"Lassitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wholly untidy. The wind lashed her dirty cotton skirt around her, disclosing a dirtier petticoat and men's shoes. The skin of her worn, blond face had a look as if the soil of life had fairly been rubbed into it. All the lines of this face were lax, displaying utter lassitude and no energy. She, however, had her evanescent streaks of life, as now. Once in a while a bubble of ancestral blood seemed to come to the surface, although it soon burst. She had come, generations back, of a good family. She was the run out weed of it, but still, at times, the old colors of the ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... The present weariness and 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
... with the expectation of being bored. Curiosity prompted them to accept, but it did not prevent the subsequent inevitable lassitude. Socially Monty Brewster had yet to make himself felt. He and his dinners were something to talk: about, but they were accepted hesitatingly, haltingly. People wondered how he had secured the cooperation of Mrs. Dan, but then Mrs. Dan always did go in for a new toy. To her was ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... was still a dream, but a dream growing momentarily more wonderful and thrilling. The stupor in her head was passing away, and there was nothing painful in the lassitude which remained. She was just weak and languid, content to lie still in the sunshine, her head resting on one of the cushions from the overturned cart, her eyes turning instinctively to the bronzed face which bent over ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and true descended upon the marshal late in the afternoon, half fearful of the result, but resolute. They found him slowly emerging from his spell of lassitude. He greeted them with a solemn nod of the head. Since early morning he had been conscious of a long stream of sympathisers passing through the house, but it was not until now that he felt equal to the task ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... did not for an instant attribute to its true cause her sudden change from radiant happiness to the weakness and lassitude that tell of mental anguish. They were not given to seeing anything that was not entirely on the surface ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... she 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 ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... also posted major gains, especially in coastal areas near Hong Kong and opposite Taiwan, where foreign investment helped spur output of both domestic and export goods. On the darker side, the leadership has often experienced in its hybrid system the worst results of socialism (bureaucracy and lassitude) and of capitalism (windfall gains and stepped-up inflation). Beijing thus has periodically backtracked, retightening central controls at intervals. The government has struggled to (a) collect revenues due from provinces, businesses, ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... over France and great part of Europe, and which furnishes the key at this moment to the state of European affairs. This movement, like all great movements, reactionary or progressive, is complex in its nature. In the political sphere it presents itself as the lassitude and despondency which, as usual, have ensued after great political efforts, such as were made by the Continental nations in the abortive revolutions of 1848, and by England in a less degree in the struggle for Parliamentary Reform. In ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... creaked and grovelled on the bed of the river, churning the water into a yellowish, foaming mass; her captain bellowed and barked, her crew yelped, her passengers shouted; the flat boats and perogues moored along the bank, aroused from their lassitude, began to romp gaily in the swirl of her crazy backwash; ropes whined and rasped and groaned, the deck rattled hollowly with the tread of heavy feet and the shifting of boxes and barrels and crates; the gangplank came down with a crash,—and so the mighty hundred and fifty ton leviathan of the ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... a victim of the musical lassitude of Philadelphia. He had his musical training there. He has written in the large forms a suite founded on Rossetti's "Love's Nocturne," an overture, "Three Guardsmen," a "Novelette" for orchestra, a cantata, ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... 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 ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... cried Blake, and he clenched that determination by an outburst of blasphemous anger. But he secretly took great doses of quinin and drank much native liquor. He fought against a mental lassitude which he could not comprehend. Never before had that ample machinery of the body failed him in an emergency. Never before had he known an illness that a swallow or two of brandy and a night's rest could not scatter to the four winds. ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... the course of his adventurous career, had Perenna experienced such a knockdown blow. It gave him a feeling of extreme lassitude, depriving him of all power of speech or movement. Father and son were dead! They had been killed during that night! A few hours earlier, though the house was watched and every outlet hermetically closed, both had been poisoned by an infernal puncture, even as ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... eye; the eye shines like dew; it looks soft and full of feeling; it smiles at my jargon: it is susceptible; impression follows impression through its clear sphere; where it ceases to smile, it is sad; an unconscious lassitude weighs on the lid: that signifies melancholy resulting from loneliness. It turns from me; it will not suffer further scrutiny; it seems to deny, by a mocking glance, the truth of the discoveries I have already made,—to ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... repetition of it is necessarily injurious to health. The secretions of the seminal fluid being, like other secretions, chiefly under the influence of the nervous system, an expenditure of them requires a corresponding renewal. This renewal greatly taxes the corporeal powers, inducing lassitude, nervousness, and debility. It is a well known fact that the highest degree of mental and bodily vigor is inconsistent with more than a moderate ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... attended; when he said, "Vizier, my mind is so uneasy that nothing will amuse me." "Enter then," replied the minister, "into thy cabinet, and look at thy jewels, the examination of which may perhaps entertain thee." The sultan did so, but it had no effect on his lassitude; when he said, "Vizier, this dispiritedness will not quit me, and nothing gives me pleasure within my palace; let us, therefore, walk out in disguise." "To hear is to obey," replied the vizier. They then retired into a private chamber, and putting on the habits of dervishes of Arabia, strolled through ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... think of troubling you to such an extent. No doubt this feeling of lassitude will pass away shortly. It was very foolish of me, but I left the fan with my wraps at the hotel. It can be recovered when we go ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... the pores of the skin. The bathers are then rubbed over with towels and brushes, and a profuse perspiration ensues, which continues till all superfluous moisture has exuded from the body. There is then, it must be understood, no lassitude, no weakness, such as is produced by physical exertion, while also perspiration has in reality ceased. The frame, therefore, is not liable to receive a chill, but is, on the contrary, strengthened to resist it. Consequently, a person may either ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... 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 clearness of a mirror, and also, it should ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... of interest and excitement for the little girl. The heavy lassitude of her steerage days had fallen from her, and already that first morning a delicate glow of returning vigour touched ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... gave to men in the reign of the ancient caliphs is beyond all question. To impute to it the present decadence of the Moslem world is altogether too puerile. The truth is that nations have their day; and to a period of glorious splendour succeeds a time of lassitude and slumber. It is a law of nature. And then one day some danger threatens them, stirs them from their ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... "To-morrow,"—an earnest of his subsequent success. For it is rapid decision, and a similar promptitude in action, such as taking instant advantage of an enemy's mistakes, that so often wins battles. "At Arcola," said Napoleon, "I won the battle with twenty-five horsemen. I seized a moment of lassitude, gave every man a trumpet, and gained the day with this handful. Two armies are two bodies which meet and endeavour to frighten each other: a moment of panic occurs, and THAT MOMENT must be turned to advantage." "Every moment ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... men who had been polished by polite letters or by intercourse with high life, and there was a sameness in their very dress as well as address, of which peers and peeresses had become weary. They therefore welcomed this rustic candidate for the honour of giving wings to their hours of lassitude and weariness, with a welcome more than common; and when his approach was announced, the polished circle looked for the advent of a lout from the plough, in whose uncouth manners and embarrassed address they ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... in however imperfect a way, the principal incidents of married life; after struggling against so many wives that did not belong to me, exhausting myself in conflict with so many personages called up from nothingness, and joining so many battles, I feel an intellectual lassitude, which makes me see everything in life hang, as it were, in mournful crape. I seem to have a catarrh, to look at everything through green spectacles, I feel as if my hands trembled, as if I must needs employ the second half of my existence and of my book ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... The lassitude which had held the house party in thrall was dispelled. It was almost as though Judith had applied a cleansing fluid to the atmosphere. She stood in their midst, displaying her wares with an earnestness and simplicity that was most convincing. Who could ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... ample drapery, seated cross-legged by a playing fountain, on a carpet of exquisitely designed ground-ivy, a little bare trellis behind her, a tortoise lyre in her hand; which has in it somewhat of that odd, vague, questioning character, half of eagerness, half of extreme lassitude, which we find in Botticelli. Only that in Neroni's work it seems not the outcome of a certain dreamy spiritual dissatisfaction—the dissatisfaction which makes us feel that Botticelli's flower-wreathed nymphs may end in the pool under ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... makes the curious confession: "I am just recovered from a violent fit of laziness, which has confined me to my elbow-chair these three months."[14] Brougham thinks these statements show symptoms of hypochondria; but they probably indicate no more than the ordinary lassitude and exhaustion ensuing from overwork. Hume, when about the same age, had by four or five years' hard reading thrown himself into a like condition, and makes the same complaints of "laziness of temper" and scurvy. The shaking in the head continued to attend ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... enjoyment. My only object still was to find a refuge where I might enjoy the congenial peace suited to some new artistic creation. In consequence, however, of thoughtlessly indulging in ices, I soon got an attack of dysentery, which produced the most depressing lassitude after my previous exaltation. I wanted to flee from the tremendous noise of the harbour, near which I was staying, and seek for the most absolute calm; and thinking a trip to Spezia would benefit me, I went there by steamer a week later. Even ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... brightness seventy years or more had not dimmed. The group was completed by Mrs. Gregory's bachelor brother, older than his sister by fifteen years. This brother, Simon Jefferson, though stockily built and evidently well- fed, wore an air of lassitude, as if perennially tired. As he leaned back in a hall chair, he seemed the only one present who did not ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... began to unfold in writing his ideas of a true union of the soul with God. He too explained how the souls of all creatures should empty themselves, so to speak, and prepare themselves in absolute passiveness, in 'inaction and lassitude,' for a glorified state. His profession of learning, and his academical and clerical dignities he resigned, as ministering to vanity. He bought a small property near Wittenberg, and repaired thither to live as a ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... three times a day, with scrupulous care and exactness, lest a drop or a crumb of the food that was more precious than diamonds should be lost. The men had all become accustomed to short allowance now, and experienced no greater inconvenience than a feeling of lassitude, which feeling increased daily, but by such imperceptible degrees that they were scarcely conscious of it, and were only occasionally made aware of the great reduction of their strength when they attempted to lift any article which, in the days of their ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... dances like an Englishman." At the first ball this comforted the suitors, and most the Comte de Belle Chasse; but this very circumstance drew Ormond and Dora closer together—she pretended headaches, and languor, and lassitude, and, in ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... morning; even Mr Paton, who rarely used strong language, had called him intolerable and incorrigible, and had threatened a second report to the headmaster, because this was the tenth successive Greek grammar lesson in which he had failed. Added to all this, he was suffering from headache and lassitude. And now his father's letter was the cumulus of his misfortunes. A rebellious, indignant, and violent spirit rose in him. Was he always, for no fault of his own, to be bullied, baited, driven, misunderstood, and crushed in this way? If it was ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... of 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 material leadership of ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... child. The blow of her husband's desertion seemed to have stopped all the springs of action. Neither the chaplain, the post-surgeon, nor Mrs. McGillicuddy, singly or united, could rouse Mrs. Lawrence from the deadly lassitude of a broken heart. Both the chaplain and the surgeon had seen such cases, and nothing in the ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... state of excitement into which Charlie had been kept by the startling events connected with the massacre, and his ingenious defence of the cabin, brought about a reaction; great lassitude alternated with feverish symptoms. He felt obliged to watch during the long hours of night, and caught such snatches of sleep as Bub's performances allowed ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... field of battle, weary, broken men, many of them wounded, all of them terror-stricken, staggering in speedless haste with the last remnants of their strength into the shelter which it was their vain illusion the town would afford them. Eyes glazed with lassitude and fear looked up piteously out of haggard faces at Mr. Blood and his companion as they rode forth; hoarse voices cried a warning that merciless pursuit was not far behind. Undeterred, however, young Pitt rode amain along the dusty road by which these poor fugitives from that swift rout ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... 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 soul ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... when we came into the street. A hot dead wind drifted in great puffs through the city, and ragged masses of vapor swept the purple sky; an unsavory night altogether, one of those nights of hopeless lassitude when one feels, if one is at home, like doing nothing but drink mint juleps ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... Julian was stunned, and then a sudden lassitude and an immense sadness came over him. Holding his head between his hands, he wept for ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... 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 ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... paler than ever, and her step had lost its lightness. Yet she did not seem to share her husband's political anxieties; one would have said that she was hardly aware of them. She seemed wrapped in a veil of lassitude, like Iseo on a still gray morning, when dawn is blood-red on the mountains but a mist blurs its reflection in the lake. I felt as though her soul were slipping away from me, and longed to win her back to my care; but she made her ill-health a pretext for not coming to confession, and for the ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... 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 had divined in the mind of Napoleon Bonaparte. In his place, Fouche, always eager to serve the man ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... steed, and beast of burden, and there is a hum and murmur, like the surges of the ocean. As the sun ascends to his meridian, the hum and bustle gradually decline; at the height of noon there is a pause. The panting city sinks into lassitude, and for several hours there is a general repose. The windows are closed, the curtains drawn, the inhabitants retired into the coolest recesses of their mansions; the full-fed monk snores in his dormitory; the brawny porter lies stretched ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... vivacious was it, so keenly interested and alert. She was a great contrast to the people amongst whom she had come, for tropical heat saps a good deal of the enthusiasm of life out of people—even the children were subject to lassitude. ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... is to take only such an amount of nourishment as will not cause you to feel any dullness, or heaviness, or bodily lassitude. ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... the climate induces great lassitude and indisposition to exertion, alias indolence. I began to experience this soon after arriving in the south. This, which in England would be called laziness, is encouraged by the most trifling offices ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... you know, when I hesitated to enter the seminary, when I had doubts about my vocation. You ended my hesitation and silenced my doubts; you have made a priest of me; well, now more than ever, I have moments of lassitude which make ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... him, and went home just in time to dress. There were some people to dinner, at which Jane appeared. Her lassitude had vanished, and, as was her manner when in good spirits, she was very humorous and amusing. Also I had never seen her look so beautiful, for her colour was high and her dark eyes shone like the diamond ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... ferocious censorship. The mystic doctrine of non-resistance preached by Leo Tolstoi was attuned to the mood prevailing among educated Russians, for, in the words of the Russian poet, "their hearts, subdued by storms, were filled with silence and lassitude." ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... those days, seemed always like some foreign military station in the tropics. The long, low, white buildings, with piazzas and verandas on the water-side; the general impression of heat and lassitude, existence appearing to pulsate only with the sea-breeze; the sandy, almost impassable streets; and the firm, level beach, on which everybody walked who could get there: all these suggested Jamaica or the East Indies. Then the head-quarters at the end of the beach, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the besetting faults and failings of his temperament—an impulsive self confidence, followed by moments of revolt and lassitude and discouragement. He knew that a quiet stability was the quality he lacked, and that the fire of enthusiasm and the revolt against abuses which blazed hot within him was not the holiest frame of mind in which to meet a crisis such as had lately threatened him. He knew that he might ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... he could not endure to face them—yet the echo of 'nothing will ever do him good,' seemed to ring like a knell in his ears every time he turned his weary head. Nothing do him good! Nothing! Always these four walls, that little bed, this wasting weary lassitude, this gnawing, throbbing pain, no pony, no running, no shouting, no sense of vigour and health ever again, and perhaps—that terrible perhaps, which made Alfred's very flesh quail, he would not think of; and to drive it away, he found some fresh toil to require of the sister who ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her nostril quivered, her head trembled, indignant tears were on her cheek, and her foot was set upon the moss as though she would have crushed it into nothing. And yet almost the self-same glance that showed him this, showed him the self-same lady rising with a scornful air of weariness and lassitude, and turning away with nothing expressed in face or figure but ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... of lassitude with which she replied bespoke her feeling on that point. 'I have little curiosity,' she said. 'You know I can be happy anywhere. And, turning toward me, she moved her lips in a way I interpreted to mean: 'Go below with me. ...
— The Gray Madam - 1899 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... with which it has been written. In that case, fatal must be the reception of this—for the writer frankly avows, that during the time she has been writing it, she has suffered every quality and degree of weariness and lassitude, into which no other employment could have ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... these only serve to wean one's thoughts from the oppressive heat for a moment. At times one fairly gasps for breath and looks involuntarily about in forlorn search of some place of escape, if only for a moment, from the stifling atmosphere. A feeling of utter lassitude and loss of ambition comes over one; the importance of accomplishing one's object diminishes, and the necessity of yielding to the pressure of the fearful heat and taking things easy becomes the all-absorbing theme of the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... upon the mind of those who should be artists. Under this influence not only is the subdivision of labour which places each successive operation in separate hands accepted as a matter of course, but into each operation itself this separation imports a spirit of lassitude and dulness and compliance with false conditions and limited aims which would seem almost incredible in those practising what should be an inspiring art. To men so trained, so employed, all counsels of perfection are foolishness; all idea of tentative work, experiment, modification while ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... 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 ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... "The rogue has been catering for himself, I suspect I hope that he may bring me something for dinner, for though a pigeon a day is something, sufficient to keep body and soul together, I shall require more to retain my strength." As he again rose a sensation of lassitude oppressed him. He felt very much disinclined for the painful task he had undertaken. It must be done, however, and rousing himself he seized the wooden spade he had before used, and set to work to dig a grave near that of Voules. He had not long been engaged in his task, when looking up he ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 type of person takes up work with zeal and renewed ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... the least trifle too long, but hardly worth mentioning—that aristocratic oval which the most graceful portrait painters of the fifteenth century were rather fond of exaggerating. The refined features had that subtle expression of suffering and lassitude which lends the human charm to the Virgins of the Florentine tondi of the time of Cosimo. A soft and tender shadow, the fusion of two diaphanous tints—violet and blue, lay under her eyes, which had the leonine irises of the brown-haired angels. Her hair lay on her forehead and temples ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... promote health, and prepare for more serious duties, selecting those which have a directly opposite tendency, cannot be justified. Of course, if a person feel that the previous day's diversions have shortened the hours of needful repose, or induced a lassitude of mind or body, instead of invigorating them, it is certain that an evil has been done, which should never ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... age, and therefore "on the tramp" looking out for a job. He wore a soft slouched felt hat, very much out of shape and weather-stained,—and when he had been seated for a few minutes in a kind of apathy of lassitude, he lifted the hat off, passing his hand through his abundant rough white hair in a slow tired way, as though by this movement he sought to ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... practice of Langsdorff in similar cases, and used the lancet, a heroic treatment he would never have accomplished had his master been conscious. The fever ebbed, and in a few days Rezanov was able to continue the journey by shorter stages, although heavy with an intolerable lassitude. But his will sustained him until he reached Yakutsk, not at the end of twenty-two days, but of thirty-three. Here he succumbed immediately, and although his sickbed was in the comfortable home of the agent of the Company, and he had medical attendance of a sort, his fever and convalescence ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... death of Robespierre. Vainly did certain Jacobins— Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Herault de Sechelles, &c.—propose that clemency should be given a trial. The only result of this proposition was that its authors were sent to the scaffold. It was merely the lassitude of the public that finally put an end to ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... 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 ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... brings out the latent defect or quality, and does not create it. The selfish languor and indifference of to-day's possession is the consequence of the selfish ardour of yesterday's pursuit: the scorn and weariness which cries vanitas vanitatum is but the lassitude of the sick appetite palled with pleasure: the insolence of the successful parvenu is only the necessary continuance of the career of the needy struggler: our mental changes are like our grey hairs or our wrinkles—but the fulfilment of the plan of mortal growth and decay: that ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... joint ventures. The most gratifying result has been a strong spurt in production, particularly in agriculture in the early 1980s. Otherwise, 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 and thereby undermining the credibility of the reform process. ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... burnished steel. The heat became so stifling that even the Africans were gasping for breath, and we envied them their freedom from all impediments. The least exertion was irksome, and attended with extreme lassitude. During the afternoon thin cirri clouds, flying very high, spread out over the western heavens like a fan. As the day lengthened they thickened to resemble the scales of a fish, bringing to mind the old saying, "A mackerel sky and a mare's tail," etc. The ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... feeling was evidently a strong desire for peace, a dislike of the exigencies and hazards of the Imperial despotism, a calculated foreshadowing of its fall, and the dawning perspective of another system of government. The lower orders, on the contrary, only roused themselves up from lassitude to give way to a momentary burst of patriotic rage, or to their reminiscences of the Revolution. The Imperial rule had given them discipline without reform. Appearances were tranquil, but in truth it might be said of the popular ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... 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 ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... These things were instructive, and sometimes interesting. But when "Case 1" is expanded to a novel of three or four hundred pages, or "Case 2" expressed in the form of hectic vers libre, a feeling of lassitude comes o'er us which is more or less ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... angry at having nothing to do, and wished to remind the wind to fulfil its duty. The sun shone out of the sky, without a cloud to temper its heat, and its rays made one side of the ocean shine like molten gold. Every one was suffering more or less from the lassitude produced by excessive heat; the pitch was bubbling up from the seams of the deck; a strong, hot, burning smell pervaded the vessel; the chickens in the hencoops hung their heads and forgot to cackle; the ducks refused to quack, and sat with their bills open, gasping ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... the beat of German drums, and sleep in the soft air of Italy? Are the ball-room, the billiard-room, and the Boulevard, the only attractions that win us into wandering, or tempt us to repose? And when the time is come, as come it will, and that shortly, when the parsimony—or lassitude—which, for the most part, are the only protectors of the remnants of elder time, shall be scattered by the advance of civilization—when all the monuments, preserved only because it was too costly ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... already stated, the vital powers will speedily suffer from 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 poison. When mixed with atmospheric air in the ratio of ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... Chamber. What advice, political considerations and remonstrances winding up with demands for offices! What cantatas that begged for subsidies! Everywhere demands: demands for subsidies, demands for grants, demands for help, demands for decorations! Nothing but harass, enervation, lassitude, deafening clamor. They wished to kill him with their shouts: ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... religious 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 obliged to ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... abstinence now and then, he can subdue head-aches, catarrhs and digestive troubles, and by exercising an intelligent will, can generally prevent their recurrence. If one finds himself in the morning in a state of languor and lassitude, be sure he has abused some physical function, and apply a remedy. An invalid will make a poorly equipped librarian. How can a dyspeptic who dwells in the darkness of a disease, be a guiding light to the multitudes who beset him every hour? There ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... There was not a soul in the drawing-room; there was only one candle burning. Madame Lubyantsev sat on the round stool before the piano, motionless, as though expecting something. And as though taking advantage of the darkness and her extreme lassitude, an oppressive, overpowering desire began to assail her. Like a boa-constrictor it gripped her limbs and her soul, and grew stronger every second, and no longer menaced her as it had done, but stood clear before her in ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... her own metaphorical American language, "never goes back on her." But Edith looks fagged and spiritless. If people are to be supernaturally brilliant and bright, dashing and fascinating all night long, people must expect to pay the penalty next day, when lassitude and reaction set in. ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... lingers; and, following in the track of Byron and Rousseau, have watched the lengthening shadows of the hills on the beautiful waters of the Genevan lake. Blessings, then, upon these young wayfarers, for they have "blessed me unawares." In an hour of sickness and lassitude they have wrought for me the miracle of Loretto's Chapel, and, borne me away from the scenes around me and the sense of personal suffering to that wonderful land where Nature seems still uttering, from lake and valley, and from mountains whose eternal snows lean on the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... of lassitude that brought them back to Marietta for another summer. Through a golden enervating spring they had loitered, restive and lazily extravagant, along the California coast, joining other parties intermittently ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... on deck, pale, and with an air of fatigue and lassitude altogether unusual. He gazed anxiously into every nook and cranny of ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... now 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 ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... of Havana is 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 ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... trench systems on a wide front had to be prepared against an active enemy, and men could ill be spared for the all-important task of training behind the front line. It was not long, however, before troops who had got into that state of lassitude which is engendered by a belief that they were settling down to trench warfare for the duration of the war—that, in fact, there was a stalemate on this front—became inspired by the energy of General Chetwode. They saw him in the front line almost every day, facing the risks they ran themselves, ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... of the winter, what is called catarrh, viz. an increased secretion of mucus from the membranes of the nose, fauces, and air-tubes, with fever, and attended with sneezing and cough, thirst, lassitude, and want of appetite, ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... 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 ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... 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 failure ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Most men have known moods of severe depression and lassitude when not to be at all seemed the one consummation to be desired; but that is not the normal attitude of normal people. Such would still fain believe that the grave is not the end, but many of them are in a state ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... Abel touched the mare lightly on her glossy flank. After that single pang his suffering had left him—for six weeks of sleepless nights and tormented days had exhausted his endurance and reduced him to a condition of emotional lassitude. In his brief reaction from spiritual revolt into a state of apathetic submission, he approached his mother's permanent austerity of mind as closely as he was ever likely to do in the whole of his experience. The mere possibility ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... word, puts him into that agreeable activity, for the want of which the enjoyment of happiness itself cannot compensate him. Action is the true element of the human mind; as soon as it ceases to act, it falls into disgust, sinks into lassitude. His soul has the same occasion for ideas, his stomach has ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... other hand, the peculiar blessedness of boyhood may itself be but a symptom of the same complaint, for the two effects are strangely similar; and the frame of mind of the invalid upon the Alps is a sort of intermittent youth, with periods of lassitude. The fountain of Juventus does not play steadily in these parts; but there it plays, and ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... wearisome monotony and lack of interest attending highly specialised and sub-divided machine-industry, producing physical lassitude.[281] ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... savouring the delights of such a self-abandon, and his own soul was battered and torn with earthly conflict. He must admit that the momentary desire to believe, to take refuge in the timeless, proceeded from a multitude of ignoble motives: from lassitude with the petty and repeated annoyances of existence, quarrels with the laundress, with the waiter, with the landlord; the sordid scramble for money; in a word, from the general spiritual failure of a man approaching forty. ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... freed from lassitude and stupor, Graydon began whispering joyous words of love to Jane. His eyes were bright with the gladness that his pain had brought. She checked his weak outbursts at first, but before many days had passed she was obliged to resort to a firmness that shocked him into a resentful silence. ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... army of clerks had already vanished in the city, and the hour was drawing near to eleven, when Victor Nevill shook off his lassitude sufficiently to get out of bed. A cold tub freshened him, and as he dressed with scrupulous care, choosing his clothes from a well-filled wardrobe, he occasionally walked to the window of his sitting-room and looked down on ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... Making a bed of blankets he lifted Hare into it, and covered him, cautioning him to lie still. Hare had a sensation of extreme lassitude, a deep drowsiness which permeated even to his bones. There were intervals of oblivion, then a time when the stars blinked in his eyes; he heard the wind, Silvermane's bell, the murmur of voices, yet all seemed remote from him, intangible ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... were back in their nice, cosy sitting-room, and a feeling of not altogether unpleasant lassitude stole over Mrs. Bunting. It was a comfort to have Daisy out of her way for a bit. The girl, in some ways, was very wide awake and inquisitive, and she had early betrayed what her stepmother thought to be a very unseemly and silly curiosity concerning the lodger. "You might just let me have ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... effort of the will you force your lagging brain to take up the thread of work. There will invariably come a new supply of energy, a "second wind," enabling you to forge ahead with a freshness and vigor that is surprising after the previous lassitude. ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton
... noon, and the day was warm and still. No one was stirring in Waddy. Professor Thunder had given up the idea that his eloquence could conquer the general lassitude, and was snoring in the tent of the Egyptian Mystic. Madame Marve was shopping in the township, and Matty Cann, the Living Skeleton, had come down from his throne and was curled up on a horse-rug. Ammonia, the orang-outang, sprawled on the floor of his cage, and the other ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... indication of anxiety and haste. From the first she returned after an interval of more than three weeks; from the second after about four or five days. Each absence had been followed by a long season of despondency and lassitude, during which, said the concierge, Mademoiselle scarcely spoke, or ate, or slept, but, silent and pale as a ghost, sat up later than ever with her books and papers. As for this last journey, all she knew ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... place is held, that as we drew near it, I remarked the conversation to become slack; every face put on an appearance of solemnity and thoughtfulness, and no man was inclined to relish the conversation of his neighbor or to speak himself. The very women were silent. Even the lassitude of the journey was unfelt, and the unfledged pilgrim, as he looked up in his father's or mother's face, would catch the serious and severe expression he saw there, and trot silently on, forgetting that ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... I turned such unhappy thoughts in my seething brain, until the faintest sound from without had died away. I may have spent hours thus, while De Noyan slept on peacefully as a tired child. At last a wild desire for action overcame my lassitude, conquered all lingering discretion. There arose before me, clearly as a painted picture, the pleading face of her I loved. I knew that to no other was she looking for aid in her despair. There might be little I could accomplish for her succor, yet it would bring her new courage even to exchange ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... totally unacquainted with lassitude and spleen, the lust of variety, and the impatience of curiosity. In a state of society our ideas habitually succeed in a certain proportion, and an employment that retards their progress, speedily becomes disagreeable and tedious. But children, not ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... 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 waiter ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... aspects, which unfortunately only exhibited one side of the truth, the fate of woman as summed up in Fantine, and public authority as personified in Javert. He had returned to prison, this time for having done right; he had quaffed fresh bitterness; disgust and lassitude were overpowering him; even the memory of the Bishop probably suffered a temporary eclipse, though sure to reappear later on luminous and triumphant; but, after all, that sacred memory was growing dim. Who knows whether Jean Valjean had not been on the eve of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... 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" and ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry |
