"Lethargy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... somewhat in a passion; "is it not enough that I have said, at first, I have nothing for you? Such lazy vagrants as you hinder a gentleman from walking the streets." Rochefoucault burst into a loud laugh, and awakening the absent man from his lethargy, he was not a little surprised, himself, that he should have taken his friend for an importunate mendicant! La Fontaine is recorded to have been one of the most absent men; and Furetiere relates a ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... impatiently with his foot, saying, "Such a change is positively inexplicable." And he looked at Saint-Aignan, who had also remarked La Valliere's peculiar lethargy, as well as the ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... appeared to arouse him from his lethargy and the jester arose, but not before the princess, with flaming cheeks, but proud bearing, had cast a quick glance in his direction; a glance half-appealing, half-resentful. Idly the joculatrix regarded him, her hands upon the table playing with the ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... to cultivate the ground. As if there was something in the climate of Quebec to produce such an effect, they were naturally inclined to be supremely tranquil. And notwithstanding the recent horrible massacre they soon sank back into their ordinary state of lethargy. They were fearfully aroused from their lethargy, however, by another series of attacks on the part of the Iroquois. The latter ferocious red men made a descent upon the village of St. Ignace, killing and capturing all the Hurons there. They next attacked St. ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... the tall canopied bed, beneath a heavy pall of velvet, that gave a funereal aspect to the whole room. He had been aroused by the King's visit, and had spoken a few words in reply to the kind ones addressed to him; but afterwards he had sunk back into the lethargy of extreme weakness, and the brothers were to all intents and purposes alone in the long dormitory they had shared with John, and with two more comrades who had also received slight hurts, but who had now been ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... sentence contains the motive for all the action in the sequel. The same situation is threatened in "Yvain", but there Gawain rescues the hero from the lethargy, ignoble in the eyes of a feudal audience, into which he was falling. Cf. also "Marques de Rome" ("Lit. Verein in Stuttgart", Tubingen, 1889), p. 36, where the Empress of Rome thus incites her husband to the chase: "Toz jors cropez vos a Postel; vos n'estes point ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... since he had come to Algeria in search of peace. When first he landed, and until the day of Victoria's letter, he had been enormously interested in the panorama of the East which passed before his eyes. He had eagerly noticed each detail of colour and strangeness, but now, though the London lethargy was gone, in its place had been born a disturbing restlessness which would not let him look impersonally at ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... into its shaft projected an unhinged shutter supported on two saw-horses, with a sheeted burden upon it. As his eyes became more accustomed to the gloom beyond the room's centre, Parish could make out the hunched figure that sat at the head of the body, still mercifully wrapped in something like lethargy and too numbed ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... room, without ever changing her position, without occupation of any kind, without uttering a word, or breathing a sigh. I soon discovered that she was not lost in thought, at these periods (as I had at first supposed): but lost in a strange lethargy of body and mind; a comfortless, waking trance, into which she fell from sheer physical weakness—it was like the vacancy and feebleness of a first convalescence, after a long illness. She never changed: never looked better, never worse. I often spoke to her: I tried ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... teeming currents of the creeks were lifting the ice, and the waters were becoming turbulent to the eye; when the sapsuckers and creeping birds were jubilant, and the honk of the wild goose was a passing thing; when, with the upspring of the rest of nature, the trees threw off their lethargy, and through the rugged maples the sap began to course again. It was only a few days before Easter that my friend—his name was Hayes, "Jack" Hayes, we called him, though his name, of ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... light under the butler's door, gently opened it, and to his astonishment, beheld one of the bed curtains in flames. He immediately ran to the butler, and pulled him with all his force, to rouse him from his lethargy. He came to his senses at length, but was so terrified, and so helpless, that, if it had not been for Franklin, the whole house would soon inevitably have been on fire. Felix, trembling and cowardly, knew not what to do; and it was curious to see him obeying Franklin, ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... profound sources of evil, they think that institutions can do everything, and that a change of laws would suffice to reform men's hearts; they believe that the organization of society alone hinders the realization of good and of happiness. The resignation of believers appears to them a stupid lethargy, and in their patient expectation of a judgment to come they see only an obstacle to the immediate triumph of justice on the earth. What if the nations were persuaded that there is nothing to be looked for beyond the present life, so that ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... that stuffy carriage I presently followed the example of Heedless and Too-Bold and fell sound asleep. I was awakened by the train rumbling over the points of a little moorland junction. Sunk in a pleasing lethargy, I sat with my eyes closed, and then covertly took a glance at my companion. He had abandoned the Missionary Child and was reading a little dun-coloured book, and marking passages with a pencil. His face was absorbed, and it was a new face, not the vacant, good-humoured look ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... 16th, 1885, at noon, the column on the march was roused from the lethargy induced by monotonous riding hour after hour under a warm ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... largest share of the inspiration which resulted in the famous Lyrical Ballads of 1798. In their partnership Coleridge was to take up the "supernatural, or at least romantic"; while Wordsworth was "to give the charm of novelty to things of everyday ... by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us." The whole spirit of their work is reflected in two poems of this remarkable little volume, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," which is Coleridge's masterpiece, and "Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey," ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... preach plain enough; and that polished periods and glittering sentences flew over the heads of the common people, without any impression upon their hearts. Something might be necessary, he observed, to excite the affections of the common people, who were sunk in languor and lethargy, and therefore he supposed that the new concomitants of methodism might probably produce so desirable an effect.[359] The mind, like the body, he observed, delighted in change and novelty, and even in religion itself, courted new appearances ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... and rode out of the courtyard of the Baggott Hotel and down the Calle Rivera under a seething tropic sun. Limasito's principal street was well-nigh deserted in the lethargy of the noon-day siesta, but the flower-market was a riotous blaze of color in the glistening white plaza, from which radiated broad vistas of fantastically painted adobe and soberer concrete, ending in ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... while he received the baron's instructions, and then went out; five minutes later a large wagon belonging to the military train, covered with a miller's tilt, galloped off as fast as four horses could take it, under the pouring rain, and the officers all seemed to awaken from their lethargy, their looks brightened, and ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... "Steve!" No lethargy in the girl's figure now, in the face of a sudden turned toward him appealingly. "Don't take it that way or say such things. Nothing has changed in the least. I'm still your friend, as I've always been; so is Harry Randall—and the rest. You're still a successful writer; you've proved it to-day, ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... throat seemed burning up. The water he drank only partially allayed his frantic thirst. It was with great difficulty that he could arouse himself from a lethargy that seemed to completely paralyze both body and mind. As the moments passed, however, he succeeded in rallying into something like normal. But as yet he was unable to fully understand just ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... The lethargy was more mental than physical. It was that semi-consciousness that precedes sleep, or that one sometimes experiences when awakened suddenly out of a ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... presides over the comfort of her favorites, had plied me with breakfast-cakes and milk and honey, I sauntered down toward the Lebanon road. Yes, sauntered, for I felt that a great crisis in my life was at hand, and at such times a wonderful calmness, almost to lethargy, possesses me. I went slowly up the hill. The church-clock was striking nine—calm, peaceful strokes. There was no tremor in them, no warning of what was coming. The air was very still, and I stopped a moment to watch the bluebirds before I turned ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... much drunkenness is due to this cause alone! They are always looking for some form of excitement, of the strongest kind they can bear—the excitement of being with people of like nature with themselves; and if they fail in this, their mind sinks by its own weight, and they fall into a grievous lethargy.[1] Such people, it may be said, possess only a small fraction of humanity in themselves; and it requires a great many of them put together to make up a fair amount of it,—to attain any degree of consciousness as men. A man, in the full sense of the word,—a man par excellence—does ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... nothing else to fill up the time he had stupefied himself with drink. He drank at first, not because he liked drinking, but because it dulled his brain, his heart. It didn't excite him; on the contrary, it brought him to a state of lethargy which, if he was at the club, made him willing to go home, or, if he was at home, made it possible for him to go to bed and sleep. It was only within a month or so that he had begun to suspect that other people noticed it; and even then he hadn't been sure ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... the impulse come? when will you shake off that fatal lethargy? Now you are truly useless to yourselves, and the rest of the world; what is it ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... pillow Hattie Krakow stirred reluctantly, her weary senses battling with the pleasant lethargy of sleep; but a sudden nip in the air stung her nose and found out the warm crevices of the bed. She stirred and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... scientific classification of these we are indebted to Professor Charcot, of the Salpetriere hospital in Paris, to whom, next to Mesmer and Braid, we are indebted for the present science of hypnotism. He recognized three distinct stages—lethargy, catalepsy and somnambulism. There is also a condition of extreme lethargy, a sort of trance state, that lasts for days and even weeks, and, indeed, has been known to last for years. There is also a lighter phase than somnambulism, that ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... absolutism of the mother country. Self-reliance and independence of thought or action on the part of the creoles was discouraged, divisions and factions among them were encouraged and educational opportunities restricted, and the American-born Spaniards gradually sank into idleness and lethargy, indifferent to all but childish honours and distinctions and petty local jealousies. To make matters worse, many of the Spaniards who crossed the seas to the American colonies came not to colonize, not to trade or cultivate the ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... obtained by a universal tax, and the proceeds distributed among the towns, parishes, or districts, there will often be general conditions of public sentiment unfavorable, if not hostile, to schools; and, there will always be found in any state, however small, local indifference and lethargy which render all gifts, donations, and distributions, comparatively valueless. The subject of self-taxation annually is important in connection with a system of free education. It is the experience ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... its wards, and lifted higher in humanity's scale. Too much dependence is as hurtful as entire neglect. The more persistent the call for the forces within the greater the response from the assistants without. The lethargy or neglect to give the Negro protection in the exercise of his constitutional rights is developing a spirit of self-help and intensity of purpose, to find and adopt a course and measures remedial that may be practical and efficient; to ignore the sentimentality ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... work he does altogether much better. He writes a good hand, reads fairly well, and promptly does a sum in long division. He claims to have reached the 6th grade. One difficulty in testing him was his prevailing lethargy. We constantly had to fight this by encouragement. Once he insisted he must give up the work because he had not had a smoke for an hour or so. Altogether, including his irregularities, we could not call him lower than poor in ability, possibly subnormal. He did not come within the limits of ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... of the social work of modern churches. Her aromatic presence, and in this setting, continually disturbed him: nature's perfumes, more definable, —exhalations of the sea and spruce,—mingled with hers, anaesthetics compelling lethargy. He felt himself drowning, even wished to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... womanhood. They will speak as one having authority and they will boldly assert their authority to speak. They will take up where the fathers left off, and they in their possession of so great an inheritance of religious fervor and unshrinking faith, will arouse Christianity from its lethargy, and start as a nation of believers, arousing, as it were, from its spell of years. They will be as bold as lions, wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. They will win their way because the things for ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... and all publicity methods are of great service, but the mightiest effort is to lift the majority of the people out of the lethargy which renders them immune to pangs of the daily spectacle. The remarkable part is that the people are ready, but they expect the stimulus to come from without instead ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... masts and roofs of Algiers dimly outlined against the crescent sweep of lights that marked the levee of the great Southern metropolis, still prostrate from the savage buffeting of the war, yet so soon to rouse from lethargy, resume her sway, and, stretching forth her arms, to draw once again to her bosom the wealth and tribute, tenfold augmented, of the very heart of the nation, until, mistress of the commerce of a score of States, she should rival even New York in the volume of her trade. Below them, away to ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... citizen was still frequently summoned from his work, or roused from his lethargy, by the call of military service; and the practice of the conscription fostered a series of grievances, one of which had already attracted the attention of Tiberius Gracchus. Caius was bound to deal with the question: and the two provisions ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... with one vigorous effort from his lethargy, feeling quite ashamed of himself and of this breakdown of his nervous system. He looked with frank admiration on Sir Percy, who stood immovable and silent by the window—a perfect tower of strength, serene and ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... with a dismal groan. Joel did not hear it. It is doubtful if he heard anything until several minutes later, when the pronouncement of his name awoke him from the lethargy ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... denoted some great derangement of the planet; and when the moon labored under one of these mysterious infirmities, they sounded their instruments, and filled the air with shouts and lamentations, to rouse her from her lethargy. Such puerile conceits as these form a striking contrast with the real knowledge of the Mexicans, as displayed in their hieroglyphical maps, in which the true cause of this phenomenon is ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... gladdened, and, as I lay on my bunk listening to the merry crackle of the wood fire, I was in a purring lethargy of content. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... all felt somewhat relieved one night when we heard that the German fleet was bombarding the English coast, hoping that it would shake the country out of its feeling of smug self-complacency and lethargy. ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... the saddle all day, and on their knees half the night. When shall we see the like of them again? A few such broken wrecks as I are left, with the fire of our youth all burned out and nought left but the ashes of lethargy and lukewarmness.' ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to make her father understand the difficulty in hopes that he would suggest a remedy, but all her efforts were in vain. Carmichael lay with his eyes closed in a kind of lethargy or paralysis. ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... forever, the brush he had previously wielded with such promise. The young stranger sought the Frate in his cell at San Marco, and soon found the way to his heart. Stimulated by this new friendship, Bartolommeo roused himself from lethargy and resumed the practice of art with increasing success. It is pleasant to trace the influence which the two artists exerted upon each other. The older man had experience and learning; the younger had enthusiasm and genius. Now it happened that, by nature, Bartolommeo was specially gifted in the ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... onward the Mountain became very active in contrast with its previous condition of lethargy, and throughout the whole of the eighteenth century there were frequent eruptions, many of them on a vast scale. All these outbursts have been carefully recorded and commented upon, for naturally the scientists of a great city like Naples were intensely interested in the passing ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... did not arouse the old lady, who was falling back into a pleasant lethargy, so common ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... Cleopatra learned from them, it is said, that the bite of the asp was the easiest and least painful mode of death. The effect of the venom of that animal appeared to her to be the lulling of the sensorium into a lethargy or stupor, which soon ended in death, without the intervention of pain. This knowledge she seems to have laid up in her ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... faculties and his strength soon failed him, and he sank down to the floor. They bore him away to his palace. A violent fever intervened, which the physicians did all in their power to allay. As soon as his reason returned a little, Alexander aroused himself from his lethargy, and tried to persuade himself that he should recover. He began to issue orders in regard to the army, and to his ships, as if such a turning of his mind to the thoughts of power and empire would help bring him back from the brink of the grave toward which he had been so obviously tending. ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... "wandering winds" and the devas, whispered the truth of human sorrows into his listening ear, and when the appointed hour arrived, the Suddha Devas threw the spell of slumber over the household, steeped in profound lethargy the sentinels (as we are told was done by an angel to the gaolers of Peter's prison), rolled back the triple gates of bronze, strewed the sweet moghra-flowers thickly beneath his horse's feet to muffle every sound, and he was free. Free? Yes—to resign every earthly comfort, every ...
— The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons • H.S. Olcott
... Saturday night, a lethargy appeared to be overpowering her frame. On Sabbath morning she was disposed to constant slumber; observing Mr. B—— looking at her with agitation, she was roused from her heaviness, and stretching her arms towards ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... immeasurable loss had been almost beyond endurance to a man of his age and of his volcanic nature. His physician was soon at his side, and, with some degree of success, put forth all his skill to rally his exhausted patient. He at last succeeded in producing a certain degree of lethargy, which, in benumbing the brain, ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... put into a Boat waiting at the Quayside, as the Monk had told me, and ten minutes' hard pulling brought us alongside a large craft, on board which, I being so weak, they were fain to hoist me with Ropes. By this time I had sunk into a kind of Lethargy, and, being conveyed below and put into a cot in the Master's Cabin, fell into a slumber, which lasted for very ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... later the sun came out again, and the various shades of yellow and of orange that played over the wrinkled earth deepened and glowed. Domini had sunk into a lethargy so complete that, though not asleep, she was scarcely aware of the sun. She was dreaming ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... Scott, with that last thought, Bennington shook the lethargy, the stillness of deep thought that had contained and enveloped him since the report of this breaking ...
— Take the Reason Prisoner • John Joseph McGuire
... last raised his head from his arms. He looked about him dazedly for a little while, as if endeavoring to put himself in touch once again with the humdrum facts of existence. Then, when his brain cleared from the lethargy imposed by the strain to which it had so recently been subjected, he gave a sudden defiant toss of his head, and muttered wrathfully: "Go broke, or starve your men!" He got out of his chair, and paced ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... that age. Feeling half drowsy from riding in the cold, and then the sudden change to a warm fire, I was rather inclined not to move on the entrance of the stranger. But the name of Thomas Dick, LL.D., roused me in a moment, from my lethargy; I could scarcely believe that I was in the presence of the "Christian Philosopher." Dr. Dick is one of the men to whom the age is indebted. I never find myself in the presence of one to whom the world owes so much as Dr. Dick, without feeling a thrilling emotion, as if ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... this terrible predisposition from its lethargy? How is it that the Filipino people, so fond of its customs as to border on routine, has given up its ancient habits of work, of trade, of navigation, etc., even to the extent of ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... Heaven and Hell. They were like the courtiers of Louis XV. in the most godless period of the monarchy. They were worse, for they superadded pagan infidelities. There were memorable exceptions, but not many, until Christianity had reached the throne. "One after another, the nobles sunk into a lethargy almost without a parallel. The proudest names of the old republic were finally associated with the idlest amusements and the most preposterous novelties. A Gabrius, a Callius, and a Crassus were immortalized by the elegance of their dancing. A Lucullus, a Hortensius, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... Art, or any care for honest sport. And here lies the whole secret of the discontent of villages; their inhabitants are conscious of unjust deprivations in their lot; and if they remain villagers, it is rather from lethargy than love. ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... What we want is advanced men like you in the province. The lethargy—the lethargy of these aristocrats! The want of public spirit! The absence of all enterprise! I, with my profound studies ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... fallen. Peggy sat numb and limp in the chassis. But presently the necessity of attending to Roy aroused her from her lethargy. Under her directions the boy was removed to a bed in the hotel and a doctor sent for. The physician lived in the hotel, so no time was lost before he was at Roy's bedside. He had finished his examination and had pronounced ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... of parliament in their debating society, and copied the arts of journalism in the Eton Miscellany. In both fields the young Gladstone took a leading part. The debating society was afflicted with 'the premonitory lethargy of death,' but the assiduous energy of Gaskell, seconded by the gifts of Gladstone, Hallam, and Doyle, soon sent a new pulse beating through it. The politics of the hour, that is to say everything not fifty years off, were forbidden ground; ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Esperance is but an infant, and it may be years ere Europe shall awake from her lethargy and strive to overturn the thrones of her despots; before that period, the period of revolution and bloodshed, our son may change his opinions and cease to be the ardent Republican ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... stumbled and had to rest; often the terrible sleep of the snow lay heavy on his eyelids, and he longed to lie down and be at rest, as the little brothers were; often it seemed to him that he would never reach home again. But he shook the lethargy off him and resisted the longing, and held on his way: he knew that his mother would mourn for him as Katte mourned for the lambs. At length, through all difficulty and danger, when his light had spent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... estimation. We are told that it is idle to expect young men to do strenuous work before they feel the impending pressure of earning a livelihood; that they naturally love ease and self- indulgence, and can be aroused from lethargy only by discipline, or by contact with the hard facts of a struggle with the world. If I believed that, I would not be president of a college for a moment. It is not true. A normal young man longs for nothing so much as to devote himself to a cause ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... from the conjugal bed. Mrs. Shandy may be taken to mean us harm in bidding the father of Tristram wind up the clock; so long as your wife is not blamed for the pleasure she takes in interrupting you by the most imperative questions. Where there formerly was movement and life is now lethargy and death. An act of love becomes a transaction long discussed and almost, as it were, settled by notarial seal. But we have in another place shown that we never refuse to seize upon the comic element in a matrimonial crisis, although here we may be permitted to disdain the ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... an easy matter to awaken either of those, who slept under the influence of potations as deep as the night-caps taken by Captain Crutchely and Mr. Hillson. The latter, in particular, was like a man in a state of lethargy, and Mark had half a mind to leave him, and make his condition an excuse for not having persisted in the call. But he succeeded in arousing the captain, who soon found the means to bring the second-mate to a ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... to hope, towards the Western Powers: in the treaty with Austria of April 20, Prussia has bound herself, in certain eventualities that may occur at any moment, to a warlike support of Austria. Is it not, therefore, high time for Prussia to arouse herself from her lethargy, in order to undertake the support contracted for by treaty? If history teaches anywhere an evident lesson, Prussia will find it in her own past history. Once before Prussia promised to help Austria, and was not able to perform her ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... by Barneveld out of the cabinet of the Jesuits, had been duly communicated by him months before to those whom it most concerned, and as usual it seemed to deepen the lethargy of the destined victims and their friends. Not only the whole Spanish campaign of the present year had thus been duly mapped out by the Advocate, long before it occurred, but this long buried and forgotten correspondence of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Abdal. Love, like a lethargy, has seized my will. I'm not myself, since from her sight I went; I lean my trunk that way, and there stand bent. As one, who, in some frightful dream, would shun His pressing foe, labours in vain to run; And his own slowness, in his sleep, bemoans, With thick short sighs, weak cries, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and wonders of ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... the mountain, but there had been no time for him to eat. He was decidedly hungry, and the plain offered nothing in the shape of breakfast. He halted, lingered, and came to a neighing stop, looking around at his mistress. She roused from her lethargy of trouble, and realized that his wants—if not ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... themselves. They are in no wise persecuted; but their unconscious soul fails to perform its duty. Is it less adroit than the others: is it less eager? Does it slumber hopelessly in the depths of its secular prison: and can no amount of will-power arouse it from its fatal lethargy, and force the redoubtable doors that lead from the life that unconsciously is aware of all things to the ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... a dream he handed her his keys. Through a lethargy which was almost a stupor he saw her enter his house; he heard her unlock the door of the room where his plates lay. After a moment she found a match and lighted the candles. Helm sat heavily on the steps, his head on his breast, dimly aware that she was passing ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... immediately. Sir Francis was unconscious of danger when he was aroused late at night by Alderman Powell, who had been taken prisoner by the rebels but succeeded in making his escape and finding his way to Government House. Sir Francis at last awoke from his lethargy and listened to the counsels of Colonel Fitzgibbon—the hero of Beaver Dams in 1813—and other residents of Toronto, who had constantly endeavoured to force him to take measures for the public security. The loyal people of the province rallied with great alacrity to put down the revolt. ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... to London from this expedition, he happened to fall sick of a lethargy, and it was confidently given out that he was dead. This report was, with great industry and artifice, dispersed by his enemies, which quickly discovered the ill inclination of several lords, who, although they never believed the thing, yet made use of it for an occasion or pretext to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... writing here, sick and grown old, Not my least burden is that dulness of the years, querilities, Ungracious glooms, aches, lethargy, constipation, whimpering ennui, May filter in ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... super-structure—of the grief and the ruin of the architect. In this state of imbecility I had, for amusement, turned my attention to political economy; my understanding, which formerly had been as active and restless as a hyaena, could not, I suppose (so long as I lived at all) sink into utter lethargy; and political economy offers this advantage to a person in my state, that though it is eminently an organic science (no part, that is to say, but what acts on the whole as the whole again reacts on each part), yet the several parts may be detached and contemplated ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... gazing fixedly at the Archbishop while he spoke, trying to understand. Now she made a supreme effort to shake off her lethargy, seeming for the moment so like her usual self that the two conspirators trembled for ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... it be now seemingly distant, that the people will awake from this lethargy; that it will perceive how much of the noblest blood of the people, how much time and money, have been worse than recklessly squandered. The people will find it out, and then they will ask those Cains at the wheel an account of the innocent ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... the clock struck eleven, and then Richard roused from his lethargy and said: "The next train for Olney passes at twelve. I am going there, Harry—going after Ethie. You'll ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... occasionally rouse himself from his lethargy, and complain to the father, that the heir of his honors was far inferior to his younger brother in acquirements, and remonstrate against the course which produced such an unfortunate inequality. On these ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... away to feed in the fields, and their departure was followed by a long interval, during which no single thought crossed his mind—at least, none that he could remember. No doubt his tired mind had fallen into lethargy, from which a sudden fear had roughly awakened him. What if some countryman, seeking his goats among the rocks, had come upon the bundle and taken it home! And at once he imagined himself climbing up the rocks naked. Pat Kearney's ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... forward into a more comfortable position and encountered a rock, and sluggishly through his benumbed faculties passed a train of associated ideas—rock, rock ledge, loup-cerviers, the boy! With a mighty effort he roused himself from the growing lethargy and staggered blindly ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... Instinct—the instinct of the stricken beast to creep to hiding—moved her, while reason was still bound in lethargy. She moved to step, drawing at her son's hand. "Come, Charles," she said, in a low, ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... forth and fight France," he said at last; and with that resolve the sense of numb lethargy and despair fell away from him like a worn-out garment, and his ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... family of Persia are the hereditary chiefs of the royal Kajar tribe, and still preserve the customs of that position. They have not changed the manly habits of a warlike race for the luxury and lethargy which sapped the energies and ruined the lives of so many monarchs of Persia. Up to the time of the present ruling dynasty the princes of the blood were immured in the harem, where their education was left to women and their attendants, and until the death ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... received with enthusiastic shouts by the warlike part of the populace. Granada once more awoke, as a warrior shaking off a disgraceful lethargy. The commanders and council partook of the public excitement, and despatched a reply to the Christian sovereigns, declaring that they would suffer death rather than surrender ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... people and events in distant Europe far into the night. And Madame sang Polish love-songs in a sweet, pathetic voice, and I recounted one or two American yarns in Yankee vernacular which excited inordinate gaiety, so easily amused were these poor souls with minds dulled by long years of lethargy and despair. And I wondered, as I glanced around the squalid room, how many years had elapsed since its mud-walls had last echoed to the sounds of ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... ancient influences to hang about her "like a giant's robe upon a dwarfish thief." In this year (Port Folio, page 463) is heard the first note of alarm. New England is gaining; "with such rivalry Philadelphia must yield the proud title which she has borne, or rouse from the withering lethargy in which she slumbers." New York jealousy is increasing. In 1820 Salmagundi says that "one of the editors of the Port Folio was discharged—for writing common-sense." These trifles indicate a shifting of the balance of power. Three years more, and the cry of discontent ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... more efficacious than blistering or stimulating frictions. Its effects, though perhaps less permanent, are general and diffused over the limb. This process has been found effectual in restoring heat to the lower extremities, and a case of obstinate lethargy was cured by Corvisart by a repeated urtication of the whole body. During the action of the stimulus, the patient, who was a young man, would open his eyes and laugh, but then sink again into a profound sleep. In three weeks, however, ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... seemed as if not a day had passed over her. When she was a girl she used to collect every scrap of love poetry that appeared in the local paper, and paste them into a book, and now, the events of the week having roused her from the lethargy into which she had fallen, she turned for a poem to the Hanley Courier as instinctively as an awakened child turns to ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... she heard a tinkling. She took it for sheep-bells, and started up once more, and once more cried to Mr. Coventry; and this time he heard her, and shook off his deadly lethargy, and tried to ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... freezing-point." In a following page he cites observations made by Bugeaud, under the parallel of 58 degrees N. L., between the months of November and June, during most of which time, of course, vegetable life was in its deepest lethargy. Bugeaud found that when the temperature of the air was at -34.60 degrees, that of a poplar was only at -29.70 degrees, which certainly confirms the doctrine that trees exercise a certain ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... preventing a further advance southward. In the next year the Athenian pacifist party was desirous of dropping further resistance. This policy caused the delivery of the First Philippic. It is a stirring appeal to the country to shake off its lethargy. Nothing but personal service would enable her to recover the lost strongholds. "In my opinion," it says, "the greatest compelling power that can move men is the disgrace of their condition. Do you desire to stroll about asking one another for news? What newer news do you want than ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... individuals, which is sufficient to give you an idea of all the rest. He had indeed some unaccountable illusions, which he pushed to the utmost extremity. The most dangerous kind of illusion in State affairs is a sort of lethargy that never happens without showing pronounced symptoms. The abolishing of ancient laws, the destruction of that golden medium which was established between the Prince and the people, and the setting up a power purely and absolutely despotic, were the original ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... dissuade them from such abuse of their free-agency; but if they persist, we cannot interfere with their humour: only do not let them apply the iron to our foreheads! They cry out that they have been in a lethargy; why do they not add that they would have been asleep to this hour, if they had not been roused, in their vales and on their moors, by an officious and impertinent call from the dirty alleys and obscure courts ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... congress in their late address to the several states, have given a just picture of our situation. I very much doubt its making the desired impression; and if it does not, I shall consider our lethargy as incurable. The present juncture is so interesting, that if it does not produce correspondent exertions, it will be a proof, that motives of honour, public good, and even self-preservation, have lost ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... somewhat fond, it is said, of good living and of luxury; inclined, it may be, to say, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," and to sink more and more into the mere worldling, unless some shock should awake him from his lethargy. ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... the effect of partially awakening him from his lethargy. "Six o'clock—did you say, Mrs Bately? Are the boys washed—and in the schoolroom? I will rise speedily—yet I am overcome with much heaviness. Delapsus somnus ab—" and the Dominie snored again. I renewed my attempts, and gradually ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat |
