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verb
Languish  v. i.  To cause to droop or pine. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Languish" Quotes from Famous Books



... fix, and either horn of the dilemma was bad enough. They could not talk Spanish; they had no money; they had killed somebody's cow; they were very hungry; they might be willing to pay, but had no way of doing it; they did not want to languish in jail, and how to get out of it they could not understand. Luck came to them, however, in the shape of a man who could speak both English and Spanish, to whom they told their story and who repeated ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... a wonderful effect. Turini, aware of this circumstance, adapts his compositions with great intelligence to the place, and makes his slave, the organ, send forth the most affecting, long-protracted sounds, which languish in the air, and are some time a-dying. Nothing can be more original than his style. Deprived of sight by an unhappy accident, in the flower of his days, he gave up his entire soul to music, and scarcely exists but ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... and of this number twelve have set their faces toward the Gospel ministry. Oh, what a source of joy to me that I leave that association in such a high condition of vigor and prosperity! No church can languish, no church can die, while it has plenty of young blood ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

... 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, ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... legislate through central committees and a direct vote of the citizenship. Executives and other officials will be but stewards. In a society so constituted, communities that reject the elements of political success will languish; free men will leave them. The communities that accept the elements of success, becoming examples through their prosperity, will be imitated; and thus the momentum of progress will be increased. Communities free, state boundaries as now known ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan

... bed I languish, Full of sorrow, full of anguish; Fainting, gasping, trembling, crying, Panting, groaning, speechless, dying— Methinks I hear some gentle spirit say, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... the particular comforts of life, we shall find many advantages on the side of the Europeans. They cure wounds and diseases, with which we languish and perish. We suffer inclemencies of weather, which they can obviate. They have engines for the despatch of many laborious works, which we must perform by manual industry. There is such communication ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... out in wails, in bitter cries, Break out in wails, in bitter cries, Must men whose hearts now bleed with anguish, Yes, trembling slaves in freedom's land, Endure the lash, nor raise a hand? Must nature 'neath the whip-cord languish? Have pity on the slave, Take courage from God's word; Pray on, pray on, all hearts resolved—these captives shall ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various

... last; and after establishing this distinction, the government should have made a fair appeal to the justice and generosity of the nation. Frenchmen, who yield so readily to every dignified sentiment, would not have allowed the faithful and virtuous servants of their King to languish in poverty. We may appeal to the universal assent which was given to the proposal[12] made by the marshal duke of Tarentum, that ten millions of francs should be annually appropriated for the indemnification of the emigrants who had been deprived of their property, and of the ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... Paris.'—'Your ribands, your shoes, your handkerchief?' All, all contraband.—Worthy magistrate, if you would hold the scales of Justice with an even hand, make out one more mittimus before you sit down to table. Send your wife to languish a twelvemonth in company with the poor smugglers, and then 'to dinner with what appetite you may.' And now, Debriseau, have I convinced you that I may follow my present calling, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... convictions, and knowing them to be shared by millions of others, inevitably experiences a strengthening and intensifying influence from the sympathy of his fellows. If he knew himself to be solitary and alone in his opinions, unsupported by that human sympathy which every one craves, his ideas would languish, and be greatly diminished in their power. It is only great minds, of exceptional character, which can do battle, single-handed, against the world. Most men require to be propped and supported on all sides, by the ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... that he owed it to himself to do or say something that should frighten his lordship into a more generous final arrangement. There had been, he said to himself again and again, such a confidence with a lady of so high a rank, that the owner of it ought not to be allowed to languish upon two or even upon three hundred a-year. If the whole thing could really be explained to the Marquis, the Marquis would probably see it himself. And to all this was to be added the fact that no harm had been done. The Marchioness owed him very much for having wished to assist her in getting ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope

... spark of heavenly flame! Quit, oh quit this mortal frame: Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying, Oh the pain, the bliss of dying! Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife, And let me languish into life! ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al

... the livelihood of the actors and actresses and their relatives depended upon it; if all German music were eliminated there would be little left to choose from; and the important racing horse industry could not be allowed to languish on account of a mere ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith

... mountains. No time was to be lost, for it was rumored that El Zagal was about to march with a mighty host to the relief of the castles. The bustling bishop of Jaen acted as pioneer to mark the route and superintend the laborers, and the grand cardinal took care that the work should never languish through lack of means.* ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... by her father, when she was removed from the old mansion, in order to prevent his having access to her, and with a view to compel her to marry Beauman. Her appearance had indicated a deep decline when he last saw her. "There, said he, far removed from friends and acquaintance, there did she languish, there did she die—a victim to excessive grief, and cruel ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.

... "The Limes," which had come to him by inheritance without any accompanying provision for its upkeep, was one of those pretentious, unaccommodating mansions which none but a man of wealth could afford to live in, and which not one wealthy man in a hundred would choose on its merits. It might easily languish in the estate market for years, set round with noticeboards proclaiming it, in the eyes of a sceptical world, to ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki

... platajxo. Landlord bienulo, landsinjoro. Landmark terlimsxtono. Landscape pejzagxo. Landslip terdisfalo. Lane strateto. Language lingvo. Language (speech) lingvajxo. Languid malfortika. Languish malfortigxi. Lank maldika. Lantern lanterno. Lap leki, lekumi. Lapis lazuli lapis lazuro. Lapse (of time) manko, dauxro. Larceny sxtelo. Larch lariko. Lard porkograso. Larder mangxajxejo. Large granda. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... multiplying daily on shelves 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

... voice and intonation of the speaker's phrases there was something sovereign, which rather diminished than exalted the young writer in his own eyes. Night came and lights were brought. The master of the mansion permitted the conversation to languish, and Hugo was much relieved when the friend who had introduced him rose to go. Chateaubriand, seeing them about to take their leave, invited Hugo to come and see him on any day between seven and nine in the morning, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... fortified by the severest laws. For the laborer to be in debt was equal to a crime, in fact, in its results, worse than a crime. The burglar or pickpocket would get a certain sentence and then go free. The poor debtor, however, was compelled to languish in jail at the will ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... Martinique, one of the French West Indies. When the young stranger, freighted with such possibilities of wealth, arrived there, it was found that the exposure of the voyage had nearly extinguished its vitality. It was tended with the most anxious care; but for two or three years it continued to languish, and threatened by an untimely death to give Dutch selfishness a triumph after all. At last, however, it took a happy start, and from that plant the whole West Indies have derived their coffee. It was introduced into ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... the dissatisfaction inseparable from 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

... hear a sound of anguish In my own, my native land; Brethren, doomed in chains to languish, Lift to heaven the suppliant hand, And despairing, And despairing, Death the end of ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark

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

... insecure. With the overthrow of Olaf Tryggvesson in this year 1000, and the temporary partition of Norway between Swedes and Danes, the work of Christianizing the North seemed, for the moment, to languish. Upon the eastern frontier the wild Hungarians had scarcely ceased to be a terror to Europe, and in this year Stephen, their first Christian king, began to reign. At the same time the power of heretical ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... be an Alderman, born in the City, Where haunches of venison and green turtles meet Seeking in Leadenliall, reckless of pity, Birds, beast, and fish, that the knowing ones eat I'd never languish for want of a luncheon. I'd never grieve for the want of a treat; I'd be an Alderman, constantly munching, Where haunches of venison and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various

... full operation, and to create an immediate revenue, that some measures which possessed great and pressing claims to immediate attention had been unavoidably deferred. That neglect under which the creditors of the public had been permitted to languish could not fail to cast an imputation on the American republics, which had been sincerely lamented by the wisest among those who administered the former government. The power to comply substantially with the engagements of the United States being at length conferred on those ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... past dark dream seems tolerable—for amid its lurid smoke were flashes of brightness. A slave? Well; I ask myself at times, and what were women meant for but to be slaves? Free them, and they enslave themselves again, or languish unsatisfied; for they must love. And what blame to them if they love a white man, tyrant though he be, rather than a fellow-slave? If the men of our own race will claim us, let them prove themselves worthy of us! Let them rise, exterminate ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... 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 warrior—for to-day he fought like a buffalo in a net, ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard

... 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 and success ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... ill-treated, neglected, miserable. 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: leave no stray unemployed quarters of an hour, ten minutes, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... changed?' exclaimed Talma, quickening his pace. 'Poor exile! unhappy genius! torn from thy native soil, to languish and die!' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various

... 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

... small matter, but in exhibiting what they have undergone or seen, which is a quite unlimited one, do talkers dilate. Cut us off from Narrative, how would the stream of conversation, even among the wisest, languish into detached handfuls, and among the foolish utterly evaporate! Thus, as we do nothing but enact History, we ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... wander beings pallid, Fill the air with words of anguish: All our doings are invalid, Sick and old, we slowly languish. ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel

... 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 ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille

... relief! Then active charity, with boundless care, From gloomy faces chased the fiend Despair, Dispelled the horrors of the wintry day, And none that asked went unrelieved away. "Yet there are some who sorrow's vigils keep, Unknown that languish, undistinguished weep; Behold yon ruined building's shattered walls, Where drifting snow through many a crevice falls; Whose smokeless vent no blazing fuel knows, But drear and cold the widow's mansion shows; Her fragile form, by sickness deeply riven, Too weak to face the driving blasts ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham

... and hypocrisy wore the mitre, and the tiara of Christ was in fact God. He knew of the future. He knew what crimes and horrors would be committed in His name. He knew the fires of persecution would climb around the limbs of countless martyrs; that brave men and women would languish in dungeons and darkness; that the church would use instruments of torture; that in His name His followers would trade in human flesh; that cradles would be robbed and women's breasts unbabed for gold, and yet He died with voiceless lips. If ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... 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 old as the year ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... in a continuous torrent; the voice so brilliant and infinitely varied, that if "rivalry and emulation" have as large a place in feathered breasts as some imagine all that hear this surpassing melody might well languish ever after in ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... him to find you a good housekeeper; thinking it over on his way, he remembered his friend Madame Dubois, and the matter was thus arranged without malice or pretense. She is a regular find, a perfect jewel for you, and if you get taken with her I don't think she will allow you to languish for long." ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... of Alexander, it began to Languish, and never recover'd its entire Strength till the Reign of Augustus, in which the Rules ...
— The Preface to Aristotle's Art of Poetry • Andre Dacier

... was in prison, he began, and almost finished a satire, which he entitled London and Bristol Delineated; in order to be revenged of those who had had no more generosity for a man, to whom they professed friendship, than to suffer him to languish in a gaol for eight pounds. He had now ceased from corresponding with any of his subscribers, except Mr. Pope, who yet continued to remit him twenty pounds a year, which he had promised, and by whom he expected to be in a very short time enlarged; because he had directed the keeper to enquire ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... military force, strengthened with the undisciplined power of the Terrorists, and the nearly general disarming of Paris, there would almost certainly have been before this an insurrection against them, but for one cause. The people of France languish for peace. They all despaired of obtaining it from the coalesced powers, whilst they had a gang of professed regicides at their head; and several of the least desperate republicans would have joined with better men to shake them wholly off, and to produce something more ostensible, if they ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Estate and House Agent, Surveyor, Valuer and Auctioneer; she was the prettiest of six, with two brothers, neither of the least use, but, thanks to the manner in which their main natural protector appeared to languish under the accumulation of his attributes, they couldn't be said very particularly or positively to live. Their continued collective existence was a good deal of a miracle even to themselves, though they had fallen into the way of not unnecessarily, or too nervously, exchanging ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James

... 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 ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson

... the great work of freeing Italy accomplished. If Sardinia can but have time allowed her in which to knit her forces, if she can for a time escape from foreign attacks and from internal divisions, Italy is secure. Venice, Rome, and Naples will not long languish under the tyranny of Austrian, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... comrade! I heard thou wast in trouble, and have come myself to ease thee; so cheer up, lad!" Then approaching the judge, he said, "Good Master Gascoigne, your prisoner is a friend of mine, too gay a comrade to languish in bonds for a trifling scrape like this. Spare yourself, therefore, further pains on his account, and come, solace your gravity with a party of boon companions who assemble to-night to celebrate their ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... up, 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 concert ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... who contend for the slave, and his master too, for the drunkard, the criminal; yes, for the wicked or the weak in all their forms.... But the saints and the heroes of this day, who draw no sword, whose right hand is never bloody, who burn in no fires of wood or sulphur, nor languish briefly on the hasty cross; the saints and heroes who, in a worldly world, dare to be men; in an age of conformity and selfishness, speak for Truth and Man, living for noble aims, men who will swear to no lies howsoever popular; ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... monarchies, destroys all strength of character. Liberty is the mother of virtue, and if women are, by their very constitution, slaves, and not allowed to breathe the sharp invigorating air of freedom, they must ever languish like exotics, and be reckoned beautiful flaws in nature; let it also be remembered, that they ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... is no better than a scheme upon paper; and not a living, active, effective constitution. It is possible, that through negligence, or ignorance, or design artfully conducted, Ministers may suffer one part of Government to languish, another to be perverted from its purposes: and every valuable interest of the country to fall into ruin and decay, without possibility of fixing any single act on which a criminal prosecution can be justly grounded. The due arrangement of men in the active part of the state, far ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... Love's own hand did make, Breathed forth the sound that said 'I hate', To me that languish'd for her sake: But when she saw my woeful state, Straight in her heart did mercy come, Chiding that tongue that ever sweet Was us'd in giving gentle doom; And taught it thus anew to greet; 'I hate' she alter'd with an end, That followed it ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare

... the awful gibbet's anguish, Not they who, while sad years go by them, in The sunless cells of lonely prisons languish, Do suffer fullest ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... arrived which were to take them from the island, where the unfeeling Ovando had suffered them to languish above a year, exposed to misery in all its various forms. When he arrived at St. Domingo, Ovando treated him with every kind of insult and injustice. Columbus submitted in silence, but became extremely impatient to quit a country where he had been ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich

... languish honest men and true, Except by placemen's fraud, misgovernment, ' ' Jealousies, anger, ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... turnest love divine To joyless dread, and mak'st the loving heart With hateful thoughts to languish and repine, And feed itself with self-consuming smart; Of all the passions of the mind thou vilest ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... them languish a long time for what they expect from you. I have promised not to constrain you; but their love claims from you a declaration that you should not put off any longer the reward of their attentions. I had asked Sostratus to sound your heart, but I do not ...
— The Magnificent Lovers (Les Amants magnifiques) • Moliere

... Eternity! He was also delighted to notice Evelyn's readiness of resources: she had that faculty, without which woman has no independence from the world, no pledge that domestic retirement will not soon languish into wearisome monotony,—the faculty of making trifles contribute to occupation or amusement; she was easily pleased, and yet she so soon reconciled herself to disappointment. He felt, and chid his own dulness for not feeling it before, that, young and ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... only live 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 sleep The moan ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll

... good!—why, see, and hear, and be with her I languish'd for, my Antipho!—was that An idle reason, or a trivial good? —To Thais I'm deliver'd; she receives me, And carries me with joy into her house; Commits the ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer

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

... who dost dwell alone— Thou, who dost know thine own— Thou, to whom all are known From the cradle to the grave— Save, oh! save. From the world's temptations, From tribulations, From that fierce anguish Wherein we languish, From that torpor deep Wherein we lie asleep, Heavy as death, cold as ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... Malaprop's lodgings at Bath. Present, Lydia Languish. Enter Mrs. Malaprop and Sir ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... readily into the conspiracy. It will be remembered what he had formerly suffered from his father; since that time he had married, and the close-fisted old man had left him, with his wife and children, to languish in poverty. Guerra's house was selected to meet in and ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Blunt and himself as the result of the jewel episode in Paris that he could count with certainty on the successful working of his scheme. The grateful knight would not be likely to allow any old New York friend of his preserver to languish at the village inn. The sleuth-hound would at once be installed at the castle, where, unsuspected by Jimmy, he could keep an eye on the course of events. Any looking after that Mr. James Pitt might require could safely be left in ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse

... man like me to be prosing about female beauty; suffice it to say, Amy had attained her seventeenth year. Long since had her sampler exhibited hearts in couples desperately transfixed with arrows, and true lovers' knots worked in deep blue silk, and it was evident she began to languish for some more interesting occupation than the rearing of ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... all well enough for Hannah to observe that I was a pretty baby with fat cheaks. May not Hannah herself, for some hiden reason, have brought me here, taking away the real I to perhaps languish unseen and "waste my sweetness on the dessert air"? But that way lies madness. Life must be made the best of as it is, and not as it might be or ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... their time, weary of the world, and longing only to quit it. This has been observed in most of the oak plantations of which I have spoken, and they have not been able to attain to full growth. When the vegetation was perceived to languish, they were cut, in the hope that this operation would restore their vigor, and that the new shoots would succeed better than the original trees; and, in fact, they seemed to be recovering for the first few years. But the shoots were soon attacked by the same decay, and the operation ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... can discern the truth. But we may rejoice with a deep-seated joy, in the dark hours, that the Hand of God is heavy upon us. When our vital energies flag, when what we thought were our effective powers languish and grow faint, then we may be glad because the Father is showing us His Will; and then our sorrow is a fruitful sorrow, and labours, as the swelling seed labours in the sombre earth to thrust her slender hands up to the sun and air. . ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... 1400 at Solza in the Bergamasque Contado. His father, Paolo, or Puho as he was commonly called, was poor and exiled from the city, together with the rest of the Guelf nobles, by the Visconti. Being a man of daring spirit, and little inclined to languish in a foreign state as the dependent on some patron, Puho formed the bold design of seizing the Castle of Trezzo. This he achieved in 1405 by fraud, and afterwards held it as his own by force. Partly with the view of establishing himself more firmly ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... daylights out uh one uh them bone-headed grangers that vitiates the atmosphere up there; and I put him all to the bad. So a bunch uh them gaudy buck-policemen rose up and fogged me back across the line; a man has sure got t' turn the other cheek up there, or languish in ga-ol." ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower

... failed with me likewise! It was not the Beauty—Miss Flora was for my master—(and what a master! I protest I take off my hat at the idea of such an illustrious connexion!)—it was Dora, the Muse, was set upon me to languish at me and to pity me, and to read even my godless tragedy, and applaud me and console me. Meanwhile, how was the Beauty occupied? Will it be believed that my severe aunt gave a great entertainment to ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... have tried my best to be interested in that museum; but it is impossible; I cannot make myself care for it in the slightest degree! And, what is more, I know I shall never be able to do so; and I shall languish here for the rest of ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton

... festival. Lottchen, who had brought in my breakfast, was all in her Sunday best, having risen early to get her work done and go abroad to gather grapes. Bright colours seemed to abound; I could see dots of scarlet, and crimson, and orange through the fading leaves; it was not a day to languish in the house; and I was on the point of going out by myself, when Herr Mueller came in to offer me his sturdy arm, and help me in walking to the vineyard. We crept through the garden scented with late ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell

... London in 1698, 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 in ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... go;— 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

... trouble of writing, where the Mistres and Servant are learned in this amorous blazon. Yesterday I wore Folimort, Grisdelin and Isabella: Folimort is withered, Grisdelin is absent, and Isabella is beauty, which put together express I did wither or languish for your absent beautie. ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various

... poor sufferer: for when it was begged as a favour by his mess-mates, that Mr Cozens might be removed to their tent, though a necessary thing in his dangerous situation, yet it was not permitted; but the poor wretch was suffered to languish on the ground some days with no other covering than a bit of canvas thrown over some bushes, where he died. But to return to our story: the captain, addressing himself to the people thus assembled, told them, that it was ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... destroy, instead of bringing about the ruin of those whom the authorities had in mind, and who were doubtless the finest fellows among all the inhabitants of Venice! Monstrous! Because they were the enemies of this infamous government, because they were reputed heretics, were they to languish in The Leads where he had languished twenty-five years ago, or were they to perish under the executioner's axe? He detested the government a hundred times more than they did, and with better reason. He had been a lifelong heretic; was a ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler

... bride! Write to me ere the evening closes, for I shall never be able to shut my eyes in slumber upon my prison couch, until they have been first blessed by the sight of a few words from thee! Write to me, love! write to me! I languish for the reply which is to make or mar me ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... ("Gewisz!"—"Nimmermehr!"—"Vortrefflich!") "I don't care to draw distinctions between forms of the thing. Socialism, communism, collectivism, parliamentarism,—all these have one and the same end: to put men on an equality; and in proportion as that end is approached, so will art in every shape languish. Art, gentlemen, is nourished upon inequalities and injustices!" ("Ach!"—"Wie kann man so etwas sagen!"—"Hoch! verissime!") "I am not representing this as either good or bad. It may be well that justice should be established, even though art perish. ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... make Nurseries a-part, and transplant them to the Places where they are wanting: but as they do not all grow, especially when they are a little too big, or the Season not favourable, and because the greatest part of those that do grow languish a long time, it always seem'd to me more proper to set fresh Kernels; and I am persuaded, if the Consequences are duly weighed, it will be practised for ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus

... stoutness and complexion which I had when you saw me at Venice. My leanness is extreme, my sight is dim, my hands shake, and my knees totter, so that I can hardly drag myself to my country-house at Certaldo, where I only languish. After reading your letter, I wept a whole night for my dear master, not on his own account, for his piety permits us not to doubt that he is now happy, but for myself and for his friends whom he has left in this world, like a vessel in a stormy ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... at a banquet. Sometimes he would seat himself on the breast of a little one, and with a knife sever the head from the body at a single blow; sometimes he cut the throat half through very gently, that the child might languish, and he would wash his hands and his beard in its blood. Sometimes he had all the limbs chopped off at once from the trunk; at other times he ordered us to hang the infants till they were nearly dead, and then take them down and cut their throats. ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould

... longer twenty years of age. Believe me, I speak according to my own knowledge and experience. A prison is certain death for men of our time of life. No, no; I will never allow you to languish in prison in such a way. Why, the very thought of it makes my ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... a desire to cut up dead bodies. He did so languish after every corpse that was carried by his house for burial, that I was surprised the people did not set upon him for his ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... out here at night," Valentine said, "generally to wonder why people live as they do. When I see the soldiers going by, for instance, I have often marvelled that they could find any pleasure in the servants, so often ugly, who hang on their arms, and languish persistently at them under cheap hats and dyed feathers. And I gaze at the policeman on his beat and pity him for the dead routine in which he stalks, seldom varied by the sordid capture of a starving cracksman, or the triumphant seizure ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... 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. ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond

... Wish-Ton-Wish to be turned away in uncharitableness, but that which is freely given should not be taken in licentiousness. From off the hill where my flock is wont to graze, it is easy, through many an opening of the forest, to see these roofs; and it would have been better that the body should languish, than that a grievous sin should be placed on that immortal spirit which is already too deeply laden, unless thou art far more happy than others of the fallen race ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... 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 Hastings's, creatures had each of them allowances ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the South, cut off its cotton crops, and a fatal blow will be struck at the commerce and manufactures of the whole country. Every other branch of industry, throughout all its minutest ramifications, will feel the shock and languish accordingly. If, instead of using our fine Southern cotton at ten cents per pound, we are compelled to go to a distance of ten or twelve thousand miles, paying fifty or sixty cents for the inferior, coarse, short-staple ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... sky's one blue, The one long languish of the rose, But these, beyond prevision new, Shall charm and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... I will put out a red flag, and then flee away as fast as you can, and the dear God watch over you. Every night will I arise and pray for you—in winter that you may have a fire to warm yourselves by, and in summer that you may not languish ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm

... of sir Anthony, in love with Lydia Languish, the heiress, to whom he is known only as ensign Beverley. Bob Acres, his neighbor, is his rival, and sends a challenge to the unknown ensign; but when he finds that ensign Beverley is captain Absolute, he declines to ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... grief, fall a sacrifice to, drain the cup of misery to the dregs, sup full of horrors [Macbeth]. sit on thorns, be on pins and needles, wince, fret, chafe, worry oneself, be in a taking, fret and fume; take on, take to heart; cark^. grieve; mourn &c (lament) 839; yearn, repine, pine, droop, languish, sink; give way; despair &c 859; break one's heart; weigh upon the heart &c (inflict pain) 830. Adj. in pain, in a state of pain, full of pain &c n.; suffering &c v.; pained, afflicted, worried, displeased &c 830; aching, griped, sore &c (physical pain) 378; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... producing it by prayer, and by "a devout procession to Our Lady of Pinda," a belief truly worthy of the Nganga; and a fast ship is stranded that "men may learn to honour holidays better." When the magicians swear falsely they either burst like Judas or languish and die—"a warning to be more cautious how they jest with God." An old hag, grumbling after a brutish manner, proceeds to bewitch a good father to death by digging a hole and planting a certain herb. The ecclesiastic resolved to defeat her object by not ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... his glory's topmost height," said he, "Respect of dignity all cast aside, Freely He fix'd him on Sienna's plain, A suitor to redeem his suff'ring friend, Who languish'd in the prison-house of Charles, Nor for his sake refus'd through every vein To tremble. More I will not say; and dark, I know, my words are, but thy neighbours soon Shall help thee to a comment on the text. This is the work, that from these ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... are the holes where so many poor and honest workmen languish exhausted, forced to abandon their beds to their infirm wives, and to leave with powerless despair their half-starving, naked children, struggling with the cold, in ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... and destroyed him. Oftentimes he opened his heart to me without rashness, and without passing the strict limits of his virtue; but the poniard was in his heart, and neither time nor reflection could dull its edge. He did nothing but languish afterwards, yet without being confined to his bed or to his chamber, but did not live more than two years. Villars, on the contrary, was in greater favour than ever. He arrived at Court triumphant. The King made him occupy an apartment at Versailles, so ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... palm the maiden stood; Men say the palm of palms in tropic Isles Doth languish in her deep primeval wood, And want the voice of man, his home, his smiles, Nor flourish but in his dear neighborhood; She too shall want a voice that reconciles, A smile that charms—how sweet would heaven so please— To plant her at my door over ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow

... done nothing," said Isaacs. "Shall believers languish and perish in the hands of swine without faith? Verily it is Allah's doing, whose name is great and powerful. He will not suffer the followers of His prophet to be devoured of jackals and unclean beasts. Masallah! There is no God ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford

... stay, and it will stay, To honour thy decree: Or bid it languish quite away, And 't shall do so ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... despatching the grumbling seller of goods with his own weapon, which created less joy in the commercial community than the Baron seemed to expect. Thus navigation on the swift current of the Rhine began to languish, for there was little profit in the transit of goods from Mayence to Cologne if the whole consignment stood in jeopardy and the owner's life as well, so the merchants got into the habit of carrying their gear overland on the backs of mules, thus putting ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr

... of the soul, according to Lam. 3:19, "Remember my poverty . . . the wormwood and the gall," which refers to the Passion, and afterwards (Lam. 3:20) it is said: "I will be mindful and remember, and my soul shall languish within me." Therefore delight or joy is not the effect ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... alas! how swift you flew, Her neat post-wagon trotting in! Ye bore Matilda from my view; Forlorn I languish'd at the U niversity of Gottingen, niversity ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... taken care to search him," replied Morestal. "Besides, they watched him more closely than they did me ... so he could not do as I did...." And he added. "And a good job too! For I should have been left to languish in their prisons until the end of an interminable trial; whereas he, in forty-eight hours ... But this is all talk. The authorities can't be far away. I want to have my report ready. There are certain ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc

... excitement ought to come from within—from the moved and sympathetic imagination; whereas, where so much is addressed to the mere external senses of seeing and bearing, the spiritual vision is apt to languish, and the attraction from without will withdraw the mind from the proper and only legitimate interest which is intended to ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... with him she swells in mickle glee Even from that day, and makes of me a jest; And of that evil which I brought on me I languish yet, and find no place of rest. Justly this growing ill my death will be, Of little remnant now of life possest. I well believe I in a year had died, But that a single ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... impressed her thus. And she returned on her thought, when first seeing him upon the terrace that morning, that she might lose her head. Helen laughed a little bitterly. She, of all women, to lose her head, to long and languish, to entreat affection, and to be faithful—heaven help us, faithful!—could it ever come to that?—like any sentimental schoolgirl, like—and the thought turned her not a little wicked—like Katherine Calmady herself! And then, that other woman of whom Richard had told ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... hap," quoth ESHER, M.R., "That Solicitors languish for lack of bread? That want of cases, as felt by the Bar, To cases of want has recently led? Oh, how does it come, and why, and whence, That men shun the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various

... the capital, and those leading to Spain, Switzerland, Italy, and the Pays Bas, had their origin in the days of Philippe-Auguste. His predecessors had let the magnificently traced itineraries of the Romans languish and become covered with grass—if ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... grave's lowly one Risen victorious? Sits he, God's Holy One, High-throned and glorious? He, in this blest new birth, Rapture creative knows;[9] Ah! on the breast of earth Taste we still nature's woes. Left here to languish Lone in a world like this, Fills us with anguish Master, ...
— Faust • Goethe

... army would have been despatched to "extradite" him. But Aime Bonpland was only a student of Nature—one of those unpretending men who give the world all the knowledge it has, worth having—and so was he left to languish in captivity. True, his imprisonment was not a very harsh one, and rather partook of the character of parole d'honneur. Francia was aware of his wonderful knowledge, and availed himself of it, allowing his captive to ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... shoot their 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

... expect more effort than we find. When education becomes as general in South Africa as it is among the people of Europe then it will be possible to institute fair comparisons. Education is the discoverer of ability and without the opportunity it gives genius will languish and die unknown, as said that acute observer of human nature, Machiavelli, in speaking about the leaders of antiquity, "Without opportunity their powers of mind would have been extinguished and without those powers the opportunity would have come ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen

... his prisoner, an act of generosity which infuriates his father, who hopes to be enriched by the count's ransom. To punish Aucassin, the Count of Biaucaire now thrusts him into prison, but, although the lovers are sharing the same fate, they languish apart, and, therefore, spend ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber



Words linked to "Languish" :   die, weaken, degenerate, drop, deteriorate, waste, hanker, long, ache, pine away, languisher, yearn, fade



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