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Relapse   Listen
verb
Relapse  v. i.  (past & past part. relapsed; pres. part. relapsing)  
1.
To slip or slide back, in a literal sense; to turn back. (Obs.)
2.
To slide or turn back into a former state or practice; to fall back from some condition attained; generally in a bad sense, as from a state of convalescence or amended condition; as, to relapse into a stupor, into vice, or into barbarism; sometimes in a good sense; as, to relapse into slumber after being disturbed. "That task performed, (preachers) relapse into themselves."
3.
(Theol.) To fall from Christian faith into paganism, heresy, or unbelief; to backslide. "They enter into the justified state, and so continue all along, unless they relapse."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Relapse" Quotes from Famous Books



... in this state I have no means of ascertaining; my first sensation was a sickness that almost made me again relapse into insensibility, accompanied by a feeling of pain in all my limbs. Languidly I opened my eyes; all was dark as midnight. The roar of the waters stupified every sense. The horrors of my situation chilled my soul, and annihilated all my courage. How ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... case of industrial anaemia. As in medicine, so industry has its quacks—experts who prescribe pink pills for pale industries, the administration of which may be attended with a brief show of energy and improvement, only to relapse into the old pallor. As between a half-baked "expert" and an "ignorant" employer whose heart is in the right place—take the employer. If he sincerely feels that long enough has he gone on the principle, "I'll run my business as I see fit and take suggestions from no one"; if it ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... organism is still capable of battling against the internal disease, by compelling it to leave the interior tissue, and to develop itself externally. It is the first business of the physician to support the organism in this tendency, and to guard the brain and bowels from every destructive relapse. Apis, employed as above, accomplishes this result more speedily than any other drug. Of course, a few days are required for this purpose, although the rules of using the drug and the course ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf

... my news quickly before I relapse into my usual idleness. I have a terror lest I should relapse before I get this finished. Courage, R. L. S.! On Leslie Stephen's advice, I gave up the idea of a book of essays. He said he didn't imagine I was rich enough for such an amusement; and moreover, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... kept his chamber some time with a fever, and though he was pretty well recovered, having not yet been out of it, we consulted how we might introduce our sister and children to him, with as little surprise as might be, for fear of a relapse by too great a hurry of his spirits. At length we concluded I should go tell him that some strangers had arrived desiring to see him; but on inquiry, finding their business was too trifling to trouble him upon, I had despatched them; I was then to say how like one of them was to my sister Youwarkee; ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock

... "An unexpected relapse in a dangerous case, Signor Marchese," he said in explanation. "What would you have? We doctors are at the mercy of nature! Pray forgive my neglect, but I could send no one, as you did not wish to be seen. I locked the door, so that nobody might find you here. Pray come with ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... seven pounds for each of the first twelve years, and ten pounds for each of the remaining nine years. If, at the end of the time, the amount stipulated had not been paid, or Nurse should abandon the undertaking, the property was to relapse to Allen. Disinterested and suitable men, whose appointment was provided for, were then to estimate the value added to the estate by Nurse during his occupancy, by the clearing of meadows or erection of buildings or other permanent improvements, and all of that value over and above one hundred ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... where Iago shows him Cassio with the handkerchief in his hand, and making sport (as he thinks) of his misfortunes, the intolerable bitterness of his feelings, the extreme sense of shame, makes him fall to praising her accomplishments and relapse into a momentary fit of weakness, 'Yet, oh, the pity of it, Iago, the pity of it!' This returning fondness, however, only serves, as it is managed by Iago, to whet his revenge, and set his heart more against her. In his conversations with Desdemona, the persuasion of her guilt and the immediate ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... OF CIRCULATION, as in 1857, when the steadily increased circulation, which had almost doubled in nine years, had rendered it very easy to grant excessive discounts and loans, which had thus over-stimulated business, so that the above relapse occurred; or, we may imagine the converse case, leading to a quicker and even greater disaster: a sudden and proportionate shrinkage of circulation, which, of course, would have fatally cut down loans and discounts, and ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar

... was laughter, though less general—for instance, neither Sir Robert nor Mr. Champers-Haswell laughed. This merriment seemed to excite Jeekie. At any rate it caused him to cease his stilted talk and relapse into the strange vernacular that is common to all negroes, tinctured with a racy slang that ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... campaigns in Western China and Central Asia. But these measures have all owed their conception and execution to foreign energy, enterprise, and ability; and, as will be presently shown, wherever the salutary influence of these is weakened or removed, disorganization and relapse are sure to be the result. Something has, no doubt, been accomplished within the last twenty years towards opening the eyes of the Chinese Government to the wisdom of assuming a recognised place in the comity of nations, and inducing it to introduce various domestic measures of a useful and progressive ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... institutions, and our press—which, although it occasionally shows unpleasant symptoms of sinking beneath the yoke of special and not highly reputable interests, is still greatly superior in tone to that of any other nation—are sufficient guarantees against relapse into the morass of political immorality which characterised the relations between nation and nation, and notably between the strong and the weak, even so late as the eighteenth century.[4] It is to be hoped and believed that, for the time ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... SIR,—I thank you for your last truly friendly letter, and for the number of Blackwood which accompanied it. Both arrived at a time when a relapse of illness had depressed me much. Both did me good, especially the letter. I have only one fault to find with your expressions of friendship: they make me ashamed, because they seem to imply that ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... still more disconcerted, this afternoon, to find my pony going badly. He was perfectly willing to walk, but at a most dignified rate, selected by himself. He apparently had no objection to catching up the party every now and then, but only to relapse into his funeral walk, after contact had been re-established. But then Cootes took the lead that afternoon, and as his thoroughbred had had two days' rest, and breasted all the rises with apparent joyousness, nobody was able to keep up, ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox

... free an exercise of the imagination, have superinduced a morbid kind of sensibility; which is to the mind what excessive irritability is to the body. Some circumstances occurred on my arrival at Nottingham, which gave me just cause for inquietude and anxiety; the consequences were insomnia, and a relapse into causeless dejections. It is my business now to curb these irrational and immoderate affections, and, by accustoming myself to sober thought and cool reasoning, to restrain these freaks and vagaries of the fancy, and redundancies of [Greek: melancholia]. When I am well, I cannot help ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White

... of these hopes came that terrific relapse of civilization between 1855 and 1870. Then came a pause, and hope might have revived had not the war epoch left behind it a ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various

... that a spy had arrived with letters, and that the English army was at hand. A merchant found a piece of newspaper lying in the road, in which it was stated that the strength of the relieving forces was 15,000 men. For a moment, hope flickered up again, only to relapse once more. The rumour, the letters, the printed paper, all had been contrivances of Gordon to inspire the garrison with the courage to hold out. On the 25th, it was obvious that the Arabs were preparing an attack, and a deputation of the principal inhabitants waited ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... country whilst you proceed to another, would break forth into outrages at least as bad as their former. They must, as fast as gained, (if ever they are gained,) be put under the guide, direction, and government of better Frenchmen than themselves, or they will instantly relapse into a fever of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... and the rudiments of civilised education. This appears to me a sufficiently feasible plan; but I suspect that the Arab converts to civilisation would, on their return to their native land, quickly relapse into their old idle, roving habits, their primitive mode of life, and their inborn hatred of the infidel, whom they now regard as an instrument sent by Providence to inflict vengeance on the true believer ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham

... acted schismatically, and of having fallen foul of the Church: all of which crimes and errors she now abjured, and humbly submitted herself to the will of the Church and its ordinances. She promised with her abjuration not to relapse, and called on Saint Peter, the Pope, as well as the Bishop of Beauvais and other of her ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower

... his own climate and that an easy billet had been found for him as a recruiting officer in New York City. Believing the woman he loved to be in Europe, this plan for his comfort only succeeded in bringing on a relapse. But the day following there came another cablegram. It put an abrupt end to his mutiny, and brought him and the War Department ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis

... real cause, a want of the most ordinary power of exertion, owing to the impressions made upon an old and infirm constitution by private misfortune and by public calamity. It is true, I make occasional efforts to rouse myself to something better,—but I soon relapse into that state of languor which must be the habit of my body and understanding to the end of my short and cheerless ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... rather laxative and of an easily digestible character after an attack of this form of indigestion. Feed should be given in moderate quantities, as excess by overtaxing the digestive functions may bring on a relapse. Ice-cold water should ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... the medicines and treatment generally exert a permanent effect on the constitution of the patient, thus allaying the scruples of many persons, that although they may be successful for a certain period, they may not prevent a relapse. This may be perfectly true in some cases; all the patients in these cases were perfectly well when this pamphlet went to press; yet I will not positively assert that they shall always continue so. This assurance would be foolish and indiscreet, because there is scarcely ...
— Observations on the Causes, Symptoms, and Nature of Scrofula or King's Evil, Scurvy, and Cancer • John Kent

... face toward him at last, the singer, in a hollow voice, curtly said, "Explain all this!" There was a glance in her recklessly brave eyes which made the soi disant August Meyer relapse into a whining tenderness. "The high hand won't ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage

... Rome, when Goethe was in Sicily? I hope he went for the purpose of shaking off his infatuation for Miss Harte. I am loth to think he went merely to wind up his affairs in Rome. I will assume that only after a sharp conflict, in which he fought hard on the side of duty against love, did he relapse to Naples. But I won't pretend to wish he had ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... went by heavily enough, and the next followed, in the same half-snowy, half-rainy style, the weather now being the inevitable relapse which sooner or later succeeds a time too radiant for the season, such as they had enjoyed in the late midwinter at Hintock. To people at home there these changeful tricks had their interests; the strange mistakes that some of the more sanguine trees had made in ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... better now—from the hour he had seen Margaret there had been no relapse; but he was struggling through his convalescence with a restless impatience that was very trying to all who came ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... would not come. He would be too delicate to run the chance of meeting her, while her shame must be so fresh in his memory. The very mention of his name renewed her trouble, and produced a relapse into the feeling of depressed, pre-occupied exhaustion. She gave way to listless languor. Suddenly it struck her that this was a strange manner to show her patience, or to reward her father for his watchful care of her all through the ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... proves it best is the way she treats Paul. She is very affectionate. I suppose there is no fear of a relapse?" ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... stifle the vigour, the energy, the restless desire that drives me to express myself—that will not tolerate the inertia of calculation and ponderous reflection? Ought I to check myself, consider, worry, entangle myself in psychologies, seek for subtleties where none exist—split hairs, relapse into introspective philosophy when my fingers itch for a lump of charcoal and every colour on my set palette yells at me to be ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... new guardian, she showed no change of manner toward Gualtier. To her, application to any thing was a thing as irksome as ever. Perhaps her fitful efforts to advance were more frequent; but after each effort she used invariably to relapse into ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... whose speech came from the emotions of the heart, all unregulated by the usages of the schools. He was the first for generations who had aspired to college learning and a profession, and had trained his tongue by the models of the educated and polite. He could not help, at times, the relapse of his thoughts, and their speaking to himself in the dialect of his family and his ancestors. "She's 'way above me, and I ought to ha' known it," he further said, with the meekness of an humble but fiercely independent race, which is meek to itself alone. He would have maintained ...
— Evelina's Garden • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... Europeans," we also have hours when we allow ourselves a warm-hearted patriotism, a plunge and relapse into old loves and narrow views—I have just given an example of it—hours of national excitement, of patriotic anguish, and all other sorts of old-fashioned floods of sentiment. Duller spirits may perhaps only get done ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... general. He says you are not fit to live in it: you are no match for it. You have been persuading him, contrary to all history and experience, that men are capable of virtue and happiness. In short, he owns that he was more than half convinced: but that he believes he shall be obliged to relapse ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... gained the least insight into what, beneath the ruin of earthquake and tornado, lay buried in the soul of her mother. The best of changes is slow in most natures, and the main question is, perhaps, whether it goes slowly because of feebleness and instability, and consequent frequency of relapse, or because of the root-nature, the thoroughness, and the magnitude of what has been initiated. But Mrs. Wylder was tropical: any real change in her would soon reach a point where it must become swift as ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... health been equal to his gallantry and tact all might even yet have gone well. But he came on board ill, and two days after we sailed he was confined to his berth with a dangerous relapse, and the fate of the Zebra was left in the hands of the worst possible man for the duty—Mr Adrian, the ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed

... lines were addressed, after seeming to be on the road to perfect recovery, had suddenly had a relapse necessitating a return to confinement from the lodging in which her brother ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... not surely know whether the consecrated Host may not be the body of Christ. And of all that range of sentiment he is the poet, a poet still alive, and in possession of our inmost thoughts—dumb inquiry over the relapse after death into the formlessness which preceded life, the change, the revolt from that change, then the correcting, hallowing, consoling rush of pity; at last, far off, thin and vague, yet not more vague than ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater

... the highest importance to be able to demonstrate the presence of fungus in the blood of the circulation and in the urine of patients in whom the diagnosis is doubtful. The presence of the Limnophysalis hyalina in the urine indicates that the patient is liable to a relapse, and that his intermittent fever is not cured, which is important in a prognostic and therapeutic point ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various

... the auditors to answer for themselves,—at that moment, he perceives two or three of the persons he had particularly in view begin an active whispering, prolonged with the accompaniment of the appropriate vulgar smiles. They may possibly relapse at length, through sheer dulness, into tolerable decorum; and the instructor, not quite losing sight of them, tries yet again, to impel some serious ideas through the obtuseness of their mental being. But he can clearly ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... him in token of his approbation, and was somewhat grieved when Athelstane observed, "that he would fight a dozen such men as Front-de-Boeuf, if, by so doing, he could hasten his departure from a dungeon where they put so much garlic into their pottage." Notwithstanding this intimation of a relapse into the apathy of sensuality, Cedric placed himself opposite to Athelstane, and soon showed, that if the distresses of his country could banish the recollection of food while the table was uncovered, yet no sooner ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... smiles mixed with tears often covered his poor thin face as the little ones vied with each other in nursing him. But he was too weak yet to enter into much conversation, and his nurse was very careful not to let him over-exert himself, for fear of a relapse. In fact, nature seemed to speak for him, as in reply to our anxious queries whether we could do anything for him, he would reply, "Nothing, nothing, but let me look at you, God ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton

... A relapse followed upon the exertion and outburst, but even gout had its limitations, and finally the patient was sufficiently convalescent for preparations to begin for the journey ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... Murdison standing with a look of dogged determination on his face, which changed to one of relief when he saw Brown. Old Benson, the watchmaker, who had been convalescing from illness when Brown came away, had suffered a relapse and had probably but few hours ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond

... nature, or fortune, which depend upon no merit of our own. Beauty and wealth have their due influence in the world, where their value is greatly overrated; but they add little in reality to the possessor. Deprived of both, persons of little moral worth, would relapse into their original insignificance; while those, who improve the talents entrusted to their care by Providence, possess qualities which defy the power of change. Such persons can alone afford to be proud, yet these of all others make the least ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie

... Negroes have shown less capacity for government than any other race of people. No independent government of any form has ever been successful in their hands. On the contrary, wherever they have been left to their own devices they have shown a constant tendency to relapse into barbarism. In the Southern States, however, Congress has undertaken to confer upon them the privilege of the ballot. Just released from slavery, it may be doubted whether as a class they know more than their ancestors how to organize and regulate civil ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Johnson • Andrew Johnson

... life is one of seriousness, with an occasional relapse into some of his old qualities, but never a complete laying aside of earnestness. He gained friends elsewhere, and finally settled in Darmstadt, where he still found women's hearts susceptible, in spite of his small, weak frame, his great long neck, and ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... mere accurate performance of the rite had a mystic efficacy. It was believed to help to uphold the order of the world; without it the gods would grow weak, the ordinances of nature would fail, and man would relapse to the state of savagery. The gods themselves first sacrificed; from sacrifice they themselves were born, so that sacrifice is an essential principle of the universe, was so in the beginning, and must always be so. The Vedic leaders of religion, therefore, were not merely champions ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... Marxist upon these difficulties and he will relapse magnificently into the doctrine of laissez faire. "That will be all right," he will ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells

... this he fought the drink; fought it steadily. With Christmas came a relapse, through which she nursed him. To her dismay she found the fit, during the few days that it lasted, more violent than before, and thought of the house swept and garnished and the devil returning with others worse than himself. Her consolation was that at ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... dancing, and went home in his little coupe. He was desperately fatigued, for he was still very weak, and he feared lest his imprudence in going out so soon might bring on a relapse from his convalescence. Nevertheless, before he went to bed he dismissed Temistocle, and opened a shabby-looking black box which stood upon his writing-table. It was bound with iron, and was fastened by a patent lock which had frequently defied Temistocle's ingenuity. Prom this ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... vodka, even the girls having a glass. We did not keep the custom; the haymakers and the women used to come into the yard and stay until late in the evening, waiting for vodka, and then they went away cursing. And then Masha used to frown and relapse into silence or whisper ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff

... clime, The smell whereof shall breed a plague in France. Mark then abounding valour in our English, That being dead, like to the bullet's grazing, Break out into a second course of mischief, Killing in relapse of mortality. Let me speak proudly: tell the Constable We are but warriors for the working-day. Our gayness and our gilt are all besmirch'd With rainy marching in the painful field; There's not a piece of feather in our host— ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]

... day of the week, Thursday, about noon, just one week from that very day, when his wife sent for me. When I went to their home I found her in great trouble, and learned that he had had a relapse. I asked if he had expressed a desire to see me. She said "No; he is always saying 'there is no hope,' and I cannot bear to have him die in that condition." I went into the room. He did not speak to me, but I went around to the foot of the bed and looked in his face and ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody

... things more wholesome for us poor mortals than hearty, unrestrained, unrestrainable, innocent laughter, had decided between them that, in order to put his case beyond all human or superhuman possibility of relapse, Sprigg should have some hearty laughter. Accordingly, they had sent one of their dog-robed, dog-natured elves to tinker and conjure with Pow-wow's tail, and through that sensitive member, as a medium, telegraph, as it were, such fancies to his sober old noddle as should, for a brief space, set ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady

... a year after her first husband's death; that Walter had fallen at Shiloh, that Arthur was killed in the battle of Luka, and that his mother, hearing of it just as she was convalescing from an attack of fever, had a relapse and died a ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley

... frame after the practitioners of the healing art have done with it and taken their leave. So thriving had this son-in-law of hers been in his business, that his wife drove about in her own carriage, drawn by a pair of jet-black horses of most dignified demeanor, whose only fault was a tendency to relapse at once into a walk after every application of a stimulus that quickened their pace to a trot; which application always caused them to look round upon the driver with a surprised and offended air, as if he had been guilty of a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... they—suspended at exactly their point between barbarism and civilisation. In course of time, doubtless, 'the ring'will die out. For either we shall become so civilised that we shall not rejoice in the sight of painful violence, or we shall relapse into barbarism and go into the mauling business on our own account. Our present stage—the stage of our transition—is ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... Millin, 2nd Coldstream Guards, who is 6 ft. 8-1/2 in." This, again, is the sort of paragraph which might have been censored with advantage, for we are quite sure that, if the PRINCE OF WALES'S giant sees it, it will cause a relapse. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various

... century, the progress in husbandry, without being at any one period very brilliant, was decided and constant. If there was anything like a relapse, and neglect of good culture, it was most marked shortly after the Restoration. The country-gentlemen, who had entertained a wholesome horror of Cromwell and his troopers, had, during the Commonwealth, devoted themselves to a quiet life upon their estates, repairing the damages which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... that he may be made alive. Even when the natural heart is roused and wakened by some foreign agency; some startling providence of God or some Divine operation in the conscience, how soon, if left to its own motion and tendency, does it relapse into its old slumber and sleep. The needle has received a shock, but after a slight trembling and vibration it soon settles again upon its axis, ever and steady to the north. It is plain, that the sinner's worldly mind ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... have cooled off enough, you may remember that I haven't yet disapproved your action. I don't disapprove. Give him anything you like where a possible relapse on his part won't involve the lives of other people. Is that what you want ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... auctioneer stated on what account they were there, to be sold, asked for bidders, winked his eye and said "no bidders." Our goods were sent back to our store. This law, in the words of a distinguished Statesman, was then allowed to relapse "into innocuous desuetude." No further attempts to enforce it upon colored ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... respectful letter, somewhat injured in tone, to the minister, saying he was much concerned to hear that he was not so well, and expressing his apprehension that he himself had been in some measure the cause of his relapse. He begged leave to assure him that he perfectly recognized the absolute superiority of Mr. Drake's claim to the child. He had never dreamed of asserting any right in her, except so much as was implied in the acknowledgment of his duty to restore the expense which his wrong and neglect had caused ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... and fretful. Five o'clock came, and yet no tidings of the girl. Ann's anxiety had now become distraction; for her brother's absence threw upon her shoulders the responsibility of the girl's disappearance, and the care of Floyd should he suffer a relapse. Her perturbation became so unbearable that she put her pride from her, and sought the aid ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White

... During this relapse into virtue Baron Hulot had been three times to the Rue du Dauphin, and had certainly not been the man of seventy. His rekindled passion made him young again, and he would have sacrificed his honor to Valerie, his family, his all, without a regret. But Valerie, now completely ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... had a relapse. It was no wonder. In spite of the Franklin stoves, her frail body must have been chilled to the bone for many months. Relief settled on several faces, when we heard—I am afraid it may have settled on mine. She had been more dead than alive, I judged, for a year; ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... uneasy heave of waters in among the kelpy rocks, flowing from no swell or furrow on the misty glass of sea, but like a pulse of discontent, and longing to go further; after the turn, the little rattle of invaded pebbles, the lithe relapse and soft, shampooing lambency of oarweed, then the lavered boulders pouring gritty runnels back again, and every basined outlet wavering toward another inlet; these, and every phase of each innumerable to-and-fro, made or met their impress in her ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore

... cast awaye some of it in vaine pursuites, chusing always rather to doe some thinge worth nothing then nothing att all. How farre I had proceeded in this, I ment now to have given you an account, but that the reporte of the unfortunate Erles relapse into calamitie makes me beleeve that you are enough troubled both with his misfortunes and my ladys troubles; and so a discourse of this nature would be unseasonable. [And concludes the letter with] But at this time this much ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens

... relapse into her teasing, but she did not yield. "Oh, father's all right—from your point of view. He's been ridiculous from the first; perhaps that's the reason he doesn't feel obliged to expatiate and expand a great deal ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... she leaned forward, watching him with breathless interest till the song ceased, and, with the old impatient gesture, David seemed to relapse ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... Stevens was eleven years old, he was taken very sick with pneumonia. During convalescence, he suffered an unexpected relapse, and his mother and the doctor worked hard ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... upon Dick, who had a bad relapse, and for some days caused his nurses grave anxiety. There was sickness in the town and the doctor could spare but little time to him, the nursing sister was occupied, and Dick was, for the most part, left to Clare and Lucille. They did what they could; the girl with pitiful tenderness, ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss

... is to pray for their reformation; and this he does in terms not unlike those in which we can imagine a Portuguese priest interceding with Heaven for a Jew, delivered over to the secular arm after a relapse. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Northern friends [Lochgarry and the clans] to keep their posts. I can answer for such as regards me, and I beg least the Company [Jacobites] make banckrout that you proteck my parte of them. I am now pretty well recover'd of my leate illness, tho' I have been very much afraid of a relapse, having catch'd a violent cold at the Masquerad ball of Lundi Gras, beeing over perswaded to accompany our worthy friend Mr. Murray to that diversion, where I was greatly astonish'd to find Mr. STRANGE [Prince Charles] whom I imagin'd to be ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang

... will not be surprised that I have been slow in answering when I tell you that my poor boy[36] became frightfully worse after you were at Down; and that during our journey to Bournemouth he had a slight relapse here and my wife took the scarlet fever rather severely. She is over the crisis. I have had a horrid time of it, and God only knows when we shall be all safe at home again—half my family ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... recovered, but the shock of Roy's announcement threw him back into a relapse. And yet he insisted on ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.

... to know in some mysterious manner that one was converted; the operation was permanent in its character; it could not be repeated; once thoroughly effected the converted person neither wished to sin nor really did sin. If anyone supposed to have been converted did relapse into evil ways, then he never had really been converted, but only seemed to have been. I have heard this circular form of argument urged most strongly by those who were (by constitution apparently) absolutely unable to see the illogical position which ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

... creatures break forth, shine, and sink back, like meteor flashes in a cloud. The generations of sentient being, like the annual growths of vegetation, by spontaneity of dynamic development, spring from dead matter, flourish through their destined cycle, and relapse into dead matter. The bosom of nature is, therefore, at once the wondrous womb and the magnificent mausoleum of man. Fate, like an iron skeleton seated at the summit of the world on a throne of fresh growing grass and mouldering skulls, presides over all, and annihilation is the universal ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... the central mass of diseased feeling, rapidly sink back into it and 'lose the name of action.' We see them doing so; and sometimes the process is quite simple, no analytical reflection on the deed intervening between the outburst of passion and the relapse into melancholy.[48] But this melancholy is perfectly consistent also with that incessant dissection of the task assigned, of which the Schlegel-Coleridge theory makes so much. For those endless questions (as we may imagine them), 'Was I deceived by the Ghost? ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... feelings, and discountenancing formalism in connection with it. Though I was never an Episcopalian in my preferences, and though the appointment of godfathers and godmothers may, like every good thing, relapse into mere form, I honor it for its excellent and pious design of surrounding the parents and the children with admonition and help. For there are sponsors, I am happy to know, who are not mere formalists, but who make it a rule to have an interview with their godchildren on or near ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams

... we left Mrs Forster in the lunatic asylum, slowly recovering from an attack of the brain-fever, which had been attended with a relapse. For many weeks she continued in a state of great feebleness, and during that time, when, in the garden, in company with other denizens of this melancholy abode (wishing to be usefully employed), she greatly assisted the keepers in restraining ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... spend in works of penitence. Now then listen and tremble with great fear! Elected by the assembled Chapter to carry it out, instruct, and complete the process commenced against a demon, who had appeared in a feminine shape, in the person of a relapse nun—an abominable person, denying God, and bearing the name of Zulma in the infidel country whence she comes; the which devil is known in the diocese under that of Clare, of the convent of Mount Carmel, and has much afflicted the town by ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... a most strange matter, that whenever I come to think and to write of the events of that period, and of my sickness at Kingswell, my thoughts relapse into infirmity, and all which then passed move, as it were, before me in mist, disorderly and fantastical. But wherefore need I thus descant of my own estate, when so many things of the highest concernment are pressing upon my tablets for registration? Be it ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... ceased, she became calm, and presently she fell asleep. But on awaking she was attacked as before, and try as he might the physician could not effect a permanent cure. To all his "passes" she responded with gratifying promptitude, only to suffer a relapse the moment she was released from ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce

... reasoning, and such my sentiments, previous to any relapse into sin or folly. I knew its heinousness. I transgressed and repented; habit was all-powerful in me; and the only firm support I could have looked to for assistance was, unfortunately, very superficially attended to. Religion, for any good purposes, was scarcely in my thoughts. My ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... not to go. A relapse is a serious matter," he remarked, panting and puffing between his sentences. "However, we must try what can ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston

... weeks, during which time the cloud of ill-humour scarcely once ruffled her brow. At the end of that time Mrs. Benson wished to return home, and Fanny begged to accompany her, fearing that if deprived of her aunt's counsel before her good habits were entirely fixed, she might relapse into ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley

... constitution is thus probably especially favorable to that disease but I do not estimate less the fact that I was perfectly cured the second time, in spite of the fact that I caught it a few years later a third time. To be sure, such experiences of relapse cannot be spared any psychotherapist. I may ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg

... sigh Cheniston closed his eyes, and appeared to relapse once more into a kind of stupor; and when, in obedience to a silent gesture, Iris withdrew to the window, Anstice joined ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... have my strength she won't," said J. B. Wheeler firmly. "She's given up painting since I taught her golf, thank goodness, and my best efforts shall be employed in seeing that she doesn't have a relapse." ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse

... peculiarity renders their voices scarcely audible, except at a short distance, and when many of them are talking, forms a strange confusion of sounds. The common conversation we overheard, consisted of low guttural sounds occasionally broken by a loud word or two, after which it would relapse and scarcely be distinguished. They seem kind and friendly and willingly shared with us berries and roots, which formed their only stock of provisions. Their only wealth is their horses, which are very fine, and so numerous that this party had with ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... was too busy with Felipe to pay attention or to give thought to Juan. Felipe's fainting had been the symptom and beginning of a fierce relapse of the fever, and he was lying in his bed, tossing and raving in delirium, ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... contributed to this stage was 'A Trip to Scarborough,' Which was only a species of 'family edition of Vanbrugh's play, 'The Relapse;' but in 1777 he reached the acme of his fame, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... trust.—Without confidence in one another, we could not live in social relations a single day. We should relapse into barbarism, strife, and mutual destruction. Since society rests on confidence, and confidence rests on tried veracity, the rewards of veracity are all those mutual advantages which a civilized society ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde

... found Charny a changed man, declaring himself perfectly strong, asking the doctor how he should be moved, and when he should be quite well, with so much energy that the doctor feared it was too much, and that he must relapse after it. He was, however, so reasonable as to feel the necessity of explaining this sudden change. "The queen has done me more good by making me ashamed of myself," he said, "than you, dear doctor, with all your science. She has vanquished me by an ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere

... the bush and the habits of savage life is fixed and perpetuated by the immense boundary placed by circumstances between themselves and the whites, which no exertions on their part can overpass, and they consequently relapse into a ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey

... touched, much less forgot, Nose, ears, and eyes, seem present on the spot. Now the distemper, spite of draught or pill, Victorious seemed, and now the doctor's skill; And now—alas for unforeseen mishaps!— They put on a damp nightcap and relapse; They thought they must have died, they were so bad; Their peevish ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... he is getting a relapse of that front-row habit. There's no use in talking, Laura, it's a great thing for a girl's credit when a man like Jerry can take two or three friends to the theatre, and when you make your entrance delicately point to you with his ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter

... wisdom is to waste no time over them, but to eject them at once. Love, too, requires that the two persons who love one another shall constantly present to one another what is best in them, and to accomplish this, deliberate purpose, and even struggle, are necessary. If through relapse into idleness we do not attempt to bring soul and heart into active communion day by day, what wonder if this once exalted ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford

... reasonably have presumed, that, even if the peers should so far resume courage as to make an application against his dispensing power, the same steady answer which he had given to the commons would make them relapse into the same timidity; and he might by that means have obtained a considerable supply, without making any concessions in return. But so imperious was his temper, so lofty the idea which he had entertained of his own authority, and so violent the schemes suggested by his own bigotry ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume

... she said. "Isn't that fine! Now I think you are entitled to a nice nap." And when Tom arrived, post-haste upon receipt of Nancy's note, he was met at the front door with the news of her relapse. ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis

... patience, all his toil, the obstacle was yet serious, might never be entirely overcome. Nervous hurry, rapidity of action, vehemence of feeling, brought back, might at unguarded moments always bring back, the gasping breath, the emptied lungs, the struggling utterance. But the relapse, rarer and rarer now with each trial, would be at last scarce a drawback. "Nay," quoth Waife, "instead of a drawback, become but an orator, and you will convert a defect ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... said we weren't thinkin' of offerin' charity and if it would please her to have us run an expense book we'd do it, of course. She asked what the doctor said about her condition. I told her he said she must keep absolutely quiet and not fret about anything or she'd have an awful relapse. That was pretty strong but I meant it that way. Answerin' questions that haven't got any answer to 'em is too much of a strain for ME. You try it some time yourself ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln

... faults afterward. Howbeit, even in the giving of his comfort, he may find ways enough in such wise to temper his words that the men may take occasion of good courage and yet far from occasion of new relapse into his former sin. For the great part of his counsel shall be to encourage him to amendment, and that is, perdy, far ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More

... speech, but one that brought an infinite joy to both his hearers. For it showed that George Mackintosh was cured beyond possibility of relapse. ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse

... gone to her and who wrote to anxious friends: "She made the journey without even a rise of temperature, found the house all bright with sunshine and flowers and was the happiest person in the world to be at home again." She seemed to recover entirely but on June 30 had a sudden relapse and died at 7 o'clock on the evening of ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... cakes for the convalescent patients, her gifts being, as usual, gratefully received. A month later she paid another visit, and inquired after certain patients in whom she was particularly interested: since the last time she came they had suffered a relapse—the malady had changed in nature, and had shown graver symptoms. It was a kind of deadly fatigue, killing them by a slows strange decay. She asked questions of the doctors but could learn nothing: this malady was unknown to them, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... listener. With lack-luster eyes he remained motionless like a traveler in the desert who gazes upon a mirage. "You have described her well. The features of Diana! It was at a revival of Vanbrugh's 'Relapse' I first met her, dressed after the fashion of the Countess of Ossory. Who would not worship ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... of Saint-Privat caused my feverishness to return. My sleep was full of nightmares, and I had a relapse. The news was worse every day. After Saint-Privat came Gravelotte, where 36,000 men, French and German, were cut down in a few hours. Then came the sublime but powerless efforts of MacMahon, who was driven back as far ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... faith. Elipandus, who was not a subject of Charlemagne, could not be compelled to appear before the councils held in his dominions, Toledo being at that time subject to the Moors. Felix, after his relapse, returned to the faith with his principal followers in the council of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 797.[6] From that time he concealed his heresy, but continued in secret to defend it, and at his {286} death, in 815, left a written profession ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... tired when she went at last to bed, but the dreamless sleep which came upon her, and which lasted until a late hour in the morning, did her good, and probably saved her from a relapse, which might have proved fatal. Still she was very pale and weak when she went down stairs about nine o'clock and found Tom waiting for her. He had been up since sunrise, strolling through the park, with a ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... more sitz-bath in the evening and a pack after it, in which he stayed asleep almost all the time, nearly four hours, upon which the rash stood out finely and never disappeared until desquamation set in. I managed to keep him in bed after the relapse mentioned, till desquamation was over. I need scarcely say that I continued to pack him (twice a day) till after desquamation, when the packs were given once a day for about a week longer. On the seventeenth day (which was ...
— Hydriatic treatment of Scarlet Fever in its Different Forms • Charles Munde

... repeat that I am not holding up the sixteenth century as a model which the nineteenth might safely follow. The population has become too large, and employment too complicated and fluctuating, to admit of such control; while, in default of control, the relapse upon self-interest as the one motive principle is certain to ensue, and, when it ensues, is absolute in its operations. But as, even with us, these so-called ordinances of nature in time of war consent to be suspended, and duty to his country becomes with every good citizen ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley

... but if you ever want a friend,—one who is courteous to strangers and ill-mannered only to those he likes,—you can call for Charlie Keene. I'll drop in to see you, anyhow, from time to time, till you get stronger. I have taken a heap of trouble to keep you alive, and if you should relapse now and give us the slip, it would be a deal of good physic wasted; so ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... distraught, Hester might have marked and sighed over his sudden relapse into odiousness. But she had risen with a white face; for scream folllowed scream overhead, and the sound ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... them. No other person ever sees her except the physician and now and then a nerve-specialist from New York. She saw there was something the matter that morning, but she got no facts out of me. But that is nothing—she hasn't had anything but lies for 8 months. A fact would give her a relapse. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... in them: they had baptized, twenty-seven thousand, four hundred converts: and such had been their care, in admitting them to that sacred rite, and such their assiduity, in cultivating a spirit of religion, among them, that scarcely an individual, had been known, to relapse into paganism. All travellers, who have visited their settlements, speak with wonder, and praise, of the humility, the patient endurance of privation, and hardship, the affectionate zeal, the mild, and persevering exertions of the missionaries; and the innocence, industry and piety of ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler

... diadems, and stars, and garters, and titles of nobility. He has been taught to burn with restless emulation at the names of great heroes and conquerors,—of Cromwell, and Csar, and Bonaparte. His enchanted island is destined soon to relapse into a wilderness; and, in a few months, we find the tender and beautiful partner of his bosom, whom he lately "permitted not the winds" of summer "to visit too roughly,"—we find her shivering, at midnight, on the wintry banks of the Ohio, and mingling her ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... inducing his mother to have him released "on probation." Many fair promises were made. For months he was to have an attendant as a companion. His mother, believing him well, consented, after securing his promise in writing to return for treatment should there be a relapse into his old habits. As evidencing the decay of his character, these fair promises were made without the slightest intention that they would be kept. The first important city reached after crossing the state-line saw his demeanor change. ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll

... ladder. "And, besides, my father is snappy to-day. He scolded me last night for neglecting my guests. Just as if I were called on to sit all day and listen to Nan Burgess appraise her lovers or to sing a song every time Wally Dalton has his relapse of lovesickness. He has come away to forget her, you know." She chuckled, uttering her funny little gurgle of a laugh which stirred in him, always, a desire to smother it ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... what studied adornment and the most minute attention to her toilet mean when these are undertaken for love's sake and not for vanity. Even now this making ready helped her to bear the long time of waiting. A relapse of intense agitation set in when she was dressed; she passed through nervous paroxysms brought on by the dreadful power which sets the whole mind in ferment. Perhaps that power is only a disease, though the pain of it is sweet. The Duchess was dressed and waiting ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... happy slumber Ferdinand continued to improve. Each day the bulletin was more favourable, until his progress, though slow, was declared certain, and even relapse was no longer apprehended. But his physician would not allow him to see any one of his family. It was at night, and during his slumbers, that Lady Armine stole into his room to gaze upon her beloved child; and, ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli



Words linked to "Relapse" :   backsliding, lapse, retrogress, failure, reversion, change state, reverting, turn, return, relapsing, lapsing, revert, get well, retrovert, recidivate, get worse, regress, turn back



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