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Languish   /lˈæŋgwɪʃ/   Listen
Languish

verb
(past & past part. languished; pres. part. languishing)
1.
Lose vigor, health, or flesh, as through grief.  Synonyms: pine away, waste.
2.
Have a desire for something or someone who is not present.  Synonyms: ache, pine, yearn, yen.  "I am pining for my lover"
3.
Become feeble.  Synonym: fade.



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"Languish" Quotes from Famous Books



... the St. Gothard Tunnel, and the Americans mowed down by shot and shell while fighting for the abolition of slavery, have helped to develop the cotton industry of France and England, as well as the work-girls who languish in the factories of Manchester and Rouen, and the inventor who (following the suggestion of some worker) ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin

... sovereigns in Egypt. This event, which, as is generally known, succeeded the death of Alexander, 320 years before the Christian era, collected into one spot the scattered embers of literature and science, which were beginning to languish in Greece under a weak and distracted government and an unsettled state of society. The children of her divided states, whom domestic discord and the uncertainties of war rendered unhappy at home, wandered into Egypt, and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... beauties, and a form divine. To whom Ulysses, ever-wise, replied. Awful Divinity! be not incensed. I know that my Penelope in form And stature altogether yields to thee, For she is mortal, and immortal thou, 260 From age exempt; yet not the less I wish My home, and languish daily to return. But should some God amid the sable Deep Dash me again into a wreck, my soul Shall bear that also; for, by practice taught, I have learned patience, having much endured By tempest and in battle both. Come then ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... have a far away expression, dreamy and tender, that soon affects the music. The magic violin sighs and breathes in melting tenderness. The melody floats upward, melting and fading away, exhaled into palpable silence. Not quite, for just as it seems ready to languish into nothing, a soft, sweet chord from the band completes the cadence and brings it ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard

... him, namely, the hopes of seeing Sophia at the masquerade; on which, however ill-founded his imagination might be, he had voluptuously feasted during the whole day, the evening no sooner came than Mr Jones began to languish for some food of a grosser kind. Partridge discovered this by intuition, and took the occasion to give some oblique hints concerning the bank-bill; and, when these were rejected with disdain, he collected courage enough once more to mention a ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... men weare wounded with arrowes and foure escaped, but he that was sent with me att first to make a discovery was horribly wounded with 2 arrowes and a blow of a club on the head. If he had stuck to it as we, he might proceed better. We burned him with all speed, that he might not languish long, to putt ourselves in safty. We killed 2 of them, & 5 prisoners wee tooke, and came away to where we left our boats, where we arrived within 2 days without resting, or eating or drinking all the time, saveing a litle stagge's meate. We tooke all their booty, ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson

... concerns the sixth mountain having greater and lesser clefts, they are such as have believed; but those in which were lesser clefts are they who have had controversies among themselves; and by reason of their quarrels languish in the faith: ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake

... demand. This she took for the protest of her pure reason. In reality, grieved though she was on account of that Dr. Shrapnel, her captive heart resented the anticipated challenge to her to espouse his cause or languish. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... original proposition," he remarked. "I can spare you all you want in the way of supplies. Yes and even to a coffee-pot and an extra frying-pan. An enterprise as splendidly started as this has been must not be allowed to languish, or be utterly wrecked through the mean tricks of such scamps as ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster

... be repeating The vows he uttered then— Alas! the years, though fleeting, Are truer yet than men! The summer moonlight glistens In the favorite trysting spot Where the river ever listens For a song it heareth not. And I, whose head is sprinkled With time's benumbing snow, I languish, old and ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field

... dying children. And such beings sympathize equally with sorrow that grovels and with sorrow that soars. Such beings pity alike the children that are languishing in death, and the children that live only to languish in tears." ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... the military and naval establishments, they would remember that, unless England were secure from attack, she could not continue to hold the high place which she had won for herself among European powers; her trade would languish; her credit would fail; and even her internal tranquillity would be in danger. He also expressed a hope that some progress would be made in the discharge of the debts contracted during the War. "I think," he said, "an English Parliament can never make such a mistake ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... feeling you express for the work of an unpopular writer. Otherwise one would incline to be sceptical, for the English are given to practical jokes, and to stir up the vanity of authors who are supposed to languish in the shade amuses them." A remark curiously unfair to the small, faithful band of admirers which Meredith then had. The whole letter, while warmly and touchingly grateful, is gloomy. Further on in it he says: "Good work has a fair chance to be ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett

... dispute as to right, for Great Britain professed her earnest desire to restore promptly any American-born sailors whom her naval officers had seized through error. In fact many such sailors were soon liberated, but a large number either continued to serve on British ships or to languish in British prisons until the end ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... these words appeared to convey in metaphorical terms a presage or foreboding that she would at some early period droop beneath her trials and take an easy flight towards the stars, she immediately began to languish, and taking a volume of the Manual from a neighbouring table, leant her arm upon it as though she were Hope and that her Anchor. Mr Chester perceiving this, and seeing how the volume was lettered on the back, took it gently from her hand, and turned ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... the goddess press'd, Approaching soft, and thus the chief address'd: "Unhappy man! to wasting woes a prey, No more in sorrows languish life away: Free as the winds I give thee now to rove: Go, fell the timber of yon lofty grove, And form a raft, and build the rising ship, Sublime to bear thee o'er the gloomy deep. To store the vessel let the care be mine, With water from the rock and ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... at yours. A storm of wild thoughts has passed over my mind. To be loved every day the same, yet with a difference, to be loved as much after ten years of happiness as on the first day!—such a love demands years. The lover must be allowed to languish, curiosity must be piqued and satisfied, feeling roused ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac

... Dialogues of the Dead, The Art of Cookery, and other amusing works, was, at the end of the month, appointed Gazetteer, in succession to Steele, on Swift's recommendation. Writing earlier in the year, Gay said that King deserved better than to "languish out the small remainder of his life in the Fleet Prison." The duties of Gazetteer were too much for his easy-going nature and failing health, and he resigned the post in July 1712. He died ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... a maze of doubt and fear, "what shall I do? Is it better to remain as we are and allow the poor old man to languish in prison, or to go to Almvik, and thus receive the only boon our father wishes, liberty? But what would Ragnar advise me to do. He loves his father as he does the apple of his eye; but his wife he loves as he does his own heart—And then if he should ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen

... you: I have occasion for your stay on earth. Let him mount first, and beat upon the wing, And wait an age for what I here detain; Or sicken at immortal joys above, And languish for the heaven he ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... his nose slit, his ears cut off, and was then divided into quarters, each quarter being hung upon a tree, and Mary Monino, had her jaw bones broke and was then left to languish ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... to kindle And burn with love's sweet anguish As tapers blaze and dwindle. Love, our lady! lend thine ear! Would'st thou but spoil our pleasure? Ah, leave us not to languish! Who vows to thee his treasure, Haughty ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... imprisoned so justly for stealing so handsome a motor-car in such an audacious manner, and for such lurid and imaginative cheek, bestowed upon such a number of fat, red-faced policemen!" (Here his sobs choked him.) "Stupid animal that I was" (he said), "now I must languish in this dungeon, till people who were proud to say they knew me, have forgotten the very name of Toad! O wise old Badger!" (he said), "O clever, intelligent Rat and sensible Mole! What sound judgments, what a knowledge of men and matters you possess! O unhappy and forsaken Toad!" With ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... patiently waiting to re-enact the scenes of blood and terror of St. Bartholomew. Her time of opportunity will appear to have come in a few years. Bismarck and Kaiser William will be out of the way, and Germany will languish for want of two equal successors. And France will not forget to pay back the debt of revenge she owes to Germany, and seek to reclaim her prestige in councils, and especially to restore her lost influence over Egypt, ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild

... / to castle court he went, E'en as do now the people / whene'er on pleasure bent, There stood 'fore all so graceful / Siegelind's noble son, For whom in love did languish / the hearts of ladies ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler

... speaking, or stirring out of the place they were in. St. Perpetua fell into the hands of a very timorous and unskilful apprentice of the gladiators, who, with a trembling hand, gave her many slight wounds, which made her languish a long time. Thus, says St. Austin, did two women, amidst fierce beasts and the swords of gladiators, vanquish the devil and all his fury. The day of their martyrdom was the 7th of March, as it is marked in the most ancient martyrologies, and in the Roman calendar as ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... act so well that they may not be prolific. It is better for the soul to sink on the earth than to languish in carnal fetters." ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert

... the Waterman's Company. I promise you, that many a pretty fellow has been mortally wounded with a quibble or a carwitchet at the Mermaid, and sent from thence, in a pitiable estate, to Wit's hospital in the Vintry, where they languish to this day amongst ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... more asleep than awake. For if any one had come upon me then I should have felt it very painfully. I have incidentally noted the words: 'Oh moon with thy white face, thou knowest I am in love only with thee. Come down to me. I languish in torture, let me only comfort myself upon thy face. Thou enticing, beautiful, lovely spirit, thou torturest me to death, my suffering rends me, thou beautiful Moon, thou sweet one, mine, I implore thee, release me from this pain, I can ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger

... my uneasiness, did not suffer me to languish under it, and acquainted me, that having taken a solid sincere affection to me, he would begin by giving me one leading mark of it, in removing me out of a house which must, for many reasons, be irksome and disagreeable ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... finds oneself choosing even among the acts of "Tristan und Isolde," finding the first far inferior to the poignant, magnificent third. Sometimes, one glimpses a little too long behind his work not the heroic agonist, but the man who loved to languish in mournful salons, attired ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... a word to add. Since my ruin, I have seen my wife and only child, a daughter of twenty, languish and die before my very eyes. This has embittered me against the men who have worked the ruin of the masses more than anything else. I have pledged myself to avenge the sufferings of humanity. I shall be doing something for the good of the race; something to atone for the ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... at last. 'He would have had, to be sure, to languish his whole life long in an awful prison! At any rate, he is out of suffering now! He is better off now! Such was bound to be his ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... into ruins. Having no appreciation of education, the Germans failed to keep up the schools, universities, and libraries. Being devoted chiefly to agriculture, they had no need for foreign wares or costly articles of luxury, and hence they permitted industry and commerce to languish. In short, large parts of western Europe, particularly Gaul, Spain, and Britain, fell backward into a condition of ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... the end of a drunken nation on the unwilling attention of the roisterers, in verses 13-17, which throb with vehemence of warning and gloomy eloquence. What can such a people come to but destruction? Knowledge must languish, hunger and thirst must follow. Like some monster's gaping mouth, the pit yawns for them; and, drawn as by irresistible attraction, the pomp and the wicked, senseless jollity elide down into it. In the universal catastrophe, one thing alone stands ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... up in Farmer Acorn's apple tree to steal apples, and the limb didn't break, and he didn't fall and break his arm, and get torn by the farmer's great dog, and then languish on a sickbed for weeks, and repent and become good. Oh, no; he stole as many apples as he wanted and came down all right; and he was all ready for the dog, too, and knocked him endways with a brick when he came to tear him. It was very strange —nothing like it ever happened ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... King, "my poor Corinne! She will languish. I think of Corinne and I see that her eyes are full of mourning, like the eyes of a wood dove. Gorman, I cannot bear the weight. It will be better that I take the risk, that I go on the navy. The ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham

... circumference of the liquid. It does not require much skill in experiments of this kind to enable one to see plainly that immediately after the glass has been placed on the drop, which has been affected all over by atmospheric air, the whole of the vibrios seem to languish and to manifest symptoms of illness—we can think of no better expression to explain what we see taking place—and that they gradually recover their activity about the centre, in proportion as they find themselves in a part of the medium that is less ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... him, still less to condemn him to the auto-da-fe. Oh, no, they will not do that! But while Dyer has been talking, I have been thinking, and my mind is already made up. Hubert must not be permitted to languish a day longer in prison than we can help. Therefore I shall at once set to work to organise an expedition for his rescue, and trust me, if he does not contrive to escape meanwhile—as he is like enough to do—I will have him out of the ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood

... he will. His excellency has too great an esteem for these gentlemen to allow them to languish in prison when no stronger proof than the story which a broken-down gambler can invent is urged ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... of sated curiosity, perhaps on account of a pin famine, the attendance began to languish. Only four responded to the next call of the band; the four dwindled to three; finally the entertainment was given for one blase auditor, and Schofield and Williams looked depressed. Then followed an interval when the band ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... tears in their eyes, and bowing down to my feet, said, with whispering timid voice, "O gracious sir, our lady is doubly yours, since she was gained by your own valour when you rescued her from death, and is assigned to you by the all-powerful God of Love. Do not let her languish in vain. Make her your wife without delay." With this request I could not refuse to comply, and taking the hand of the princess, I ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob

... punishment is upon me, yes. The money, it is there. Ferd shall tell of all the rest that he has put somewhere, I know not. His poor brain cannot carry out the plan, and to me it avails no more. Ay de mi! But Solano—beware. Of some things he knows, and of more he suspects, is it not? Ah! I weary, I languish, I die, I, Antonio Bernal, heir to wealth so boundless. It was so fine a plan—so most wonderful and simple. The fools, how they feared! Oh! the laughter I had! and the wild, rides on my so splendid ghost horse, yes. But I die—I die; and the great big plan for the ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond

... in these days of her prime; but there were thousands of more beautiful women in France. And for ten years Madame Scarron was left to languish within the convent walls with never a lover to offer her release. When the Queen-mother died, and with her the pitiful pension, her plight was indeed pitiful. Her petitions to the King fell on deaf ears, until Montespan, moved by her tears ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... this Cross and hearken to its minister! You languish for the blessing of Christ, and you follow after heathen abominations. The superstitious triumph, through which I have struggled to reach you, will be turned to howls of anguish if you stop your ears and are deaf to the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... slack and unsuccessful continuation of his father's crusade, he gave it up, and re-embarked in November, 1270, with the remnants of an army anxious to quit "that accursed land," wrote one of the crusaders, "where we languish rather than live, exposed to torments of dust, fury of winds, corruption of atmosphere, and putrefaction of corpses." A tempest caught the fleet on the coast of Sicily; and Philip lost, by it several vessels, four or five thousand men, and all the money he had received from ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... the wilderness to be encircled by the godly. If Admiral Kerk had carried off a settlement, Mother Church was to produce other settlements. A new governor was named—Montmagny. Business, however, began to languish. The Indians became exceedingly troublesome. And the Iroquois had subdued the Algonquins, and had nearly vanquished the Hurons. To defend the settlement from these fierce warriors, Montmagny built a fort at Sorel, at the mouth of the ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... is some hope of getting for them. It is an unhappy fact that there is often less than no point in presenting even fine proposals for legislative consideration at a financially inappropriate point in history. Once defeated, whatever the reason, they may forever languish in limbo. ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... dear, will I be thine? How can you such a question ask When, 'neath the robber's fearful mask, I languish for thee, ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil

... my master, But touch the strings with a religious softness! Teach sounds to languish through the night's dull ear Till Melancholy starts from off her couch, And Carelessness grows ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... 1852, after the death of Overweg, his last companion, he plunged into the west, visited Sockoto, crossed the Niger, and finally reached Timbuctoo, where he had to languish, during eight long months, under vexations inflicted upon him by the sheik, and all kinds of ill-treatment and wretchedness. But the presence of a Christian in the city could not long be tolerated, and the ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... expressing compassion for her situation, told her chat if she would make such an application of living toads as is mentioned she would be well.' Now is it likely that this unknown gentleman should express so much tenderness for this single sufferer, and not feel any for the many thousands that daily languish under this terrible disorder? Would he not have made use of this invaluable nostrum for his own emolument; or, at least, by some means of publication or other, have found a method of making it public for the good of mankind ? In short, this woman (as it appears to me) having ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... garden, in strawberry and currant time. I hope I appreciate the value of children. We should soon come to nothing without them, though the Shakers have the best gardens in the world. Without them the common school would languish. But the problem is, what to do with them in a garden. For they are not good to eat, and there is a law against making away with them. The law is not very well enforced, it is true; for people do thin them out with constant dosing, paregoric, and soothing-syrups, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... cloak, sword, and military stride, endeavoured to live up to her conception of an eighteenth-century buck, and made love with a fervour that was all the more enhanced by the sight of Miss Gibbs in the front row, sitting with pursed-up lips and straightened back. Meta, as Lydia Languish, sighed, wept, made eyes, and indulged in a perfect orgy of sentiment, while Lois acted the cheeky maidservant with enthusiasm. The best of all, however, was Mrs. Malaprop; Linda had seen the play on the real stage, ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... with so many passionate Asseverations, Vows, and seeming Pity for her being so inhumanly abandon'd, that she almost gave Credit to all he had said, and had much ado to keep herself within the Bounds of Moderation, and silent Grief. Her Heart was breaking, her Eyes languish'd, and her Cheeks grew pale, and she had like to have fallen dead into the treacherous Arms of him that had reduc'd her to this Discovery; but she did what she could to assume her Courage, and to shew as little Resentment as possible for a Heart, like hers, oppress'd with Love, and now abandon'd ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... Love, or the Song of Songs. For he that loves greatly, lists often to sing of his love, for joy that he or she has when they think on that they love, specially if their love be true and loving. And this is the English of these two words: "I languish for love." Separate men on earth have separate gifts and graces of GOD, but the special gift of those who lead the solitary life, is for to love JESUS Christ. Thou sayest to me, 'All men love Him who keep His commandments.' That is Truth. But all men ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole

... night my heart was bitter with unutterable anguish, And I cried out in my slumber till with my words I woke: "How long, O Lord, must poverty bow down its head and languish, While wrong, with wealth to garnish it, makes ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey

... was sentenced to be broken to death upon the wheel. To receive this punishment he was conducted to Tournon, in Viverais, where the Jesuits had a college. He first received forty blows of the iron bar, after which he was left to languish with his bones broken, for forty hours, until he died. During his torments, he said: "I count myself happy that I can die in my Master's service. What! did my glorious Redeemer descend from heaven and suffer an ignominious death for ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... me, nor swerve from the paths of truth. For if thou reply unto my questions with sincerity, I will loosen thy bonds and give thee treasures; but if thou deceive me, thou shalt languish till death ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... Daphnis, wherefore dost thou languish, while for thee the maiden by all the fountains, through all the glades is fleeting, in search of thee? Ah! thou art too laggard a lover, and thou nothing availest! A neatherd wert thou named, and now ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang

... his life; but if they spared his life he would none the less be punished, for they would throw him into the dark prison that he had once seen under the king's castle, and there they would leave him to languish in chains for many years, so that his strength would go from him, and he would be no longer fit ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton

... field, and the abundance of fruit in the rich produce which assists in supporting their families. The pathless jungle is endeared to them by every association which influences the human mind, and they languish when prevented from roaming there ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... I received a letter from a friend with whom I had been interned. He secured his release some months before I shook the dust—and mud—of Ruhleben from my feet. On the day we parted he sympathised deeply with me at the prospect of being condemned to languish in the hands of the enemy until the clash of arms had died down. I did not seek to disillusion him, although, even at that time, I had made up my mind to get away by hook or ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... making their calling and election sure: would now give thousands of treasures, that they could but spy their names, though last and least among the sons of God. But, I say, how will they fail? how will they faint? how will they die and languish in their souls? when they shall still as they look, see their names wanting. What a pinch will it be to Cain to see his brother there recorded, and he himself left out. Absalom will now swoon, and be as one that giveth up the ghost, when he shall see ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... they were not even interrupted at nightfall, but were continued by torchlight and with relays of labourers. To Hayes, again become his property, Lord Chatham was removed in December, 1767. But there, during many months ensuing, he continued to languish in utter seclusion, and with no ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... the Government may be hazarded; without harmony as far as consists with freedom of sentiment its dignity may be lost. But as the legislative proceedings of the United States will never, I trust, be reproached for the want of temper or of candor, so shall not the public happiness languish from the want of my strenuous ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson

... act many parts, with strange catch-words and burdens that seemed to act with mystical power on her own fancy, sometimes stimulating her to convulse the hearer with laughter, sometimes to melt him to tears. When her power began to languish, she would spin again till fired to recommence her singular drama, into which she wove figures from the scenes of her earlier childhood, her companions, and the dignitaries she sometimes saw, with fantasies unknown to life, unknown to ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller

... having young women in them to the wifeless cabins is ludicrous. A modern "Sabine raid" was made upon the young damsels, who were actually carried away to the De Meuron homesteads. The Swiss families which had the misfortune to have no daughters in them were left to languish in their comfortless tents. The afflictions of the earlier Selkirk settlers were increased by the arrival of these settlers. With the Selkirk settlers in their first decade the first consideration was always food. Till that question is settled no Colony can advance. ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce

... shepherd is, such be his flocks, So pine and languish they, as in despair He pines and languishes; their fleecy locks Let hang disorder'd, as their master's hair, Since she is gone that deck'd both him and them. And now what beauty can there be to live, When she is lost that did all beauty give? ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... another's arms, In love to lie and languish, 'Twad be my dead, that will be seen, My heart wad burst wi' ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... funeral service, and an extreme unction, and an abi in pace. It has its course, like all mortal things—its beginning, progress, and decay. It buds and it blooms out into sunshine, and it withers and ends. Strephon and Chloe languish apart; join in a rapture: and presently you hear that Chloe is crying, and Strephon has broken his crook across her back. Can you mend it so as to show no marks of rupture? Not all the priests of Hymen, not all the incantations to the gods, can ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... love Disdain, For whom had languish'd many a Swain: Leading her bleating Flocks to drink, She 'spy'd upon a River's brink A Youth, whose Eyes did well declare, How much he lov'd, but lov'd ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various

... the Gulf of Guinea and Teneriffe in the Canaries.[913] Russian political offenders of the most dangerous class are confined first in the Schluesselberg prison, situated on a small island in Lake Ladoga near the effluence of the Neva. There they languish in solitary confinement or are transferred to far-off Sakhalin, whose very name is taboo in St. Petersburg.[914] During our Civil War, one of the Dry Tortugas, lying a hundred miles west of the southern point of Florida and at that time the most isolated ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... said I, solemnly, "do you remember how, some six years ago at Hydrabad, when yet beardless and whiskerless, the only hair upon my face being eyebrows and eyelashes, at your instigation and 'suadente diabolo,' I attempted to perform Lydia Languish in 'The Rivals?' and hast thou yet forgotten, O son of an unsainted father, how my grenadier stride, the fixed tea-pot position of my arms, to say nothing of the numerous other solecisms in the code of female manners which I perpetrated ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... Mahrattas, who, he, the said Hastings, well knew, did keep up claims upon several parts of the dominions of Oude, and had with difficulty been persuaded to include the Nabob in the treaty of peace, he, having suffered him first to languish at home in poverty, and then to fly abroad for subsistence, and afterwards taking no step and countenancing no negotiations for his return from his dangerous place of refuge, at the same time that several of his, the said ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... floating from St. Elmo's towers. Vain delusions, not destined to realization. The feeble attempts of the Italian patriots were easily suppressed, and Pepe retired to Paris, to mourn the fate of his beloved and beautiful country, doomed to languish in Austrian servitude and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... toe a-kickin' of the villain. An' then there's the ladies—'specially the very young 'uns, God bless their bibs an' tuckers! Lord, how they sigh an' tremble an' toss their pretty curls an' weep an' languish. I heard o' one as always read wi' her smellin'-salts handy, but then, to be sure, she was a maiden lady of uncertain age as wished she wasn't an' was smitten wi' love for Tom Jones, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... holy one of Ishtar, in the middle of the year the fields languish... The shepherd, the wise one, the man of sorrows, why have they slain?... In his temple, in his inhabited domain, The child, lord of knowledge, abides no more... In the meadows, verily, verily, the soul of ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... tinsel beams and vanities, Threading with those false fires their way; But as you stay And see them stray, You lose the flaming track, and subtly they Languish away, And ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... Strikes man's soul with anguish; Anxious love's too eager touch Makes man fret and languish: Thus in doubt and grief I pine; Pain more ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... but the Emperor, wisest of the court, began at last to languish, and to long unceasingly for the fresh, free note of the little brown nightingale. It was sweeter by far than the machine-made trills and roulades of the artificial songster, and he felt instinctively that only by its return could death ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various

... dusky hues arrange O'er the fine tints of parting day; Insensibly the colours change, And languish into soft decay. ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe

... news of mere disaster and discomfiture. It is in this Campaign, though not till far on in it, that the long lane does prove to have a turning, and the Fortune of War recovers its old impartial form. After which, things visibly languish: and the hope of ruining such a Friedrich becomes problematic, the effort to do it slackens also; the very will abating, on the Austrian part, year by year, as of course the strength of their resources is still more steadily doing. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... Why, shall I sit and languish in this pain? No, strike the drums, and, in revenge of this, Come, let us charge our spears, and pierce his breast Whose shoulders bear the axis of the world, That, if I perish, heaven and earth may fade. Theridamas, haste to the court of Jove; Will him to send Apollo hither straight, To cure me, ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe

... no opportunity of answering. It is true that then, as now, I liked the work for its own sake. Indeed, I have always thought that literature would be a charming profession if its conditions allowed of the depositing of manuscripts, when completed, in a drawer, there to languish in obscurity, or of their private publication only. But I could not afford myself these luxuries. I was too modest to hope for any renown worth having, and for the rest the game seemed scarcely ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... all earnestness, that there is great danger, that the work may languish almost to lifelessness, even at the two posts which you now occupy in Syria, before your new messengers can be found, cross the ocean, and pass through the primary process indispensable to fit them to prophesy upon the ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson

... and in windows, and the ragged boys with their pennies waiting to see if there was a new piece by Allan Ramsay; while perhaps in the corner, where lay the lists of the new circulating library—the first in Scotland—Miss Lydia Languish with her maid, or my lady's gentlewoman from some fine house in the Canongate, had come in to ask for the last new novel from London, the Scotch capital having not yet begun to ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... ardent and glorious life," said the impatient Otho; "while I, whose arm is as strong, and whose heart is as bold, languish here listening to the dull tales of a hoary sire and the silly songs of an orphan girl." His heart smote him at the last sentence, but he had already begun to weary of the gentle love of Leoline. Perhaps when he had no longer ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... reform may be imperfect in some of its details; it may be misunderstood and opposed; it may not always be faithfully applied; its designs may sometimes miscarry through mistake or willful intent; it may sometimes tremble under the assaults of its enemies or languish under the misguided zeal of impracticable friends; but if the people of this country ever submit to the banishment of its underlying principle from the operation of their Government they will abandon the surest guaranty of the safety ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland

... to weep, Who'd prove his friendship true and deep By day a lonely shadow creep, At night-time languish, Oft raising in his broken ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll

... the present misconceptions of love and society. The first move, obviously, in stopping war was the suppression of such ameliorating forces as the Red Cross; and, conversely, with complete unions, infidelity would languish and disappear. ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... Lord, it surely can not be That Thou wilt let me languish In hopeless depths of misery, And ...
— Toni, the Little Woodcarver • Johanna Spyri

... Then, too, existence for you must be a scene of continual change and excitement, or else the world is a dungeon: you must be admired, you must be courted, you must be flattered—you must have music, dancing, and society—or you languish, you die away. Have you no sense to devise a system which will make you independent of all efforts, and all wills, but your own? Take one day; share it into sections; to each section apportion its task: ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... a nobler doom had plann'd; Song was his favourite and first pursuit. The wild harp rang to his adventurous hand, And languish'd to his breath the plaintive flute. His infant Muse, though artless, was not mute: Of elegance as yet he took no care; For this of time and culture is the fruit; And Edwin gain'd at last this fruit so rare: As in some future ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... unto myself I languish, And in disdain myself from joy I banish. These secret thoughts enwrap me so in anguish That life, I hope, will soon from body vanish, And to some rest will quickly be conveyed That on no joy, while so I lived, ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various

... brass and pewter hap to stray, And linen slinks out of the way; When geese and pullen are seduc'd, And sows of sucking-pigs are chows'd; When cattle feel indisposition, 115 And need th' opinion of physician; When murrain reigns in hogs or sheep. And chickens languish of the pip; When yeast and outward means do fail, And have no pow'r to work on ale: 120 When butter does refuse to come, And love proves cross and humoursome: To him with questions, and with urine, They ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... in the race utterly misses his aim. The real enjoyment existed, altho it was unperceived by him, in the mere strife for superiority. When he has outstript all his rivals the contest is at an end: and his spirits, which were invigorated only by contending, languish for ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser

... years. We are the harpers who turn into singing Our hopes and our foves and our fears. Thine is the tribute wrung hard from our anguish After the death blows are struck. We are thy bondmen who jest while we languish,— We are thy ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey

... accidentally once or twice, about ten days before he died: and observed he began very much to droop and languish; although I hear his friends did not seem to ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... know I'm weak and sinful, But Jesus will forgive, For many little children, Have gone to heaven to live. Dear Saviour, when I languish, And lay me down to die, Oh send a shining angel To bear me ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... as a result, Steve becoming more dependent on Roy for companionship and Tom on Harry. When they were all four together, which was very frequently, it was not so bad, but when Steve and Tom were alone conversation was apt to languish. ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour

... O Father! a fond mother waiting, Waiting so anxious, the dark tide's abating! Waiting all breathless, in agonized anguish, Living by heart-throbs that spring up—then languish; Catching each sound that comes back from the battle, Dark shrieks and groans and the lonely death rattle, Imaging visions of feverish thirsting— Hearts ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... it not a happiness in itself to be closely connected with them? Then why this vague, uneasy, gnawing sensation? Why this sadness? If you're such a melancholy dreamer, his lips murmured again, what sort of a revolutionist will you make? You ought to write verses, languish, nurse your own insignificant thoughts and sensations, amuse yourself with psychological fancies and subtleties of all sorts, but don't at any rate mistake your sickly, nervous irritability and caprices for the manly wrath, the honest anger, of a man of convictions! Oh Hamlet! Hamlet! Thou Prince ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... the danger! It is with governments as with individuals. The institutions which have occasioned anarchy and devastation before, will, if persisted in, produce them again. Vile and detestable as have been the monsters of antiquity, the world still contains their parallels; and if they languish in obscurity, if they have not attained a celebrity equally atrocious, it is because they possess not equal facilities for the display of their real character and propensities. Human nature is still the same, and wherever a field is opened for the growth of tyranny, ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... this man lives for himself alone, and only the baser passions spring up in his breast. His soul is too narrow for Christian benevolence; sympathy and emotion are disabled and all his nobler faculties languish. Action, from intelligent and benevolent principles, is a great fountain of happiness. Few streams of bliss equal those which flow from charitable exertions. Benevolence and well-doing are great inducements ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various

... languish to possess, A safe and permanent abode! To rest in unmolested peace, And cast my care on ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... me! Rather let me languish out a wretched life, and breath my soul beneath your feet. (I must say the same thing over again, and ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... herbs, bought parched barley, and (for not yet had the meadows reached the redolency that tempts the ten toes)-so to mule-back again; whence this tenderness behind. And now I walk with pain, and the sweat runs down; my bones languish, and yearn for the longest of water-swims; 'tis ever my joy to ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... Disdain" (canto 6). Timias and Serena, after quitting the hermit's cell, meet her. Though so sorely clad and mounted, the maiden was "a lady of great dignity and honor, but scornful and proud." Many a wretch did languish for her through a long life. Being summoned to Cupid's judgment hall, the sentence passed on her was that she should "ride on a mangy jade, accompanied by a fool, till she had saved as many lovers as she had slain" ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... the Paphian queen replies: "Obey the power from whom thy glories rise: Should Venus leave thee, every charm must fly, Fade from thy cheek, and languish in thy eye. Cease to provoke me, lest I make thee more The world's aversion, than their love before; Now the bright prize for which mankind engage, Than, the sad victim, of ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... intend thus to allow the pirates to escape with impunity?" said Dick to Lancelot and me, as we watched the Moorish city recede from our eyes. "I much fear that your relatives will be left to languish in hopeless captivity." ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston

... that which is consolatory while we are here, and of that which in plain reason ought to render us contented to stay no longer. You, Leontion, would make others better; and better they certainly will be, when their hostilities languish in an empty field, and their rancour is tired with treading upon dust. The generous affections stir about us at the dreary hour of death, as the blossoms of the Median apple swell and diffuse ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... her, as we had agreed, that she was very far from well enough to go away alone; for indeed, it was true that disease of the lungs had set in, and to send her away to languish and die alone was not to ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge

... travellers rode on, the evanescent ardour of Don Cornelio's roadster insensibly cooled down; while the student himself, fatigued by the incessant application of whip and spur, gradually allowed to languish a conversation, that had enabled them to kill a long hour ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... arranged in the most convenient, contiguous, self-adjusting, self-acting, patent-right, perfective manner,—and yet, I tell you, Marianne will die of that house. It will yet be recorded on her tombstone, 'Died of conveniences.' For myself, what I languish for is a log cabin, with a bed in one corner, a trundle-bed underneath for the children, a fire-place only six feet off, a table, four chairs, one kettle, a coffee-pot, and a tin baker,—that's all. I lived deliciously in an establishment ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... Full of my guilt, distracted where to roam: I'll find some place where adders nest in winter, Loathsome and venomous; where poisons hang Like gums against the walls: there I'll inhabit, And live up to the height of desperation. Desire shall languish like a with'ring flower, Horrors shall fright me from those pleasing harms, And I'll no more be caught with beauty's ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway

... the pale limbs, marred and scarred in love's lost battle, languish; See how the splendid passion still smiles quietly from his eyes: Come, come and see a king indeed, who triumphs in his anguish, Who conquers here in utter loss ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... glory of human nature require—that it should be true no longer.... In an age, which amidst all its vices and all its follies has not become infamous for want of charity, it may be surely allowed to hope, that the living remains of Milton will be no longer suffered to languish in distress.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... happy effort, and the debate, for a while revived by his interposition, continued to languish until this hour (nine o'clock), with successive relays of mediocrity, until it yielded its last gasp in the arms of ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... and the evil to mingle and contend with each other until the fulness of time, as he left the Canaanites in the land to chastise and exercise his chosen people. When the tares prosper, the wheat languishes: when the wheat prospers, the tares languish. Evil men have lived in God's world ever since sin began: evil thoughts and deeds will be found in God's children as long as they remain in the body. The angels are not sent to-day to make such a separation ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... part of France. With such an exertion as that of sending a superior fleet to America, we see nothing in the course of human affairs, that can possibly prevent France from obtaining such a naval superiority without delay. Without it the war may languish for years, to the infinite distress of our country, to the exhausting both of France and England, and the question left to be decided by ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various

... pierce; Alone I waste and languish, And make my cry to God on high To ease me of mine anguish. If heroic was my youth, In truth its powers are over; With brain dead and force sped, Love sets at naught the lover! The Muse from off my lips is thrust, 'Tis long since song ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves

... thou seest we have no water here, and but a little food, and we must choose between these three things—to languish like a starving lion in his den, or to strive to break away towards the north, or"—and here he rose and pointed towards the dense mass of our foes—"to launch ourselves straight at Twala's throat. Incubu, the great ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard

... be too strongly insisted on. Light and warmth are powerful agents in the economy of our being. The former especially is an operative agent on which health, vigor, and even beauty itself, depend. Withdraw the light of the sun from the organic world, and all its various beings and objects would languish and gradually lose those charms which are now their characteristics. In its absence, the carnation tint leaves the cheek of beauty, the cherry hue of the lips changes to a leaden-purple, the eyes become glassy and expressionless, and the ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... But she loves romance and mystery and excitement, as Lydia Languish did. It is a very harmless romance that consists in sending a few cut flowers ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... to present without exaggeration or embellishment of imagination, a truthful picture of army life in all its vicissitudes; its marches, its battles, its camps, and the sad scenes when the victims of war languish in hospitals. The story is written mostly from extensive notes taken by myself amid the scenes described; but official reports and letters from officers have been used freely in correcting these notes, and gathering fresh material. The narrative commences with the experiences of ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens

... illa benedicta, Was she then, the Mother blessed, Mater unigeniti: Who the sole-begotten bore: Quae moerebat, et dolebat, As she saw his pain and anguish, Et tremebat, cum videbat She did tremble, she did languish, Nati poenas inclyti. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various

... the ideas with which they have come to languish on Tortuga, and be buried in its sands! These emigrants have much to ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... North-West Company {67} met at Fort William in the month of July 1814. Their fond hope had been that Lord Selkirk's colony would languish and die. Instead, it was flourishing and waxing aggressive. The governor of Assiniboia had published an edict which he seemed determined to enforce, to the ruin of the business of the North-West Company. The grizzled partners, as ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood

... wave o'er Delphi's steep, Isles that crown th' Aegean deep, Fields that cool Ilissus laves, Or where Maeander's amber waves In lingering labyrinths creep, How do your tuneful echoes languish, Mute but to the voice of Anguish? Where each old poetic mountain Inspiration breathed around, Every shade and hallowed fountain Murmured deep a solemn sound; Till the sad Nine in Greece's evil hour Left their Parnassus for the Latian plains: Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... say, Brooke, that if you leave these English ladies in the hands of merciless villains to languish in captivity, to suffer torment, and perhaps to die a cruel death, you will be guilty of an unpardonable sin—an offence so foul that it will haunt your ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille

... they give us paying returns for our investments. But that food will not always last; it is gradually exhausted, and we fail to feed them again, or in that proportion their necessities require. They languish and die; a disease seizes them, and we complain and grumble at the ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... its just Resentments languish and die away when their Object becomes the unresisting prey of Death. Such is my Experience with regard to Betty Fisher, whose ill Life hath now terminated, and from whom, confronted at the Bar of their great Judge, Father will, ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning



Words linked to "Languish" :   die, degenerate, hanker, drop, deteriorate, weaken, long, devolve



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