"Torpor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Burnouf, as "self-control;" and Edkins, as "ecstatic reverie." "Samadhi," says Eitel, "signifies the highest pitch of abstract, ecstatic meditation; a state of absolute indifference to all influences from within or without; a state of torpor of both the material and spiritual forces of vitality; a sort of terrestrial nirvana, consistently culminating in total destruction of life." He then quotes apparently the language of the text, "He consumed his body by Agni (the fire of) Samadhi," and says it is "a common expression ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... skies in their embodied movements;" and Mrs. Thrale, when a party of clever people sat silent, is said "to have been provoked by the dulness of a taciturnity that, in the midst of such renowned interlocutors, produced as narcotic a torpor as could have been caused by a dearth the most barren of all human faculties." In truth, it is impossible to look at any page of Madame D'Arblay's later works without finding flowers of rhetoric like these. Nothing in the language of those jargonists at whom ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... contact with Etruria at the outset allowed the Hellenes to scatter there the seeds of art, and that a later epoch of hostility impeded the admission into Etruria of the more recent developments of Greek art, or whether, as is more probable, the intellectual torpor that rapidly came over the nation was the main cause of the phenomenon, art in Etruria remained substantially stationary at the primitive stage which it had occupied on its first entrance. This, as is well known, forms the reason why Etruscan art, the stunted ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... And in mid labour leaves the plough-gear fast. Nor tall wood's shadow, nor soft sward may stir That heart's emotion, nor rock-channelled flood, More pure than amber speeding to the plain: But see! his flanks fail under him, his eyes Are dulled with deadly torpor, and his neck Sinks to the earth with drooping weight. What now Besteads him toil or service? to have turned The heavy sod with ploughshare? And yet these Ne'er knew the Massic wine-god's baneful boon, Nor twice replenished banquets: but on leaves They fare, and virgin grasses, ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... any event that might awaken the young solitary from his torpor. By day, he roved through the island, or lay listlessly under the shadow of a tree; by night, he slept beneath the rocks which had first sheltered him; while the fruits, that grew and ripened without his care, ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
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