"Lassitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... felt, and the least exertion brings on a feeling of lassitude, there is evidently an undue exhaustion of nerve force in the body. Too rapid action of the heart is a frequent cause. In such a case all exciting ideas and influences should be kept from the patient's mind, and rest taken. The heart's action should also be reduced by careful lathering with soap ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... voyage had lasted nearly ten months before entering the Hooghly. While ascending the stream, the lassitude produced by the climate was so great that Martyn's spirits sank under it: he thought he should "lead an idle, worthless life to no purpose. Exertion seemed like death; indeed, absolutely impossible." Yet at the least he could write, "Even if I should never see a native converted, God may ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... wail and beseech: "Am I my brother's keeper?" My soul is guilty—guilty of loving him—guilty of his death, for had I not loved him he would never have known the Black Hills. Oh! if I could but be resigned—if I could but bind up my bleeding wounds and lose myself in immeasurable lassitude! ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... his recollection of the address by checking it in the Telephone Book, and paid a call on the Home Circle Store next afternoon, while Foe was enjoying a siesta in that state of lassitude which (as I've told you) almost always in one or other of the men followed their ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... task. Rapidly as she went to work at this singular task, it occupied an hour, and when it was all over the prim, starched old lady actually sat down upon her own door-step with lax hands, and crushed her best new bonnet against the door-post in a very abandonment of lassitude and fatigue. ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... intestinal poisons affects the system itself,—the symptoms are headache, neuralgia, loss of appetite, nervousness, insomnia, vertigo, inability to concentrate, lassitude, indigestion. The condition which we name constipation is therefore one of supreme importance. From a medical standpoint, it is the biggest problem in the whole realm of disease. It is the most significant ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... precursors of his awakening, disappeared by the secret passages through which she had entered. An hour rolled by before Taddeo could triumph over his sleep. His heavy eyes shut together in spite of himself, and his eyelashes rested on each other. All sensation was lost in general lassitude. In the first disorder of his mind, he asked himself if he had not again dreamed of the appearance of La Felina. Had he not seen her approaching his bed just as he sunk to sleep, he would have been sure of it. He shuddered at the thought that he had lost the opportunity ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... especially in coastal areas near Hong Kong and opposite Taiwan, where foreign investment helped spur output of both domestic and export goods. On the darker side, the leadership has often experienced in its hybrid system the worst results of socialism (bureaucracy, lassitude, corruption) and of capitalism (windfall gains and stepped-up inflation). Beijing thus has periodically backtracked, retightening central controls at intervals. In late 1993 China's leadership approved additional long-term reforms aimed at giving ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... myself to write and receive letters are both very pleasant, but I wish not to break in upon your valuable time by expecting to hear very frequently from you. Reserve that obligation for your moments of lassitude, when you have nothing else to do; for your loco-restive and all your idle propensities of course have given way to the duties of providing for a family. The mail is come in but no parcel, yet this is Tuesday. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... 13,000 feet, the ground was everywhere hard and frozen, and I experienced the first symptoms of lassitude, headache, and giddiness; which however, were but slight, and only came on ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... an early age, nearly half a century ago, and sought freedom for his natural development backward in the wilds of the Adirondacks. Sometimes it is a love of adventure and freedom that sends men out of the more civilized conditions into the less; sometimes it is a constitutional physical lassitude which leads them to prefer the rod to the hoe, the trap to the sickle, and the society of bears to town meetings and taxes. I think that Old Mountain Phelps had merely the instincts of the primitive man, and never any hostile civilizing intent as to the wilderness into which ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... labor with much greater ease; and were in a great measure free from that lassitude and fatigue to which they were ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... deal of him, writes: "I perceive in the intellect and conduct of Napoleon during the Hundred Days no sign of enfeebling: I find in his judgment and actions his accustomed qualities." In a passage quoted above (p. 449) Mollien notes that his master was a prey to lassitude after some hours of work, but he says nothing on the subject of disease; and in a man of forty-six, who had lived a hard life and a "fast" life, we should not expect to find the capacity for the sustained intellectual efforts of the Consulate. Meneval noticed nothing worse in his ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... You'd fill the temple Phoebus holds so dear, And give poor bards the stimulus of hope To aid their progress up Parnassus' slope. Poor bards! much harm to our own cause we do (It tells against myself, but yet 'tis true), When, wanting you to read us, we intrude On times of business or of lassitude, When we lose temper if a friend thinks fit To find a fault or two with what we've writ, When, unrequested, we again go o'er A passage we recited once, before, When we complain, forsooth, our laboured strokes, Our dexterous turns, are lost on careless folks, When we expect, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... speech, patient with her own silences. There was a droop to her shoulders now; his own were sagging as he leaned slightly forward in his chair, arms resting on his knees, while around them the magic ebbed, eddied, ebbed; and lassitude succeeded tension; and she stirred, looked up at him with eyes that seemed dazed at first, then widened slowly into waking; and he saw in them the first clear dawn of alarm. Suddenly she flushed and sprang to her feet, the bright colour surging to ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... began to have a most debilitating effect upon John Lander, and from a state of robust health and vigour, he was now reduced to so great a degree of lassitude and weakness, that he could scarcely stand a minute at a time. Every former pleasure seemed to have lost its charm with him. He was on this day attacked with fever, and his condition would have been hopeless indeed, had his brother not been near to relieve him. He complained ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... die, just the same as those that never won more than grub-stakes. Then again why? But the blank stretches in his thinking process began to come more frequently, and he surrendered to the delightful lassitude that was ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... in silence and restraint. Mrs. Jarvis felt troubled and oppressed—for the prospect before her seemed to grow more and more gloomy. All the morning she had suffered from a steady pain in her breast, and from a lassitude that she could not overcome. Her pale, thin, care-worn face, told a sad tale of suffering, privation, confinement, and want of exercise. What was to become of her children she knew not. Under such feelings of hopelessness, to have one sitting by ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... right," said Nan indifferently. The lassitude of seasickness had left her, and the excitement of new surroundings was beginning. She felt gently stirred by the give and take of the light conversation in the Sherwoods' room; and, although she did not quite ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... of the ground that the enemies found in advancing, after having driven in our right, enabled our them to rally and to resist. But this resistance was of short duration. Every one had been engaged in hand-to-hand combats; every one was worn out with lassitude and despair of success, and a confusion so general and so unheard-of. The household troops owed their escape to the mistake of one of the enemy's officers, who carried an order to the red coats, thinking them ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... it seemed. Made it all himself; melted the lead and everything! I examined the instrument critically, and pronounced it absolutely magnificent. As we passed in at our gate the girls were distantly visible, gardening with a zeal in cheerful contrast to their heartsick lassitude of the morning. "There's bin another letter come to-day," Harold explained, "and the hamper got joggled about on the journey, and the presents worked down into the straw and all over the place. One of 'em turned up inside the cold duck. And that's why they weren't found at ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... in some Arabian Night, to rock there, cradled and subdued, In a luxurious lassitude of rhythm ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... described by Shakespeare (sonnet cxxix). Such a passage should not be quoted, as it sometimes has been quoted, as the representation of a normal phenomenon. But, with equal gratification on both sides, it remains true that, while after a single coitus the man may experience a not unpleasant lassitude and readiness for sleep, this is rarely the case with his partner, for whom a single coitus is often but a pleasant stimulus, the climax of satisfaction not being reached until a second or subsequent act of intercourse. "Excess in venery," which, rightly or wrongly, is set down ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... state accounts for Hamlet's energy as well as for his lassitude, those quick decided actions of his being the outcome of a nature normally far from passive, now suddenly stimulated, and producing healthy impulses which work themselves out before they have time to subside. (b) It accounts for the evidently keen ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... Her hair was white as spun-glass, and neatly confined under one of those high Norman caps of which the long starched frills, encircling the face, lend a cold, severe expression to the wearer: her gait was stooping, her steps feeble, and her whole appearance denoted lassitude and weakness. She was, as I guessed, the wife of the elder and the mother of the younger of my companions; and the glance she threw at these when she saw them told as plainly as the language of a wife's and mother's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... pleases. It is inconstant, and besides the changes which arise from strange causes it has an infinity born of itself, and of its own substance. It is inconstant through inconstancy, of lightness, love, novelty, lassitude and distaste. It is capricious, and one sees it sometimes work with intense eagerness and with incredible labour to obtain things of little use to it which are even hurtful, but which it pursues because it wishes ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... had felt such an extreme lassitude throughout all his limbs, that he could scarce believe himself to have slept as long as he had done. The height of the sun, however, proclaimed that he had slumbered ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... a dreary lecherous song and showing an immense quantity of frilled underclothing, had occupied five or six minutes in boring the audience before The Girl Gets Left began; and an air of lassitude had enveloped the men who were sitting in relaxed attitudes in the theatre. Their eyes seemed to become dull, and they paid more attention to their pipes and their cigarettes than they paid to the young woman's underclothing.... But when The Girl Gets Left began, ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... Sandbeach, lodging at the inn, but spending most of his time with Honor. He owned that he had been unwell, and there certainly was a degree of lassitude about him, though Honor suspected that his real motive in coming was brotherly kindness and desire to see whether she were suffering much from the death of Owen Sandbrook. Having come, he seemed not to know how to go away. He was too fond of children to become weary ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... acquaintance Arion the musician, who told us his name. He wore that very garment he used when he strove for mastery. We brought him into our tent and found he had received no damage in his passage, save only a little lassitude by the violence of the motion. He told us the whole story of his adventure,—a story incredible to all but such as saw it with their eyes. He told us how, when he had determined to leave Italy, being hastened away by ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Eustace became more violent and more continuous as he began to note the lassitude which gradually crept into her intercourse with him. London rang with them. At one time he pretended to a strange passion for death; prayed to a skull which grinned in a shrine raised for it in his dressing-room; ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... will go on needing it for two or three years, financial as well as moral. He mustn't be allowed to fail. That's the essence of it. He's—spent, you see; depleted. One speaks of it in figurative terms, but it's a physiological thing—if we could get at it—that's behind the lassitude of these boys. It all comes back to that. That they're restless, irresolute. That they need the stimulus of excitement and can't endure the drag of routine. They need a generous allowance, my dear,—even for an occasional ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Day. The People could not sit down. They shuffled Wearily and were pop-eyed with Lassitude ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... tall handsome man, with an indefinable air of mingled good-nature and lassitude about him which suggested the possibility of his politely urging even Death itself not to be so much of a bore about its business, smiled doubtfully. "Is it a wise procedure, Sir?" he enquired—"Conducive to comfort ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... unnerved by the agitating incidents of the morning. There are days into which emotions which might fill years are crowded. It was long since she had felt oppressed by such a sense of lassitude and melancholy. Her interview with Maurice had stirred all the tenderest chords of her spirit, yet left them vibrating sadly. The mysterious visit of Count Tristan had perplexed her mind with ominous forebodings. She could scarcely be said to have seen through his machinations, yet she had ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... book on the bed, and seized her gloves. She would follow him, if she could. She would do what she had never done before—she would spy on him. Fighting against her lassitude, she descended the long winding stairs, and peeped forth from the doorway into the street. The ground floor of the hotel was a wine-shop; the stout landlord was lightly flicking one of the three little yellow tables that stood ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... as I had heard them in my dreams during the years I had spent around the Islands, and now the woman of my dreams was in front of me. But I was afraid of her. When she came toward me I thought of the years I had wasted down in that lonely quarter where ambition is strangled by lassitude bred in tropical sunshine, and the ghost of the man I might have been banged me ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... sportive, eagerly awaits his prey at the right. Jonah is making a graceful dive from the ship, apparently with an effort to land in the very jaws of the whale. At the opposite side, the whale, having coughed up his victim, looks disappointed, while Jonah, in an attitude of lassitude suggestive of sea-sickness, reclines on a bank; an angel, with one finger lifted as if in reproach, is hurrying ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... perceive none of the marks of disease, but every sign of health, energy, and resolution. While he was still looking, the visitor took his departure; and the invalid, having carefully fastened the front door, sprang upstairs without a trace of lassitude. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... came a boy to England, the poor excited my compassion; but now that my judgment is matured, I pity the rich. I know that in this opulent kingdom there are nearly as many persons perishing through intemperance as starving with hunger; there are as many miserable in the lassitude of having nothing to do as there are of those bowed down to the earth with hard labour; there are more persons who draw upon themselves calamity by following their own will than there are who experience it ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... snap that should have accompanied the motion, the sound reached his ears in a dull pop—noted, too, that the dogs paid no slightest heed to the sound, but plodded on methodically—slowly, as though they were tired. Connie was conscious of a growing lassitude—a strange heaviness that hardly amounted to weariness but which necessitated a distinct effort of brain to ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... stunned, and then a sudden lassitude and an immense sadness came over him. Holding his head between his hands, he wept for a ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... tired, dearest Hal, and feel such a general lassitude and discouragement of mind and body, that I will end my letter. Give my most affectionate love to Dorothy, whom I should love dearly if I saw her much. I wish I was with you, seeing the Danube, that river into which poor Undine carried her ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... horrors that I had committed. No saint has loved virtue better than I did during those long, sick days of self-disgust; no man was ever more sure of defying such hideous temptations if they recurred. As my lassitude passed, I would take up my brushes and feel confident for an hour, or for a week. And then temptation would creep on me once more—humming in my ears, and tingling in my veins. And temptation had lost ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... thousands are freely given for accomplishments, hundreds would be refused for bodily health and bloom, is to doubt the parents' sanity. If the father were fully satisfied that Miss Mary could exchange her stooping form, pale face, and lassitude for erectness, freshness, and elasticity, does anybody suppose he would hesitate? Fathers give their daughters Italian and drawing, not because they regard these as the best of the good things of life, but because they form a part of the established course of education. Only let the means ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... be doubted whether Molly heard anything of this exposition; she may well have missed one or two steps in a carefully reasoned argument. Hers was that state of absorbent lassitude when the words and acts put to you sink into the floating mass of your weakness. The late shocking grief hovers felt about you: a buzz of talk, a rain of caresses, hold the spectre off, and so are serviceable—but no more. ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... excitement followed a general lassitude, a positive physical necessity for rest. But, alas! there was something which drove sleep from their eyelids, and increased the weariness of their bodies. This was hunger. The pandours had thoroughly plundered the Prussian camp; they ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... paradise of poetry. The minstrelsy of genius, sporting with the fancy rouzing the passions and unfolding the secrets of the heart, could fascinate at all times; while nothing could sooner create lassitude and repugnance than the ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Consul for life of the French Republic: the murderer of a prince of the house of Bourbon, he raised again on his own account the overturned throne. Still without children, he founded in his person an hereditary monarchy, assured of finding in the nation the assent of admiration as of lassitude and fear. Eight days had scarcely passed since the execution of the Duc d'Enghien; the brothers of the First Consul were absent and discontented. Cambaceres was opposed to the projects which he ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... to with the smell and taste of some powerful volatile spirit, and the vague vision of Mr. Bradley still standing at the window of the mill and vibrating with the machinery; this changed presently to a pleasant lassitude and lazy curiosity as he perceived Mr. Bradley smile and apparently slip from the window of the mill to his bedside. "You're all ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... were still in the room, waiting for their womenkind; and in the hall there was a little group of belated guests huddled around the door, while cabs and carriages were being brought up for them. There was about everyone the lassitude which follows the gaiety of a dance. The waiters behind the tables were heavy-eyed. Lucy was bidding good-bye to one ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... health should not suffer at the menstrual period. She normally will have a feeling of lassitude and disinclination for any great mental or physical work, perhaps accompanied by a slight feeling of uneasiness in the pelvic region. Because so many women do suffer at these periods it often is considered as "natural" ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... admit of their ever being rendered desirable habitations. They work very hard all the week. We know that the effect of prolonged and arduous labour, is to produce, when a period of rest does arrive, a sensation of lassitude which it requires the application of some stimulus to overcome. What stimulus have they? Sunday comes, and with it a cessation of labour. How are they to employ the day, or what inducement have they to employ it, in recruiting their stock ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... to any story, or trifling tale, he was seized with giddiness; he was in violent agonies whenever he wanted to recollect any thing which had slipped his memory; he oftentimes fainted away gradually, and experienced a disagreeable sensation of lassitude. Rousseau has very justly remarked, that excessive application of mind "makes men tender, weakens their constitutions, and when once the body has lost its powers, those of the soul are not easily preserved. Application wears out the machine, exhausts the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... him he felt an utterly new sensation, as though he were standing in a garden of narcotics, and lassitude were stealing through his limbs. When she had gone, a single memory clung to him—the memory of the wonderful texture of her skin. He had read in a child's book of physiology that our skin breathes. The affirmation ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... but none of their recreations; inasmuch as we only wish that to be remembered which others will not, or cannot perform or experience; and we know that all men can enjoy recreation as much as ourselves. We wish succeeding generations to admire our energy, but not even to be aware of our lassitude; to know when we moved, but not when we rested; how we ruled, not how we condescended; and, therefore, in the case of the triumphal arch, or the hereditary palace, if we are the builders, we desire stability; if the ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... soul. How well I remember her laugh; it had in it the same sudden recognition that flashed into her eyes, was a burst of humor, short and intelligent. Her rapid footsteps shook her own floors, and she routed lassitude and indifference wherever she came. She could not be negative or perfunctory about anything. Her enthusiasm, and her violent likes and dislikes, asserted themselves in all the every-day occupations of life. Wash-day ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... felt the same lowering of velocity. It still swayed with the incessant oscillations of conjecture; but they were slower, more rhythmical in their beat. There were moments of overwhelming lassitude when, like the victim of some poison which leaves the brain clear, but holds the body motionless, she saw herself domesticated with the Horror, accepting its perpetual presence as one of the ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... "There is nothing to you except that you are stronger than I, and you know it—and that is brutal!" She paused a long moment, quivering, and then relapsed into spent, defeated lassitude,—"and I like it," she added under her breath, looking down at ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... long ride in the middle of a summer's day, and my invariable reflection used to be, "It is not nearly so hot out of doors as one fancies it would be." Then there is none of the stuffiness so often an accompaniment to our brief summers, bringing lassitude and debility in its train. The only disadvantage of an unusually hot season with us was, that our already embrowned complexions took a deeper shade of bronze; but as we were all equally sun-burnt there was no ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... conspicuously displayed than in the case of Englishmen in India. John Bull, who is always a grumbler even on his own shores, is sure to become a still more inveterate grumbler in other countries, and perhaps the climate of Bengal, producing lassitude and low spirits, and a yearning for their native land, of which they are so justly proud, contribute to make our countrymen in the East even more than usually unsusceptible of pleasurable emotions until at ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... with a child about nine or ten years of age. Still young, she had the brown complexion of Southern women, and her beautiful black hair fell in curls about her face. Her flashing eyes occasionally betrayed hidden passions, concealed, however, beneath an apparent indifference and lassitude, and her wasted form seemed to acknowledge the existence of some secret grief. An observer would have divined a shattered life, a withered happiness, a ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... new expression as he heard these words. The lassitude and weariness passed out of it, and a curious light crept into his eyes. Roger and the ranger continued to talk together of many things, but their silent companion still sat motionless beside the hearth. ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... re-arrangement of the new residence was no easy business, and occupied so much time that the end of January arrived before they could be said to be fairly settled. And then began a life of dreary monotony. Then seemed to creep over everyone a kind of moral torpor as well as physical lassitude, which Servadac, the count, and the lieutenant did their best not only to combat in themselves, but to counteract in the general community. They provided a variety of intellectual pursuits; they ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... world grows more broad-minded, the mature poet sometimes appeals to the orthodox for sympathy when his daring religious questing threatens to plunge him into despair. The public is too quick to class him with those whose doubt is owing to lassitude of mind, rather than too eager activity. Tennyson is ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... lassitude of human spirit and the disappointment and disillusion as to the aftermath of the harvest of blood, may have aggravated, but they could not cause the symptoms of which I speak; for the very obvious reason that all these symptoms ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... sleepy, as Chris had; but the keen edge of her vitality had been blunted, and she was experiencing a sweet and pleasing lassitude. And while the message was being read, in her eyes persisted the vision ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... that overlooked the two old vessels and gave a fair prospect on to the river and the profile of Philadelphia. Sitting there on a pile of pebbles, I lit a pipe and watched the busy panorama of the river. I made no effort to disturb the normal and congenial lassitude that is the highest function of the human being: no Hindoo philosopher could have been more pleasantly at ease. (O. Henry, one remembers, used to insist that what some of his friends called laziness was really ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... but finding, or fancying, that they could supervise the work as efficiently from the tent as they could at a yard or two from its shelter, they gradually gave up the struggle, yielding day after day more completely to the seductive feeling of lassitude which seemed to ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... they were not thin, except the shivering greyhound. It was more as if they had lived a long time with people who never spoke to them or looked at them: as though the silence of the place had gradually benumbed their busy inquisitive natures. And this strange passivity, this almost human lassitude, seemed to me sadder than the misery of starved and beaten animals. I should have liked to rouse them for a minute, to coax them into a game or a scamper; but the longer I looked into their fixed and weary eyes the more preposterous the ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... blessing for him, preventing him ever again feeling with such acuteness. From time to time he fell into deadness of all sensation, when he hoped that the worst of his suffering was over; but always it struggled up out of the numbness again, as insistent as before. He fought his lassitude of spirit as stubbornly as the periods of active pain, but both with the same result, the opposition probably only making both last the longer. He would doubtless have pulled through more quickly if he had gone away, joined Killigrew in Paris, or gone on some tour with ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... the sudden fiery change in the old man. His lassitude was gone in a flash, his eyes blazed ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... first by the discovery of his own indifference. The last barriers of his will seemed to be breaking down before a flood of moral lassitude. How could he continue to play his part, to keep his front to the enemy, with this poison of indifference stealing through his veins? He tried to brace himself with the remembrance of his wife's scorn. He had ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... hardness under John Weightman's hands grew sharper and more distinct. The feeling of bodily weariness and lassitude weighed upon him, but there was a calm, almost a lightness in his heart as he listened to the fading vibrations of the silvery bell-tones. The chimney clock on the mantel had just ended the last stroke of seven as he lifted his head from the table. Thin, pale strips of the city morning ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... into his fob when the hedge opposite was parted suddenly and a man came through. A wretched being he looked, dusty, unkempt, unshorn, whose quick, bright eyes gleamed in the thin oval of his pallid face. At sight of this man the gentleman's lassitude vanished, and ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... volubility like a flood advancing. That could be withstood, and his arguments and persuasions. But by what steps could I restrain the man himself? I said 'the man,' as Janet did. He figured in my apprehensive imagination as an engine more than as an individual. Lassitude oppressed me. I felt that I required every access of strength possible, physical besides moral, in anticipation of our encounter, and took a swim in sea-water, which displaced my drowsy fit, and some alarming intimations of cowardice menacing a paralysis of the will: I had not altogether recovered ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... be the same, (namely, that nothing can change it selfe,) is not so easily assented to. For men measure, not onely other men, but all other things, by themselves: and because they find themselves subject after motion to pain, and lassitude, think every thing els growes weary of motion, and seeks repose of its own accord; little considering, whether it be not some other motion, wherein that desire of rest they find in themselves, consisteth. ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... things may be impeded by actual reduction of energy, as in tuberculosis, cancer, or in the lassitude of convalescence. In addition there are emotions, feelings, thoughts that energize,—that create vigor and strength of body and mind. Joy rouses the spirit; one dances, laughs, sings, shouts; or the more quiet ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... vomiting of all solid and liquid aliments, and during the empty state of the stomach, violent efforts to vomit occurring at irregular intervals; abdomen tense and tympanitic; violent intermittent pain along the course of the intestines; constipation; sensation of fatigue and lassitude in the lumbar region and in the extremities; dragging pains in the inter-scapular region; extinction of the voice; urine red and scanty; the face animated and bearing no marks of profound suffering; agitation, and total want ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... their revolutionary theories at the house-fronts; and the pavement seemed to be their property—all the pavement touched by their feet, all that old battleground whence arose intoxicating fumes which made them forget their lassitude. ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... that followed, a remembrance of her responsibilities came back to Helen and when she looked at Mildred Caniper, alternating between energy and lassitude, the shining house seemed wearily far off, or, at the best, Notya was in it, bringing her own shadows. Helen had been too happy, she told herself. She must not be greedy, she must hold very lightly to her desires ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... is far from being mournful: he feels only an immense lassitude, and an infinite regret that perhaps he will not be able to bring his series of "Souvenirs" to the point he had desired; not wishing to die until he has pushed his career as far as is in his power; without having worked, on his feet, until ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... loose him; the strange spectral wreath of the Florence Pieta, casting its pyramidal, distorted shadow, full of pain and death, among the faint purple lights that cross and perish under the obscure dome of St^a. Maria del Fiore, the white lassitude of joyous limbs, panther like, yet passive, fainting with their own delight, that gleam among the Pagan formalisms of the Uffizii, far away, showing themselves in their lustrous lightness as the waves of an Alpine ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... that he was dazed or that he behaved like a man in a dream. Those are stock terms that in themselves are quite inadequate to convey his peculiar state of mind and body. It was something more than lassitude, yet it was not quite fatigue. It was rather as if some integral part of his brain had ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... power of the five elements! By thus adhering to the duties of a householder, thou hast conquered thy passions, desires, and anger, and this princess, O prince of virtuous men has, by serving thee, conquered affliction, desire, illusion, enmity and lassitude of mind!' ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... lassitude which besets me, and strive in vain to be either sensible or jocose. I had better ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... cottage to the court, from the cradle to the grave, the French invariably dance when they can seize an opportunity. Nay, the older the individual, the more vigorous seems to be the passion. Wrinkles may furrow the face, but lassitude never attacks ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... instantly called, I was plentifully blooded in the foot, my lower extremities were bathed in a decoction of salutiferous herbs: in ten hours after I was taken ill I enjoyed a critical sweat, and next day felt the remains of the distemper, but an agreeable lassitude, which did not hinder me from getting up. During the progress of this fever, which, from the term or its duration, is called ephemera, my father never once quitted my bedside, but administered the prescriptions of the physicians with the most pious ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... class was dismissed he sank back in his chair by the class-room window. It was wide ajar to-day for the first time since winter. April, like an early-morning housemaid, was throwing open all the windows of the world. Litton felt a delicious lassitude; he was bewildered with leisure. A kind of sweet loneliness fell on him. He had made no provision for ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... is no love so wild, no, not even the love of a mistress, as that which is sometimes found in a father or mother for a child, and often for one who is physically or even mentally defective. It is not subject to satiety and lassitude, and grows with age. To Kate also her father was more than the whole world of men and women. The best of friends weary of one another and large spaces of separation are necessary, but these two were always happy together. Theirs was the blessed ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... felt descend upon them the need of speaking their own tongue and gave themselves heartily to the labor of discovering a music entirely Russian. His material, at its best, approximates the idiom of the Russian folk-song, or communicates certain qualities—an Oriental sweetness, a barbaric lassitude and abandon—admittedly racial. His music is full of elements—wild and headlong rhythms, exotic modes—abstracted from the popular and liturgical chants or deftly molded upon them. For there was always within him the idea of creating an art, particularly an operatic ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... was drawn up to its full height. There was a look of nervous energy about her which Effie had not observed for many a long day. The curious phase into which her mother had entered had an alarming effect upon the young girl. It frightened her far more than her father's look of lassitude and the burning touch of his hands. She tried to turn her thoughts from it. After all, why should she become nervous herself, and meet ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... birthright of knowledge, and is seized with subtler curiosities and further-reaching desires than anything she has yet been conscious of. The world of fact and of idea is open, and the explorer's instruments are as perfect as they can be made. The intoxication of entrance is full upon him, and the lassitude which is the inevitable Nemesis of an unending task, and the chill which sooner or later descends upon every human hope, are as yet mere names and shadows, counting for nothing in the tranquil vista ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... attractiveness, as with Rejane; the thing is plastic, a modelling of emotion before you, with every vein visible; she leaves nothing to the imagination, gives you every motion, all the physical signs of death, all the fierce abandonment to every mood, to grief, to delight, to lassitude. When she suffers, in the scene, for instance, where Armand insults her, she is like a trapped wild beast which some one is torturing, and she wakes just that harrowing pity. One's whole flesh suffers with her flesh; her voice caresses and excites like a touch; it has a throbbing, monotonous ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... him. He sought it in the various ways, in every way but the one, simple and only right way—the effort to confer happiness on others. Frantic intoxications, the culminations of carnal pleasures, which amount to unspeakable ecstasies, are mere temporations which are followed by lassitude, exhaustion and disgust, and these soon turn to a fiercely implacable hate. The search for happiness, when carried to the extreme, becomes a torture. The desire for happiness is selfish, and selfishness is never happy. Happiness dispensed ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... some ridiculous little academy of literary busybodies and hangers-on, the public recognition of this or that sociological pretender or financial "scientist," and a little polite jobbery with picture-buying, relapse into lassitude and a contented acquiescence in the rivalry of Germany and the United States for the moral, intellectual and ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... fatigue; weariness &c. 841; yawning, drowsiness &c. 683; lassitude, tiredness, fatigation|, exhaustion; sweat; dyspnoea. anhelation, shortness of breath; faintness; collapse, prostration, swoon, fainting, deliquium[Lat], syncope, lipothymy[obs3]; goneness[obs3]. V. be fatigued ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... very well with Athalie. Also she was frequently physically tired. Perhaps it was the lassitude consequent on the heat. But at times she had an odd idea that she lacked courage; and sometimes when lonely, she tried to reason with herself, tried to teach her heart bravery—particularly during the long interims which ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... me alone." But she checked herself. She doubted if she could exert her will another time like that. Already beads of perspiration stood out on her brows. A feeling of extreme lassitude crept over her and she slipped back into the hammock with a sensation of nausea. Then unconsciousness bound her with invisible cords and the brave little woman fainted ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... office. On the walls the great European powers were represented by photographs—the Empress Eugenie, the Princess of Wales, a grand-duchess of Russia, and an archduchess of Austria. M. Arthur was there taking a few moments' rest, seated in a large arm-chair, with an air of lassitude and exhaustion, and with a newspaper spread out over his knees. He arose on seeing Mme. Derline enter. In a trembling voice she ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... au sortir du combat, un oeillet tout sanglant tombe de lassitude; la un bouton de rose, eufle du mauvais succes de son antagoniste, s'epanouit de joie; la le lys, ce colosse entre les fleurs, ce geant de lait caille, glorieux de voir ses images triompher au Louvre, s'eleve sur ses compagnes ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... spacious, and watched her, and was always about her. Under private advice from Dr. Amboyne, she superintended her patient's diet, and, by soft, indomitable perseverance, compelled her to walk every day, and fight against her fatal lassitude. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... thick canopy of clouds. The sails were flapping against the masts; the air was oppressive. There the ship lay, her head moving now in one direction, now in another. Those who had before been full of life and spirits began to complain of lassitude and weariness. The seamen no longer moved actively about the decks, but went sauntering along when called upon to perform any duty. The heat grew greater and greater. The iron about the ship was unpleasant to touch. The ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... eminently a festive one. Men luxuriate in the cafe, or spend their evenings in worse places. A brief period of the morning only is given to business, the rest of the day and night to melting lassitude, smoking, and luxurious ease. Evidences of satiety, languor, and dullness, the weakened capacity for enjoyment, are sadly conspicuous, the inevitable sequence of indolence and vice. The arts and sciences seldom disturb the thoughts of such people. Here, as in many European cities, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... into the Criterion bar and sat down. The clock showed seventeen minutes to nine. His piece was advertised to start at eight-thirty precisely. The Criterion Bar is never empty, but it has its moments of lassitude, and seventeen minutes to nine is one of them. After an interval ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... The lassitude with which we did our work and tore down part of the hut in order to build that raft, our only way of salvation, was too pitiful to watch. We absolutely had no strength at all. When we pulled the liane to fasten together the different pieces of palm wood we were more exhausted than if we had lifted ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Walmer, we find that in the summer of 1802 he fell a prey to nausea and lassitude; so that Lady Hester Stanhope, who visited him in September, found him very weak. Probably his indisposition was due less to the exceptional heat of that season than to suppressed gout aggravated by anxiety. As we saw, he invited Addington to come over from Eastbourne and discuss ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... may I have seemed to thee, but I would have shed the best drops of my heart to have saved thy young years from a single pang. Nay, listen to me silently. That thou mightest one day be worthy of thy race, and that thine hours might not pass in indolent and weary lassitude, thou hast been taught lessons of a knowledge rarely to thy sex. Not thine the lascivious arts of the Moorish maidens; not thine their harlot songs, and their dances of lewd delight; thy delicate limbs were but taught the attitude that Nature dedicates to the worship of a ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book I. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... began to regret the absence of sustenance, for this kind of weather makes for extreme lassitude shot through with rattiness, and under its influence nourishment dies in one ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... lay, breathing faster and more feverishly. Tears came after a long while, and with them relaxation and lassitude. She felt that the dreadful thing which had seized and held her was letting go its hold, was freeing her body and mind; and as it slowly released her and passed on its terrible silent way, she awoke and sat up with a frightened cry—to find herself lying on her own ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... it was a perfect specimen of Elizabethan architecture; and he treated Lizzie to all he could pretend to know on the subject, and he condemned the owner for the glaringly modern garden benches with which the swards were interspersed. The sun was setting, there was lassitude in every passing boat, the girls leaned upon the arms of the young men, and the woods stood up tall and contemplative, as beautiful in the deep blue river ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... Luckily we found a cistern not far off, and near it some trees, beneath which we made a bed of cloaks for our sick friend. A little water mixed with a few drops of strong vinegar restored him to consciousness. After the lapse of an hour, the patient was indeed able to resume his journey; but lassitude, headache, and feverish shiverings still remained, and we had a ride of many hours before us ere we could reach our resting- place for the night. From every hill we climbed the ocean could be seen at so short a distance that we thought an hour's journeying ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... evidently obtruded itself amid the party, and its attendants, lassitude and restlessness, were not long in bringing up the rear. The impression already made upon the mind of Bob by the cursory view he had taken of Life in London was indelible, and it required little persuasion on the part of his cousin, the Hon. Tom Dashall, to induce him ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... they all seem under a spell of lethargy—the lassitude of fatigue. They have ridden a long way, and need rest. They might go to sleep alongside the log, but none of them thinks of doing so, least of all Clancy. There is that in his breast forbidding sleep, and he is but too glad when Woodley's next words arouse him from the torpid repose to which ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... was hotter than usual, the sun was going down with a red glare, a low moaning wind came every now and then suddenly through the trees. As Schillie and I came down the cliffs, our knees knocked together with heat and lassitude. We had not spoken for several hours until I had said, "Come, let us go." She mutely assented, and, supporting each other, we wearily and slowly clambered down. Suddenly stopping at a a smooth place ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... half veiled with eyelids which, seemed too weary to lift themselves. He was a handsome man, but his general air of weariness belied the somewhat eagle cast of countenance which was his. Mrs. Abbot, watching him, thought that the deplorable lassitude which he always exhibited masked a very different nature. Jacky possibly had her own estimation of the man. Whatever it was, her friendship for him was not to be doubted, and, on his part, he never attempted to ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... not a success; very little inflammation and a small scab being the only evidences. But I have a cough, and much lassitude. ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... Oh! it was so sad to see how soon the manly gait would change to the drunkard's stagger. To see eyes once bright with intelligence growing vacant and confused and giving place to the drunkard's leer. In many cases lassitude supplanted vigor, and sickness overmastered health. But the saddest thing was the fearful power that appetite had gained over its victims, and though nature lifted her signals of distress, and sent her warnings through ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... a possible peace will begin to get stated towards the end of 1916, and a certain lassitude will creep over the operations in the field.... The process of exhaustion will probably have reached such a point by that time that it will be a primary fact in the consciousness of common citizens of every belligerent country. The ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... himself down in a cheerful frame of mind on the sunny side of a large rock, and gave himself up to the enjoyment of thorough repose, as well mental as physical. The poor lad was in that state of extreme lassitude which renders absolute and motionless rest delightful. Extended at full length on a springy couch of heath, with his eyes peeping dreamily through the half-closed lids at the magnificent prospect of mountains and glens that lay before him, and below him too, so that he felt like a bird ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... we ignore, and those at which we guess, are removed. Durtal was at this point; he could not return on his steps, for the way he had quitted horrified him. He would rather have died than return to Paris, there to begin again his carnal experiences, to live again his hours of libertinage and lassitude; but if he could not again retrace his road, neither could he advance, for the road ended in a blind alley. If earth repulsed him, heaven at the same ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... thithers of an eventful life shall I tell you the people who have made me the most weary? It is not the bad people, nor the foolish people; we can get along with all such because of a streak of common humanity in us all, but I cannot survive without extreme lassitude the decorous people; those who slip through life without sound or sparkle, those who behave themselves upon every occasion, and would pass through a dynamite explosion without rumpling a hair; those who never have done anything out of the way and never will, simply for the same reason that ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... early July 1901. To George's right was an open door leading to the principals' room, and to his left another open door leading to more rooms and to the staircase. The lofty chambers were full of lassitude; but round about George, who was working late, there floated the tonic vapour of conscious virtue. Haim, the factotum, could be seen and heard moving in his cubicle which guarded the offices from the stairs. In the rooms shortly to be deserted ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... accustomed to eunuchs, yielded to amazement at the strength of this man. It was the chastisement of the goddess or the influence of Moloch in motion around her in the five armies. She was overwhelmed with lassitude; and she listened in a state of stupor to the intermittent shouts of the sentinels as ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... such an expression of lassitude upon it that Beautrelet felt a vague sort of pity for him. Sorrow in that man must assume larger proportions than in another, even as joy did, or pride, or humiliation. He was now standing by the window, and, with his finger pointing to ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... with a pretty smart shock the night before, and was suffering from the physical effects of the same that morning; the mental were still in abeyance. She felt a strange lassitude for one thing, and was strongly inclined to indulge it by being indolent. She breakfasted in her own room, but could not eat, neither could she read. She turned her letters over; then tried a book; then going back to her letters again, she picked one out which she had overlooked ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Katherine lay abed in that delicious lassitude which is the compound of complete exhaustion and of a happiness that tingles through every furthermost nerve. And as she lay there she thought dazedly of the miracle that had come to pass. She had not even guessed that she was in love with Arnold ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... nights of the apparently interminable "wet season." Rain in a city, rain in the country, rain in a village, rain at sea, are sufficiently wearying, even to those whose mental activity is amused or occupied by books or the concerns of life; but who can comprehend the insufferable lassitude and despondency that overwhelm an African resident, as he lies on his mat-covered arm-chest, and listens to the endless deluge pouring for days, weeks, months, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... bitterly cold, and his feet were benumbed. He crouched at the bottom of the sledge, so that the fur rug should entirely cover him. It was warm and comfortable underneath it, and gradually he felt a great lassitude coming over him, as if he could have fallen asleep. But ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... have been a prevision of this beech-wood. Mrs. Underwood, with Felix and Wilmet, tied up the plates, knives, and forks, and then the mother, taking Angela with her, went to negotiate kettle-boiling at the cottage. Geraldine would fain have sketched, but the glory and the beauty, and the very lassitude of delight and novelty, made her eyes swim with a delicious mist; and Edgar, who had begun when she did, threw down his pencil as soon as he saw Felix at liberty, and the two boys rushed away into the wood for a good tearing scramble and climb, like creatures intoxicated ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... my Clodius, we are discontented when we compare the enormous luxury and wealth of others with the mediocrity of our own state. But here we surrender ourselves easily to pleasure, and we have the brilliancy of luxury without the lassitude of its pomp.' ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... at luncheon, and she says she will join me 'some day at dinner.' When that glorious occasion arrives, I shall call it the event of my life, for her mere presence stimulates me to such effort in conversation that I feel in the very lassitude afterwards what a strain ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... felt unutterably bored. The sensation of lassitude, even in its less acute degrees, was rare with her; for she possessed a nature of so fresh a buoyancy that she was able, as a rule, to extract diversion from any environment. Her mind took impressions with the vivid ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... months in the lassitude that malarial fever leaves behind it. Susannah had need to support her, as well as herself, by the small fees which her day-scholars could afford. She had had the satisfaction of seeing Elvira restored in a great degree to health, but so capricious and fantastic were the bright little lady's words ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... her forehead, followed by lassitude, told her alas! that all she had shuddered to think of was coming to pass. Weary and suffering, she laid herself upon the couch, which she prayed but for her infant might be her last resting place. Too soon, as she watched with a keenness of vision which only a mother can possess, did ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... malicious word the old woman said lodged in her brain and arose to confront her at the most inopportune times—in the middle of a recitation or when she roused enough to turn over in her bed at night. The more vigorously she threw herself into her school work, the more she realized a queer lassitude, creeping over her. She kept squaring her shoulders, lifting her chin, and brushing imaginary ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... excess of stimulus, the circulation and respiration become too rapid, and the system generally becomes highly excited. Diminish the proportion of oxygen, and the circulation and respiration become too slow, weakness and lassitude ensue, and a sense of heaviness and uneasiness pervades the entire system. As has been observed, air loses during each respiration a portion of its oxygen, and gains an equal quantity of carbonic acid, which is an active ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... mother's apprehensions. Without once reflecting on the possible consequences, I sat down on a chair beside the sufferer, felt her pulse, and as well as I could, made inquiries after her health. Her pulse was quick, her tongue white and thickly furred, and extreme lassitude was shown by her dejected countenance. Uncertain as to the nature of her disease, and unable to offer any alleviation of her sufferings, I retired to my apartment. There I did reflect on the danger which I had incurred, and the possibility of the widow having ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... followed by reactions; it is one great reason for avoiding them. But let it be remembered, first, that the disbanded soldiers of the Commonwealth and the other relics of the Puritan party still remained the most moral and respectable element in the country; and secondly, that the period of lassitude which follows great efforts, whether of men or nations, is not altogether the condemnation of the effort, but partly the weakness of humanity. Nations as well as men, if they aim high, must sometimes overstrain themselves, and weariness must ensue. Nor did the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... or shock, to the dreary consciousness of all she had lost, she was still under the influence of the despair which had settled on her spirits overnight, and had run like a dark stain through her troubled dreams. Fatigue of body and lassitude of mind, the natural consequences of the passion and excitement of her adventure, combined to deaden her faculties. She rose aching in all her limbs—yet most at heart—and wearily dressed herself; but neither saw nor heeded the objects round her. The ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... Teutonic Order somewhere. Life here is too harassing for his health; besides, he is so isolated that I do not see how he is ever to get on. You know the kind of existence here. I do not take it upon myself to say that society would dispel his lassitude, but he cannot be persuaded to go anywhere. A short time since, I had some music in my house, but our friend Steffen stayed away. Do recommend him to be more calm and self-possessed, which I have in vain tried to effect; otherwise he can neither enjoy health ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... Willis arrived on deck, pale, and with an air of fatigue and lassitude altogether unusual. He gazed anxiously into every nook ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... rides on two successive days had exhausted him physically; and the strain of securing and ensuring the safety and happiness of the woman who was dearer to him than life, had reacted now in a mental lassitude which seemed unable to rise up and face the prospect of the lonely years ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... had foreseen, Matilde was soon better, and by bed-time she felt no ill effects from what had happened to her, beyond great weakness and lassitude. The doctor had asked many questions and had elicited the fact that Matilde had a preparation of arsenic in powders, which she took according to prescription, and which she showed him after the first spasms were passed. She assured him, however, that she had only ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... may be seen beside their vehicles, urging the horses, with the thermometer at 110 deg., and perhaps a stout-looking Englishman inside, with white kerchief to his face, the image of languor and lassitude. ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... haunted with the idea that there must be fox-hounds in Heaven. All Lieut. Sassoon's poems about horses and hunting and country life generally betray his tastes and habits. This particular poem hardly touches on the war, but those which follow are absorbed by the ugliness, lassitude, and horror of fighting. Lieut. Sassoon's verse has not yet secured the quality of perfection; he is not sufficiently alive to the importance of always hitting upon the best and only word. He is essentially a satirist, and sometimes a very bold one, as in "The Hero," ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... back to her but slowly; she complained of great lassitude and want of appetite. But, the following day having cleared up, the sun shone out with great power and brilliancy. She gladly welcomed the return of the fine weather, but Hazel shook his head; ten days' rain was not their portion—the bad weather ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... eye, a sweet smile on his lip, and serenity on his brow, joined with the fevered cheek, the air of lassitude, and the panting, oppressed breath, there was a strange, melancholy beauty about him; and while Amy felt an impulse of ardent, clinging affection to one so precious to her, there was joined with it a sort of awe and veneration for one who so spoke, looked, and felt. She hung over ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spent the rest of the day upon the sofa, and, after the lassitude caused by his morning excess, felt all the better for it. The next day he was all right again; but he did not dare ask for the decanter; it was gone, and ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... these voices thought Lawford, in deadly lassitude, meant only one thing—insanity. A blazing, impotent indignation seized him. He leaned near, peering as it were out of a red dusky mist. He snatched up the china candlestick, and poised it above the sardonic reflection, as if to throw. Then slowly, with infinite pains, ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... discomposed the spinster, they overtook the cart of the washerwoman driving slowly over the stones, with a proper consideration for the wounds of Captain Singleton. The occurrences of that eventful night had produced an excitement in the young soldier, that was followed by the ordinary lassitude of reaction and he lay carefully enveloped in blankets, and supported by his man, but little able to converse, though deeply brooding over the past. The dialogue between Lawton and his companion ceased with the commencement ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... the ships of the line, Le Guillaume Tell and Genereux—and of the frigates, La Diane and La Justice—perceiving that the rest of the fleet had fallen into the enemy's hands, had taken advantage of a moment of lassitude and inaction on the part of the English, to effect their escape. We learned, lastly, that the 1st of August had broken the unity of our forces; and that the destruction of our fleet, by which the lustre of our glory was tarnished, had restored ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... preoccupation. It was scarcely in Mrs. Jocelyn and Mildred's nature to speak otherwise than gently and kindly, and so without trying they disarmed their hosts and won their sympathy. Notwithstanding their dejection and lassitude, they maintained the habits of their lives, and unwittingly gave Mrs. Atwood and her daughter a vague impression that neatness, attractiveness, and order were as ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... defeat of the socialist and revolutionary plans of Mr. Chamberlain—than to work vigorously at the formation of a numerous class of small landowners. Mutatis mutandis, we have here also the corresponding phenomenon of the transformation of parties. We are unquestionably entering on a period of lassitude. The Conservatives have gained one hundred and twenty seats at the last elections, for four principal reasons, all of which spring from ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... starvation. It is all poppycock. Any healthy person, with a normal appetite, after missing two or three meals is as hungry as he ever gets. After awhile there is a sense of weakness that grows on one, and this increases with the days. Then there comes a desire for a great deal of sleep, a sort of lassitude that is not unpleasant, and this desire becomes more pronounced as the weakness grows. The end is always in sleep. There is no keeping awake ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... Taka. When the first faint glint of dawn sweetened the air he was lying on his back; he felt, rather than saw, that a new day was blossoming. He collected his wandering faculties, fought with the lassitude which stole upon him whenever his senses were not on the alert and sat up. And he would have cried out aloud at what he saw were not his throat and mouth and lips so dry that he was beyond calling out. For yonder, a blurred moving ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... a stone and fell weakly to the ground, only to leap to his feet again, frightened. Already it was coming, the stupifying lassitude, the reckless indifference to his fate, and yet he was hardly tired. The Valley had not been hot, any more than usual, and he had walked twice as far before; but now, with water just around the corner, he was lying down in the ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... change was here! The battered hat, the faded muffler and shabby clothes seemed only to show off all the hitherto hidden strength and vigour of the powerful limbs below; indeed it almost seemed that with his elegant garments he had laid aside his lassitude also and taken on a new air of resolution, for his eyes were sleepy no longer, and his every gesture was lithe and quick. So great was the change that Spike stared speechless, and Mr. Brimberly ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... Shanghai, where foreign investment has helped spur output of both domestic and export goods. The leadership, however, often has experienced - as a result of its hybrid system - the worst results of socialism (bureaucracy and lassitude) and of capitalism (growing income disparities and rising unemployment). China thus has periodically backtracked, retightening central controls at intervals. The government has struggled to (a) sustain adequate ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... served, I have often observed with wonder, and with fear, when I considered the near extremes of ill-health, and the manner in which her life heaped itself in high and happy moments, which were avenged by lassitude and pain. ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... sooner returned to Sen's inn, which I did on my release, than I was seized with a kind of aguish fever, the effect, no doubt, of the exposure I had recently undergone. It was nothing serious, but caused a feeling of great lassitude and depression, and confined me indoors for some ten or twelve days. I had the place almost to myself, as the approach of the Japanese armies had not been favourable to custom, and the usual course of travel to and ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... somewhat rudely rebuffed by the only person who had looked at his manuscript, and had promptly torn the play up and scattered the fragments out of the window of his boarding-house. That was two days ago. The curious lassitude which followed this acces of passion was probably increased by the senior warden's reproaches. But Sam believed himself entirely indifferent both to his literary failure, and to his father's scolding. Neither was in his mind as he climbed the hill, and halted for a wistful moment at the green ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... lassitude, and broken sleep, and loss of appetite, and afterwards in six weeks of idle waiting in poverty, for there was no work or power of thought left in him for the time. He pawned the dressing-case old Darco had ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... not brave. The lassitude which is a kind of spurious resignation poisons courage, or quenches it as water quenches fire. Although she hated her life, if it could be called life, had no pleasure in it, and had almost forgotten how to hope, still she was afraid of ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... ultimate act of the intelligence accepts. This it is which the will deliberately confirms. And that is why Faith though an act of the Will is Moral. If the Ordnance Map tells us that it is 11 miles to [a place] then, my mood of lassitude as I walk through the rain at night making it feel like 30, I use the Will and say "No." My intelligence has been convinced and I compel myself to use it against my mood. It is 11 and though I feel in the depths of my being to have gone 30 miles and more, I know ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward |
