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Lassitude

noun
1.
A state of comatose torpor (as found in sleeping sickness).  Synonyms: lethargy, sluggishness.
2.
A feeling of lack of interest or energy.  Synonyms: languor, listlessness.
3.
Weakness characterized by a lack of vitality or energy.  Synonyms: inanition, lethargy, slackness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Lassitude" Quotes from Famous Books



... Street is one of lassitude and expectancy. The great banks have an abundance, perhaps a superabundance, of money, their own and their depositors, which they are only too glad to lend on solid and readily salable collateral at low ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... reference to the amount of excretions, and believed that a monthly increase in weight to the amount of one or two pounds occurred in men, followed by a critical discharge of urine, this crisis being preceded by feelings of heaviness and lassitude.[119] Gall, another great initiator of modern views, likewise asserted a monthly cycle in men. He insisted that there is a monthly critical period, more marked in nervous people than in others, and that at this time the complexion becomes ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... my way some two or three miles up the gorge, when I became sensible of a singular faintness stealing over me. A chill crept through my frame—not like that produced by cold from without; but as if the blood was freezing in my veins! The feeling was accompanied by a sense of torpor and lassitude— like that experienced by one dropping to sleep in a snow-storm. I made an effort to rouse myself—thinking it was sleep that was oppressing me. It might well have been—since it was more than thirty hours since I had slept, and then ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... on two successive days had exhausted him physically; and the strain of securing and ensuring the safety and happiness of the woman who was dearer to him than life, had reacted now in a mental lassitude which seemed unable to rise up and face the prospect of the ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... prevails among the company, and the exposure to cold or dampness to which their unprepared systems are often subjected in returning home, Death has marked many a victim for his own; while, at the best, lassitude and depression are sure to follow, from which it will require ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... condition, three diverse aspects of his need and misery. The 'covert' and the 'hiding-place' imply tempest, storm, and danger; the 'river of water' implies drought and thirst; 'the shadow of a great rock' implies lassitude and languor, fatigue and weariness. The view of life that arises from the combination of these three bears upon its front the signature of truth in the very fact that it ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... first, that the disbanded soldiers of the Commonwealth and the other relics of the Puritan party still remained the most moral and respectable element in the country; and secondly, that the period of lassitude which follows great efforts, whether of men or nations, is not altogether the condemnation of the effort, but partly the weakness of humanity. Nations as well as men, if they aim high, must sometimes overstrain themselves, and weariness must ensue. Nor did the Commonwealth ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... ashpits and waterways and broken ships and dry canals are girls and garlands and all the old lovely things that help the human heart to float and flow along its winding courses. If you inform the palate of the mind by flavours, then life in Queen's Gate must be a round of labour and lassitude, and, from the rich faces that pass you in the Isle of Dogs, you know that it must always be the time of roses there. Stand by the crazy bridge at the gates of West India Dock, at six o'clock, when, through the lilac dusks, comes that flock of chattering ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... reddening in streaks through the trees. Several hours must have passed since I stood there before, watching the ascending figures, and the memory of it now came back to me horribly, like an evil dream. Oh, how tired it made me feel, that ceaseless raging wind! Yet, though the deep lassitude of a sleepless night was on me, my nerves were tingling with the activity of an equally tireless apprehension, and all idea of repose was out of the question. The river I saw had risen further. Its thunder filled ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... man may never be sick, he yet may have his physical and mental vigour greatly impaired by prolonged exposure to heat is thus lost sight of. No man can do his best work, either physical or mental, if he is hot and uncomfortable. The same feeling of lassitude and indisposition to exertion is experienced at home during the hot summer, which after a ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... inhabitants of these two dwellings. Incessantly occupied with the wants of his family, to whom the day is hardly long enough, seeing a mad perversity reducing his salary, the artisan will be cast down and worn out; the hour of repose will not be sound to him; a kind of sleep like lassitude alone interrupts his daily toil. Then, on awaking from this mournful drowsiness, he will find himself overwhelmed with the same racking thoughts of the present, with the same ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... removed. Durtal was at this point; he could not return on his steps, for the way he had quitted horrified him. He would rather have died than return to Paris, there to begin again his carnal experiences, to live again his hours of libertinage and lassitude; but if he could not again retrace his road, neither could he advance, for the road ended in a blind alley. If earth repulsed him, heaven at the same time was ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... its exhausted cravings, we perceive already the symptoms of that unnamed malady which was the plague of imperial Rome. The tyrants and the suicides of the Empire expand before our eyes a pageant of their lassitude, relieved in vain by festivals of blood and orgies of unutterable lust. It is not that ennui was a specially Roman disease. Under certain conditions it is sure to afflict all overtaxed civilisation; and for the modern world no one has expressed its nature ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... by showing himself docile; but though he strove to eat out of complaisance, the singular contrast between his present situation and that which he had occupied on the same spot when the envoy of princes and the victor in combat, came like a cloud over his mind, and fasting, lassitude, and fatigue oppressed his bodily powers. El Hakim examined his hurried pulse, his red and inflamed eye, his heated hand, and ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... quality, and does not create it. The selfish languor and indifference of to-day's possession is the consequence of the selfish ardour of yesterday's pursuit: the scorn and weariness which cries vanitas vanitatum is but the lassitude of the sick appetite palled with pleasure: the insolence of the successful parvenu is only the necessary continuance of the career of the needy struggler: our mental changes are like our grey hairs or our wrinkles—but ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the water was like burnished steel. The heat became so stifling that even the Africans were gasping for breath, and we envied them their freedom from all impediments. The least exertion was irksome, and attended with extreme lassitude. During the afternoon thin cirri clouds, flying very high, spread out over the western heavens like a fan. As the day lengthened they thickened to resemble the scales of a fish, bringing to mind the old saying, "A mackerel sky and a mare's tail," etc. The signs were all unmistakable, ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... well beyond Middletown. Out of each extended cloud, now at right angles, came rumblings as of thunder. The column beneath the Front Royal cloud was moving rapidly, halts and delays apparently over, lassitude gone, energy raised to a forward blowing flame. That on the Valley pike, the six-mile-long retreat from Strasburg, was making, too, a progress not unrapid, considering the immensity of its wagon train and the uncertainty of the ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... singing a dreary lecherous song and showing an immense quantity of frilled underclothing, had occupied five or six minutes in boring the audience before The Girl Gets Left began; and an air of lassitude had enveloped the men who were sitting in relaxed attitudes in the theatre. Their eyes seemed to become dull, and they paid more attention to their pipes and their cigarettes than they paid to the young woman's underclothing.... ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine

... smouldering under those airs of lassitude. She exasperated me by the provocation of her nonchalance, by something elusive and defiant in her very form which I wanted ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... the bicycle rides ceased. Violet was overtaken, first, with a dreadful lassitude, then with a helplessness as great as Granville's. And with it a sullenness that had no sweetness in it, for Violet defied her fate. And now when she raised her old cry again, "I can't see why ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... yet never giving her any overt cause of complaint. He could worry and sting her under the politest exterior, and he knew very well that the most effectual form of annoyance was the persuading his master that any discomfort or lassitude was to be removed by some form of narcotic. This would have the further advantage of stupefying Mr. Egremont, and making him more ready to lapse under the old influence; while the duration and strength of the new one was already a surprise ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... felt a profound desire to quit this world and enter a higher world; but this desire is rather dejection than strength, a lassitude than an upsoaring." ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... with the mellow September glow, Gertrude was softly summoned to the pleasant upper chamber, which smelt sweetly of lavender, rose leaves, and wild thyme, where beside the open casement lay Reuben, in a snow-white bed, his face sadly wasted and white, and his eyes closed as if in the lassitude ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green

... just ten o'clock when we came into the street. A hot dead wind drifted in great puffs through the city, and ragged masses of vapor swept the purple sky; an unsavory night altogether, one of those nights of hopeless lassitude when one feels, if one is at home, like doing nothing but drink mint ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram

... remarks cross and clash; and were it not for the dilapidated outlook, the sunken lines of the trench that buries us on the hillside, and the veto on our voices, we might fancy ourselves in the rear lines. But lassitude weighs upon all of us, our faces are jaundiced and the eyelids reddened; through long watching we look as if we had been weeping. For several days now we have all of us been sagging ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... is scarcely a parody of the strict surveillance under which Dick lived, but from a mixture of lassitude and good nature it did not seem to annoy him too much, and he appeared to be most troubled when Kate murmured that she was tired, that she hated the profession and would like to go and live in the country. For ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... guessing what his decision would be. But on reflection she found hope in his deferring reply. It was all that was left to her. She had done her utmost, the rest lay with him. She sighed deeply, she had never felt such weariness of mind and body. As she gave way to a feeling of growing lassitude drowsiness came over her which she was too tired to combat and for some time she slept heavily. She awoke with a start to find Gillian, wide-eyed with concern, kneeling beside her, the girl's slim warm fingers clasped closely ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... Mr. Browne at last, unable to pretend lassitude any longer. Taking up a racket he brandishes it wildly, presumably to attract attention. This is necessary. As a rule nobody pays any attention to ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... the feebleness of senility, and has one of the most certain marks of that stage of authorship, the attempt to imitate himself in those points in which he was once strong. When "glad no more, He wears a face of joy, because He has been glad of yore." Or it is an "oeuvre de lassitude," a continuation, with the inevitable defect of continuations, that of preserving the forms and wanting the soul of the original, like the second parts of Faust, of Don Quixote, and of so many ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... feeders of the press would shrink from,—assumed and performed,—when her friends were to be served, I have often observed with wonder, and with fear, when I considered the near extremes of ill-health, and the manner in which her life heaped itself in high and happy moments, which were avenged by lassitude ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... anxiety to every pedestrian. The exceptions to this rule are apt to go to the other extreme, and wear a defiant, obtrusive kind of indolence which suggests quite as much inward disquiet and unrest. The shiftless lassitude of a gambler can never be mistaken for the lounge of a gentleman. Even the brokers who loiter upon Montgomery Street at high noon are not loungers. Look at them closely and you will see a feverishness and anxiety under the mask of listlessness. They do not lounge—they ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte

... furtively watch his man's face. The orchestra ceased; the curtain rose, and the valet gazed mechanically at the stage. In his way, Francois was as blase as his master, only, of course, he understood his position too well to reveal that lassitude and ennui, the expression of which was the particular privilege of his betters. He had seen many great actresses and heard many peerless singers; he had delved after his fashion into sundry problems, and had earned as great a right as any of the nobility to satiety and defatigation ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... 'enfeebles all internal strength of thought,' as a course of dram-drinking destroys the tone of the stomach. The faculties of the mind, when not exerted, or when cramped by custom and authority, become listless, torpid, and unfit for the purposes of thought or action. Can we wonder at the languor and lassitude which is thus produced by a life of learned sloth and ignorance; by poring over lines and syllables that excite little more idea or interest than if they were the characters of an unknown tongue, till the eye closes on vacancy, and the book drops from the feeble hand! I would rather be a ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... "that was the exciting thing. In home affairs, social questions, and the ordinary events of the day not much change was noticeable. A certain Oriental carelessness seemed to have crept into the editorial department, and perhaps a note of lassitude not unnatural in the work of men who had returned from what had been a fairly arduous journey. The aforetime standard of excellence was scarcely maintained, but at any rate the general lines of policy and outlook were ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki

... great number and variety of plays, he had been attentively inconspicuous in several really good week-end parties. He had spent a golden October in North Italy with his mother, and escaped from the glowing lassitude of Venice for some days of climbing in the Eastern Alps. In January, in an outbreak of enquiry, he had gone with Lionel Maxim to St. Petersburg and had eaten zakuska, brightened his eyes with vodka, talked with a number of charming people of the war that was then ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... thirty miles off, not at all. The clouds are a brownish grey, the air moist and motionless, and the mercury has varied from 82 degrees in the day to 80 degrees at night. The household is afflicted with lassitude and loss of appetite. Evening does not bring coolness, but myriads of flying, creeping, jumping, running creatures, all with power to hurt, which replace the day mosquitoes, villains with spotted legs, which bite and poison one without the warning hum. The night mosquitoes are legion. There are ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... buffalo hunting, any one of which can hardly be called an indoor sport. These are the four animals that are classed as "royal game" in game law parlance, and each one when aroused is sufficiently diverting to dispel any lassitude produced by the climate. It is wakeful sport—hunting these four kinds of game—and in my experience elephant hunting is the "most ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... it had been a voluntary blindness! In this transition one punishes oneself by distrust of one's sentiments; one tortures one's enthusiasm with doubt, one feels even the good conscience to be a danger, as if it were the self-concealment and lassitude of a more refined uprightness; and above all, one espouses upon principle the cause AGAINST "youth."—A decade later, and one comprehends that ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... had watched him drink two cups of coffee and devour the food—she guessed he had had no lunch—did she allow him to talk, first lighting his cigarette and finding a place for herself on the arm of his chair. By this time Stefan's extreme lassitude, and with it his despair, had vanished. He brightened perceptibly. "You wonder," he exclaimed, catching her hand and kissing it, "now I can tell you about it." With his arm about her he described all his experiences, the fiasco of the Jensen affair and his ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... weary, broken men, many of them wounded, all of them terror-stricken, staggering in speedless haste with the last remnants of their strength into the shelter which it was their vain illusion the town would afford them. Eyes glazed with lassitude and fear looked up piteously out of haggard faces at Mr. Blood and his companion as they rode forth; hoarse voices cried a warning that merciless pursuit was not far behind. Undeterred, however, young Pitt rode amain along the dusty road by ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini

... been less rapt and triumphant he must have wondered more at that icy lassitude, and at the cloak of ceremony she wrapped about her to hide a terror. It was queer to hear the chill urbanity of her: "This is Christopher, Nelson; Christopher, this is your father's servant, Nelson." It was queerer still to see the fastidious decorum ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... eat. He felt a great lassitude in all his limbs. He slept soundly enough, but he awoke with no sense of refreshment; on the contrary he felt a peculiar exhaustion. And the energetic little man, who could not bear the thought of lying in bed, had to make an effort to force himself out of his bunk. After a few ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham

... be classified as physical losses, economic losses, and social losses. The immediate physical effect is exhilaration, but this is succeeded by lassitude and incompetency. The stimulus gained is momentary, the loss is permanent. It is well established that even small quantities of alcohol weaken the will power and benumb the mental powers. Habitual use depletes vitality and so predisposes to disease. ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... basest envy. The School Committee had lately tendered her again her old position, which she had declined with thanks. She was too weak to labor now, either with hands or brain. What did this strange lassitude, this ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock

... always give to the inferior portions of his work only such inferior attention as they require; and according to his greatness he becomes so accustomed to the feeling of dissatisfaction with the best he can do, that in moments of lassitude or anger with himself he will not care though the beholder be dissatisfied also. I believe there has only been one man who would not acknowledge this necessity, and strove always to reach perfection, Leonardo; the end of his vain effort being merely that he would take ten years to a picture ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... especially in coastal areas near Hong Kong and opposite Taiwan, where foreign investment helped spur output of both domestic and export goods. On the darker side, the leadership has often experienced in its hybrid system the worst results of socialism (bureaucracy and lassitude) and of capitalism (windfall gains and stepped-up inflation). Beijing thus has periodically backtracked, retightening central controls at intervals. The government has struggled to (a) collect revenues ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... shimmering green, while the more distant fields of grain were dark against the light ash of plowed land. Above, the sun shone slanting from the blue of an early June sky. The air, clean and clear, was already pervaded with the drowsy lassitude ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... of Haldin's death gave Razumov the feeling of general lassitude which follows a great exertion or a great excitement. He kept very still on the sofa, but ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... the rooms too small, to admit of their ever being rendered desirable habitations. They work very hard all the week. We know that the effect of prolonged and arduous labour, is to produce, when a period of rest does arrive, a sensation of lassitude which it requires the application of some stimulus to overcome. What stimulus have they? Sunday comes, and with it a cessation of labour. How are they to employ the day, or what inducement have they to employ it, in recruiting ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens

... mature poet sometimes appeals to the orthodox for sympathy when his daring religious questing threatens to plunge him into despair. The public is too quick to class him with those whose doubt is owing to lassitude of mind, rather than too eager activity. Tennyson is obliged ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... whether Molly heard anything of this exposition; she may well have missed one or two steps in a carefully reasoned argument. Hers was that state of absorbent lassitude when the words and acts put to you sink into the floating mass of your weakness. The late shocking grief hovers felt about you: a buzz of talk, a rain of caresses, hold the spectre off, and so are serviceable—but no more. The cold cheek, the clay-cold ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... to run now. The lassitude of months was gone from his limbs. He wanted to fling aside that clogging crowd, run, leap, arrive. How long was this hour? Where was he? He tried to see the housetops to know, but the glow was in his eyes. He felt the hands of ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... political considerations and remonstrances winding up with demands for offices! What cantatas that begged for subsidies! Everywhere demands: demands for subsidies, demands for grants, demands for help, demands for decorations! Nothing but harass, enervation, lassitude, deafening clamor. They wished to kill him with their shouts: ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... the lassitude which besets me, and strive in vain to be either sensible or jocose. I ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... rowed. The fresh air, and the exercise, soon did their work. Cyril at first could only take one scull, and that only for a short time, but at the end of a fortnight was able to manage both for a time, or to row with one for hours. The feeling of lassitude which had oppressed him passed away speedily, the colour came back to his cheeks, his muscles strengthened, and he began to ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty

... victory when an orderly and two troopers arrived with a riderless horse, bearing the command of Colonel Cumner for the beggar to appear at once at the Palace. The beggar looked doubtfully at the orderly a moment, then rose with an air of lassitude and languidly mounted the horse. Before he had got half-way to the Palace he suddenly slid ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... you force your lagging brain to take up the thread of work. There will invariably come a new supply of energy, a "second wind," enabling you to forge ahead with a freshness and vigor that is surprising after the previous lassitude. ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton

... intellect and conduct of Napoleon during the Hundred Days no sign of enfeebling: I find in his judgment and actions his accustomed qualities." In a passage quoted above (p. 449) Mollien notes that his master was a prey to lassitude after some hours of work, but he says nothing on the subject of disease; and in a man of forty-six, who had lived a hard life and a "fast" life, we should not expect to find the capacity for the sustained intellectual efforts of the Consulate. Meneval noticed nothing worse in his master's ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... produced a lassitude impossible to describe; it was overpowering, and I had no choice but to yield to it. I dropped back in my chair, leaned forward on the table, and instantly fell into a heavy sleep, ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne

... the pursuits which formerly interested me, I yawned over Ab Gwilym, even as I now in my mind's eye perceive the reader yawning over the present pages. What was the cause of this? Constitutional lassitude, or a desire for novelty? Both it is probable had some influence in the matter, but I rather think that the latter feeling was predominant. The parting words of my brother had sunk into my mind. He had talked of travelling in strange ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... Her weakness, lassitude, and despondency are more than apparent; yet bravely buckling to her work, and encouraged by her success with Fontenelle, she Englished with rare skill his Theory of the System of Several New Inhabited Worlds, prefixing thereto ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... him curiously as he reacted into lassitude and despondency after the strain and tension ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... it, threading in and out among the toiling crowd, Willy Cameron had a chance to observe the change in the other man, his drooping shoulders and the almost lassitude of his walk. He went ahead, charging the mass and going through it by sheer bulk and weight, his hands in his coat pockets, his soft hat pulled low over his face. Neither of them noticed that one of the former clerks ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... discreet person, Tomlinson, the two retired to their room at an early hour. The butler pressed them hospitably to try the house's special blend of Scotch whisky, but they had declined resolutely. Both acknowledged to an unwonted lassitude and sleepiness—symptoms which Hilton Fenley might expect and inquire about. When they were gone, the major domo sat down to review ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... moment or so I took the vessel and filled it and gave it to Schwartz. Then it seemed to me that my responsibility had ended. A sudden great dreamy lassitude came over me. I knew I needed food, but I had no wish for it, and no ambition to search it out. The man in the corner mumbled at me with his toothless gums. I remember wondering if we were all to starve there peacefully ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... sea-coast of Hindustan, in Ceylon, in the West Indian Islands, at New Orleans, and in other places whose situation is similar. The vital powers languish under this oppression, which produces in the European a lassitude of body and a prostration of mind that wholly unfit him for active duties. On the Asiatic, however, these influences seem to have little effect. The Cha'b Arabs, who at present inhabit the region, are a tall and warlike race, strong-limbed, and muscular; ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson

... business worries were not all, nor the worst of his troubles: his physical powers were waning. To all appearances he was as strong as ever, but a strange bodily lassitude hampered him; he tired easily, and against this handicap he was forced to struggle continually. He had never rightly valued his amazing equipment of energy until now, when some subtle ailment had begun to sap it. The change ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... near surrender several times. There were afternoons of belated ripened warmth, a kind of summer that had been long in the bottle, with a certain lassitude in the air and a blue haze among the trees, that made her feel the folly of all resistances to fate. Why, after all, shouldn't she take life as she found it, that is to say, as Sir Isaac was prepared to give it to her? He wasn't really so bad, ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... cannon-ball crashed through the room among them, as if to enjoin haste in bringing the proceedings to a close. The council listened to what was already but too well known. Already the finger of fate pointed undeviatingly to the inevitable result. A general lassitude had fallen upon the spirits of the soldiers. The situation ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake

... physician to prescribe for him, as he cannot see himself as he sees others; so I called a physician, and he advised me to try a little chemical food, or a bottle of hypophosphates. I took two or three bottles of the chemical food with no apparent benefit. My lassitude and indisposition seemed to increase, my food distressed me. I suffered from neuralgic pains in different parts of my body, my muscles became sore, my bowels were constipated, and my prospects for recovery were not very flattering. I stated ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... had called him intolerable and incorrigible, and had threatened a second report to the headmaster, because this was the tenth successive Greek grammar lesson in which he had failed. Added to all this, he was suffering from headache and lassitude. And now his father's letter was the cumulus of his misfortunes. A rebellious, indignant, and violent spirit rose in him. Was he always, for no fault of his own, to be bullied, baited, driven, misunderstood, and crushed in this way? If it was of no use trying ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... manner the majority hands in its resignation. Through inertia, want of forethought, lassitude, aversion to the electoral hubbub, lack of political preferences, or dislike of all the political candidates, it shirks the task which the constitution imposes on it. Most certainly is has no taste for the painstaking ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... After the lassitude of a day spent in the strolling manner, which is usual with men of pleasure in this town, and with a head full of a million of impertinences, which had danced round it for ten hours together, I came to my lodging, and hastened to ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... time was passing, and the poison was not telling, as far as he, the poisoner, could judge from appearances, on Douglas Dale. He never complained of illness, and beyond a slight lassitude, he did not seem to have anything the matter with him. This would not do. It behoved Carrington to expedite matters. His project was to accomplish the death of Douglas Dale by poison, throwing the burthen ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... late, and late as it was, Rosie did not make her appearance at it. Graeme had still a very pleasant remembrance of the evening; but it was not altogether unmixed. The late breakfast, the disarrangement of household matters, Rosie's lassitude, and her own disinclination to engage in any serious occupation, was some drawback to the remembrance of her enjoyment. All were more or less out of sorts, some from one ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson

... reacts, he rebels, he storms. A dozen poems hardly exhaust his gall. It is not merely that beauty and joy and love are transient, now, but in their going they are corrupted into their opposites, — ugliness, pain, indifference. And his anger once stilled by speech, what lassitude follows! ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke

... Rosalie Bourdon, doubtless the one under which she had travelled. She appeared quite indifferent to all that went on around her. On entering this prison, where she knew her mother was, she showed absolutely no emotion. She remained in this state of resigned lassitude for two days. Licquet, who came to see her several times, endeavoured to keep her under the impression that her imprisonment had no other cause than Delaitre's infringement of the maritime regulations; he even took the precaution of pretending ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre

... a day, with scrupulous care and exactness, lest a drop or a crumb of the food that was more precious than diamonds should be lost. The men had all become accustomed to short allowance now, and experienced no greater inconvenience than a feeling of lassitude, which feeling increased daily, but by such imperceptible degrees that they were scarcely conscious of it, and were only occasionally made aware of the great reduction of their strength when they attempted to lift any article which, in the days of their full vigour, they could ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne

... time they were both eating an appetizing lunch in the attractive restaurant of the Occidental. Just before the arrival of coffee and cheese, Mitchell sat back in his chair with a sigh of physical content. The Martini had warmed his chilled body, and the lassitude which comes after a hearty meal was stealing over him. Miller had proved an agreeable companion, able to talk upon any subject—except one, in spite of the detective's hints in its direction. Their table was in one corner apart from the others, and there was no danger of ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... sweetest, and soil with their excrements the combs they frequent. The patient workers, their eyes steadily fixed on the future, will silently set things right. From noon till three, when the purple country trembles in blissful lassitude beneath the invincible gaze of a July or August sun, the drones will appear on the threshold. They have a helmet made of enormous black pearls, two lofty, quivering plumes, a doublet of iridescent, yellowish velvet, ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck

... took a new expression as he heard these words. The lassitude and weariness passed out of it, and a curious light crept into his eyes. Roger and the ranger continued to talk together of many things, but their silent companion still sat motionless beside the hearth. Over his face was stealing a look of purpose — such purpose as follows a struggle ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... doctrine of non-resistance preached by Leo Tolstoi was attuned to the mood prevailing among educated Russians, for, in the words of the Russian poet, "their hearts, subdued by storms, were filled with silence and lassitude." ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... pass the necessary examination—then not a very severe one—while he could be at the same time learning the native languages, which would be of immense benefit to him after he had entered the army. Coming out as they had done in the cold season, none of the four exhibited any of that pallor and lassitude which, at any rate during the summer heats, are the rule throughout the ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty

... 5, on the next Monday morning at breakfast-time. It did not at first attract the attention of James. The Sunday exertions had again left a mental and physical lassitude, showing how much care and privation had told upon his strength; and Isabel's still tardy convalescence weighed him down with anxiety for the future, and almost with despair, as he thought of the comforts for want of which she suffered, though ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... visited the same States, and South Carolina and Georgia for the first time since the war. What a transformation! But for the genial climate the busy factories would have recalled New England, while a keen business air had taken the place of that old-time lassitude which in ante-bellum days seemed inseparable from the institution of slavery. The Southern people have all the acuteness of the Yankee, with a genuine bonhomie which brightens the most ordinary incidents of life. New conditions have called into play valuable qualities which were torpid until ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... right," said Nan indifferently. The lassitude of seasickness had left her, and the excitement of new surroundings was beginning. She felt gently stirred by the give and take of the light conversation in the Sherwoods' room; and, although she did not quite realize it, she was responding to the stimulation of having made a good impression. ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... revolutionary theories at the house-fronts; and the pavement seemed to be their property—all the pavement touched by their feet, all that old battleground whence arose intoxicating fumes which made them forget their lassitude. ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... gases, oxygen and nitrogen, and in every one hundred parts of common air there are about seventy-five parts of nitrogen and twenty-five of oxygen, subject to expansion from heat and of contraction from cold. This accounts in part for the general lassitude felt in a warm atmosphere, while a corresponding degree of vigor obtains in a cold one. The condensation, the result of a cool temperature, gives to the lungs a much larger amount of oxygen at a single inspiration, and, of course, for the day the difference is truly wonderful. ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill

... she feels an unconquerable sense of lassitude. For the first time, her feet begin to fail her. For the first time, she, who traversed, with firm and equal footsteps, the moving lava of torrid deserts, while whole caravans were buried in drifts of fiery ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... following days, while the sense of spring and warmth slowly gave life to those who could breathe the air on deck, Conyngham lay in his little cabin and heeded nothing; for when the fever left him he was only conscious of a great lassitude, and scarce could raise himself to take such nourishment as the steward, with a rough but ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman

... was telling this entrancing story, a look of devoted love spread over the beautiful countenance of Pearl. She gradually became instinct with life, and before he had finished speaking, the lassitude and exhaustion which had seemed to threaten her very life entirely disappeared. A rosy look came over her face, and her coal-black eyes flashed with ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan

... and starved. I had had no news of the world, nor of her who was dear to me, nor of Juste Duvarney save that he lived, nor of our cause. But succeeding the thrill of delight I had at thought of seeing the open world again there came a feeling of lassitude, of indifference; I shrank from the jar of activity. But presently I got upon my feet, and with a little air of drollery straightened out my clothes and flicked a handkerchief across my gaiters. Then I twisted my head over my shoulder as if I were noting ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... restraints he did not like; and by undermining the intrigues and power of so mighty an enemy of European liberties as Louis XIV. His heroism shone brilliantly in defeat and disaster, and his courage and exertion never flagged when all Europe desponded, and when he himself labored under all the pains and lassitude of protracted disease. He died serenely, but hiding from his attendants, as he did all his days, the profoundest impressions which agitated ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... A weary lassitude had come over him; he seemed incapable of exertion, and shook his head in answer to Maud's appeal; but again some hidden motive stung him into action, and taking his seat at the writing-table, he seized ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... appetites. But Wakeman ate, gorged himself, to the astonishment even of the kitchen orderlies. Plateful after plateful of stewed meat and potatoes, steaming and savoury, disappeared. Yet there was no sign about the boy of the lassitude of repletion. His eyes remained bright and glanced rapidly here and there. His body was still alert, the movements of his hands ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham

... lassitude that brought them back to Marietta for another summer. Through a golden enervating spring they had loitered, restive and lazily extravagant, along the California coast, joining other parties intermittently and drifting from Pasadena to ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... as spun-glass, and neatly confined under one of those high Norman caps of which the long starched frills, encircling the face, lend a cold, severe expression to the wearer: her gait was stooping, her steps feeble, and her whole appearance denoted lassitude and weakness. She was, as I guessed, the wife of the elder and the mother of the younger of my companions; and the glance she threw at these when she saw them told as plainly as the language of a wife's and mother's eyes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... was audible only to himself. To anyone looking on, it only seemed as if a sudden dreamy lassitude had overtaken him; his head sank back against the chair, his eyes closed, his face grew calm and peaceful, and, like a tired child, ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)

... springs in play, in a word, puts him into that agreeable activity, for the want of which the enjoyment of happiness itself cannot compensate him. Action is the true element of the human mind; as soon as it ceases to act, it falls into disgust, sinks into lassitude. His soul has the same occasion for ideas, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... gazed at the awe-inspiring phenomena which surrounded him in the semicircle of the hospital theatre, he had slept during the operation. His simple heart had not worked out the lesson which sleep, the greatest mistress on earth, teaches. After the operation everything had been veiled by mortal lassitude. This had continued, but in the afternoon and at night they had mixed something heavy, like a stone ball, into his drinking-cup, and waves of warmth had flowed to the toes of his healthy foot from the cup. Thoughts chased one another swiftly, like tiny quicksilver balls through ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... familiarly, his old tradition, before the sea of faces. A few faint hand-claps instead of the old expectant laughter welcomed him. A generation had apparently risen that knew not Petit Patou. His heart sank. The heat of the footlights shimmered like a furnace and smote him with sudden lassitude. He began his tricks. Took his tiny one-stringed broomstick handled fiddle and played it with his hands encased in grotesquely long cotton gloves. Presently, with simulated impatience, he drew off the gloves, ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

... ultimate act of the intelligence accepts. This it is which the will deliberately confirms. And that is why Faith though an act of the Will is Moral. If the Ordnance Map tells us that it is 11 miles to [a place] then, my mood of lassitude as I walk through the rain at night making it feel like 30, I use the Will and say "No." My intelligence has been convinced and I compel myself to use it against my mood. It is 11 and though I feel in the depths of my being to have gone 30 miles and more, I know ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... him with avid eyes. No mask on her face now. The eyes brooded over him, over the fair hair, the bare throat, the pale, hard young face, that showed the lassitude following on ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner

... I did not rest. My fever, or my lassitude, or probably some presentiment of the troubled career into which I was to be plunged, made "tired nature's sweet restorer" a stepmother to me. I can never endure hearing the dreams of others, and thus I cannot suffer myself to inflict them on my hearers; but ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... was dismissed he sank back in his chair by the class-room window. It was wide ajar to-day for the first time since winter. April, like an early-morning housemaid, was throwing open all the windows of the world. Litton felt a delicious lassitude; he was bewildered with leisure. A kind of sweet loneliness fell on him. He had made no provision for ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... uncomfortable inconclusive way—"muddling along"; that they wanted nothing very definitely nor very urgently, that mean fears enslaved them and mean satisfactions decoyed them, that they took the very gift of life itself with a spiritless lassitude, hoarding it, being rather anxious not to lose it than to use it ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... for the vizier, who attended; when he said, "Vizier, my mind is so uneasy that nothing will amuse me." "Enter then," replied the minister, "into thy cabinet, and look at thy jewels, the examination of which may perhaps entertain thee." The sultan did so, but it had no effect on his lassitude; when he said, "Vizier, this dispiritedness will not quit me, and nothing gives me pleasure within my palace; let us, therefore, walk out in disguise." "To hear is to obey," replied the vizier. They then retired into a private chamber, and putting on the habits of dervishes ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... face. She never did mention the incident to her father or to anybody else. But from that day a change took place in her, as if the springs of her pride were relaxed. She became capricious, had fits of lassitude, a curl of disgust in her smile, and sometimes she yielded to sudden outbursts of wrath against her father, and cast scornful glances upon him, rebuking him for his failure to ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... was actually passing from his possession. He summoned in vain the emotions which, he told himself, were appropriate. The profound discouragement within him would not be lifted to emotional heights: lassitude settled ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... but twittered here and there among the woods; the sun was not yet up, but the eastern sky was barred with solemn colours. Half-starved and over-weary as they were, they lay without moving, sunk in a delightful lassitude. And as they thus lay, the clang of a bell ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... never think of troubling you to such an extent. No doubt this feeling of lassitude will pass away shortly. It was very foolish of me, but I left the fan with my wraps at the hotel. It can be recovered when we go ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... you very much," he said. "The effect of Bromocine," he went on, speaking with the quiet precision of one who was lecturing on the subject to an interested audience, "is peculiar. It reduces the subject to a condition of extreme lassitude, so that really nothing matters or seems to matter. Whilst perfectly conscious the subject goes obediently to his death, behaves normally and does just what he is told—in fact, it destroys ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... ground that the enemies found in advancing, after having driven in our right, enabled our them to rally and to resist. But this resistance was of short duration. Every one had been engaged in hand-to-hand combats; every one was worn out with lassitude and despair of success, and a confusion so general and so unheard-of. The household troops owed their escape to the mistake of one of the enemy's officers, who carried an order to the red coats, thinking ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... of Europe, are bound to lie for long years after in the trough of disillusionment. The national mood with them will be more than ever that of inquiry and exploit. With us, unless I make a mistake, after a spurt of hedonism—a going on the spree—there will be lassitude. Every European country has been overtried in this hideous struggle, and Nature, with her principle of balance, is bound to take redress. For Americans the war, nationally speaking, will have been but a bracing ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... Lawford, in deadly lassitude, meant only one thing—insanity. A blazing, impotent indignation seized him. He leaned near, peering as it were out of a red dusky mist. He snatched up the china candlestick, and poised it above the sardonic reflection, as if to throw. ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... its full height. There was a look of nervous energy about her which Effie had not observed for many a long day. The curious phase into which her mother had entered had an alarming effect upon the young girl. It frightened her far more than her father's look of lassitude and the burning touch of his hands. She tried to turn her thoughts from it. After all, why should she become nervous herself, and meet ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade

... remind the wind to fulfil its duty. The sun shone out of the sky, without a cloud to temper its heat, and its rays made one side of the ocean shine like molten gold. Every one was suffering more or less from the lassitude produced by excessive heat; the pitch was bubbling up from the seams of the deck; a strong, hot, burning smell pervaded the vessel; the chickens in the hencoops hung their heads and forgot to cackle; the ducks ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston

... additional objection, that through the same cause his studies were partial, temporary, and irregular. His mind was amply stored with acquired knowledge, much of it perhaps the fruits of early reading and application. But, while engaged in the hurry of composition, or overcome by the lassitude of continued literary labour, he seems frequently to have trusted to the tenacity of his memory, and so drawn upon this fund with injudicious liberality, without being sufficiently anxious as to accuracy of quotation, or even of assertion. If, on the other hand, he ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... admission of my friend, of his incapacity to make a sailor, for it was the first intimation I heard of his intention. I had remarked a certain want of energy, in various situations that required action, in Rupert, but no want of courage; and I had ascribed some portion of his lassitude to the change of condition, and, possibly, of food; for, after all, that godlike creature, man, is nothing but an animal, and is just as much influenced by his stomach and digestion as ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... broke, there was no question of Io's going that day, even had accommodations been available. A clogging lassitude had descended upon her, the reaction of cumulative nervous stress, anesthetizing her will, her desires, her very limbs. She was purposeless, ambitionless, except to lie and rest and seek for some resolution of peace out of the tangled web ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... first returning strength, freed from lassitude and stupor, Graydon began whispering joyous words of love to Jane. His eyes were bright with the gladness that his pain had brought. She checked his weak outbursts at first, but before many days had passed ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon

... possible consequences, I sat down on a chair beside the sufferer, felt her pulse, and as well as I could, made inquiries after her health. Her pulse was quick, her tongue white and thickly furred, and extreme lassitude was shown by her dejected countenance. Uncertain as to the nature of her disease, and unable to offer any alleviation of her sufferings, I retired to my apartment. There I did reflect on the danger which I had incurred, and the possibility of the widow having ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various

... vapour was more dense than ever, but I welcomed the sight of open ground after the reptile-infested thicket. Alas! it was a snare, a death-trap, a sort of morass, in which we sank up to our knees. Pah! it was filthy—vile! And I became aware of great—lassitude, do you say?— whilst Valera's panting breath told that he had almost reached the end ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer

... unsentimental acts of the creatures who never wander from nature. Now, excess of obedience is, to one who manages most exquisitely, as bad as insurrection. Happily Mrs. Doria saw nothing in her daughter's manner save a want of iron. Her pallor, her lassitude, the tremulous nerves in her face, exhibited an ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... was unyoked—he could hear it being led away—but the ache in his head grew almost intolerable and his lassitude more intense. For a while he had no idea what was going on; and then a hoarse cry, which seemed one of alarm, rang out sharply. There was a patter of running feet, a thud of hoofs on the soft soil, and, breaking through these sounds, a rhythmic ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss

... me alone." But she checked herself. She doubted if she could exert her will another time like that. Already beads of perspiration stood out on her brows. A feeling of extreme lassitude crept over her and she slipped back into the hammock with a sensation of nausea. Then unconsciousness bound her with invisible cords and the brave ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes

... eventful life shall I tell you the people who have made me the most weary? It is not the bad people, nor the foolish people; we can get along with all such because of a streak of common humanity in us all, but I cannot survive without extreme lassitude the decorous people; those who slip through life without sound or sparkle, those who behave themselves upon every occasion, and would pass through a dynamite explosion without rumpling a hair; those who never have done anything out of the way and never will, simply for the same reason ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden

... and refreshment (ease tenfold sweet after such labours) prevail over the sagest counsels, and the apprehension of certain evil outweigh the prospect of contingent danger. They expostulated, that the nerves of Ulysses seemed to be made of steel, and his limbs not liable to lassitude like other men's; that waking or sleeping seemed indifferent to him; but that they were men, not gods, and felt the common appetites for food and sleep. That in the nighttime all the winds most destructive to ships are generated. That black night still required to be served with meat, ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... more likely to engender bitter thoughts than idleness and ennui. Occupations should be selected with a view to improve and amuse; they should be varied, to prevent the lassitude resulting from monotony; serious meditations and abstract studies should be relieved by the lighter branches of literature; music should be assiduously cultivated; nothing more refines and exalts the mind; not the mere performance of mechanical ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore

... worry and its twin brother, despondency. The remedy for the evil lies in training the will to cast off cares and seek a change of occupation, when the first warning is sounded by Nature in intellectual lassitude. Relaxation is the certain foe of worry, and 'don't fret' one of the ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden

... were firmer than marble. Salammbo, who was accustomed to eunuchs, yielded to amazement at the strength of this man. It was the chastisement of the goddess or the influence of Moloch in motion around her in the five armies. She was overwhelmed with lassitude; and she listened in a state of stupor to the intermittent shouts of the sentinels as they ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert

... supervise the work as efficiently from the tent as they could at a yard or two from its shelter, they gradually gave up the struggle, yielding day after day more completely to the seductive feeling of lassitude which seemed to ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... disappeared—to be next heard of in some distant part of France, or perhaps in Corsica, Sardinia, or Italy. It is not surprising that even in these early days, and in spite of Balzac's exuberant vitality, there are frequent mentions of terrible fatigue and lassitude, and that the services of his lifelong friend, Dr. Nacquart, were often in requisition, though his warnings about the dangers of ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... him, and went home just in time to dress. There were some people to dinner, at which Jane appeared. Her lassitude had vanished, and, as was her manner when in good spirits, she was very humorous and amusing. Also I had never seen her look so beautiful, for her colour was high and her dark eyes shone like the diamond stars in her hair. But again I observed that she ate nothing, although she, ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard

... oppressive heat for a moment. At times one fairly gasps for breath and looks involuntarily about in forlorn search of some place of escape, if only for a moment, from the stifling atmosphere. A feeling of utter lassitude and loss of ambition comes over one; the importance of accomplishing one's object diminishes, and the necessity of yielding to the pressure of the fearful heat and taking things easy becomes the all-absorbing theme of the imagination. A supreme and heroic effort of ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... reddening, and stretching herself with fatigue she threw herself back on a couch. She did not feel weary exactly, for the lassitude she felt in every limb had a peculiar pleasure in it. She felt as if she had come out of a hot bath, and since her father had roused her she seemed to hear, again and again, the sound of the inspiriting music which she had followed arm in arm with Pollux. Now and again she smiled, now and again ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... James was ill and tired, and disillusioned; his head ached so that he could hardly bear the pain, and in all his limbs he felt a strange and heavy lassitude. He wondered why he had troubled himself about the woman who cared nothing—nothing whatever for him. He repeated about her the bitter, scornful things he had said so often. He fancied ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham

... know which way led to Kish Taka. When the first faint glint of dawn sweetened the air he was lying on his back; he felt, rather than saw, that a new day was blossoming. He collected his wandering faculties, fought with the lassitude which stole upon him whenever his senses were not on the alert and sat up. And he would have cried out aloud at what he saw were not his throat and mouth and lips so dry that he was beyond calling out. For yonder, a blurred moving shape came toward him. The ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory

... out of her, and was frightening her mother. Even if things went no further, here was partial failure. She had intended to make an inevitably rising force of Eve, and here at the very outset were lassitude and a glance ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... precipitously as at Menton, the shelter from the northerly winds is less complete. At the same time the vast olive groves screen the locality from cold blasts and temper them into healthful breezes, imparting a pleasing freshness to the atmosphere, and removing sensations of lassitude often experienced in too well-protected spots. The size of the sheltered area gives patients a considerable choice of residences, which can be found either close to or at varying distances from the sea, according to the requirements of the case; while the numerous wooded valleys, ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... the Criterion bar and sat down. The clock showed seventeen minutes to nine. His piece was advertised to start at eight-thirty precisely. The Criterion Bar is never empty, but it has its moments of lassitude, and seventeen minutes to nine is one of them. After an interval a ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett

... to the hotel along Main Street the lassitude that had so long held her half-paralyzed was gone. She was the old Rose again; the Rose ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... make so many wretched, characters. They coloured some of the most attractive prose among the French, and the most fascinating verse in the pages of Byron. It might be asked, by a profane inquirer (and I have touched on this before), what effect a life nearly similar—a life of luxury, indolence, lassitude, profuse, but heartless love, imparted to the deep and touching wisdom in his page, whom we consider the wisest of men, and who has left us the most ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... back in their nice, cosy sitting-room, and a feeling of not altogether unpleasant lassitude stole over Mrs. Bunting. It was a comfort to have Daisy out of her way for a bit. The girl, in some ways, was very wide awake and inquisitive, and she had early betrayed what her stepmother thought to be a very unseemly and silly curiosity concerning the lodger. "You might ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... struggle with the difficulties of his position with insufficient means. He tried intrigue and oppression; he banished, suspended, disorganized parliament; everything was an obstacle to him, nothing aided him. After a long struggle, he sank under lassitude and weakness; I dare not say from incapacity, for had he been far stronger and more skilful, had he been a Richelieu or a Sully, he would still have fallen. It no longer appertained to any one arbitrarily to raise money or to oppress the people. It must be said in his excuse, that ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... company to carry these arrangements into effect, the first result of which was that everybody looked more cheerful than they had been since the completion of the house, after finishing which some dulness and lassitude had been observable in the men, coupled with a tendency ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... worth mentioning—that aristocratic oval which the most graceful portrait painters of the fifteenth century were rather fond of exaggerating. The refined features had that subtle expression of suffering and lassitude which lends the human charm to the Virgins of the Florentine tondi of the time of Cosimo. A soft and tender shadow, the fusion of two diaphanous tints—violet and blue, lay under her eyes, which had ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... country, rain in a village, rain at sea, are sufficiently wearying, even to those whose mental activity is amused or occupied by books or the concerns of life; but who can comprehend the insufferable lassitude and despondency that overwhelm an African resident, as he lies on his mat-covered arm-chest, and listens to the endless deluge pouring for days, weeks, months, upon ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... amiable and useful characteristics. By a deplorable consequence of these pretended miracles of grace we frequently see sorrow succeed to enjoyment, a gloomy and unhappy state to one of innocent gayety, lassitude and chagrin to activity and hilarity, and slander, intolerance, and zeal to indulgence and gentleness; nay, what do I say? cruelty itself to humanity. In a word, superstition is a dangerous leaven, that is fitted to corrupt even ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... Willis arrived on deck, pale, and with an air of fatigue and lassitude altogether unusual. He gazed anxiously into every nook and cranny of ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... them, their feet torn by thorns and brambles, their provisions exhausted, and dying with thirst, they were fain to subsist on a few seeds, wild fruit, and the palm cabbage. At length, oppressed with hunger and thirst, with lassitude and loss of strength, they seated themselves on the ground without the power of rising, and, waiting thus the approach of death, in three or four days expired one after the other. Madame Godin, stretched on the ground by the side of the corpses of her brothers and other companions, stupified, delirious, ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard

... the bushed and grass-covered slope to where Lynette, all the guests supplied, had thrown herself down to rest on a stone under a tree. She had taken off her hat, and her hair was flecked with sunshine as she leaned her head back with a little air of lassitude and weariness against the scarred bark. But in spite of weariness she was smiling and content. The rest was delicious, the peaceful quiet enchanting, the air sweet after the fetid odours of the town; and it was sweet, too, whenever she glanced at the Reverend Julius ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... eruptive fevers, so in scarlatina, the patient begins with complaining of shivering, pain in the thighs, lassitude, and rapidly augmenting debility; frequently also of headache, which, when severe, is accompanied with delirium, nausea and vomiting. The fever soon becomes very high, the pulse increasing to upwards of 120 to 130 strokes in a minute, and more; the heat is extreme, raising ...
— Hydriatic treatment of Scarlet Fever in its Different Forms • Charles Munde

... Oh! it was so sad to see how soon the manly gait would change to the drunkard's stagger. To see eyes once bright with intelligence growing vacant and confused and giving place to the drunkard's leer. In many cases lassitude supplanted vigor, and sickness overmastered health. But the saddest thing was the fearful power that appetite had gained over its victims, and though nature lifted her signals of distress, and sent her warnings through weakened nerves and disturbed functions, and although they ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... extracting from under the box-seat a piece of old blanket, he covered over his sleeves, resumed the reins, and cheered on his threefold team (which, it may be said, had so completely succumbed to the influence of the pleasant lassitude induced by Selifan's discourse that it had taken to scarcely placing one leg before the other). Unfortunately, Selifan could not clearly remember whether two turnings had been passed or three. Indeed, on ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... those days, seemed always like some foreign military station in the tropics. The long, low, white buildings, with piazzas and verandas on the water-side; the general impression of heat and lassitude, existence appearing to pulsate only with the sea-breeze; the sandy, almost impassable streets; and the firm, level beach, on which everybody walked who could get there: all these suggested Jamaica ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... science of the universe, bears the impress of their habitat. The Eskimo's hell is a place of darkness, storm and intense cold;[69] the Jew's is a place of eternal fire. Buddha, born in the steaming Himalayan piedmont, fighting the lassitude induced by heat and humidity, pictured his heaven as Nirvana, the cessation of all ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... portion of the kingdom; from the cottage to the court, from the cradle to the grave, the French invariably dance when they can seize an opportunity. Nay, the older the individual, the more vigorous seems to be the passion. Wrinkles may furrow the face, but lassitude never attacks ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... sickness; the full, girlish mouth had a pinched and pained expression; and though she was dressed richly and with excellent taste, for a mere call in the country, there was something about her small figure which showed that it had once been fuller and rounder, and that she had fallen into lassitude ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... in positions and occupations altogether inconsistent with the idea of their being savage, wary, or revengeful. Their demeanour when undisturbed is indicative of gentleness and timidity, and their actions bespeak lassitude and indolence, induced not alone by heat, but probably ascribable in some degree to the fact that the night has been spent in watchfulness and amusement. A few are generally browsing listlessly on the trees and plants within reach, others ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... have been a prevision of this beech-wood. Mrs. Underwood, with Felix and Wilmet, tied up the plates, knives, and forks, and then the mother, taking Angela with her, went to negotiate kettle-boiling at the cottage. Geraldine would fain have sketched, but the glory and the beauty, and the very lassitude of delight and novelty, made her eyes swim with a delicious mist; and Edgar, who had begun when she did, threw down his pencil as soon as he saw Felix at liberty, and the two boys rushed away into the wood for a good tearing scramble and climb, like creatures intoxicated with the freedom ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Joan's help, was managed so well that when Eve made her appearance she was told that Uncle Zebedee, tired like herself, was not yet awake, while Jerrem, brisked up by several nips of raw spirit, was lounging about in a state of lassitude and depression which might very well be attributed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... the freedom and adventure of a two years' voyage to China,—so probable, in all respects, that the fact should appear an impossible nightmare? In the experiences of his life he had abundant material to furnish forth the facts of such a voyage, and in the weariness and lassitude that should follow a day's walking equally after a two years' voyage and two years' imprisonment, he had as much physical proof in favor of one hypothesis as the other. It was doubtless true, also, as he said, that he had gone to his house at dawn, and sat down on the threshold of his ruined home; ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... bald spots on his cranium; and since his fall from his horse, he had been troubled by a slight stiffness in his right leg, which stiffness became perfect lameness in threatening weather. Premature lassitude pervaded his entire person, and when he relaxed in vigilance even his eyes betrayed a distaste for everything—weariness, satiety as it were. All the same, however, he bore himself with an undeniable air of distinction, albeit the haughtiness of his manner indicated an ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... brightness seventy years or more had not dimmed. The group was completed by Mrs. Gregory's bachelor brother, older than his sister by fifteen years. This brother, Simon Jefferson, though stockily built and evidently well- fed, wore an air of lassitude, as if perennially tired. As he leaned back in a hall chair, he seemed the only one present who did not care ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis

... malicious word the old woman said lodged in her brain and arose to confront her at the most inopportune times—in the middle of a recitation or when she roused enough to turn over in her bed at night. The more vigorously she threw herself into her school work, the more she realized a queer lassitude, creeping over her. She kept squaring her shoulders, lifting her chin, and brushing imaginary cobwebs from before ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter

... bored. The sensation of lassitude, even in its less acute degrees, was rare with her; for she possessed a nature of so fresh a buoyancy that she was able, as a rule, to extract diversion from any environment. Her mind took impressions with the vivid clearness of a mirror, and also, it should be owned, with ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... backward in the wilds of the Adirondacks. Sometimes it is a love of adventure and freedom that sends men out of the more civilized conditions into the less; sometimes it is a constitutional physical lassitude which leads them to prefer the rod to the hoe, the trap to the sickle, and the society of bears to town meetings and taxes. I think that Old Mountain Phelps had merely the instincts of the primitive man, and never any hostile civilizing intent as to the wilderness ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner



Words linked to "Lassitude" :   apathy, torpor, weakness, slackness, hebetude, torpidity, listlessness



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