"Languorous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... through Palmetto Town, Bringing with piney tang the old romance Of Pirates and of smuggling gentlemen; And tongues as languorous as southern France Flow down her streets like water-talk at fords; While through iron gates where pickaninnies sprawl, The sound floats back, in rippled banjo chords, From lush magnolia shade where mockers call. Mornings, the flower-women hawk their wares— Bronze ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... A white-curved bud Opening its petals slowly in the warmth of heaven.... The air is full of odours And languorous warm sounds.... A flute drones its insect music to the night Below the curving moon-petal of ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... traffic; to the right, on rising ground, were haunts of roaring type-mills grinding an endless grist of news; to the left, through a sudden dip and down a long decline, a world of sober-sided warehouses, degenerating into slums, circumscribed by sleepy South Street; all, this afternoon, warm and languorous in the lazy breeze of a sunny ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... heard the wooden bolt as it shot into place. Above the dark outlines of the forest, the moon, full-orbed, now shone in the sky, with a myriad attendant stars, its silver beams flooding the open spaces and revealing every detail, soft, dreamy, yet distinct. A languorous, redolent air just stirred the waving grain, on which ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... last as a tailor's equestrian advertisement he came striding down again into the hotel office, only to plunge most inopportunely into Miss Von Eaton's languorous presence. ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... remarks the girls did feel a certain amount of interest at the thought of the new life that lay before them. Everything had changed from that sunny, languorous, dolce far niente time a fortnight back. Now the girls felt keen and brisk, and they knew well that each moment in the future would ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... sense of sight. He bathed twice each day in the mountain stream—"a marvel of delicate delight framed in with trees." He read and rested; and wrote but little or not at all. Suddenly the repose of La Saisiaz was broken up; the mood of languorous pleasure and drowsy discontent was at an end. While preparing to join her friend on a long-intended mountain climb Miss Egerton-Smith, with no forewarning, died. The shock was for a time overwhelming. When Browning returned to London the poem La Saisiaz, the record ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... yellow. There was a red, glowing spot on the river bank. That would be Lawanne's camp. Hollister shut the door on the chill October night and turned back to his easy-chair by the stove. Doris had finished her work. She sat at the piano, her fingers picking out some slow, languorous movement that he did not know, but which soothed ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... true Horace; and after all these fascinating but doubtful Lydes, Neaeras, and Pyrrhas, it is pleasant to come across a young beauty like this Phyllis, sic fidelem, sic lucro aversam. She, at least, is a fresh and fragrant violet among the languorous hothouse splendours ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... woman slowly, gazing under languorous eyelids at the white, venomous face of the tall man. "Thief and——" she leaned forward and said the word, the ultimate and supreme insult of ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... scheme of manners and morals would nevertheless be the most momentous and mischievous event of modern history. Compared with the action of this destructive solvent, that of all other disintegrating agencies concerned in our decivilization is as the languorous indiligence of rosewater to the ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... annoying fly in the ointment, however. Her languorous surrender to love, her physical confession of defeat at the hands of that inexorable power, her sweet submission to the conquering arms of the besieger, left nothing to be desired; and yet there was something that stood between ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... Magical Nature, are joyous tributes to the power of the charm, paid by one who remains master of his heart. Numpholeptos is the long-drawn enchanted reverie of one in the very toils of the spell—a thing woven of dreams and emotions, dark-glowing, iridescent to the eye, languorous to the ear, impalpable to the analytic intellect. In Bifurcation he puts again, with more of subtlety and of detachment, the problem of the conventional conflict of love with duty, so peremptorily decided in love's favour in The ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... seated with a couple of musicians, one of whom played the tam-tam and another a sort of violin. When the family of our host, together with a few friends, were seated at the end of the room opposite the bayaderes, the signal was given, and the music commenced with a soft and indescribably languorous air. One of the bayaderes rose with a lithe and supple movement of the body not comparable to anything save the slow separating of a white scud from the main cloud which one sees on a summer's day high up in the cirrus regions. She was attired in a short jacket, a scarf, and a profusion of floating ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... rhythm of the dance, were soft and languorous as a July noon. Limply hung the draperies, slowly waved the graceful arms, and at the end, Patty sank slowly, gently, down on a mound beneath the trees, and, her head pillowed on her arm, closed her eyes, while the violin notes faded ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... of it; you will be with me, in dreamy grottoes strewn with fragrant rushes and the new-stript leaves of the vine, where the warm air woos to repose with its languorous softness, and the water as it wells murmurs its liquid laughter. Ah! no Greek would ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... a large, milk-fed moon was fairly crashing its way through, laying out a straight-away course of silver cinders across the harbor, and in all parts of the heavens stars were breaking out like a rash. In two minutes it had become a balmy, languorous night. Summer ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... poor man forget his troubles and filled him instead with delightful visions of sunny lands and blue skies and red poppies and fair women and languorous luxury. ...
— A Book Without A Title • George Jean Nathan
... merest caressing touch of the rein upon its sensitive neck. He had not been sympathetically inclined towards the fair stranger, a rich and still youthful widow, although he could not deny her unquestioned good breeding, mental refinement, and a certain languorous thoughtfulness that was almost melancholy, which accented her blonde delicacy. But he had noticed that her manner was politely reserved and slightly constrained towards the Harcourts, and he had already resented it with a lover's instinctive loyalty. He had at first attributed it to a want ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... fluttering crowd of sparrows, pigeons, and squirrels; and, leaning on a rude crutch, a lame old negro woman was dragging a basket of brushwood to the brow of the hill. The scene was very peaceful, wrapped in that languorous stillness which is the pervading charm of the South; and beyond the high spikes of the iron fence, the noise of passing street cars ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... sunlight low down in the trees; then he felt himself being carried into the house to be laid upon a bed. Some one gently unbuttoned his shirt at the neck, removed his shoes, and covered him with a blanket. Before he had fully awakened he was left alone, and quiet settled over the house. A languorous sense of ease and rest lulled him to sleep again. In another moment, it seemed to him, he was awake; bright daylight streamed through the window, and a morning breeze ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... at thirty-two, was still fair. Her face was thin, but her languorous eyes were expressive and her mouth delicate. A certain shadow about its corners may have meant rigidity of will or only a habit of introspection, but ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... over the jagged edge of the eastern hills,—a moon that left the valley in a mystic sheen of gold and blue, and threw their shadows madly into one as they walked. They heard the drowsy chirp of the cricket, now harmless, and the low cry of an owl. They felt the languorous warmth of the night, spiced with a hint of chilliness, and they felt each other near. They had felt this nearness before. One of them had learned to fear it, to tremble for himself at the thought of it. The other had learned to dream of it, and to long ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... shall go on," said Gwen, a novel note of languorous professionalism creeping into her voice. "The other women don't much like it if husband and wife work together, and I don't think Hal would like me to act away ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... issued boldly forth from the depths of the sea, and the battle began in earnest. They came during the hush of the dawn, a mad, crowding throng from No Man's Land, to wake the tide-rips and people the shimmering reaches of the bay, lashing them to sudden life and fury. Outside, the languorous ocean heaved as smiling and serene as ever, but within the harbor a wondrous ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... edge. A sycamore log answered the purpose of a divan, and a great drooping elm furnished a royal canopy. A half-moon hung in the sky, whitening a few small clouds that seemed to be painted on the blue-black dome. The air, though not oppressive, was warm enough to make all nature languorous, and the soft breath of the south wind was almost narcotic in its power to soothe. A great forest is never still; even its silence has a note of its own. The trees seem to whisper to each other in the rustling of their leaves. ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... than the perhaps not very practical passion which first makes young hearts ache? What agony it is to her when he dances three times running with that horrid, stuck-up London girl, with her fashionable jargon, her languorous movements, just a turn or two, and then stop for as many minutes! First love is not often last love. He thinks her unreasonable to mind those dances, yet when a great love comes into her life, making ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... with what breathless interest do we follow this history of love! We seem to be admitted to the confidences of beings of another sphere, to celestial heights of affection. We hear the heart-beats and see the glances of the languid, languorous eyes. The universe itself seems to stand still for these two lovers. Their heads are among the stars, their hearts in heaven. Their love is as pure as a sonnet of Keats, as ineffable as shimmering starlight. Day by day we trace its current, we cannot say growth because ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... pleasure of informing you. Your conduct is so light - so light,' she repeated, the fan wavering higher like a butterfly, 'that perhaps you do not truly understand.' The Countess rolled her fan together, laid it in her lap, and rose to a less languorous position. 'Indeed,' she continued, 'I should be sorry to see any young woman in your situation. You began with every advantage - birth, a suitable marriage - quite pretty too - and see what you have come to! My poor girl, to think of it! But there is nothing ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Skrebensky in the house. His lounging, languorous indifference irritated her and yet cast a spell over her. She knew it was the outcome of a spirit of laissez-aller combined with profound young vitality. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... had finished the song, had swept her sinuous lithe form back in a graceful curtsy in front of the two, and, as if by accident, a red rose had floated to the feet of Captain Barlow. Surely her soft, dark, languorous eyes had said: ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... and looked, not into his, but over his shoulder, as in a reverie, half meditation, half languorous dreaming. She swayed ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... along the bank, and the radiant transformation of earth, air, and water, when suddenly the sun was with them again, and grey was gold and colour was born and sprang out of the earth once more. They recalled the languorous siesta of hot mid-day, deep in green undergrowth, the sun striking through in tiny golden shafts and spots; the boating and bathing of the afternoon, the rambles along dusty lanes and through yellow corn-fields; and the long, cool evening at last, when so many ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... them. The girl spurned hers, but absent- mindedly pocketed the pasteboard check that went with it. While yet Pierce's throat was warm from the spirits there began the opening measures of a languorous waltz and the crowd swept into motion again. There was no refusing the invitation ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... an intimate charm, a true glamor of love-idyll about the Adagio. On more eager pulse rises a languorous strain of ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... a questionable clam. For two days he was languorous and petted and esteemed. He was allowed to snarl "Oh, let me alone!" without reprisals. He lay on the sleeping-porch and watched the winter sun slide along the taut curtains, turning their ruddy khaki to pale blood red. The shadow of the draw-rope was dense black, in an enticing ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... valley he had known languorous Februaries when orchard and garden, deceived by a fierce-wooing sun, trustingly put forth their treasures, only to find them blackened and withered when the true spring came. Dear little Jacqueline, glowing, tremulous, instinct with the joy and passion of giving—for to Kate Kildare's child love ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... Around the edges of the cow-lot peach trees were all in blossom and humming with bees, their rich, amethystine rose flung up against the gay April sky in a challenge of beauty and joy. The air was full of the promises of spring, keen, bracing, yet with an undercurrent of languorous warmth. There was a ragged fleece of bloom, sweet and alive with droning insects, over a plum thicket near the woods,—half-wild, brambly things, cousin on the one hand to the cultivated farm, and on the other to the free ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... rumble the big, lighted things dashed across the void, and rumbled on with a clatter of smashing iron as they took the switches recklessly. The noise soothed her; in the quiet intervals she was listening for sounds from upstairs. The night was still and languorous, one of the peaceful nights of large spaces when the heavens brood over the earth like a mother over a fretful child. At last no more cars came booming out of the distance. She shut the windows and bolted the door; then she prepared slowly ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... sunflowers hung on their stalks along the border of the lawn, and overhead the ripple of the summer breezes in the cottonwoods made a music like pattering raindrops. Under their swaying boughs Leigh Shirley stood, a fair, sweet girl. And nothing in the languorous beauty of the midsummer afternoon could have been quite so pleasing ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... of the crew knew the necessity for making some sort of contact with the natives. Mura did not even nod, but squeezed by the Salarik and pressed the lock. There was a sign of air, and the crisp smell of growing things, lacking the languorous perfumes of the world outside, puffed ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... sight and a nettle to the touch. If a storm arose, a fury that raged and threatened, it presently swept away, and the blue laughed again. When the sun sank, there arose in the east such a moon as might have been sole light to all the realms of faery. A beauty languorous and seductive was most absolute empress of the wonderful ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... fell a silence between us, yet a silence that was full of leafy stirrings, soft night noises, and the languorous murmur of the brook. Presently Charmian reached out a hand, broke off a twig of willow and began to turn it round and round in her white fingers, while I sought vainly ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... like those of the refrains of certain poems, employing, for example, the method of Baudelaire in L'Irreparable and Le Balcon, where the last line of the stanza is the echo of the first, in the languorous progression of the melody. And above all he has his few, carefully chosen pictures, with their diverse notes of strange beauty and strange terror—the two Salomes of Gustave Moreau, the 'Religious Persecutions' of Jan Luyken, the opium-dreams of Odilon ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... of the last days of July, cooled and freshened by a touch of rain and dropping back again to a languorous warmth. London looked at its summer best, rain-washed and sun-lit, with the maximum of coming and going in its more ...
— When William Came • Saki
... impersonal courtesy failed. He was becoming more sensitive than he liked to her charm and the warm sentiment she was giving out to him. This strange access in her of haunting loveliness, the gentle shadows that lay beneath her wide—yet languorous eyes, the almost imperceptible tremor of her sweetly fashioned lips, all troubled him profoundly. He exerted himself to break the spell upon his senses which this woman, wittingly or not, was weaving. But the effort was at ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... was still uncertain. Laboured and lifeless epics like Chapelain's La Pucelle, petty ingenuities in metre like those of Cotin, violence and over-emphasis, extravagances of sentiment, faded preciosities, inane pastoralisms, gross or vulgar burlesques, tragedies languorous and insipid, lyrics of pretended passion, affectations from the degenerate Italian literature, super-subtleties from Spain—these had still their votaries. And the conduct of life and characters of men of letters were often unworthy ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... till the gloaming She used to sit combing Her hair in a languorous way. And her suitors would stop To look into the shop, And stand there the rest of the day. She filled them with mute, but with deep despair, For she never glanced up, with a smile, to where They stood about, crushing Each other, and blushing: She simply ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... cigar was smoked out, he laid the letter aside, but he still refrained for a while from going to bed. His mind was far away on the Nile. Never had he seen the Nile. Should he go to see it, soon, this year, this spring? He remembered a morning's ride, when the air of London was languorous, had seemed for a moment almost exotic. That air had made him wish to go away, far away, to the land where he would be really at home, where he would be in "his own place." And then he had imagined a distant country where all romances unwind their shining coils. ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... path in the wildest part of Marguerite's garden. Overhead against the trunk of a tree a solitary lantern was flickering fitfully. It soon went out. The dazzling lights of the ballroom, glimmering through boughs and vines, shot a few rays into their faces. Music, languorous, torturing the heart, swelled and died on the air, mingled with the murmurings of eager voices. Close around them in the darkness was the heavy fragrance of perishing blossoms—earth dials of yesterday; ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... She opened her eyes, and shut them again at once. The sun was very strong now. It was one of those prematurely warm days of early Spring which have all the languorous heat of late summer. She opened her eyes once more, and found that she was feeling greatly refreshed. She also discovered that her head was ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... much of a man. But the style itself suffers some injustice from those who would speak thus. The views expressed are often quite foolish and often quite insincere; but the style itself is a manlier and more natural thing than is commonly made out. It is not in the least languorous or luxurious or merely musical and sensuous, as one would gather from both the eulogies and the satires, from the conscious and the unconscious imitations. On the contrary, it is a sort of fighting and profane parody of the Old ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... beach at Pass Christian meet and conflict as though each strove for the mastery of the air. The land-breeze blows down through the pines, resinous, fragrant, cold, bringing breath-like memories of dim, dark woods shaded by myriad pine-needles. The breeze from the Gulf is warm and soft and languorous, blowing up from the south with its suggestion of tropical warmth and passion. It is strong and masterful, and tossed Annette's hair and whipped her skirts about her in ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... reverie, his horse turned of its own accord to the left, and went for some distance up an embowered road; Arthur suddenly roused himself to find that he was passing close to a large sombre house, that had evidently once been fortified, looming very impressively in the languorous air; the gate had been opened for some purpose and not closed again, and he was, in fact, trespassing in some ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Ah! could she have seen the desperate, terrible glance fixed upon her down there in the hall, concealed behind a pillar, her smile would have lost that equivocal placidity, her voice would have sought in vain those wheedling, languorous tones in which she warbled the only song Madame Dobson had ever been able ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... that old ladies stop and watch. Of her infinite poetry of motion it is only necessary to say that she could make even "the Boston" look graceful; as witness her now. In that large room, detectives could have found men who thought Sharlee decidedly prettier than Miss Avery. Her look was not languorous; her voice was not provocative; her eyes were not narrow and tip-tilted; they did not look dangerous in the least, unless you so regard all extreme pleasure derived from looking at anything in the nature of eyes. Nor was there anything ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... was the same deep silence. The air, which should have been full of the twittering of birds, was heavy and languorous. There was no flutter of butterfly-wings or darting of flies; the fountains on the lawns were not playing, and as the Prince glanced over the edge of the marble basin of one of them he could see the goldfish beneath the water-lily leaves lying still, ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans
... to me, and calls for no redemption," said Kit awkward at the regal poise of her, and enchanted by the languorous glance and movement of her. Even the reaching out of her hand made him think of Tula's words, 'a humming bird,' if one could imagine such a jewel-winged thing weighted down with black ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... But what is certain is that the footpath descended in a gentle slope towards the edge of the lake which lay before the two children in all its languorous and silent beauty. The willows surrounded its banks with their tender foliage. The slender blades of the reeds with their delicate plumes swayed lightly over the water. They formed tremulous islands about which the water-lilies spread their great heart-shaped leaves and snow-white flowers. Over these ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... It was a languorous, luscious night, with the scent of new-mown hay mingling with that of gardens. If there was any breeze it was lightly from the east, bringing that mitigation of the heat traditional to the week following Independence Day. As there ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... upon a fashionable thoroughfare, the land baron's footstep relaxed and he relapsed into his languorous, indolent air. The shadows of twilight were darkening the streets and a Caribbee-scented breeze was wafted from the gulf across the city. It swept through the broad avenues and narrow highways, and sighed among the trees of the old garden. Seating himself absently on one of the public ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... his hand beneath the rug and sought cautiously for hers. As their palms met, and her small fingers closed responsively over his, such a thrill of satisfaction passed over him as he had never felt before. His old wounds were suddenly healed, life became a passionate love-song on a languorous, moonlit sea. But his ecstasy ceased with the music. Bobby's voice broke ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... they never would have had had they stayed in Dundee or Glasgow, but though they are proud they are lonely. What does grandeur matter if "the Quothquan folk" can't see it? The peepul trees rustle softly overhead, the languorous soft air laps them round, the scent of the East is in their nostrils, but their eyes are with their hearts, and is this what they see? A night of drizzling rain, a street of tall, dingy, grey houses, and a boy, his day's work done, bounding ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... them to where their fragrance would reach her delicately-chiseled nose, imperious, haughty.... They looked startlingly red against her cheek—like blood upon the snow.... She was looking at him.... There was no movement, save the even, languorous swing of the crimson blossoms. Lips, vivid red, were motionless, half parted in a little, inscrutable smile.... She was looking at him.... He forgot.... The whistle had been blowing, sounding departure. He had not heard. There was a lull. From afar, shrill, childish voice brought a drifting, "Bye, ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... there was nothing in the conversation to prepare him even in the slightest degree for what happened when he galloped up to the corral late one afternoon in October. It was the season of frosty mornings and of languorous, smoke-veiled afternoons, when summer has grown weary of resistance and winter is growing bolder in his advances, and the two have met in a passion-warmed embrace. Billy had ridden far with his ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... fervour gradually weakened, and I fell insensibly into a reverie. That chamber bore no semblance to a chamber of death. In lieu of the fetid and cadaverous odours which I had been accustomed to breathe during such funereal vigils, a languorous vapour of Oriental perfume—I know not what amorous odour of woman—softly floated through the tepid air. That pale light seemed rather a twilight gloom contrived for voluptuous pleasure, than a substitute for the yellow-flickering watch-tapers which shine by the side of corpses. I thought upon ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... This languorous spell disappeared presently, and then the days were full of life and action. Mrs. Beck and Bobby and Boyd, however, did not go in for anything very strenuous. Edith Wayne, too, preferred to walk through the groves or sit upon the grassy promontory. It was Helen and Dorothy ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... rose tints had been of his own making. He viciously snapped his mind shut on the thought. For a while he would feverishly clamp his attention to his work, while outside the sky continued serenely blue, and the breeze that drifted through his window was languorous and soft. But the work was too light. There was not enough of it, nor was it of the nature that demanded his absorbed concentration. He thought of Mr. Mosby, the unwitting cause of it all. And yet he did not blame Uncle Buzz in the least. Rather he sided with him. They were ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... horns, the subdued sweet shrilling of multitudes of flutes, Pandean pipings—inviting, carrying with them the calling of waterfalls in the hidden places, rushing brooks and murmuring forest winds—calling, calling, languorous, lulling, dripping into the brain like the very honeyed essence ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... Laura, who married a De Sade, was one of his ancestors, and the family had cultivated both arms and letters with success. He was, according to Lacroix, "an adorable youth whose delicately pale and dusky face, lighted up by two large black [according to another account blue] eyes, already bore the languorous imprint of the vice which was to corrupt his whole being"; his voice was "drawling and caressing"; his gait had "a softly feminine grace." Unfortunately there is no authentic portrait of him. His early life is sketched ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the mouths of carven lions, and here and there arbours with stone seats, whereon were laid soft cushions of many colours. It was a veritable place of Eastern delight and dreams, such as Peter had never known before he looked upon it on that languorous eve—he who had not seen the sky or flowers for so many weary weeks of sickness. It was secluded also, being surrounded by a high wall, but at one place the tall, windowless tower of some other building of red stone soared up between and beyond ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... smiling man who never ceased talking to her became like one of the Djinns the old ones of the caravan used to tell stories about, in the nights along the roads. The words he spoke became a languorous mist in her ears. She listened and understood only that this man with the black hair slanted across his forehead and the silent eyes, was talking to her. ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... direct look that accompanied this. Her opinions could not interest him one way or another, and he was going far in assuming that she was deeply concerned in Harwood's welfare. The incongruity of their talk was emphasized by the languorous strains of the newest popular waltz that floated over ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... growth. In retrospect now, and giving due recognition to this crescent spirit, I recall that, in spite of it, Omar Khayyam was the favorite poet of many of us, that introspection, which sometimes deepened into pessimism, was in vogue, and that a spiritual or philosophic languorous disenchantment sicklied o'er the somewhat mottled cast of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... this great artist is fully revealed in the incomparable pages of the Tentation de saint Antoine and Salammbo where, far from our sorry life, he evokes the splendors of old Asia, the age of fervent prayer and mystic depression, of languorous passions and excesses induced by the unbearable ennui resulting from opulence ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... delights for which he had designed this chamber, this painted atmosphere which gave new color to faces grown dull and withered by the use of ceruse and by nights of dissipation, there were other, more personal and perverse pleasures which he enjoyed in these languorous surroundings,—pleasures which in some way stimulated memories of his past ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Orleans when the war brought fashion to a stand: coat-waist high, skirt solemnly long; sleeves and trousers small at the hands and feet, and puffed out—phew! in the middle. The whole scheme was dandyish, dashing, zou-zou; and when he appeared in it, dark, good-looking, loose, languorous, slow to smile and slower to speak, ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... dreams by the languorous warm night and Boyar's easy stride up the steep, touched his neck with the rein and turned him into ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the better to focus an opera-glass on the box. The gong solemnly announced the second act, and Alice moved her chair to face the stage. Once more Montani scanned the party with his glass. As the lights faded Alice, with the pretty languorous gesture I so well remembered, opened her fan—the fan of ostrich plumes, that became a blur of white that held my eye through the dusk ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... concealed behind a bank of graceful exotic plants, struck up a languorous waltz, and the couples, only too eager to respond to the invitation, began to turn and glide over the polished ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... is entering. Hush! If I could but describe her! Languorous, slender and passionate. Sleepy eyes that see everything. An indolent purposeful step. An unimaginable grace. If you were her lover, my boy, you would learn how fierce love can be, how capricious and sudden, how hostile, how ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... scene that rises up in his mind is a ball-room; he sees women all arow, delicate necks and arms of young girls, and young men in black collected about the doorways. Some couples are moving to the rhythm of a languorous waltz, a French imitation of Strauss, a waltz never played now, forgotten perhaps by everybody but him—a waltz he heard twenty long years ago. That waltz has lain ever since forgotten in his brain, but now he hears it all; never before ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... the old grille in the wall, behind which Mrs. Peyton stood on the morning when he thought he was leaving the ranch forever; where he had first clasped her in his arms, and stayed. A turn of the head, a moment's indecision, a single glance of a languorous eye, had brought this culmination. And now he stood again before that ruined grille, his house and lands, even his NAME, misused by a mad, scheming enthusiast, and himself a creeping spy of his own dishonor! He turned with a bitter smile again to the garden. A few dark red Castilian ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... flowers of all descriptions raised their heads amid the grass. There was no footstep, no sound; a bee lazily humming, a brilliant butterfly darting across the path, something quick and red flashing up a tree—a squirrel frightened by the Danish hounds; that was all. And Marsa was happy with the languorous happiness which nature gives, her forehead cooled by the fresh breeze, her eyes rested by the deep green which hid the shoes, her whole being refreshed by the atmosphere of peace which fell from ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... light and gazed upward, devouring him hungrily with her great, languorous eyes. She held to his coat lapels, standing close beside him, her warm breath beating up into ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... day; pumped the sap up madly into the little buds, so that they could hardly swell fast enough, and burst at last into a perfectly riotous fanfare through the shrubberies. It pumped blood, too, as well as sap, and made hearts flutter to strange irregular rhythms with the languorous insolence of its perfumes, and the soft caressing pressures of its ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... riveted on her white silhouette in the moonlight. Sarudine now came from the lighted drawing-room on to the veranda. Sanine distinctly heard the faint jingling of his-spurs. In the drawing-room Tanaroff was playing an old-fashioned, mournful waltz whose languorous cadences floated on the air. Approaching Lida, Sarudine gently and deftly placed his arm round her waist. Sanine could perceive that both figures became merged into one that ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... a long time undisturbed, and the air in the room was so close and hot that both became languorous and sleepy. Nor was there any sound except the droning of some flies overhead and this added to the heaviness. Paul finally rose and gazed through the little windows, but he saw only an empty field and the edge of the forest. Save for this glimpse of green they were completely cut ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... too, he had seen the hope of restoring his wife's health—for which he had undertaken the overland emigration—more than fulfilled in Mrs. Peyton's improved physical condition, albeit at the expense, perhaps, of some of the languorous graces of ailing ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... this,—to move the strong man's heart to woman's tenderness! We have heard tell of poets, who singing of death have persuaded many straightway to die,—but when they sing of sweeter themes, of lover's vows, of passion-frenzies, and languorous desires, cold is the blood that will not warm and thrill to their divinely eloquent allurements. Come hither, fair sir!" and he beckoned to Theos, who mechanically advanced in obedience to the command—"Thou hast thoughts of thine own, doubtless, concerning Love, and Love's fervor of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... grown quite dark, for the moon had not yet risen; but there was a spring-time sweetness in the air, which was not yet enervated by the languorous ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... were wafted in from under the silken hangings. The room grew cooler by unguessed means. Every sense was treacherously wooed. And ever, in the middle of the moving light among the languorous dancers, the snakes ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... nameless some one whom he ardently desired, and felt that something strange and wonderful, intoxicating as it advanced, was going to happen. The twilight grew deeper, and behind a rose-bush he saw a young girl with a languorous and mysterious smile, although her forehead and eyes were hidden. As it darkened rather suddenly, her eyes came out, and they were very personal and seemed to belong to some one already much beloved, who had been found with "transports of infinite joy and tenderness." ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... romance will have already suspected—the woman to whom he believed he owed his ruin in San Francisco. She was as beautiful and alluring as ever, albeit she was thinner and more spiritual than he had ever seen her. She was tastefully dressed, as she had always been, a certain style of languorous silken deshabille which she was wont to affect in better health now became her paler cheek and feverishly brilliant eyes. There was the same opulence of lace and ornament, and, whether by accident or design, clasped around the slight wrist of her extended hand was ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... about. Agapoulos, seated alone in the chair over which he had draped the leopard skin, was busily brushing his moustache and glancing sideways toward the screen which concealed Safryeh. Zahara tilted her head on to her shoulder and cast a languorous glance into the shadows ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... knew that they were to meet, he formed a picture of her in his mind; and the necessity, if he was to find any beauty in her face, of fixing his eyes on the fresh and rosy protuberance of her cheekbones, and of shutting out all the rest of those cheeks which were so often languorous and sallow, except when they were punctuated with little fiery spots, plunged him in acute depression, as proving that one's ideal is always unattainable, and one's actual happiness mediocre. He was ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... last. These sounds, the rustling leaves, the flitting birds, the tinkling creek, the frogs, tree toads and crickets and those other intangible cadences, these were the instruments of nature's vast orchestra, playing their lullaby, languorous and sweet, for the drowsy day. It was dusk, and he was desperately in love with Adnah, and he had on a fool bloomer bath suit and no money, and he had to go back into civilization just as he was. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... languorous autumn a fierce winter ensued. The cold came early. The deciduous growths of the forests were leafless ere November waned, rifled by the riotous marauding winds. December set in with the gusty snow flying fast. Drear were the gray skies; ghastly the ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... for their tune-mates The gold languorous lilies of the glade; And the whippoorwill, that plaintive dreamer, Some dark purple flower ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... slowly, with the air of a spoiled beauty. She stops just inside the door and speaks in a very casual manner. Her voice is languorous and caressing. She is dressed in the excess of the French fashion and carries a daring parasol. She smiles and comes in, undulating, to the middle of the ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... in this scene that the local color is not confined to externals alone, but infuses the music as well. Very skilfully Verdi makes use of two melodies which are saturated with the languorous spirit of the East. The first is the invocation of Ptah, chanted by an invisible priestess to the accompaniment ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... seems to be constructed upon a smaller and more delicate scale; the fields are mere paddocks, so reduced that from this height their hedgerows appear a network of dark green threads overspreading the paler green of the grass. The atmosphere beneath is languorous, and is so tinged with azure that what artists call the middle distance partakes also of that hue, while the horizon beyond is of the deepest ultramarine. Arable lands are few and limited; with but slight exceptions the prospect is a broad rich mass ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... but a great composer. By the variety of his pauses—now at the close of the first or second foot, now of the third, and again of the fourth—he gives spirit and energy to a measure whose tendency it certainly is to become languorous. He knew how to make it rapid and passionate at need, as ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... luxury Of luring blue and wanton gold, Of blanched rose and crimson bold, Of lines that flow voluptuously In tender, languorous curves to fold Her form in ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... effort to conceal. And she, on her part, seemed to surrender herself to the enjoyment of the moment; her eyes remaining longer on his, her tones softening to a slow, tender utterance almost carrying a caress, her face keeping its languorous smile; as if the honey-sweet fragrance from the unseen flowers ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... "Now I come to think of it, the case grows deucedly clear. The South of France one winter and Florida this! Simple nervous prostration would seem to the uninitiated better fought in the exhilirating ozone of Colorado, or—the North Pole—than in this languorous atmosphere. 'An inherited tendency.' Is this the pleasant little legacy which my respected ancestor has bequeathed to his only grandson? It skipped the Judge, but it caught poor Uncle Lenox, and now it has nabbed me! What a fool I have ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... happy in catching the spirit of Spanish music. He has a book of Spanish dances and two Spanish albums full of music of most varying mood, yet every mood characteristic of Spain and its people, now gay, now languorous, now dashing, now subdued, now softly whispering, now full of verve and passion, like the "Bolero," the fifth of the "Spanish Dances," Op. 12, with its sharply accentuated rhythm and dashing melody, which toward the end fairly ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... the above-recorded conversation between Billy and myself brought with it the threat of a change of weather. It had been exceptionally hot all day, with less wind than usual, and there was a languorous quality in the atmosphere that seemed to portend thunder, a portent that was strengthened toward nightfall when the wind died away to the merest zephyr, while a great bank of heavy, lowering cloud piled itself ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... at each end and languorous in the middle; when a haze ripples the skyline like a waving ribbon of faded blue; when the winds and the grasses stop and listen for the first on-rush of winter, then it is that the rangeland takes on a certain intoxicating unreality, and range-wild blood leaps with desire to do something—anything, ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... fast and far to-night as that hombre will," supplemented Miguel with his brief smile, that was just a flash of white, even teeth and a momentary lightening of his languorous eyes. ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... can one listen to the deep, tired, and ghostly voice slowly uttering the laborious ideas of his troubled mind with the somewhat painful pronunciation of the elocutionist (he makes chapell of Chapel); nor mark his languorous movements and the slow swaying action of the attenuated body; one cannot notice all this without feeling that in spite of his great courage and his iron tenacity of purpose, he is a little weary of the battle, and sometimes even perhaps conscious of a check for the cause which is far dearer to ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... The languorous day was of the loveliest. It invited to idleness, made repudiation of work a virtue. My stint was over for a few hours at least and I enjoyed the luxury of pitying poor Mott, who was shut up in a stuffy cabin ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... he's keen enough on his own house," Gordon answered drowsily from the depths of the hammock, in which he had almost fallen asleep. He felt incapable of thought. For weeks he had looked forward to the match, and now it was so close he felt strangely languorous, ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... at him, her eyes soft and heavy with that languorous look which will quickest befuddle the sense of a man. "You tell; Ramon not hear," she hinted. "Ramon, he got plenty trobles for thinking about." She smiled again. "Ramon plenty long ways off. He got Bill Holmes for talking to. ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... came at length to a little summerhouse. It was covered with a thick jessamin vine; and the mysterious, languorous perfume of its starlike flowers filled the narrow resting-place with the very atmosphere of love. They sat down there, and in a few moments the seal was broken and Hyde's heart found out all the sweetest words that love could speak. ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... know—or if you do not, then I have the pleasure of informing you. Your conduct is so light—so light," she repeated, the fan wavering higher like a butterfly, "that perhaps you do not truly understand." The Countess rolled her fan together, laid it in her lap, and rose to a less languorous position. "Indeed," she continued, "I should be sorry to see any young woman in your situation. You began with every advantage—birth, a suitable marriage—quite pretty too—and see what you have come to! My poor girl! to think of it! But there is nothing that does so much harm," observed the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "The Libby," which in years to come was to be her special care.... But this is anticipating our story. Betty Van Lew, full of the charm and enthusiasm of youth, had just come home from school, and with her had come the Northern friend, to whom the Southern city with its languorous beauty and warm hospitality was ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... returned before eleven at night, the cat was waiting for him in the vestibule, scratching the wood of the door, miaouing, even before Durtal was in the hall; then it rolled its languorous green-golden eyes at him, rubbed against his trouser leg, stood up on its hind feet like a tiny rearing horse and affectionately wagged its head at him as he approached. If eleven o'clock had passed it did not run along in front of him, but would only, very grudgingly, rise when ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... seen before. Our horn and our siren shrieked a warning as we shot through. And it seemed wrong. They looked so peaceful and so quiet, did those French towns, on that summer's morning! Peaceful, aye, and languorous, after all the bustle and haste we had been seeing. The houses were set in pretty encasements of bright foliage and they looked as though they had been painted against the background of the landscape ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... then through the diaphanous shimmer of the atmosphere, and the eye might almost have followed their sonorous undulations. Deadened by the thickness of the walls, the music was strangely sweet. It was a song voluptuously sad, wearily languorous, expressing bodily fatigue and the discouragement of passion. It was full of the eternal weariness of the luminous azure, of the indescribable helplessness of hot countries. As the slave passed by the wall, forgetting the master's lash he would suspend his walk and stop to breathe in ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... stool outside the doorway he held up an unfinished thing before his grieved eyes and devoutly wished it in the place of punishment of the wicked dead. The sincere passion of his tones not only arrested my steps but lured through the open doorway the languorous and yawning Buck Devine, who hung over the worker with disrespectful attention. I joined the pair. To Buck's query, voiced in a key of feigned mirth, Sandy said with simple dignity that it was going to be a darned good sweater for the boys in the trenches. Mr. Devine offered ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... her languorous voice, "can you not stir a yard without that ugly black dog at your heels? Do you bring him to protect your back? If so, what is the need? Have I not sworn that you are safe ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... guitars and yearning notes of violins wailing despairing love. And Isidro, seated on the bamboo ladder of his house, went through an independent performance. He sang "Good-night, Ladies," the last song given to the school, sang it in soft falsetto, with languorous drawls, and never-ending organ points, over and over again, till it changed character gradually, dropping into a wailing minor, an endless croon full of obscure melancholy of ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... gardens of weeds. The girls are not romantic to regard or to talk with. They are not even clean. The secrets of their toilet are not known to me, but I doubt if soap and water ever appear in large quantities. And yet.... They walk or lounge, languorous and heavy-lidded, yet with a curious suggestion of smouldering fire in their drowsy gaze. Rich, olive-skinned faces they have, and hair either gloomy or brassy, and caressing voices with the lisp of Bethnal ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... his merry whistle and his buoyant step to interrupt this first languorous stage of the siesta which the girls always took during the hot hours. Nell had acquired the habit long before Mercedes came to show how fixed a thing it was in the life of the tropics. But neither girl heard him. Mercedes lay under the palo verde, her beautiful ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... vitality and a fresh happy mind. The little American doctor had sacrificed the cover of one of his beloved 'Saturday Evening Posts' for this portrait, and with extreme neatness had scissored it out and fastened it on the wall—a pleasant change from the cocaine and chocolate-box suggestiveness of the languorous Kirchner type that in 1916 and 1917 lent a pinchbeck Montmartre atmosphere to so many English ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... low in the west, and the breeze soft and languorous that came up from the south, charged with the seductive odor of the sea. Children freshly befurbelowed, were gathering for their games under the oaks. Their voices were ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... birds certainly did pull the frigid mitt! So I wend my way back to the demure Dolores, the houri of my heart, and the next time I'll take a crack at the big guns in Seattle. And I'll sure reward you for your generosity in taking me to Blewett, all the long, long, languid, languorous way——" ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... once in the morning when Laevsky had gone to bathe, and another time at midnight when he was playing cards. Remembering this, Nadyezhda Fyodorovna flushed crimson, and looked round at the cook as though she might overhear her thoughts. The long, insufferably hot, wearisome days, beautiful languorous evenings and stifling nights, and the whole manner of living, when from morning to night one is at a loss to fill up the useless hours, and the persistent thought that she was the prettiest young woman in the town, and that her youth was passing and being wasted, and Laevsky himself, though ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... first that George roused himself to the point of asking why he was here and what—now that he was here—he proposed to do. For two languorous days he loafed, sufficiently occupied with his thoughts. He smoked long, peaceful pipes in the stable-yard, watching the ostlers as they groomed the horses; he played with the Inn puppy, bestowed respectful caresses on the Inn cat. He walked down ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... music. He was not himself an instrumentalist, but in the living-room was a machine which supplied that deficiency, and this afternoon had brought a fresh consignment of records from Boston. This, too, was a night of stars, but rather of languorous than disquieting influences, and the talk had flowed along in serenity, until gradually, under the spell of the music the two younger members of the ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... fitfully conversed upon such topics as occurred to them; while Sir Edgar, clothed in flannels, with a Panama hat tilted well forward over his eyes, smoked and read with an air of placid enjoyment; the youngsters, apparently less affected than the rest of us by the languorous heat of the weather, meanwhile indulging in a game at hide-and-seek about the decks with ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... sing with the old sweet tone, Though one sits stricken where its billows roll? Will space be dumb, or from the mystic pole Will spirit-messages be backward blown? When our united lives are wrenched apart, And day no more means fond companionship, When fervent night, and lovely languorous dawn, Are only memories to one sad heart, And but in dreams love-kisses burn the lip,— Dear God, how can this same ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the window, lazily rocking, her long lithe arms clasped about her knees, her face a dream of the day. The seasons single out their favorite moods: a violet of spring-time woos one, a dusky June rose another; to-day the soft, languorous air had, unconsciously to her, charmed the ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... will. Low she bent above me, her dusky hair a cloud that choked me, and through this cloud the glitter of her eyes, red lips that curled back from snapping teeth, fingers clawed to rend and tear; then as I gazed, in horror, these eyes grew soft and languorous, these vivid lips trembled to wistful smile, these cruel hands clasped, soft-clinging, and drew me near and ever nearer towards that smiling, tender mouth, until I waked in a panic to behold the dawn and against the sun's growing ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... he looked in on Sarah and found her, amid a flood of sunshine, putting finishing touches to her white wedding gown. His own heart was full of gaiety, and the sight of the woman who was so soon to be his own so occupied, filled him with a joy unspeakable, and he felt faint with languorous ecstasy. Bending over he kissed Sarah on the mouth, and then ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... April, 1880, an article appeared in the "Le Gaulois" announcing the publication of the Soires de Mdan. It was signed by a name as yet unknown: Guy de Maupassant. After a juvenile diatribe against romanticism and a passionate attack on languorous literature, the writer extolled the study of real life, and announced the publication of the new work. It was picturesque and charming. In the quiet of evening, on an island in the Seine, beneath poplars instead of ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... the young people have been dancing—waltzing, polkaing, dancing the csardas—mostly the csardas, the dance of the nation, of the people, the most exhilarating, most entrancing, most voluptuous dance that feet of man have ever trod. The girls and lads are indefatigable, the slow and languorous Lassu (slow movement) alternates with the mad, merry csardas, they twirl and twist, advance, retreat, separate and reunite in a mad, intoxicating whirl. Small booted feet stamp on the rough wooden floor, sending up clouds of dust. ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... and from shadowy wood, from dewy grass and flower, stole wafts of perfume, while from some thicket near by a blackbird filled the air with the rich note of his languorous song; but Barnabas frowned only the blacker, and his hand clenched itself on the stick he carried, a heavy stick, that he had cut from ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... and none of sight or hearing, has impressed itself as the token of Canada, the land. Every swimmer knows it. It is not languorous, like bathing in a warm Southern sea; nor grateful, like a river in a hot climate; nor strange, as the ocean always is; nor startling, like very cold water. But it touches the body continually with freshness, and it seems to be charged with a subtle and unexhausted energy. It is colourless, faintly ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... gaining any added clearness of vision. The atmosphere of the place seemed to him somehow enervating. The little 'walk amongst the rhododendrons was still fragrant 'with perfume, reminiscent of that strange moment of emotion. The air was still languorous. Although the nightingale's song had ceased, the atmosphere seemed still vibrating with the music of his past song. He stood before the window of the room where he had talked with Julia. What would she say, he wondered? Would she think that he had sold his soul if he chose the more peaceful way? ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the languorous stillness is broken only by the splashing of the fountains in the great marble basins and the drowsy hum of a bee among the blossoms. The lad's head has sunk down upon the lady's knee and she is ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Giuliana, I evoked her image, the glowing, ruddy copper of her hair, the dark mystery of her eyes, so heavy-lidded and languorous in their smile. My spirit conjured her to stand before me all white and seductive as I had known her, and my longings were again upon me ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... last belong to me altogether and for always, but on that delicious little dimple which comes in one of her cheeks when she is happy, when she smiles, and which excited me as much as her voice did with languorous softness, on that evening when our flirtation began, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... presence of women. The earth is inhabitable only because they are there; the sun shines and is warm because it lights upon them; the air is soft and balmy because it blows upon their skin and ruffles the short hairs on their temples, and the moon is charming because it makes them dream and imparts a languorous charm to love. Every act and action of Paul's has woman for its motive; all his thoughts, all his efforts and hopes ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... a city, Lee recognized, more foreign to his own than any he knew in western Europe; a difference that existed mainly in the tropical heat, visible in languorous waves rising from blanched walls and streets already—so early—fervent. Savina was filled with delight; a positive color glowed in place of the customary uniform pallor of her cheeks; she opened her bags with an irresistible youthful energy. "Think what we ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... so welcome to Lycabetta, languorous Lycabetta, as news of the whereabouts of the fool who had caused her so many hours of mortal anguish. Lysidice shivered still in the warm air at the thought of that night when all in the palace of pleasure believed themselves to be plague-stricken, and of the slow relief ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... relief to Strange when the sweet, languorous monologue, punctuated from time to time by a response from himself, or an interjectory remark from one of the others, came to an end, and they proceeded to the ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... in the physical beauty of the Greeks, from Boston, were there; fair women from Washington, whose charms make the reputation of many a newspaper correspondent; spirited stars of official and diplomatic life, who have moments of longing to shine in some more languorous material paradise, had made a hasty flitting to be present at the ceremony, sustained by a slight feeling of bravado in making this exceptional descent. But the favored hundred spectators were mainly from the city-groups of late diners, who fluttered ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... after a lurid sunset, was beautiful and kindly beyond compare. A mist of color like powdered silver filled the air. Soft, near-by stars blinked lazily down upon the scene, illumining it without the effect of brilliance. A half moon hung idly in the mists above the cypress trees, and long, languorous shadows streaked the silvered ground with black. In the dark jungle of elder bushes there opened long vistas of silver light, as unreal as the black tops of the far-away trees. In the unreality of the night the earth itself seemed unreal, all things appeared ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... phenomenon, altogether beyond idle concern, lifted the islands afar off out of the water, suspending them in the sky. The languorous breadths of the sea gradually changed to silver, and under the purple islands the silver band extended, bright and gleaming, until it seemed to merge again into the blue of the sky. That was so, for was it not all visible—the purple islands, with the silver bands separating ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... recounted this, there was manifest a nervous expression. Likewise, her features were a trifle flushed. Yet gleaming also through the tears in her languorous eyes there was a sense of relief—one might almost have said ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... by our long and sound sleep; but the pain which was everywhere in our bodies, from our many bruises, and from our wounds, and from the aching stiffness of our muscles, made life for a time almost intolerable. Moreover, the languorous reaction following the undue exaltation that came of our battling and escape was upon us; so that our pain of body was accompanied by a most sombre and melancholy cast of mind. Yet, again, did the more balanced and delicate temperament of Fray Antonio ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier |
