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Lethargy   /lˈɛθərdʒi/   Listen
Lethargy

noun
(pl. lethargies)
1.
A state of comatose torpor (as found in sleeping sickness).  Synonyms: lassitude, sluggishness.
2.
Weakness characterized by a lack of vitality or energy.  Synonyms: inanition, lassitude, slackness.
3.
Inactivity; showing an unusual lack of energy.  Synonyms: flatness, languor, phlegm, sluggishness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Lethargy" Quotes from Famous Books



... of the head Gavin dismissed Claire from his thoughts. And his newborn hate concentrated on her brother who had betrayed to death his rescuer. Obsessed with the fierce craving to stand face to face with the blonde-bearded giant he banished his lethargy of hopelessness and cast about for means of escape. out of this seemingly ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... forced him to become a priest. In the meantime, Justinian, pretending that he knew nothing of what was going on, neither inquired to what part of the world Priscus had been banished, nor ever thought of him again afterwards, but remained silent, as if he had fallen into a state of lethargy. However, he seized the small fortune that he ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius

... of the wide, even strokes roused Miss Evelina from her lethargy, and she went to the window, veiled. At first she was frightened when she saw the queer man whom she had met in the woods hard at ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed

... think so,) can we know without regret, that in very many of the persons in the situations supposed, it suffers a dull absorption, subsides into the mere physical nature, is sunk and sleeping in the animal warmth and functions, and lulled and rocked, as it were, in its lethargy, by the bodily movements, in the works which it is not necessary for it to keep habitually awake to direct? And its obligation to keep just enough awake to see to the right performance of the work, seems to give a licensed exemption from any other stirring of its faculties. ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... years ago; yea, what it hath been within these few years. The church hath lost much ground, and is still upon the losing hand, and it seems will continue so until it pleases the Lord to pour down his Spirit from on high, or else by some sharp awakening dispensation rouse up drowzy souls out of the lethargy wherein they are fallen, &c. It is many years since the sun fell low upon Scotland, many a dismal day hath it seen since 1649. At that time our reformation mounted towards its highest horizon, and since we left our ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... has roused me a little from my lethargy and made me conscious of existence. Indulge me in it; I will not be very troublesome! At some future time I will amuse you with an account, as full as my memory will permit, of the strange turn my ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... from a lethargy which had begun to numb the bitterness of his thoughts, he raised his head and looked about. A sudden fog had settled in the streets; the arches of the Arc were choked with it. He would go home. A great horror of being alone seized him. But he ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... will understand that modern dynamic electricity owes its development to the principle of economy in production. Practical science most effectively awakens from its lethargy at the call of commerce. Nevertheless, from the earliest moment in which it became known that electricity was akin to heat—that an interruption of the easy passage of a current produced heat—the minds of men were busy with the question of ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele

... and the ocean, who take arms at the crash of the neighbouring tumult; whilst you alone go to sleep amidst the clouds of the coming storm. To say the truth, if there was nothing more than shame to awaken you, it ought to rouse you from this lethargy. I had thought you," he continues, "a man desirous of glory. You are young and in the strength of life. What, then, in the name of God, keeps you inactive? Do you fear fatigue? Remember what Sallust says—'Idle enjoyments ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... position, I cannot conceive what better you can find than Sestos. Why, it would need a combined naval and military force to invest that port." By these and such like arguments he rescued them from the lethargy of despair. ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon

... to shake off his lethargy, and, not liking the associations of Sidlinch, hired a small cottage at Chalk-Newton which had long been empty. Here he lived alone, becoming quite a hermit, and allowing no woman to enter ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... people have a very faint—perhaps a very false—idea of how men think, and act, and suffer, in this same Border State. Your impression may be that a lethargy prevails, where, in reality, dangerous fever is the disease—a fever that must one day break out violently, in spite of the quack medicines administered by an incapable Government—in spite of the restrictions unsparingly employed, by that grim ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... relations. By-and-by would be the season of reckoning, the just and delicate analysis, by nicely critical nature, of all that he had deliberately lost, when he might run desperately before the whips of his own thought; now he felt only the lethargy which succeeds strenuous action, that has been, in a measure, victorious; the physical well-being of walking rapidly, vaguely, through the comfortable shadows, allowing the cold rain to pelt refreshingly upon his face and aching ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... slave-trade was, largely for political reasons, forbidden, slavery was left untouched. Beyond this point, as years rolled by, it was found well-nigh impossible to rouse the moral sense of the nation. Even in the matter of enforcing its own laws and co-operating with the civilized world, a lethargy seized the country, and it did not awake until slavery was about to destroy it. Even then, after a long and earnest crusade, the national sense of right did not rise to the entire abolition of slavery. It was only a peculiar and almost fortuitous commingling of moral, political, and economic ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois

... cried the woman, snatching up the child. "You're a reg'lar ol' hyeny,—that's what you are—" she added defiantly, roused at last from her lethargy. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... The lethargy was more mental than physical. It was that semi-consciousness that precedes sleep, or that one sometimes experiences when awakened suddenly out ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner

... produced by the practical threat of voudou curses upon Agricola was one thing, Creole lethargy was quite another; and when, three mornings later, a full quartette of voudou charms was found in the four corners of Agricola's pillow, the great Grandissime family were ignorant of how they could ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... intention of ever going to war, and who, in fact, often did not believe that there was a war. We all felt somewhat relieved one night when we heard that the German fleet was bombarding the English coast, hoping that it would shake the country out of its feeling of smug self-complacency and lethargy. ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith

... the notion that there would supervene, on the consigning to the limbo of inutile political systems of the disabling regime that now governs, an epoch, which would witness the shaking off, by the heavy, phlegmatic red man of the present, of his dull lethargy, with the casting behind him of former inaction and unproductiveness; and his being moved to assert a healthy, genuine, wholesome activity, to be directed to lofty or soulful purpose, or expressed in high and honourable ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie

... manifestations. For a scientific classification of these we are indebted to Professor Charcot, of the Salpetriere hospital in Paris, to whom, next to Mesmer and Braid, we are indebted for the present science of hypnotism. He recognized three distinct stages—lethargy, catalepsy and somnambulism. There is also a condition of extreme lethargy, a sort of trance state, that lasts for days and even weeks, and, indeed, has been known to last for years. There is also a lighter phase than somnambulism, that ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus

... from the pack, and spread them on the ground, depositing Carroll upon them. Then he set about vigorously rubbing the soldier's exposed flesh with snow. The smart of it, together with the roughness of handling, aroused the latter from lethargy, but Hamlin, ignoring his resentment, gripped the fellow with hands of iron, never ceasing his violent ministrations until his swearing ended in silence. Then he wrapped him tightly in the blankets, and stood himself erect, glowing ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish

... she seemed almost relieved at this intelligence, especially after I had assured her that the surgeon in charge had assured me that the delirium was much to be preferred as a less dangerous symptom than the lethargy of the ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... rivers sustained, and the earth must have become for the most part plain, or stagnant marsh. But the feeding of the rivers and the purifying of the winds, are the least of the services appointed to the hills. To fill the thirst of the human heart for the beauty of God's working—to startle its lethargy with the deep and pure agitation of astonishment,—are their higher missions. They are as a great and noble architecture, first giving shelter, comfort, and rest; and covered also with mighty sculpture and painted legend. It is impossible to examine, ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin

... language enjoined by their Governments, I had Herr von Tschirsky specially in my mind; his whole temperament and feelings led him to interfere in our affairs with a certain vehemence and not always in the most tactful way, thus rousing the Monarchy out of its lethargy. ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin

... through the man who sat in the chair; the lethargy began to clear from his brain, like a morning mist when a breeze rises; he sat a little more upright and gripped the arms of his chair; he said nothing yet, but he felt power and resource flowing ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... virtue of their trade, most thoroughly inured to the effluvia of this journalistic jargon; they have literally lost all taste, and their palate is rather gratified than not by the most corrupt and arbitrary innovations. Hence the tutti unisono with which, despite the general lethargy and sickliness, every fresh solecism is greeted; it is with such impudent corruptions of the language that her hirelings are avenged against her for the incredible boredom she imposes ever more ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... light. La Touche saw it, too, but promptly pointed out that they had no fire and nothing to boil. He seemed to find an odious satisfaction in the fact, a satisfaction which Bompard faintly reflected, and for a moment the girl seemed to glimpse in the two men a lethargy of mind almost unthinkable. A lethargy and laziness, mulish, and kicking at anything that disturbed it, that actually fought against betterment because betterment meant exercise ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... ye now? what lethargy O'ercomes your ancient power? that undisturbed Ye slumber on, as if ye heeded not The piercing shriek from yonder fuming car, Which saith that even here presumptuous man Has dared intrude upon the green domain, ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park

... clock struck eleven, and then Richard roused from his lethargy and said: "The next train for Olney passes at twelve. I am going there, Harry—going after Ethie. You'll see her coming ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... surrounded by the proprietor, the maitre d'hotel and his assistants, the porters, and the chasseurs, with all of whom Mr. Greyne was now familiar. Brandy and water having been supplied, together with smelling-salts and burnt feathers, Mrs. Greyne roused herself from an acute attack of lethargy, and asked for Mr. Greyne. A joyous smile ran round ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens

... Filipinos are not an industrious, thrifty people, or lovers of work, and no power on earth will make them so. The Colony's resources are, consequently, not a quarter developed, and are not likely to be by a strict application of the theory of the "Philippines for the Filipinos." But why worry about their lethargy, if, with it, they are on the way to "perfect contentment"?—that summit of human happiness which no one attains. Ideal government may reach a point where its exactions tend to make life a burden; practical government stops this side of that point. White men will not be found willing to develop a ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... welfare, that the tombs, those standing monuments of mortality, cannot move him: even the new-dug grave, the sculls and bones, those lively and awakening monitors, cannot rouse him from his sinful lethargy, open his eyes, or pierce his heart with the least reflection; so hardened is he with vice, and so intent on the pursuit of his evil course. The hand of the boy, employed upon his head, and that of the shoe-black, in his bosom, are expressive of filth and vermin; and show that our hero is ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... carried on by a civilized people—as in the case of Alexander, whose wars had a most decided effect upon the intercourse of men and extension of civilization—or of rousing and reuniting people who had fallen into lethargy, if attacked by less civilized and numerous hordes. Frequently we find in history that the ruder and victorious tribe is made to recover as it were civilization, already on the wane with a refined nation. Paradoxical as it may seem at first glance, it is, nevertheless, ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... German beer-hall. The servants are dressed in red, a perfect caricature. It isn't surprising that Russians should be taken for Turks. I am having a good time to-day. The first two it seemed as though I was in a lethargy. That happens to me sometimes. It is over now. The Italian statues are very original. There are ...
— Marie Bashkirtseff (From Childhood to Girlhood) • Marie Bashkirtseff

... the safari awoke from the lethargy of the hot, monotonous march. The spoor was judged to be at least four hours old, so there was no use putting the dogs on it. Then presently it disappeared. On the dead grass of the bordering veldt there was nothing to show which way the lion had gone. But there was a chance—a small one, ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... shirking the contrast with the splendors of the golden light, until nothing was left of them except a dark circle beneath the wide-spreading trees. No breath of wind stirred the leaves, or rippled the surface of the little pond. The lethargy of the hour had descended even upon the towering pine-trees, growing on the precipitous slope of the mountain, and showing their topmost plumes just above the frowning, gray crag—their melancholy song was hushed. The silent ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... world as if she would sink in upon the deep full breast of this wanton whom she had hated! Then the spell broke, they fell apart with a rush, Lola swung out and went down the steps, while Ellen obediently followed Cleve into Baston's store, where she sat on a nail keg and waited in a dull lethargy. Outside Courtrey, who had witnessed the thing from across the street, slapped his thigh ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe

... entered upon the fiery sequel of unfaith. The sweat was pouring from his body. The atmosphere could only be that of the nether world. As his brain cleared he understood, and made no effort to escape: he knew the virtues of the temascal. As the intense heat sapped his remaining vitality he sank into lethargy. He was aroused by the shock of cold water, and opened his eyes to find himself struggling in the creek, Dorthe holding him down with firm arms. After a moment she carried him back to the plain and ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... I'll promise you to arouse the least sensitive from their lethargy with it. With a work of that kind you have got to blow ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... living fire at once consumed ye two. I stood betwixt ye both, and though I sought To stay its fury, the strange fire would not Molest or wound me, passing like the wind, So that despairing, blind, I woke from out a deep abysm Of dream, a lethargy, a paroxysm; But find my pains the same, For still it seems to me I see that flame, And flying, at every turn See you consumed; but now I ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... and came out of his lethargy. He threw a single glance upwards, then suddenly bowed his head on his hands. But still he ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... cheerful moments that he should never have breathed the fresh air now "but for Woodcourt." It was only Mr. Woodcourt who could occasionally divert his attention for a few hours at a time and rouse him, even when he sunk into a lethargy of mind and body that alarmed us greatly, and the returns of which became more frequent as the months went on. My dear girl was right in saying that he only pursued his errors the more desperately for her sake. I have no doubt that his desire to retrieve what he had lost was rendered the more intense ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... the French Revolution late in the eighteenth century, had made itself felt much more slowly across the Rhine. Even the generous enthusiasm that animated the German people in the War of Liberation against Napoleon in 1813 had ebbed away into disappointment and lethargy when the German princes forgot their pledges of internal reform. The policy of the German and Austrian rulers was dominated by the reactionary Austrian Prime Minister, Prince Metternich, a consistent champion of aristocratic ideas and of the "divine ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... the Great Spirit is called upon, fasts are made, the war parade is celebrated, and the warriors go out by handfuls at a time against the enemy. This fierce and evil spirit awakens their most eager aspirations, and calls forth their greatest energies. It is chiefly this that saves them from lethargy and utter abasement. Without its powerful stimulus they would be like the unwarlike tribes beyond the mountains, who are scattered among the caves and rocks like beasts, living on roots and reptiles. These latter have little of humanity ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... which blind Indolence would protect itself from restless Misery and rampant Hunger. For it is not till Art has told the unthinking that nothing (rightly treated) is too low for its breath to vivify and its wings to raise, that the Herd awaken from their chronic lethargy of contempt, and the Lawgiver is compelled to redress what the Poet has lifted into esteem. In thus enlarging the boundaries of the Novelist, from trite and conventional to untrodden ends, I have seen, not with the jealousy of an author, but with the pride of an Originator, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... Esperance is but an infant, and it may be years ere Europe shall awake from her lethargy and strive to overturn the thrones of her despots; before that period, the period of revolution and bloodshed, our son may change his opinions and cease to be the ardent Republican he ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg

... resemblance to that felt by persons afflicted with sea-sickness, who care for nothing, whom no sensations are capable of moving, who have neither strength nor courage to think, and who could not be aroused from their lethargy by the presence of any great danger, not ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau

... sat numb and limp in the chassis. But presently the necessity of attending to Roy aroused her from her lethargy. Under her directions the boy was removed to a bed in the hotel and a doctor sent for. The physician lived in the hotel, so no time was lost before he was at Roy's bedside. He had finished his examination and had pronounced the injury painful, but not dangerous, when, without ceremony, Wandering ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham

... division, corps after corps, were moving forward; miles of wagons, miles of cavalry in sinuous columns unending, blackened every valley road. Later, the heavy Parrots and big Dahlgrens of the siege train stirred in their parked lethargy, and, enormous muzzles tilted, began to roll out through the valley in heavy majesty, shaking the ground as they passed, guarded by ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers

... Ambrose?" asked Stephen, rousing a little from his lethargy. "Methought I heard mine uncle ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... The funeral was to take place at eleven! Those words rang in my brain like a passing bell. And the doctor coming—the doctor of the dead, as Mme Gabin had called him. HE could not possibly fail to find out that I was only in a state of lethargy; he would do whatever might be necessary to rouse me, so I longed for his arrival ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... order and of a more diverse character, than the struggles of an earlier day. He enters into competition, not with one race only, but with all the races of mankind. As the knowledge of the fierceness of the battle comes to him, he raises himself from his lethargy and in the strength of his manhood he ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... venting her anguish, she was roused from her lethargy of grief by the chambermaid, who had entered by the ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton

... justifies himself for his estrangement, and presses against his unknown correspondent the very blame which he had applied generally to the kinsman of the poor victim in 1712. Now, unless there is some mistake in the date, how are we to explain this gentleman's long lethargy, and his sudden sensibility to Pope's anathema, with which the world had ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... If, however, the lethargy is more complete, or if the cause of it is such that the imagination is retarded while the senses remain awake, — as is the case with an over-fed or over-exercised body, — we have a state of aesthetic insensibility. The exhilaration which comes with ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... of the Pan-Islamic Movement is full of hope. The leading representatives of the community in India seem anxious and determined to rouse their coreligionists from their lethargy and to create within them a new ambition for a higher and a more honourable place in intelligence and official usefulness. This is much needed, because the community has reached its lowest ebb of influence ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... languor; segnity|, segnitude|; lentor[obs3]; sluggishness &c. (slowness) 275; procrastination &c. (delay) 133; torpor, torpidity, torpescence[obs3]; stupor &c. (insensibility) 823; somnolence; drowsiness &c. adj.; nodding &c. v.; oscitation[obs3], oscitancy[obs3]; pandiculation[obs3], hypnotism, lethargy; statuvolence heaviness[obs3], heavy eyelids. sleep, slumber; sound sleep, heavy sleep, balmy sleep; Morpheus; Somnus; coma, trance, ecstasis[obs3], dream, hibernation, nap, doze, snooze, siesta, wink of sleep, forty winks, snore; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... tried to arouse himself from his lethargy, and went forward into the forecastle with the sailors. But the breed of sailors seemed to have changed since the days he had lived in the forecastle. He could find no kinship with these stolid-faced, ox-minded bestial ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... daylight, when a singular noise drew him out of his lethargy. Some say that shots were at first heard, which had been fired by our own people, in order to draw out of the houses such as had taken shelter in them, that they might take their places; others assert, that from a disorderly practice, too common in our bivouacs, ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... of 1580, Philip went to Lisbon to take formal possession of the crown of Portugal, which he had inherited. I sent my wife to him to intercede for me. But he refused to see her, and so I was left to continue the victim of his vindictive lethargy. After a year of this, upon my giving a formal promise to renounce all hostility towards Vasquez, and never seek to do him harm in any way, I was accorded some degree of liberty. I was allowed to go out and to receive visitors, but not ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... resources in a state of progressive and almost feverish development, and, having become accustomed to a general absence of the picturesque, had learned to look at the practical and the utilitarian with a high degree of interest and pleasure. The change from the lethargy and feudalism of Lower Canada and the gaiety of Quebec, to the activity of the New England population, was very startling. It was not less so from the reposeful manners and gentlemanly appearance of the ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... acres, raising turnips and cabbages about the skirts of the city, hardly able to make both ends meet, until the corporation has cruelly driven streets through their abodes, and they have suddenly awakened out of a lethargy, and, to their astonishment, found themselves ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... the Transvaal objective than the centre, and which was still lingering on the banks of the Klip River two months after the relief of Ladysmith, numbered about 45,000. Ian Hamilton, who had done so well in the Elandslaagte and Caesar's Camp affairs, was not allowed to waste himself in the Natal lethargy. He was recalled from Ladysmith, and after taking part from the Bloemfontein side in the Wepener operations, was given command of a column which was sent on, a few days before the general movement, in the direction of Winburg to protect the right flank of ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... courage than of old. It did not seem to matter so greatly if there were nothing to be won from life, and she was very tired. It had been a mistake to come to Marden at all, there was too much time to think there. She returned to that fact eventually. The afternoon wore on and she fell into a lethargy with no desire to escape it, and did ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... seemed wise to pursue a policy of masterly inactivity. But the mere fact of having settled on a course of action cleared the air, cheered them. In place of a despondent lethargy there was a nervous tension, as before a battle. They laughed and joked amid the bobbing stable lanterns as they harnessed and saddled; and they rode away from Talapus Ranch one and all in better ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm

... human nature, but, on the contrary, is the only motive which will permanently satisfy human nature. Certain of the Socialists have made it their deliberate policy for years to stir up hatred between the poor and the rich, on the ground that hatred alone can overcome the lethargy of the masses and arouse in them the intensity of feeling necessary for conflict. On the contrary, hatred engenders hatred on the opposite side, action provokes reaction. As the individual can be uplifted in his ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler

... must do so as a professional hack-writer of children's books, translations, newspaper essays, and such miscellaneous drudgery. His habits, formed in his years at Salem, included an element of large leisure, an indulgence of one's self in times and seasons of mental activity, a certain lethargy of life; and he had not shown any power of sustained production in the monotony of daily work for bread. He felt a dread of such necessity. "God keep me," he writes to Hillard before this time, "from ever being really a writer for bread!" The only ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry

... and only way to serve the world, but also the one happy way to satisfy himself. Then, indeed, has he come to himself. Henceforth he knows what his powers mean, what spiritual air they breathe, what ardors of service clear them of lethargy, relieve them all sense of effort, put them at their best. After this fretfulness passes away, experience mellows and strengthens and makes more fit, and old age brings, not senility, not satiety, not regret, but higher ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... gave way. Holland, roused to a sense of danger by the appearance of French arms on the Rhine, protested and appealed to England for aid; and though her appeals remained at first unanswered, even England was roused from her lethargy by the French seizure of the coast towns of Flanders. The earlier efforts of English diplomacy indeed were of a selfish and unscrupulous kind. Holland, Spain, and France were tempted in turn by secret offers of alliance. A treaty offensive ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... had the power of insistence remained to me. But the saner medicus was acute where I had gone blunt, and bade me to the restful course. He was right. I was mentally stunned, and had I not slept off my lethargy, I should have gone mad in an hour—leapt at a bound, probably, ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... out-door recreation is neglected. Whether or not it should be, it is. Excessive inside work takes away the inclination to exercise, and only those who know a large number of bankclerks understand how serious are the results of this diseased lethargy. ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... Fosdick was wholly presentable, and while his contributions to the industrial glory of Montgomery lacked elements of permanence, he had, so the "Evening Star" solemnly averred, "done much to rouse our citizens from their lethargy and blaze the starward trail." After he married Fanny, Fosdick opened an office adjoining the Commercial Club rooms and his stationery bore the legend "Investment Securities." Judge Walters, in appointing ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... the junior students. One of them took an opportunity of reading to the superior, M. Duclaux, an extract from a debate which had struck him as being more violent than usual. The old priest, wrapped up in his own reflections, had scarcely listened. When the student had finished, he awoke from his lethargy, and shaking him by the hand, observed: "It is very clear, my lad, that these men do not say their orisons." The remark has often recalled itself to me of late in connection with certain speeches. What a light is let in upon many points by the fact that M. ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... From this lethargy of sadness Cecilia was soon, however, awakened by the return of the surgeon, who had brought with him a physician to consult upon Mrs Delvile's situation. Terror for the mother once more drove the son from her thoughts, and she waited with the most apprehensive impatience ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... answered. "I will not fight the dead." He had not moved in his seat, and there was a lethargy and a dullness in his voice and eyes. "There is time enough," he said. "I too will soon be of thy world, thou haggard, bloody shape. Wait until I come, and I will fight ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... superstition and never dared to look above my blind superiors for wisdom, until a "something" which I will call "fate" broke the windows of my mental dungeon and permitted the light of "SPIRITUAL LIBERTY" to filter through my being which awoke "reason and common sense" from her long sleep of lethargy. ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg

... stare of all about them stood Rosamund and Sakr-el-Bahr regarding each other in silence for a little spell after the Basha's departure. The very galley-slaves, stirred from their habitual lethargy by happenings so curious and unusual, craned their sinewy necks to peer at them with a flicker of interest in ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... nature of God's Truth, and had not so forgotten it as poor doomed creatures never did before,—should we, durst we in our most audacious moments, think of wedding it to the World's Untruth, which is also, like all untruths, the Devil's? Only in the world's last lethargy can such things be done, and accounted safe and pious! Fools! "Do you think the Living God is a buzzard idol," sternly asks Milton, that you dare address Him in this manner?—Such darkness, thick sluggish clouds ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... destined to be the terror of our merchantmen in eastern seas. Decaen's first halt was at the Cape, which had been given back by us to the Dutch East India Company on February 21st, 1803. The French general found the Dutch officials in their usual state of lethargy: the fortifications had not been repaired, and many of the inhabitants, and even of the officials themselves, says Decaen, were devoted to the English. After surveying the place, doubtless with a view to its occupation as the point d'appui hinted at in his instructions, he set ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... days more he lay in a kind of blessed lethargy, with little or no suffering. He fancied he could not recover, nor did he desire to recover, but to go with his father to the old world, and learn its ways from his mother. In his half slumbers he seemed ever to be gently floating down a great gray river, on which thousands ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... through and behind this mask of me, (Against which years have beat thus blanchingly With their rains!) and behold my soul's true face, The dim and weary witness of life's race; Because thou hast the faith and love to see, Through that same soul's distracting lethargy, The patient angel waiting for his place In the new heavens; because nor sin nor woe, Nor God's infliction, nor death's neighborhood, Nor all which others viewing, turn to go, Nor all which makes me tired of all, self-viewed,— ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... are the hereditary chiefs of the royal Kajar tribe, and still preserve the customs of that position. They have not changed the manly habits of a warlike race for the luxury and lethargy which sapped the energies and ruined the lives of so many monarchs of Persia. Up to the time of the present ruling dynasty the princes of the blood were immured in the harem, where their education was left to women and their attendants, and until ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon

... and rejected as evanescent and worthless. If the promptings of these be followed, there will be no innovation, and the orthodoxy of the dark ages will remain the standard for all time. The animal faculties coincide with Lethargy, Sleep, and Nutrition, thus favoring organic restoration. The intellectual faculties are wakeful, active, irrepressible, while the animal powers tend to repose, sleep, and renovation, and thus suspend ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... rightly ask by the proper use of each faculty and member God has given us, to compel the earth to yield up its resources for our sustenance, which it would do in ample abundance for all, were it not for the inordinate greed and lust, or the gross lethargy, of that many-phased, still unhumanized beast that man has to conquer in himself. But happy is he who hungers for the manna of law and the bread of truth, whose prayer is a sincere desire to be so fed thereon that there shall be such strength in the muscles of his soul as shall ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various

... would my tired rhyme Had force to rise from apathy, And shaking off its lethargy Ring word-tones ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell

... concentration on these things, Determined now, that long have wasted him, Have left him in a numbing lethargy, From which I fear he may not rouse to strength For speech ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... silent but even deeper change in the religious temper of the country. It dates, as we have seen, from the work of the Wesleys, but the Methodists themselves were the least result of the Methodist revival. Its action upon the Church broke the lethargy of the clergy; and the "Evangelical" movement, which found representatives like Newton and Cecil within the pale of the Establishment, made the fox-hunting parson and the absentee rector at last impossible. In Walpole's ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green

... which Goncharov took part. After the publication of "The Precipice," its author was moved to write an essay, "Better Late Than Never," in which he attempted to explain that the purpose of his three novels was to present the eternal struggle between East and West—the lethargy of the Russian and the ferment of foreign influences. Thus he ranged himself more closely with the great figures among his contemporaries. Two other volumes consist of critical ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov

... methods are of great service, but the mightiest effort is to lift the majority of the people out of the lethargy which renders them immune to pangs of the daily spectacle. The remarkable part is that the people are ready, but they expect the stimulus to come from without ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... effort to shake off his lethargy, the boy stepped to where Saint Simon lay back sleeping soundly, and then, buckling on his sword the while, he bent over him, took his sword-belt from where it hung over a corner of the chair back, and thrust the cold hilt into the heavy ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn

... than is known of a casual acquaintance met at different parties and reunions, but now that she was aware of Sylvie's infatuation, the mingled attraction and revulsion became stronger, and she caught herself wishing fervently that the Marquis would rouse himself from his lethargy of pleasure, and do justice to the capabilities which Nature had evidently endowed him with, if a fine head and noble features are to be taken as exponents of character. Fontenelle himself, meanwhile, leaning carelessly back ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... the same perverted taste which meets its reproof in these lectures is common amongst us. Were we called upon to describe the malady under which our countrymen labour in respect to literary taste, we should describe it as a state of torpor and lethargy, rather than of virulent disease. It is indifference, more than any morbid taste, which an imaginative work would have to struggle against in this country. There is little necessity here to guard the public against ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... was merely Lieutenant O'Malley, 14th Light Dragoons, the case was very different. With what heavy censure did I condemn the commander of the forces in my own mind for his want of daring and enterprise! Whole nights did I pass in endeavoring to account for his inactivity and lethargy. Why he did not seriatim fall upon Soult, Ney, and Victor, annihilate the French forces, and sack Madrid, I looked upon as little less than a riddle; and yet there he waited, drilling, exercising, and foraging, as if he were at ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... records, as a result of long observation on the plantations of the southern United States, that "the negro children were sharp, intelligent, and full of vivacity, but on approaching the adult period a gradual change set in. The intellect seemed to become clouded, animation giving place to a sort of lethargy, briskness yielding to indolence." This is very probably the case with the Pygmies, who similarly reach a mental limit beyond which they cannot advance; but this limit is set in the adult period. In other words, ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris

... Working gently and warily he kept the log right across the axis of the eddy, where huddled a crowd of chips and sticks. Here the log turned slowly, very slowly, on its own centre; and for a few seconds of exquisite relief Henderson let himself sink into a sort of lethargy. He was roused by a sudden shot, and the spat of a heavy bullet into the log about three inches before his head. Even through the shaking thunder of the cataract he thought he recognized the voice of his own heavy Colt; and the idea of that tried weapon being ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts

... of infinite wretchedness, Donald recalled his vigors, and shook off the lethargy that had bound his spirit. Once again, he rallied the strength of his manhood, and set his will to the hopeless strife. Blind, starving, he still gave battle to ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams

... streak of light that showed high above our heads grew brighter towards noon, then began slowly to decline. Before the shadows had lengthened in the court above, however, the sound of our door being unbarred aroused us from our lethargy, and a moment later, three soldiers entered and told us to prepare to go before the great ruler Samory. Omar, attired only in a small garment of bark-cloth, took no heed of his toilet, therefore we at once announced our readiness to leave the loathsome place with ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... only waiting to see which way the wind was going to blow, and for the time being it seemed likely to blow in favor of the Swedes. The regent's widow used every effort to rouse the people from their lethargy, and with increased success. All winter long the king of Denmark was burning to send reinforcements, and dickering with the Powers of Europe to obtain the necessary funds. But his credit was bad, and it was only with great difficulty that he at last despatched ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson

... cup of wine at one draught; but this is almost certain not to be true, since his doctors have left a daily journal of his illness, and make no mention of any such excess. He daily grew worse, worn out by his toils and his wounds, and soon he sank into a lethargy, in which he hardly spoke. Once he said something about his empire passing to the strongest, and of great strife at his funeral games, and at last, when his breath was almost gone, he held out his signet ring to Perdiccas, the only one of his old friends ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of the nature and variety of pain, devotes considerable chapters to the causes, symptoms, diagnosis and treatment of headache, hemicrania, epilepsy, catalepsy, analepsy, cerebral congestion, apoplexy and paralysis, phrenitis, mania and melancholia, incubus or nightmare, lethargy and stupor, lippothomia or syncope, sciatica, spasm, tremor, tetanus, vertigo, wakefulness, and jectigation ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson

... glaring at each other, Dan was startled and thoroughly aroused from his irresistible lethargy ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne

... wheels roll off, shook from him his lethargy. It was not only that Neverbend would boast that he alone had gone through the perils of their subterranean duty, but that doubtless he would explain in London how his colleague had been deterred from following him. It was a grievous task, that of dressing ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... she ministered to his wants, until he was restored to health. Such was her life. This is merely one case. She was always ready to do her duty. Her interest in good, never left her, for when almost dying, she aroused from her lethargy and asked if Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States, which he was a few days afterwards. She always predicted a civil war, in the settlement ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... verses that I now present you rouse you from your lethargy; yet should they not, I will not cease to cry aloud. I cannot now remain in silence while my fellow countrymen are sacrificed, the citizens of two noble cities deceived, and an enterprise for which I have so long and ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... a reverie. He passed his hand once or twice across his forehead as if to rally his wits and reduce the chaos within and around him to some sort of order, but gradually sank back again into his former lethargy. ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... vow of perpetual consecration to the slave. "Before God and our country," he declares, "we give our pledge that the liberation of the enslaved Africans shall always be uppermost in our pursuits. The people of New England are interested in this matter, and they must be aroused from their lethargy as by a trumpet-call. They shall not quietly slumber while we have the management of a press, or strength to hold a pen." The question of slavery had at length obtained the ascendency over all other questions in his regard. And when Lundy perceived ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... New views indeed—new and incomprehensible to Lady Houstoun! She saw not that the life of indulgence, the perpetual gala-day, which she anticipated for her son, would have condemned him to see his highest powers dwindle away and die in the lethargy of inaction, or to waste in repinings against fate those energies given to command success. Time moderated her astonishment, and quiet perseverance subdued her opposition—subdued it the more readily, perhaps, from the knowledge that her son could accomplish ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh

... the present day is the extraordinary interest taken in the investigation of those peculiar physical and psychical conditions attending the states now known collectively under the name of hypnotism, varying from lethargy, catalepsy, etc., to somnambulism. Until quite recently these investigations have been frowned upon and tabooed in scientific circles, and the fact that any man of scientific inclinations was known to feel an interest in matters ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various



Words linked to "Lethargy" :   phlegm, lethargic, hebetude, weakness, inactivity, torpor, inactiveness, languor, torpidity, slackness, inertia



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