great difficulty that he could arouse himself from a lethargy that seemed to completely paralyze both body and mind. As the moments passed, however, he succeeded in rallying into something like normal. But as yet he was unable to fully understand ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... direction with the first, just then reached our ears, and was followed by a confused cry, as if those at whom it had been aimed, had not all been immediately killed. Our comrade, the one who understood Spanish, started from his momentary lethargy and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... parties and reunions, but now that she was aware of Sylvie's infatuation, the mingled attraction and revulsion became stronger, and she caught herself wishing fervently that the Marquis would rouse himself from his lethargy of pleasure, and do justice to the capabilities which Nature had evidently endowed him with, if a fine head and noble features are to be taken as exponents of character. Fontenelle himself, meanwhile, leaning carelessly back in the chair he had taken, looked ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... her, and she murmured inwardly "I don't know" as she drew aside to let him approach the bed. He stood by her in silence, his hands clasped behind him, his eyes on the injured man, who lay motionless, as if sunk in a lethargy. The matron, at the call of another nurse, had minced away down the ward, committing Amherst with a glance to Miss Brent; and the two remained alone ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... will also affect the body and limbs. "Every day so many hours and so much energy are required for digestion; a gross torpidity, a carnal lethargy, seizes on mortal men after dinner. This may and can be avoided. Man's knowledge of organic chemistry widens daily. Already he can supplement the gastric glands by artificial devices. Every doctor ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... had relaxed, drooped to his button again, and his lethargy was renewed. The outer world grew vaguer; voices seemed to drone at a distance; sluggish time passed heavily—but ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... to orders of mysterious, untold value. St. Clare knew this well; and often, in many a weary hour, he heard that slender, childish voice calling him to the skies, and saw that little hand pointing to him the way of life; but a heavy lethargy of sorrow lay on him,—he could not arise. He had one of those natures which could better and more clearly conceive of religious things from its own perceptions and instincts, than many a matter-of-fact and practical Christian. ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to view this whole matter in a philosophical and ultra-pragmatic way. Some observers have hazarded that our postponement of haircuts is due to mere lethargy and inertia, but that is not so. Every time we get our locks shorn our wife tells us that we have got them too short. She says that our head has a very homely and bourgeois bullet shape, a sort of pithecanthropoid contour, which is revealed by a close trim. After five ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... She only recognized in this lethargy the merciful effects of the drug she had administered to her suffering daughter ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... century, had made itself felt much more slowly across the Rhine. Even the generous enthusiasm that animated the German people in the War of Liberation against Napoleon in 1813 had ebbed away into disappointment and lethargy when the German princes forgot their pledges of internal reform. The policy of the German and Austrian rulers was dominated by the reactionary Austrian Prime Minister, Prince Metternich, a consistent champion of aristocratic ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... had before. She refound all her old dreams. It seemed as if not a day had passed over her. When she was a girl she used to collect every scrap of love poetry that appeared in the local paper, and paste them into a book, and now, the events of the week having roused her from the lethargy into which she had fallen, she turned for a poem to the Hanley Courier as instinctively as an awakened child turns ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... nervous apprehension, a sleep more like the torpor of lethargy than natural slumber, fell on me at once. I neither stirred nor heard any thing till near two o'clock, when a piercing shriek from the deck aroused me. The moon had set, but there was light enough to show the decks abaft filled with men, though I could distinguish neither ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... like manner, that there the dread of a collision with the dogma silenced the teaching of ethics both in literature and at the universities. Accordingly, all the great Protestant moralists were opposed to the Protestant doctrine of justification. In Scotland the intellectual lethargy of churchmen is not confined to the department of ethics; and Presbyterianism only prolongs its existence by suppressing theological writing, and by concealing the contradictions which would otherwise bring down on the clergy the contempt of ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... touched by the old gentleman's emotion. He took his hand. "It is serious," said he—"most serious, for this reason, that I cannot account for her obstinate lethargy; but I think there is no immediate danger. If necessity arises, I shall ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... the rest of the world, even in the lethargy which had come upon it in viewing the loss of most of North America, could not afford to leave the Grass to its own devices, content to receive the refugees it drove out or watch them die. A World Congress to ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... brave heart to bear up under such sorrows, but Edgeworth, though he felt them keenly, would not sink into the lethargy of grief, but roused himself to work for the public good. He was on the board appointed to inquire into the education of the people of Ireland, and two of his papers on the subject were printed in the reports of the Commissioners; he also drew ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... wickedness. God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had thirteen States independent for eleven years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half, for each State. ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... not arouse the old lady, who was falling back into a pleasant lethargy, so common ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... an eye to them. In such a relation as that, such a man would think of the union in worship as an essential feature in his plans. And here I am tempted to say, that in a thousand things in England which seem a hopeful improvement on English lethargy, one catches sight of Dr. Arnold as being, behind all, the power that is moving. Hodson, in the East-Indian army, seems so different from anybody else, that you wonder where he came from, till it proves he was one of Arnold's boys. Price's Candle-Works, in London, and Spottiswoode's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... frequently appointed and as often superseded, but no effectual aid was given them to enable them to check the ever spreading insurrection. But Perth was now threatened by Bruce; and the danger of this, the strongest and most important northern fortress, roused Edward from his lethargy. A fleet was fitted out for the Tay. Troops, under the Earl of Ulster, were engaged to be transported by an English fleet of forty ships, supplied by the seaports, and intended to cooperate with John of Lorne in ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... to take her hand, but his touch roused her from her lethargy; and springing at him, like a wild-cat, she gave him a blow in the face that made him stagger,—so powerful was it, in the vehemence of her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... addressed a communication to the Secretary of War, demanding that the Fourth United States Regiment at Pittsburgh, under the command of Colonel John Parke Boyd, be sent forward immediately for the defense of the frontiers. The government was in part aroused from its state of lethargy. Recent advices from Governor Edwards had announced a series of murders and depredations on the Illinois frontier, and the citizens of Vincennes were in constant dread and apprehension. The Governor said that he could not much longer restrain his people, and that there was ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... to dream they crawl on her, foretells that her aspirations will always tend to the material. If she kills or throws them off, she will shake loose from the material lethargy and seek to ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... contains another notable example of a sudden and unaccountable decline in population. The scene is Spain, which, after playing an active and very prominent part in the world's history, sank quickly into the lethargy from which it has never recovered. It may be noted that here, as in the case of Rome, the decay of population and energy followed a great influx of plundered wealth. On the other hand, the increase of population in our newly-planted North American colonies must have been extremely rapid ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... scenes in which Socrates passed his life. Of his influence it is hardly necessary here to speak at length. In the well-known metaphor put into his mouth by Plato, he was the "gad-fly" of the Athenian people. To prick intellectual lethargy, to force people to think, and especially to think about the conceptions with which they supposed themselves to be most familiar, those which guided their conduct in private and public affairs—justice expediency, honesty, and the like—such was the constant object of ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... may be thought, did not die of a lethargy, nor perish by the remission of her political ardours at home. Her distemper appeared of a nature more violent and acute. Yet if the virtues of Cato and of Brutus found an exercise in the dying hour of the republic, the neutrality, and the cautious retirement of Atticus, ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... promptly pointed out that they had no fire and nothing to boil. He seemed to find an odious satisfaction in the fact, a satisfaction which Bompard faintly reflected, and for a moment the girl seemed to glimpse in the two men a lethargy of mind almost unthinkable. A lethargy and laziness, mulish, and kicking at anything that disturbed it, that actually fought against betterment because betterment meant exercise of ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... rushed to Rhoda's eyes, and as she stooped to give that farewell kiss the salt drops fell upon Evie's cheeks, and roused her momentarily from her lethargy. ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... pretty, and then let fall into slatternly neglect. She ceased to care for her dress or the child's; the time came when it seemed as if she could scarcely move in the mystery that beset her life, and she yielded to a deadly lethargy which paralyzed all her faculties but the instinct ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... ran to the dark spot in the center of the mass and found two little boys. The head of the smaller was resting in the bosom of the larger, and both were fast asleep. The lethargy which would have been fatal but for the timely rescue had overcome ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... then others; As a poor hungry Souldier, I might bite, Sir, Yet that's a weakness too: hear me, thou Tempter: And hear thou Caesar too, for it concerns thee, And if thy flesh be deaf, yet let thine honour, The soul of a commander, give ear to me, Thou wanton bane of war, thou guilded Lethargy, In whose embraces, ease (the rust of Arms) And pleasure, (that makes Souldiers ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... moment of supreme affliction when we arrived at Johnstown. The waters had subsided, and those of the inhabitants who had escaped the fate of their fellows were gazing over the scene of destruction and trying to arouse themselves from the lethargy that had taken hold of them when they were stunned by the realization of all the woe that had been visited upon them. How nobly they responded to the call of duty! How much of the heroic there is in our people when it is needed! ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... sun was still an hour high when Kirk Anthony came down the hill from the Garavels' home and crossed the meadow toward the forest glade he knew so well. The grateful coolness of evening was stealing downward, and Nature was roused from her midday lethargy. It was the vibrant, active hour when odors are freshest and spirits rise. The forest was noisy with the cry of birds, and flocks of shrill-voiced paroquets raised an uproar in the tallest trees. The dense canopy of green overhead was alive ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... reign were marked by aspirations for a better state of things, and discussions between the rival schools of Classicists and Mediaevalists. The latter carried the day, and, after an heroic struggle and many failures, England awoke from her long lethargy, to find herself the possessor of a noble architecture, a true exponent of ecclesiastical art and tradition, although confessedly far from perfect when applied to domestic buildings. For these latter edifices the old manor-houses, with their many mullioned windows and Tudor arcuation, formed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... however, told Wilmet not to be too much alarmed at this delirium, for the most immediate danger had passed when the lethargy had given way, and that though fever was probably setting in, there was fair hope that so healthy a boy would be able to struggle through it without permanent harm. There was a gentleness and consideration in his manner quite new to her after her dealings with Mr. Rugg, and she felt at the ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he sat watching the dawn his mind began to stir, to shake off its lethargy and stupor, to struggle into keener ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... on his chair. The terrific noise and bustle of breaking down the door seemed not to have aroused him from his lethargy, but when Prince Aribert spoke to him in German he ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... strongest evidences of affection. Mrs. Henry was also in the room, at the bed-foot; but it did not appear that he observed her. And indeed (the fever being gone) he was so weak that he made but the one effort and sank again into a lethargy. The course of his restoration was now slow, but equal; every day his appetite improved; every week we were able to remark an increase both of strength and flesh; and before the end of the month he was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... opened a door, and Joe was almost surprised out of his lethargy. Here was a watching post on the outside of the monstrous half-globe. There were two guards here, with fifty-caliber machine guns under canvas hoods. Their duties were tedious but necessary. They watched the desert. From this ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... folks would not mix me up with your private matters." The words rose sharply from the senile prattle and penetrated Mostyn's lethargy. "There's old Jeff Henderson—he had the cheek to come to me to-day to borrow money. Said his family was in rags and starving. Said you euchred him out of all he had and got your start on it. What in the name of common sense does he come to me for? ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... all seem under a spell of lethargy—the lassitude of fatigue. They have ridden a long way, and need rest. They might go to sleep alongside the log, but none of them thinks of doing so, least of all Clancy. There is that in his breast forbidding sleep, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... and hours that dismal actor walked, And talked, and talked, and talked, and talked, Till lethargy upon the parson crept, And ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... said the other knight, fervently. "For there is little hope that the King himself can be stirred out of his lethargy. He is wholly without hope, and is only thinking of throwing away everything and flying to some foreign land. The commissioners say there is a spell upon him that makes him hopeless—yes, and that it is shut up in a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... an hour since, the wounded man had awakened from his lethargy, and the fever had abated. But the first thing he did on recovering his memory and speech was to ask for Lord Glenarvan, or, failing him, the Major. McNabbs seeing him so weak, would have forbidden any conversation; but Mulrady insisted with such ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... rope; Grant strained at the sled and hoarsely encouraged the dogs; Cantwell stumbled and lurched in the rear like an unwilling prisoner. When he fell his companion lifted him, then beat him, cursed him, tried in every way to rouse him from his lethargy. ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... effect. By a powerful effort Paul threw off his lethargy, and once more sprang on with the rest, continuing to talk and ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... thy jealousy could not endure; To feed thy vanity would rust unknown, And to secure thy credit, blast his own, In Hogarth he was sure to find a friend; He could not fear, and therefore might commend. But when his spirit, roused by honest shame, Shook off that lethargy, and soar'd to fame; 350 When, with the pride of man, resolved and strong, He scorn'd those fears which did his honour wrong, And, on himself determined to rely, Brought forth his labours to the public eye, No friend in thee could such a ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... ye now? what lethargy O'ercomes your ancient power? that undisturbed Ye slumber on, as if ye heeded not The piercing shriek from yonder fuming car, Which saith that even here presumptuous man Has dared intrude upon the green domain, Which ye inherited when Time was born. Awake! arise! are ye forever ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... like Virgil's Camilla, stirs him from this lethargy. He falls in love at first sight, as Tasso's heroes always do, and vows to prove himself her worthy knight by deeds of unexampled daring. Thus the plot is put in motion; and we read in well-appointed ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... more the round unwalled horizon of the open sea, the joyous breeze aloft, the furrow, the foam, the sparkle, that track the rushing keel! They have escaped the dangers of the wave, and lie still henceforth, evermore. Happiest of souls, if lethargy is bliss, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist) |
