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Heaviness

noun
1.
The property of being comparatively great in weight.  Synonym: weightiness.
2.
Persisting sadness.
3.
An oppressive quality that is laborious and solemn and lacks grace or fluency.  Synonym: ponderousness.  "His lectures tend to heaviness and repetition"
4.
Used of a line or mark.  Synonym: thickness.
5.
Unwelcome burdensome difficulty.  Synonyms: burdensomeness, onerousness, oppressiveness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Heaviness" Quotes from Famous Books



... until full atonement has been won, that are modern and Christian in essence and entirely foreign to the pagan story. On this point Tegnr: "Another peculiarity common to the people of the North is a certain disposition for melancholy and heaviness of spirit common to all deeper characters. Like some elegiac key-note, its sound pervades all our old national melodies, and generally whatever is expressive in our annals, for it is found in the depths of the ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner

... a concrete thing that possesses the attribute heaviness; and heavy is an abstract term that applies to heavy things, but does not state what they are. The idea or thought of heaviness is common to both words, and therefore it is a case of In., and as one term is concrete and the other abstract, it is a case of ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)

... burning with rage, he exclaimed in an excited voice, "Why have my orders not been executed?" With respectful firmness Admiral Bruix replied, "Sire, a terrible storm is brewing. Your Majesty may convince yourself of it; would you without need expose the lives of so many men?" The heaviness of the atmosphere and the sound of thunder in the distance more than justified the fears of the Admiral. "Sir, said the Emperor, getting more and more irritated, "I have given the orders once more; why have they not been executed? The consequences concern me alone. Obey!" 'Sire, I ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... class, expressing itself in an attempt to prove that, having established themselves securely as light comedians, they can, like the lady reciter, turn right around and be serious. The one thing which the London public felt that it was safe from in a Portwood play was heaviness, and "Tried by Fire" was grievously heavy. It was a poetic drama, and the audience, though loth to do anybody an injustice, was beginning to suspect that it was written in ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... perfect in form, and modelled by a sculptor at Rome on account of their symmetry. The character of his mind was borne out by his features, the most salient expression of which was the frankness of an open heart. The firm decisive mouth, and massive thoughtful forehead were redeemed from heaviness by the humorous light that twinkled in his deep-set grey eyes, which, bright as diamonds, positively flashed out their fun, or their reciprocation of the fun of others. As a young man, dark crisp curls covered his ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... the wise man puts restraint upon himself, so far as not to approve of what is false as if it were true. And he does so often at other times, if there is by chance any heaviness or slowness in his senses, or if those things which are seen by him are rather obscure, or if he is prevented from thoroughly examining them by the shortness of the time. Although the whole of this fact, that the wise man sometimes suspends ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... ten times a day, because private houses are comparatively clean places. So her complexion had been getting back, unnoticed, a good deal of its original country rose-and-cream, with a little gold glow underneath. And the tired heaviness was gone from her eyelids, because she had scarcely used her eyes since she had married Allan—there had been too much else to do! The little frown-lines between the brows had gone, too, with the need of reading-glasses and work under electricity. She was more rounded, and her look ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer

... give a certain spice to the matter like raisins in a plum pudding. A solid page of printed matter is distasteful to the reader; it taxes the eye and tends towards the weariness of monotony, but when it is broken up into sections it loses much of its heaviness and the consequent lightness gives it charm, as it were, to capture ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin

... the atmosphere, and the day gave promise of cloudless splendor. Rowland watched the early sun-shafts slowly reaching higher, and remembered that if Roderick did not come back to breakfast, there were two things to be taken into account. One was the heaviness of the soil on the mountain-sides, saturated with the rain; this would make him walk slowly: the other was the fact that, speaking without irony, he was not remarkable for throwing himself into the sentiments of others. Breakfast, at the inn, was ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... yet familiar experience how all things present their opposites. Do you enjoy the winter? Your neighbour loathes or fears it. Do you enjoy life? To your friend it is a sorrow and a heaviness. Even to you it is not always alike. Though the world itself is the same to-day as it was yesterday and will be to-morrow—the same snowy fields and polar hills, the same wintry stars, the same infinitely alluring variety of people—yet to-day you, that ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson

... out in new direction now; there is too much despondency and heaviness of spirit rampant; anyhow, extremely difficult task, for the conditions all around are ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.

... the shadowy plantation in silence. The heaviness in the evening air oppressed us both, and when we reached the boat-house we were glad to sit ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... Of Don Francisco's coming to me; Or else why Nam'd he him, for well he knows He never us'd to make a Visit here: Well, if he does, I cannot help it now. The time draws nigh, That I must meet Francisco! Oh, that word Gives heaviness a new unto my Soul, And makes my thoughts run backwards, The Accidents oth' day seems Ominous To all the House, but most of all to me, My guilty Breast feels most of misery. This time will quickly over, then I shall See what they tend to, or not see at all. "There's comfort yet, that miseries at ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne

... I gazed round it seemed to gather and fall on me here. The very stillness was appalling, for there was now a good deal of wind blowing from the sea, as I could tell from the rustling and cracking of the fir boughs all about, and the sound of the sea on the sand; but here there was an oppressive heaviness, as if the place was still brooding over the ancient horror it had seen. And this was succeeded in my mind by a strange, overpowering, fascinating wonder and speculation as to what dismal deeds of darkness could have been ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson

... sometimes to give the ensemble of head and face the outline of a cone truncated and rounded off above. In the females, however, the cheek is so extremely plump as perfectly to pad these broad jaws, giving, instead of the prize-fighter physiognomy, an aspect of smooth, gentle heaviness. Even without this fleshy cheek, which is not noticeable, and is sometimes noticeably wanting, in the men, there is the same look of heavy, well-tempered lameness. The girls have a rich blood color in their swarthy cheeks, and some of them are really pretty, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... like the coarseness of those stockings as I drew them on. The shoes, too, were of the clumsiest make; they were large for me, which perhaps accounted for their extreme heaviness. I was a bit of a dandy; always priding myself upon my spick and span get-up. No doubt this made me critical, but certainly the tweed of which the clothes were made was the roughest thing of its kind I had ever handled. I got into them, however, without any comment, only remarking, when ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... Heaviness and gloom sat upon the velvet seat behind him. The white, wild night outside was playful and waggish compared with the black dejection behind the ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold

... A nameless heaviness fell upon Lynde's heart. He longed to ask other questions, but he did not know how to shape them. ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... to think of it. Well, it seemed as if the world was newly created yesterday morning, and I beheld its birth; for I had risen before the sun was over the hill, and had gone forth to fish. How instantaneously did all dreariness and heaviness of the earth's spirit flit away before one smile of the beneficent sun! This proves that all gloom is but a dream and a shadow, and that cheerfulness is the real truth. It requires many clouds, long brooding over ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various

... made thee a knight?" she asked gaily. She slipped from his knee and courtesied before him, then seeing the heaviness of his look, she added: "Booh, Sir John Enderby, why dost thou look so grave? Is knighthood so big a burden thou ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... of the sunrise of happiness which dawned upon him with the opening of a way by which he decently could get rid of Dorothy, he was assailed by certain qualms of conscience as to the unfairness of thus casting upon his old friend the burden that he had found so hard to bear. For the heaviness of Mr. Port's mental processes prevented him from perceiving, as a shrewder person would have perceived, that Dorothy was not the sort of young woman to engage in an enterprise of this nature without first fully counting the cost. Had he been keener of penetration ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier

... himself with other people's affairs, other people's happiness, and old age would come on imperceptibly, and life would reach its end—and nothing more was wanted. He did not care, he wished for nothing, and could reason about it coolly, but there was a sort of heaviness in his face especially under his eyes, his forehead felt drawn tight like elastic—and tears were almost starting into his eyes. Feeling weak all over, he lay down on his bed, and in five minutes was ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... you without a pang, to love you as his sister. Arthur, I give to you my darling. I release her from her vow, and may the kind Father bless you both, giving you every possible good. Let no sorrow for me mingle with your joy. I shall have grief and heaviness for a time, but I am strong to bear it. Morning will break at last. Let the wedding night be kept the same as is appointed, there need be no change, save in the bridegroom, and of that the world will all approve. And, Edith, if during the coming week I am not much with you, if I stay ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... brightly confronting all Orion, that from blazing helm to flaming dog at heel filled high the glimmering square, he could not lift or stir his cold and leaden limbs. He rose at last and threw off the burden of his bedclothes, and rested awhile, as if freed from the heaviness of an unrememberable nightmare. But so clear was his mind and so extraordinarily refreshed he seemed in body that sleep for many hours would not return again. And he spent almost all the remainder of the lagging darkness ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... dispersed grinders in the vast mill, among whom there were doubtless plunderers, forgers, and trust-betrayers of many sorts, whom the light of any day that dawned might reveal; he could have fancied that these things, in hiding, imparted a heaviness to the air. The shadow thickening and thickening as he approached its source, he thought of the secrets of the lonely church-vaults, where the people who had hoarded and secreted in iron coffers were in their turn similarly hoarded, not yet at rest from doing harm; and then of the secrets ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... was very fond of him. He was brought down by Archie yesterday in our lines. Burnt to death. Dead when they reached him. Yesterday night at mess we were all quite gay. Only one man showed that his heart was as heavy as lead. And it seemed bad form. Heaviness of heart is bad form. No gentleman should have a heavy heart. A sign ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson

... human bulldog, his knotted hands protruding from his rusty cassock, his great underhung jaw turning slowly from right to left as he menaced the crowd with his sinister gaze. Already a close observer might have marked upon his face a heaviness and looseness of feature, the first signs of that physical decay which in a very few years was to stretch him, a helpless wreck, too weak to utter his own name, upon the causeway of the London streets. At ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the last runnings of the romantic school, as we see them in that strange contemporary Parisian literature, with which we of the less clever countries are so often driven to rinse out our minds after they have become clogged with the dulness and heaviness of our native pursuits. The romantic school began with the worship of subjective sensibility and the revolt against legality of which Rousseau was the first great prophet: and through various fluxes and refluxes, right wings and left wings, it stands to-day with two men of genius, ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... overseer over the niggers; it would not do for all to be equal there. So it is in the univarse, it is ruled by one Superior Power; if all the angels had a voice in the government I guess—" Here I fell fast asleep; I had been nodding for some time, not in approbation of what he said, but in heaviness of slumber, for I had never before heard him so prosy since I first overtook him on the Colchester road. I hate politics as a subject of conversation; it is too wide a field for chit-chat, and too often ends in angry discussion. How long he continued this train of ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... heaviness in his burning breast, in all his limbs as if the blood in his veins had become ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... a sudden loud grunt, incomplete, cut short, and Johnnie's body swung away from the Swede and fell with sickening heaviness to the grass. The cowboy was barely in time to prevent the mad Swede from flinging himself upon his prone adversary. "No, you don't," said the cowboy, interposing ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane

... delicately-cooked viands, good wines, and pleasant company, all the cares and worries of the day give place to a delightful sense of absolute enjoyment? Dinner with the English people is generally a very dreary affair, and there is a heaviness about the whole thing which communicates itself to the guests, who eat and drink with a solemn persistence, as though they were occupied in fulfilling some sacred rite. But there are men—alas! few and far between—who possess the rare art of giving good dinners—good ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume

... strife against a fate that, in my heart, I feel must sooner or later be submitted to? Not long ago—it matters not how or when—I could have avoided it all, but would not. Now that I have sacrificed that chance, I will go to my doom with a smile upon my lips, whatever heaviness may be in my heart; for, having chosen my path, I will not shrink from following it. Thus much for myself. And as for you, who have tossed me one side to the first poor brute who has begged for me, and even at this instant have taunted me with the story of baffled hopes, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... view of the pious dead afford the pious living. We commend it now to you. What consolation to the bereaved parents is the assurance that all infants are saved! This gives them "beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness." Your infant has gone to heaven; for "of such is the kingdom of heaven." Zuinlius was perhaps the first who proclaimed salvation for all who died in infancy. He based this doctrine, so comforting to the afflicted parent, upon the atonement of Christ for ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... feeling of suffocation and heaviness. The electric fans had stopped, and the air was thick and stifling. Mentally cursing all Lorenzos and storage batteries, he heard his wife moving in the adjoining stateroom and pass out into the main cabin. Evidently heading for ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London

... which had pain in it, and she felt a real pang of compunction. He had gripped the back of a chair; his face had lost its heaviness. A dull flush coloured his cheeks. Noel had a feeling, as if she had been convicted of treachery. It was his silence, the curious look of an impersonal pain beyond power of words; she felt in him something ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... If it was a dark and noisome prison, if there were hunger and thirst and inaction to be endured, if we knew not how near to us might be a death of ignominy, yet the minister and I found the jewel in the head of the toad; for in that time of pain and heaviness we became ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... cast to the ground, as if in a deep study, his mind disturbed, and had more the look of gloom than I had ever noticed before. Well might the great chieftain look cast down with the weight of this great responsibility resting upon him. There seemed to be an air of heaviness hanging around all. The soldiers trod with a firm but seeming heavy tread. Not that there was any want of confidence or doubt of ultimate success, but each felt within himself that this was to be the decisive battle of the war, and as a consequence ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... is all very well to call it so; but in the first place, continual joy is impossible in the presence of the difficulties, and often sadnesses, that meet us on our life's path; and, in the second place, it is folly to tell us to pump up emotions, or to ignore the occasions for much heaviness and sorrow of heart.' True; but, still, it is possible to cultivate such a temper as makes life habitually joyful. We can choose the aspect under which we by preference and habitually regard our lives. All ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... and only with his Blanchefleur, for whose sake he heaved many a sigh and dropped many a tear against the day appointed for her coming; and when it came and brought her not, because his parents trusted that she was now forgotten, Fleur drooped and pined; unable, from heaviness of heart, to eat, drink, or sleep; and when his chamberlain saw that Fleur was sick he hasted back to tell King Fenis, who, calling for his Queen, took counsel with her on the matter. 'What remedy there be for Fleur I know not,' said the King, 'but this thing I know full well, ...
— Fleur and Blanchefleur • Mrs. Leighton

... Holborn. Intending to avail myself of some of the public conveyances homewards, I had attempted to shorten my passage to the great thoroughfares, and in doing so had thus gone astray. As it was past ten o'clock I was necessarily hurried, and yet the heat and heaviness of the night—it was July—prevented me freeing myself as rapidly as I should otherwise have done from the squalid and disagreeable avenues in which I had got entangled. I was just pausing to enquire my way of a slatternly-looking woman, who stood considerably ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... people a little, and smile sometimes. Move about quicker. Don't look when you come into a room as if you were consecrating it to tears. And, if I may venture to say so, drop something of the heaviness of ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... know all about the interpretation of Joseph's dance; but I defy anyone to say at sight and without a showman's assistance what precisely he was after. In the Third Figure (according to my guide-book) "there is in his leaps a feeling of heaviness, as if he were bound to earth, and he stumbles once or twice as one who has missed his goal;" but how was I to guess that this signified that his "searching after God" was still ineffectual? or that when in the Fourth Figure he "leaps with light ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various

... eternal weight of glory. Can you take in the grandeur of the idea,—a weight of glory? Contrast it with the burden of care under which you saw her crushed, and you will then be willing to exchange mourning for the oil of joy, and the spirit of heaviness for ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... felicity of composition before a rigid critic, I should not select the "Essay on Man;" for it contains more lines unsuccessfully laboured, more harshness of diction, and more thoughts imperfectly expressed, more levity without elegance, and more heaviness without strength, than will easily be found ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson

... Clementina, drawing the wet cloak about her shoulders and its hood over her head. She barely shivered under its wet heaviness. ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason

... performance with various instruments, chiefly the flute and the drum, and from time to time intoning the words of the drama. An adjunct of the no was the kyogen. The no was solemn and stately; the kyogen comic and sprightly. In fact, the latter was designed to relieve the heaviness of the former, just as on modern stages the drama is often relieved by the farce. It is a fact of sober history that the shogun Yoshimasa officially invested the no dance with the character of a ceremonious accomplishment ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... with waistcoat unbuttoned, and hat set far back from his forehead, waved a fan before his death-white, flabby face, and set down one foot after the other with the heaviness of a somnambulist. Another, as they passed him, was saying huskily to the friend at his side, "I can't stand this much longer. My hands tingle as if they had gone to sleep; my heart—" But still the multitude hurried on, passing, repassing, encountering, evading, vanishing into ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... dim light of the breaking dawn there's some One standing on the beach, a Stranger. He seems interested in them, and calls out familiarily, "Have you caught anything?" And you feel the heaviness of their hearts over something else in the shout "No." And the gentle voice calls out, with a certain tone of quiet authority in it, "Throw over on the right there, and you'll get some fish." And they cast the nets out again, feeling a strong impulse to obey this ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon

... then moved towards the door. The heaviness of his step smote upon Oswald's ear and caused him ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green

... bristled and swelled; but though, in some vital ways, human sense is less acute than brute sense, Andy did feel something of what the buckskin had felt, something of what had slain the dog, and his heart thumped with a strange heaviness. "What do you want to fight for? I'd beat ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... and full of enthusiasm as ever. He had just finished telling her all the wonderful things he could do and would do with his airplane, and the earnings he had hopefully mentioned ran into thousands of dollars, and left a nice marrying balance after her father's debt was paid. Yet Mary V felt a heaviness in her heart, and though she listened to all the wonderful things Johnny meant to do, she could not feel that they were ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... The old injury done to his sensitive spirit by the publication of his journal had been unwittingly opened anew. The old slowness had crept again into his gait since the evening before. Over night his countenance had resumed its wonted heaviness; and his slender shoulders bent ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... every form of the church's pride and sensuality, which in our day have literally sunk the service of God and His poor into the service of the clergyman and his rich; and changed what was once the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, into the spangling of Pantaloons in an ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... sugar-candy, or so much fine loaf sugar beaten small, and distill it through a Limbeck, keep it close, and be seldom without it; for it reviveth very much the stomach and heart, strengtheneth the back, procureth appetite and digestion, driveth away Melancholly, sadness and heaviness of ...
— A Queens Delight • Anonymous

... accompanying words, produced upon my mind a more solemn and depressing effect than I believed possible to have been caused by the course which I had determined to pursue; it struck upon my heart with an awe and heaviness which WILL accompany the accomplishment of an important and irrevocable act, even though no doubt or scruple remains to make it possible that the agent should wish ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... seeming struggle with her passion, endeared her more than ever to Miss Woodley, and she would even risk the displeasure of Dorriforth by her compliance with every new pursuit that might amuse the time, which else her friend passed in heaviness of heart. ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... head, the stars sparkled—to use the fiddler's picturesque expression—like "gilt nails driven into the ceiling of the firmament by an audacious upholsterer." No sound could be heard, save the crackling of the snow beneath Richard's feet, as he put them down with the heaviness of old age. The road he had to follow was very narrow; its complicated windings passed through a dense forest which the axe had not yet assailed, and whose depths were still as entirely unknown as at the period when the Redskins were the sole owners ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... and the circumstances, may be held as evidence of a very tender sentiment. He tells us himself in his history, on the occasion of a certain meeting at the Kirk of Field, that "he was in no small heaviness by reason of the late death of his dear bed-fellow, Marjorie Bowes." (4) Calvin, condoling with him, speaks of her as "a wife whose like is not to be found everywhere" (that is very like Calvin), and again, as "the most delightful of wives." We know ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... sprung. The parent, I can assure you, will shed no tears at the funeral. If Saturn presided at its formation instead of Apollo, it will want no lead to make it sink, but fall quickly to the bottom by its own natural heaviness, as I doubt not many other modern productions, ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth

... Lewes says, "the tone of this letter is cavalier." But I thank him for having allowed me to publish what is so characteristic of one phase of Miss Bronte's mind. Her health, too, was suffering at this time. "I don't know what heaviness of spirit has beset me of late" (she writes, in pathetic words, wrung out of the sadness of her heart), "made my faculties dull, made rest weariness, and occupation burdensome. Now and then, the silence of the house, the solitude of the room, has pressed on me with a weight I found it difficult ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... the maid of one's eye; At losing one's freedom, one's land or wealth; At losing one's fame, or alas! one's health; At losing leisure; at losing ease; At losing peace And all things that please The heaven under. At losing memory, beauty and grace, Heart-heaviness For a little space ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... his tiring overland journey back to France, and describes vividly the miserable, jolting journey through Livonia, where the carriage road was marked out by boughs thrown down in the midst of a sandy plain, and all around was depressing poverty and desolation. Berlin, peopled with Germans of "brutal heaviness," he detested, and he loathed the society dinner parties, with no conversation—nothing but tittle-tattle and Court gossip; and complained of the trains, which travelled he said no quicker than a French diligence. Nevertheless, ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... heaviness of tobacco and bad roads, the producer has encountered great difficulties in getting his crop to market. The hauling of a few hogsheads fifty or sixty miles, or even forty, is no light job, even over good roads. Hence, tobacco has not been as extensively cultivated as it would have been ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... point, or 40 degrees, than above it. During the predisposition to sthenic disease, which is produced by the longer continued, or increased action of these powers, no symptoms of disease appear; but shortly after, disturbed sleep, depressed spirits, languor, a sense of fulness, heaviness, particularly after eating, show that this sthenic state cannot be further increased with impunity. The least increase of sthenic diathesis now brings on a disturbance of the functions, or actual disease; the commencement of which is ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett

... Croxton's brigade, which had been held in reserve on the Hillsboro' pike, as soon as the success of these dispositions had become apparent was ordered to march rapidly across the country to the Granny White pike, and beyond the right flank of Hammond's brigade; but owing to the lateness of the hour and heaviness of the road over which he was compelled to move, he secured but few prisoners." This report also seems to be silent in respect to ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield

... light stole into the room at last, Eustace began to feel drowsy. Almost against his will he lay back on his pillow and fell asleep. He had determined to watch the night through, but a great heaviness overpowered him, and he lay like ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield

... her bed and listened for the strokes of the clock. She felt nothing but an immense fatigue, an appalling heaviness. Her back and arms were loaded with weights that held her body down on ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair

... grief shall be turned to joy, and the sinking heart shall be lifted to heights untried. As now the sun steadily rises in his unerring course, following the pale footsteps of the fleet dawning, and fulfilling her half spoken promises a million-fold in his goodness; as now the all-muffling heaviness of the sad dark night is forgotten in the gladness of day—so shall your brief time of darkness and dull distress perish and vanish swiftly at the first glimpses of the heavenly day on which follows no creeping night nor shadow of earthly care. I come not to bid you forget; I come to ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford

... as if for the first time she had recognized the value of Bompard in their small society. Bompard with his age and heaviness and patent honesty, despite his stupidity, was a ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... This feast ended in heaviness, not as Balshazzar's with a handwriting on the wall, nor like that of Job's children with a wind from the wilderness, but by the folly of the king, with an unhappy falling out between the queen and himself, which ended the feast abruptly and sent the guests away ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... my sensations: they would be dull in the narration. I had intended to lodge in the market-place, near our old house. As soon as I entered, I perceived that the schoolroom, where our childhood had been taught by that good old woman, was converted into a shop. I called to mind the sorrow, the heaviness, the tears, and oppression of heart, which I experienced in that confinement. Every step produced some particular impression. A pilgrim in the Holy Land does not meet so many spots pregnant with tender recollections, and his soul is hardly ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe

... openhearted and generous antagonist by the other. He was elected Secretary of State, and served the people with fidelity and efficiency. He was a man of a powerful physical frame, deep-chested, ruddy-, faced, blue-eyed, with just enough shagginess of eyebrows and heaviness of the under-jaw to indicate the indomitable pluck which was so strong an element in his character. He was a true Douglass, as brave and true as any of the name that ever wore the kilt or swung a claymore ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald

... what seemed to her a long time, watching all of them; her heart throbbing with a dread heaviness that threatened to choke her; her body in ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer

... its distinction and its value, but which seems to-day banal and outlandish, having lost little by little its large frame of gardens, cramped now between the walls of the tall buildings, Philippe Dechartre's little house, by the roughness of its stones, by the naive heaviness of its windows, by the simplicity of the roof, which the architect's widow had caused to be covered with little expense, by all the lucky accidents of the unfinished and unpremeditated, corrected the lack of grace of its new ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... able to go any further, I laid me down under the shelter of a tree where I first miss'd the coat: Then grief restor'd my strength, and up I got again to try if I could recover the treasure; I ran hither and thither and every where but to no purpose; but spent and wasted between toil and heaviness, I got into a thicket, where having tarried four hours, and half dead with the horror of the place, I sought the way out; but going forward, a country-man came in sight of me: Then I had need of all ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter

... King Arthur's court were sadder nuptials than these. No feasting, no joy, but only gloom and heaviness, which, spreading itself from the wretched Sir Ulric, infected all the court. Many a fair dame pitied him sorely, and not a knight but thanked his gracious stars that he did not stand ...
— The Children's Portion • Various

... clung capriciously with the silent and apparently causeless obstinacy to which very old persons are subject, and which makes them resemble children. In order to sit down beside the young lady he needed a folding-chair. His slightest movements were marked by the inert heaviness, the stupid hesitancy, which characterize the movements of a paralytic. He sat slowly down upon his chair with great caution, mumbling some unintelligible words. His cracked voice resembled the noise made by a stone falling into a well. The young woman nervously pressed my hand, as if ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac

... beneath their packs on the trail. In like manner they loaded the animals they drove before them, and here was exhibited man's awful inhumanity to the dumb brutes. Pack horses, mules and dogs, loaded to top-heaviness and cinched until one could almost hear their bones crack, climbed, straining, struggling, panting, wild eyed and steaming from over-exertion under the lash of angry and profane drivers, until they sank to their haunches, helpless and exhausted, in some quagmire. ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan

... the pale queen seated in hall beside King Mark, and remembering the heaviness of Sir Tristram, some guessed how full of woe was their parting, but for love and sorrow of Sir Tristram they said naught of ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert

... that will hold 1,500. It was also intended for the Printing Press of the University, but was only used in that way for a short time, as in 1713 Sir John Vanbrugh put up the Clarendon Building, to house this department of University activity. The "heaviness" of Vanbrugh's buildings was a jest even in his own time; someone wrote ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells

... smiled. "I don't know. It seems to me a very silly way to be." The song had gone out of her voice, and a heaviness, an impalpable fear, had descended again on her heart. Why did one's path lead always through mazes of uncertainty and disappointment instead of straight onward toward one's desire? A passionate impulse seized her to fight for what she wanted, to grasp the fragile opportunity before ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... made every day good, and all days be good: but St. Paul calleth it the "evil day," because of the misfortune that chanceth or cometh in that day. As we have a common saying, "I have had an evil day, and an evil night," because of the heaviness or evil that hath happened; so saith Paul, "that ye may resist in the evil day:" that is, when your great adversary hath compassed you round about with his potestates and rulers, and with his artillery, so that you be almost overcome, then, if ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer

... are heavy. A group in some respects should resemble a tree. The heavier part of the foliage (the cup, as the landscape-painter calls it) is always near the middle; the outside branches, which are relieved by the sky, are light and airy. An inattention to this rule has given a heaviness to the group before us. The two bailiffs, the woman, and the chairman, are all huddled together in that part of the group which should have been the lightest; while the middle part, where the hand holds the door, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... had passed on ahead of her she sprang forward in a run. She ran like a schoolboy, like a deer, like a man from whose limbs heavy shackles have been struck off. She felt so suddenly lightened of a great heaviness that she could have clapped her hands over her head and bounded into the air. She was, after all, but eighteen years old, and three years before had ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... of antiquity was not quite lost. In Germany and Switzerland, garments had generally a heavy and massive appearance; in Holland, still more so (Figs. 436 and 437). England uniformly studied a kind of instinctive elegance and propriety. It is a curious fact that Spain invariably partook of the heaviness peculiar to Germany, either because the Gothic element still prevailed there, or that the Walloon fashions had a special attraction to her owing to associations and general usage. France was then, as it is now, fickle and capricious, fantastical and wavering, but not from ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... above Nello's shop, his right elbow resting on the red drapery hanging from the window-sill, and his head supported in a backward position by the right-hand, which pressed the curls against his ear. His face wore that bland liveliness, as far removed from excitability as from heaviness or gloom, which marks the companion popular alike amongst men and women—the companion who is never obtrusive or noisy from uneasy vanity or excessive animal spirits, and whose brow is never contracted by resentment or indignation. He showed no other change from the two months and more that had ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... your own conceits. A wise son maketh a glad father; but a foolish son is the heaviness of ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... my turn, looked hard at her, and thought I could perceive, notwithstanding the coarseness of her features, and especially the heaviness of her eyebrows, a something unusual—I could hardly call it grace, and yet it was an expression that strangely contrasted with the form of her features. I noticed too that her hands were delicately formed, though ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald

... took the card and his I.D., and entered the grav-shaft. There was the usual moment of heaviness as the shaft whisked him upward and deposited him in front ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone

... Did she suspect? She looked very tired and ill, I thought. The heaviness and languor of her manner were very marked. I asked her if she were feeling ill, ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie

... stay, Mrs. Deane, let her stay," said Mr. Deane, a large but alert-looking man, with a type of physique to be seen in all ranks of English society,—bald crown, red whiskers, full forehead, and general solidity without heaviness. You may see noblemen like Mr. Deane, and you may see grocers or day-laborers like him; but the keenness of his brown eyes was less ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... there. My cares now were so heavy many times that I could not attend religious worship as I wished. Sunday morning I frequently gathered my servants in the dining-room, and there we read and studied the Bible. I had great heaviness of heart, because I had no time to meditate and study the Scriptures. I saw I was only living to feed the perishing bodies of men and women. I would frequently go upstairs and prostrate myself on the floor, crying to God for deliverance from my ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... Set deown!" enjoined Miss Abigail, fluttering about with the heaviness of a fat goose. "Brother Abe,—that 's what we've all agreed to call yew, by unanimous vote,—yew set right here at the foot of the table. Aunt Nancy always had the head an' me the foot; but I only kept the foot, partly becuz thar wa'n't no ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund

... I really look for him till we reached the liner's side. And then I looked in vain. His face was not among the many that fringed the rail; his hand was not of the few that waved to friends. I climbed aboard in a sudden heaviness. I had no ticket, nor the money to pay for one. I did not even know the number of my room. My heart was in my mouth as I waylaid a steward and asked if a Mr. Raffles was on board. Thank heaven—he was! ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... do not sympathize with your English ideas; the sameness of the climate, which even precludes discourse about the weather,—all this, added to the distance from relations and friends at home, combined with the enervating effects of a hot climate, causes heaviness of spirits and despondency to single men and women. Married people have not the same excuse; for besides duty and nature, they have "one friend who loves them best," and that ought to be enough for the most exacting ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... ill, and do not believe that I shall live over this winter. Breathing is difficult to me; and perhaps the inexpressible heaviness which burdens me may contribute to this torment. When I sit up sleepless in my bed through the long nights, and see the night in myself, behind me and before me, then dark, horrible phantasies surround me, and I often think that ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer

... of the low condition of the system, thin blood, and the local inflammation in the uterus itself, ulcers may form about the mouth of the uterus. These are accompanied by more or less pain, a sense of heaviness and weight in the lower part of the bowels, and a whitish discharge similar to that of leucorrhoea only frequently streaked, or tinted, with blood. The discharge continues about the same all through the month between the days of menstruation. ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham

... this lay much in his mind whenever, as often, he contrasted his association with his poor animals, and the troublous problem of faith in his own soul. It weighed with especial heaviness upon his heart, this nightfall in the barn, over which hung that threatening sky. Do what he could for their comfort, it must be insufficient in a rotting, windswept shelter like that. And here came the pinch of conscience, the wrench of remorse: ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... had begun to feel—if any sensation while asleep can be so called—a sense of suffocation, accompanied by a heaviness of the limbs and torpidity in the joints,—as if some immense weight was pressing upon their bodies, that rendered it impossible for them to stir either toe or finger. It was a sensation similar to that ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid

... to question old men because, like travelers, they knew the sloughs and roughnesses of the long road. Men arose with the sun, and toddled forth as children on the day's journey of their lives, and became strong to endure the heaviness of noonday. They strived forward during the hours of early afternoon while their sun's ambition was hot, and then as the heat cooled they reached the crest of the last hill, and their road dipped gently to the valley where all roads end. And on into the ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks

... was successful, and we took turns driving all night. Now the day is on us, bright though cold. There is a strange heaviness in the air. I say heaviness for want of a better word. I mean that it oppresses us both. It is very cold, and only our warm furs keep us comfortable. At dawn Van Helsing hypnotized me. He says I answered "darkness, creaking wood and roaring water," so the river is changing as they ascend. ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... who in hand first the plow-handles feel, Or on the ox's flank lay the first weal, Pray Chthonian Zeus and chaste Demeter bless The grain you sow with heart and heaviness. ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... and thence in another month get to Goa. The other course is on the outside of the island of St Lawrence or Madagascar, which they take when they set out too late, or come so late to the Cape as not to have time to stop at Mozambique, and then they go on their voyage in great heaviness, because in this way they have no port; and, by reason of the long navigation, and the want of fresh provisions and water, they fall into sundry diseases. Their gums become sore, and swell in such a manner that they are fain to cut them away; their legs swell, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... padded wool, and then into a dimly lighted room John Keith followed Kao, the Chinaman. Out of this room there was no other exit; it was almost square, its ceiling was low, its walls darkly somber, and that life was there Keith knew by the heaviness of cigarette smoke in the air. For a moment his eyes did not discern the physical evidence of that life. And then, staring at him out of the yellow glow, he saw a face. It was a haunting, terrible face, a face ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood

... man the General is," I said, feeling the growing heaviness of the silence. "I can hardly place him; but I believe he ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read

... A. A general heaviness and inelegance of detail, doorways with pointed-arched heads exceedingly depressed in form, and also plain round-headed doorways, with key stones after the Roman or Italian semi-classic style now beginning to prevail; square-headed windows with plain vertical mullions, ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam

... spent in vigorous deep breathing exercise after each meal is one of the best means of remedying the sense of heaviness and weight of which so many ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell

... really slumbered again since the chastening experiences of the Boer War. Since then the national spirit, hampered though it is by the traditions of party government and a legacy of intellectual and social heaviness, has been in uneasy and ineffectual revolt against deadness, against stupidity and slackness, against waste and hypocrisy in every department of life. We have come to see more and more clearly how little ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... men crying for "souvenirs." Ladies pursued them with basins full of wine and what they were pleased to call beer. Men were literally carried from the ranks, under the eyes of their Officers, and borne in triumph into houses and inns. What with the heat of the day and the heaviness of the equipment and the after-effects of the noisome deck, the men could scarcely be blamed for availing themselves of such hospitality, though to drink intoxicants on the march is suicidal. Men "fell out," first by ones and twos, then by whole half-dozens and dozens. The Subaltern himself ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... point. The robbers?' 'I am at the point. The shawls is the point. For when I talked of the shawls and the heaviness of my loss, you must know that the ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli



Words linked to "Heaviness" :   massiveness, heft, weight, wideness, sadness, lightness, preponderance, broadness, onerousness, uninterestingness, difficultness, difficulty, unhappiness, heavy, ponderosity, heftiness



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