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Prostration   /prɑstrˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Prostration

noun
1.
An abrupt failure of function or complete physical exhaustion.  Synonym: collapse.
2.
Abject submission; the emotional equivalent of prostrating your body.
3.
The act of assuming a prostrate position.



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"Prostration" Quotes from Famous Books



... for steadfast regard, for service, patience, and good hope; this is a day for Art to chant what the soul hath endured. For Art is a fruit sown in action and watered to utterance by tears. Two priests only, clothed in fine linen, served the Mass: ornaments of candles, incense, prostration, genuflection, there were none. Yet, step by step, and with every step pondered reverently ere another was laid to Its fellow's foundation; with full knowledge of the end ere yet was the beginning accomplished; In every gesture, every pause, intonation, invocation, stave of ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... fidgety," Betsy told him at last. "If you don't look out you'll have nervous prostration—or I shall, if you don't stop jumping about like a jack-in-the-box. I advise you," she said, "to see a doctor before you get ...
— The Tale of Betsy Butterfly - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey

... after a while, finds the leading features of most cases pretty much alike. He knows when inflammation may be expected and fever will supervene; he is not surprised if the patient's mind wanders a little at times; expects the period of prostration and the return of appetite; and has his measures and his palliatives ready for each successive phase of sickness and recovery. In like manner, too, the good and skilful parson comes by experience to know the signs and stages of the moral ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... their strong excitement. Mrs. Wheaton, with many hearty congratulations and words of cheer, took her departure. Mrs. Jocelyn was justly solicitous about Mildred, fearing that the reaction from an ordeal that would tax the strongest might bring utter prostration to her delicate and sensitive organism. Mildred's manner soon threatened to realize her worst fears. She had passed a sleepless night, and was faint from fatigue, and yet, as the hours lapsed, she grew more nervously restless. Her eyes were hot and dry, sometimes so full ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... was scarcely responsible for what he did. He was beside himself with dread. The solitude was on his nerves, this haunting dog, his own reflections, all had combined to reduce him to the verge of nervous prostration. With the last dying sound his heavy revolver was levelled in the direction of the oncoming hound. There was a moment's pause, then a shot rang out and the dog stood quite still. The bullet fell short and only kicked up the snow some yards in front of the animal, nor ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... going to spoil some of our scenery, Ab. I thought I'd run up and see how much government land you were going to move without a permit. Glad you got down so promptly. Callahan had nervous prostration for a while last night. I told him you'd have some sort of a trick in your bag, but I didn't suppose you would spring the side of a mountain on us. Am I to have any coffee or not? What are you eating, dynamite? ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman

... life at the Hill Top School was a very bewildering one to Isabelle. The excitement over Peggy's accident was soon past, to that heroine's intense regret. She prolonged her nervous prostration as long as possible, and was duly petted and made much of by the girls. Isabelle, full of remorse for the trouble she had brought upon her room-mate, adopted ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke

... the Ostrogoth was generous. Alaric would have fought for Rome as Stilicho fought, had he continued to be commanded by that Theodosius who made him a Roman general; but Genseric was the vilest in soul of all the Teuton invaders, and for fifty years, during the utter prostration of Roman power, he infested all the shores of the Mediterranean with the savagery afterwards shown by ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... stripped off and wrung out. Then he was wrapped snugly in three or four big rugs and laid in one of the canoes, which was emptied for the purpose. This heroic treatment had a speedy effect, and the patient, much to the relief of all, recovered from his prostration and ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon

... present; the larger part, the better part, is yonder at her home; that is my wife, and she has a good many personal friends here, and I think it won't distress any one of them to know that, although she is going to be confined to her bed for many months to come from that nervous prostration, there is not any danger and she is coming along very well—and I think it quite appropriate that I should speak of her. I knew her for the first time just in the same year that I first knew John Hay and Tom Reed and Mr. Twichell—thirty-six years ago—and she ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... The spirit of the whole European war now assumed a bolder, loftier, and more triumphant form. A sudden conviction filled the general heart, that the fortunes of the field were about to change. Nations which had, till then, been only emulous in prostration to the universal conqueror, now assumed the port of courage, prepared their arms, and longed to try their cause again in battle. The outcry of Spain, answered by the trumpet of England, pierced to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... years a topic of complaint. They require more care, and a diet more nicely chosen, than laborers in health and mental tranquillity. Efforts to reduce these comforts have been followed by fever and physical prostration; and whatever aspect their treatment may wear, those who deprive them of liberty are bound to provide for their safety. The law sentences to transportation: no question of public policy could justify a minister, when converting that penalty into ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... address he sat down, physically exhausted. When we helped him into his carriage we never expected to see him again. The telegram from Washington announcing his prostration and certain death was no surprise. But there and then ended as remarkable a life as was ever lived ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... ask you to keep well in view that what I saw was not the mere "appearance" only, the astral body of the Mahatma, as we saw him at Bombay, but the living man, in his own physical body. He was pleased to say when I offered my farewell namaskarams (prostration) that he approached the British territory to see the Upasika. Before he left me, two more men came on horseback, his attendants I suppose, probably Chelas, for they were dressed like lama-gylungs, and both, like himself, with long hair streaming ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... as the shining of Heaven's own Splendor in the waste-howling darkness; the Pillar of Fire by night, that was to guide them on their desolate perilous way. Was it not such? Can a man's soul, to this hour, get guidance by any other method than intrinsically by that same,—devout prostration of the earnest struggling soul before the Highest, the Giver of all Light; be such prayer a spoken, articulate, or be it a voiceless, inarticulate one? There is no other method. "Hypocrisy?" One begins to be weary of all that. They who call it so, have no right to speak on such matters. They ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various

... Unonius was called away from his breakfast to visit Sarah Puckey, an aged market woman or 'regrater,' whom he found in a state of prostration following (it was alleged) upon a severe nervous shock. He attended the old woman for the remainder of her days, which were few; and while they lasted she remained—in the language of Polpeor—a 'bedrider.' She never confided to him the ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... system of education. It would be very easy to connect every sort of authority used by any government with the well-being of the General Government, and with as much reason as the committee had for their opinion, to assign the power to Congress, although the consequence must be the prostration of the State governments. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... periods of 3 to 5 and 5 to 7, and the sensation of being seated on board ship. The obstruction of the spleen by the liver should naturally create distaste for liquid or food, debility of the vital energies and prostration of the four limbs. From my diagnosis of these pulses, there should exist these various symptoms, before (the pulses and the symptoms can be said) to harmonise. But should perchance (any doctor maintain) ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... recover. Hilda had told him in general terms, and with her usual delicacy, of the cause of the Earl's illness, so that the doctor knew that it arose from mental trouble, and not from physical ailment. Yet, even under these circumstances, he was puzzled at the complete prostration of the Earl, and at the adverse symptoms which appeared as ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... reverted to the brass button, although he found few to listen to or encourage him in his idea. His medical patrons were a constant source of suffering to him, but he bore with them patiently; sometimes reviving from his prostration as if inspired, then lapsing as suddenly into his old state of semi-pain and total feebleness. As a last hope, he was removed from his fourth floor in the Place Valois, to become an inmate of the Bicetre, and a domiciled ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... breakfast. About twelve months subsequent to this date, we had nearly lost him for ever, in a severe attack of remittent fever. At the end of a fortnight, the danger passed away and he was restored to us. As he lay in complete prostration from the consequent weakness, our old and faithful servant, Anne Winter, who seldom left him, became fearful that his intellects might be affected; and I shall never forget her heartfelt delight and thankfulness when she saw ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills

... time she could not answer, her voice was too choked with weeping. At last, however, between sobs, burying her tear-stained face on Rafael's shoulder, she began to speak, completely crushed, fainting from virtual prostration. ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... apparently recovering, but still weak and feeble, unable to walk or play, and so miserably fretful and unhappy. Sunday Anna and I were fairly stricken down, as many others are, with no particular illness, but with such miserable prostration. I lay on the bed all day reading my hymn-book and thinking over passages ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... labor thirty-six hours, when the physician examined and looked in vain for a vaginal opening; the finger, gliding along the perineum, came in contact with the distended anus, in which was recognized the head of the fetus. The woman from prolongation of labor was in a complete state of prostration, which caused uterine inertia. Payne anesthetized the patient, applied the forceps, and extracted the fetus without further accident. The vulva of this woman five months afterward displayed all the characteristics ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... she, as if all happiness must meet her at that point, sprung into his vessel. The sails were unfurled, the voices of the men chanted forth their cheering responses on clearing the harbor, and Helen throwing herself along the floor of her little cabin, in that prostration of body and soul, silently breathed her thanks to God for being indeed launched on the ocean, whose waves she trusted would soon convey her to Wallace; to sooth, to serve—to die, or to compass ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... colonies soon manifested themselves. A settler at Port Phillip discovered or applied the art of boiling down the surplus stock, so as to produce the tallow of commerce; and sheep, lately 2s. 6d., became worth eight shillings. The discovery of the Burra mines raised Adelaide from deep prostration. The opening of new tracts of country offered a vast field for successful enterprise; wool once more rose in price; the banks lowered their discounts to a reasonable level; the goods saved from the general wreck appeared in the shops of those ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... Maurice, seated by the roadside, were making great inroads in it, Delaherche opened his budget of news for their benefit. His wife, the Lord be praised! was very well, but he was greatly alarmed for the colonel, who had sunk into a condition of deep prostration, although his mother continued to bear him company ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... benefiting by the comparative comfort and satisfied to have his own way, seemed to improve. For three days he improved steadily, and then, after standing still for another day slipped back inch by inch to weakness and prostration, until the homestead, without coercion, was the ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... I was in a State hospital?'' Having made this challenging statement she went no further, merely involved herself in contradictions as to the place, and would say nothing more than that she had once suffered from an attack of nervous prostration. She absolutely denied items of information about herself which we had gradually accumulated, and this type of reaction obtained all the way through our last period of acquaintance with Inez, even after we had the detailed facts about her ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy

... lay in utter prostration, and only the tears that trickled at intervals down her pale cheeks showed that she was conscious of her ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... husband's prostration with grief and desolation that drew her off, to do her best with her pretty childish caresses and soothings; and when the two had been sent to their own home, Mrs. Evelyn was so calm that her friend felt ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... probably nothing more than the complete prostration that might follow eight days of sea-sickness, but the patient's heart was certainly a little weak, and she needed the utmost quiet. His fee was a guinea for the first visit, and he would drop in again in the course of the afternoon to relieve ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... as the packet was once fairly beyond the harbour Harry's thoughts were effectually diverted from all other matters by the motion of the sailing boat, and he was soon in a state of prostration, in which he remained until, seven hours later, the packet entered ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty

... Doctor caught Kitty Tynan's eyes by accident, and there was the same look of understanding in both. They both knew that here was the real tragedy of Crozier's life. If he had had less reverence for his wife, less of that obvious prostration of soul, he probably would never have ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... overwhelming anxiety whenever any strange bird came near, I began to be seriously alarmed for her. As a member of a strictly American family, she was in a fair way, I thought, to be overtaken by the "most American of diseases,"—nervous prostration. It tired me to ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey

... any corner of it was a week's march from the territory of the enemy. The capital itself, in the event of war, would be constantly exposed to insult. In truth there was hardly a politician or a soldier in Europe who doubted that the conflict would be terminated in a very few days by the prostration ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the back of the mouth and throat by means of a goose quill, has been highly recommended. Frequent gargling of the throat and mouth, with a solution of lactic acid, strong enough to taste sour, will help to keep the parts clean, and correct the foul breath. If there is great prostration, with the nasal passage affected, or hoarseness and difficult breathing, a physician should ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... announcement had almost deprived me of the power of speech. A sensation of numbness seemed to creep over me—a prostration of spirit, as if some horrid danger was impending and nigh, and I without the ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... in the tariff of duties on imports, but because there was no demand at any price for their productions. The people were obliged to restrict themselves in their purchases to articles of prime necessity. In the general prostration of business the iron manufacturers in different States probably suffered more than any other class, and much destitution was the inevitable consequence among the great number of workmen who had been employed in this useful branch of industry. There could be ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan

... was ultimately one of the agencies of his prostration, though not of his death, but he did not have recourse to it until his power of recuperation from overwork had begun to fail; and, when he had become accustomed to the effect of the chloral, he took it as the ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman

... amount of specie was not adequate to support the mass of credit which these banks created, and what there was in the country drifted to New England, which was upon a metallic basis. A number of banks collapsed in 1814, and business prostration was ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... is, the compromise alluded to, instead of effecting a union, rendered it impracticable; unless by the term union are to understand the absolute reign of the slaveholding power over the whole country, to the prostration of Northern rights. In the just use of words, the American Union is and always has been a sham—an imposture. It is an instrument of oppression unsurpassed in the criminal history of the world. How then can it be innocently sustained? It is not certain, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... creature—came down with nothing in particular on, to complain to me that he couldn't sleep. Sleep, you know! It wasn't after ten—but it seems he had a headache, as usual, because Mrs. Johnson had insisted on going to look at pictures with him and Rhoda, and her remarks were such—Nervous prostration, poor Mr. Vyvian. So I've had Illuminato down here with me since then. He wants to go to you, ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay

... Bramble or Bessy the state of mind to which I was reduced was impossible. I was in a condition of prostration against which I could not rally; and I believe that there never was a person who had been disappointed in his first love who did not feel as I did—that is, if he really loved with a sincere, pure, ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... efforts to his father, who, after getting the garments thus secured in a condition of fictitious newness, displayed them in front of his establishment, marked with prices which, as he explained to those unwary enough to venture within the radius of his personality, brought him as near to nervous prostration as was possible for the parent of such ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... in her room until I brought her to terms.—A chauffeur, indeed! Really, Uncle Giles' money is scarcely worth the strain, and now with poor Vernon acting so strangely, and you so unsympathetic, it is a wonder I am not down with nervous prostration!" ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... her little sofa in a half-fainting condition, her head thrown back, her braids unfastened, while every now and then her sobs broke forth. Her eyes were dim and their lids swollen; she was, in fact, in a state of moral and physical prostration which might have softened the hardest ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac

... variable; in fact, she had some fair streaks of good fortune, just enough to keep her thoroughly amused with her new distraction; but on the whole she was a loser. The Brimley Bomefields had a collective attack of nervous prostration on the day when she sold out a quantity of shares in Argentine rails. 'Nothing will ever bring that money back,' they remarked ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... was out. Lucien little knew how indulgent great natures can be to the weaknesses of others. Every one of the friends had thought of the peculiar troubles besetting the poetic temperament, of the prostration which follows upon the struggle, when the soul has been overwrought by the contemplation of that nature which it is the task of art to reproduce. And strong as they were to endure their own ills, they felt keenly for ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... will stay for two days. I am writing this on the car and a ranger is shooting splinters out of the telegraph poles from the window in front and has a New York drummer in a state of absolute nervous prostration. I met the Rangers last night as we came into camp and find them quite the most interesting things yet. They are just what I expected to find here and have not disappointed me. Everything else is either what we know it to be and know ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis

... on arriving in a purer atmosphere, they begin to enjoy repose. A certain excitement of the mental powers may suspend for some time the action of pathogenic causes. Our mulatto servant having been much more exposed to the rains than we were, his disorder increased with frightful rapidity. His prostration of strength was excessive, and on the ninth day his death was announced to us. He was however only in a state of swooning, which lasted several hours, and was followed by a salutary crisis. I was attacked at the same time with a violent fit of fever, during which I was made to take a mixture ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... back with her, and Theron hastily stretched himself out again in the armchair, with his head back in the pillow, and his feet on the other chair. He had come mighty near forgetting that he was an invalid, and he protected himself the further now by assuming an air of lassitude verging upon prostration. ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... independent feeling is struggling through the long frost of misfortune with patient dignity. It is a touching thing to see the simple joys of life, in homes like these, crushed into a speechless endurance of penury, and the native spirit of self-reliance writhing in unavoidable prostration, and hoping on from day to day for better times. I have seen many such places in my wanderings during these hard days—cottages where all was so sweet and orderly, both in person and habitation, that, but for the funereal stillness which sat upon hunger-nipt ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh

... carried out in the provinces by the mandarins, have not resulted in a complete rescue of the object eclipsed. Doubtless the vast majority of the common people in China believe that the burning of tapers and incense, the prostration of the mandarins, the beating of the gongs and drums, and the recitations on the part of the priests, are signally efficacious in driving away the voracious monster. They observe that the sun or the ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... youngest child, the most sensitive lady, and those having heart disease, and lung complaint, inhale this vapor with impunity. It stimulates the circulation of the blood and builds up the tissues. Indorsed by the highest authority in the professions, recommended in midwifery and all cases of nervous prostration. Physicians, surgeons, dentists and private families supplied with this vapor, liquefied, in cylinders of various capacities. It should be administered the same as Nitrous Oxide, but it does not produce headache and nausea as that sometimes does. For further ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various

... come with eager inquiries, and begs to see the sufferer. But she is confronted by the indefatigable spinster, who, cloaking her denial under ceremonious form, declares that her state of nervous prostration will not admit of it. Madame withdraws, sadly; but the visit and the claim are repeated from time to time, until the stately civility of Miss Johns arouses ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... to ethics everywhere. Everywhere the creed made a moderation out of the still crash of two impetuous emotions. Take, for instance, the matter of modesty, of the balance between mere pride and mere prostration. The average pagan, like the average agnostic, would merely say that he was content with himself, but not insolently self-satisfied, that there were many better and many worse, that his deserts were limited, but he ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton

... could do all that I have said during the period through which we are now following him; but he could not quite do it with impunity. Each winter brought its searching attack of cold and cough; each summer reduced him to the state of nervous prostration or physical apathy of which I have already spoken, and which at once rendered change imperative, and the exertion of seeking it almost intolerable. His health and spirits rebounded at the first draught of foreign air; the first breath from an English cliff or moor might ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... good enough for my lady's fine friends. I know Geraldine Jerrold pretty well, and if I's Hannah I wouldn't run to every beck and call, when nothing under the sun ails her but hypo. She has had everything, I do believe—malary, cancers, spinal cords, nervous prostration, and now it's her heart. Humbug! More like hysterics. Burton Jerrold has got his hands full, and I pity him. Why, he looks like an old, broken-down man, and his hair ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes

... prostration lasted for many days—I may say for weeks, before it was altogether removed. I could find no pleasure in my books, which were taken up, and after a few moments laid aside. It was now within a month of the time that the birds should come to the island. I was ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat

... him thy love misled! * O Branch of Bn, O star of highmost stead! To thee of pine and passion I complain, * O thou who fired me with cheeks rosyred. Did e'er such lover lose his soul for thee, * Or from prostration and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... held his little orphan; but the deepness of his obeisance—the faltering tremor of his voice—and the glistening of his eye, showed a grateful respect for the lady whom he addressed, deeper and more reverential than could have been expressed even by Persian prostration. A few courteous and mild words, expressive of the pleasure she found in once more seeing her neighbours as her friends—a few kind inquiries, addressed to the principal individuals among her guests, concerning their families and connections, completed her triumph over angry thoughts and dangerous ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... came out in abundance, and the hempen apoplexy, which had only just begun, was arrested in its course. The young man moved and came more to life; then he fell, from natural causes, into a state of great weakness and profound sadness, prostration of flesh and general flabbiness. Now the old maid, who was all eyes, and followed the great and notable changes which were taking place in the person of this badly hanged man, pulled the surgeon by the sleeve, and pointing out to him, by a curious glance of the eye, the ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... at least a fortnight before paternal munificence would refill those pockets and that purse, Manicamp lost all his energy, he went to bed, remained there, ate nothing and sold his handsome clothes, under the pretense that, remaining in bed, he did not want them. During this prostration of mind and strength, the purse of the Comte de Guiche was getting full again, and when once filled, overflowed into that of De Manicamp, who bought new clothes, dressed himself again, and recommenced the same life he had followed before. The mania ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... September: —"All attempts at dining very fruitless. Basins in requisition. Wind hard ahead. Que diable allais-je faire dans cette galere? Writing or thinking impossible: so read 'Letters from the AEgean.'" These brief words give, I think, a complete idea of wretchedness, despair, remorse, and prostration of soul and body. Two days previously we passed the forts and moles and yellow buildings of Algiers, rising very stately from the sea, and skirted by gloomy purple lines of African shore, with fires ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... had a very happy voyage. Having arrived at the isle of Serendib, I acquainted the king's ministers with my commission, and prayed them to get me speedy audience. They did so, and I was conducted to the palace, where I saluted the king by prostration, according to custom. That prince knew me immediately, and testified very great joy at seeing me, 'Sinbad,' said he, 'you are welcome; I have many times thought of you since you departed; I bless the day on which ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown

... of fops, they do not know where to lead them; they change their minds twenty times a-day; they have an access of religious enthusiasm in Advent, followed by an attack of Liberal fever in Carnival, and their season is brought to a fitting termination by the prostration which overtakes them in Lent. By that time all their principles are upset, and they go to Paris for the month of May—pour se retremper dans les idees idealistes, as they express it. Do you think one could construct a party out of such elements, especially ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... which we mean the service of God and man. It takes you—all the time; and the reward is work, and peace, and a satisfaction in your work that passeth all understanding. No more grinding fear, no more "bad days," no more wishing to die, no more nervous prostration. Just work ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung

... Gaston had received some terrible shock; for it could not have been the quarrel in the morning that had reduced him to this abject state of prostration. ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... they express the stuff they hide, As yours, I like to fancy, take their tone From stern, ascetic qualities inside; Just as the soldier's heavy marching-gear Conceals a heart of high determination, Too big, in any temperature, to fear Nervous prostration. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various

... on the contrary, into a profound sadness. Tchekoff unconsciously gave up the "genre" of pleasant anecdote in order to concentrate all his attention on facts. This practice made him sad. Russia was, at this time, going through a period of prostration as a result of the last Russo-Turkish war. This war, which, at the cost of enormous sacrifices, ended in the liberation of the Bulgarian people, awakened among the Russians a hope of obtaining their own liberty, and provoked among the younger generation the most energetic ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... prostration of her intellect, the old woman was insensible even to her consolation. She sipped and drank, it is true; but as if the stream warmed not the benumbed region through which it passed, she continued muttering in a ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... sob, as she thus gives vent to her troubled feelings. Twice, already, has her husband been seized with the drunkard's madness; and, in the nervous prostration consequent upon even a brief withdrawal of his usual strong stimulants, she sees the fearful precursor of another attack of this dreadful and dangerous malady. In the hope of supplying the needed tone she has given him strong coffee; and ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur

... of a primitive, superstitious people, from an ethnological view of its details, than would be suspected at first. The story of the sacrifice and the medicine-man wrapping himself in the bloody hide of the buffalo, the use of the pine as fuel, and the prostration of the multitude, while communion is held with the Great Spirit, is the same ceremony that was observed by the Druids, and religious peoples before them. This peculiar offering of blood was common to the Indian who in the ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... tumble, drop; decrease, decline, depreciation, slump; cadence; declivity, slope; prostration, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... her husband admitted. "But I presume he was expectin' to get well right away, then. And I don't believe," he added, energetically, "but what he will, yet. As I undastand, there ain't anything ogganic about him. It's just this he'e nuvvous prostration, resultin' from shock, his docta tells me; and he'll wo'k out of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... ensuing one is to be constructed. At times I feel so tired that I throw down the pen in despair; but t is soon taken up again, and, like a pigmy Ant, it seems to have imbibed fresh vigour from its prostration. ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... tact and skill into the interviews he had with Hardy, when he came from time to time to inquire after his health. Informed of everything by his spies, and aided by his natural sagacity, he soon saw all the use that might be made of the physical and moral prostration of the boarder. Certain beforehand that Hardy would not take the hint, he spoke to him frequently of the gloom of the house, advising him affectionately to leave it, if he felt oppressed by its monotony, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... the most interesting real Scout adventure, without words, and the audience sat spellbound while she fainted from heat prostration, and he put around her head a wet bandage made with his and her handkerchief, raised a signal for other Scouts to come and help, and finally took her up on his back and carried her off the platform behind the curtain. The applause was deafening, ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess

... ungrateful. I have been here three weeks; and you have had not one letter from me! Not a word of thanks! And yet I ended by realizing from what terrible death you saved me and understanding the secret of that terrible business! But indeed, indeed I couldn't help it! I was in such a state of prostration after it all! I needed rest and solitude so badly! Was I to stay in Paris? Was I to continue my expeditions with you? No, no, no! I had had enough adventures! Other people's are very interesting, I admit. But when one is one's self the victim and barely ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... and yet it was in no slight degree owing to his policy that, seventy years later, a tempest was to burst out in France, which was to sweep away the nobility and the crown itself; which was to deluge the soil of France with its best blood, to carry war through Europe, and to end at last by the prostration of France beneath the feet of the nations to whom ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty

... way as a place in which to collect and prepare his specimens between the many excursions to other parts of the Archipelago. The name is now indelibly associated with that particular visit which ended after a trying journey in an attack of intermittent fever and general prostration, during which he first conceived the idea which has made Ternate famous in the ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... and spoke in a stern voice. But, ere he had uttered a word more, the stricken-hearted woman gave a wild scream and fell upon the floor. Nature had been tried beyond the point of endurance, and reason was saved at the expense of physical prostration. ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... his bedside, after telling him of the rescue of Penrose. He desires to see you. There is no positive suffering—he is sinking under a complete prostration of the forces of life. That is what the doctors tell me. They said, when I spoke of writing to you, 'Send a telegram; there is ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins

... He rose from his prostration on the floor and fairly flew to the girl's side, pushing her hand aside from the key she had almost turned, his whole manner expressing ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond

... league, which had furnished a useful base for pretenders against Cassander's regency; but by 280 four towns combined again, and before long the ten surviving cities of Achaea had renewed their federation. Antigonus' preoccupation during the Celtic invasions, Sparta's prostration after the Chremonidean campaigns, the wealth amassed by Achaean adventurers abroad and the subsidies of Egypt, the standing foe of Macedonia, all enhanced the league's importance. Most of all did it profit by the statesmanship of Aratus (q.v.), who initiated its ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the helped, was now the helper; he, the defended, was now the defender. His chest could scarcely contain the mighty surge of exultation that heart and lungs together accomplished. He was far from having any rejoicings over Dick's prostration; he rejoiced instead that he was able, since the prostration had come, to care for both. He had had the forethought and courage to go forth and seek for Dick, and the strength to save him ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler

... fire and sword of barbaric invasions. She saw not only her glories but also her virtues "star by star expire." The old heroism, the old beliefs, the old manliness and simplicity, were dead and gone; they had been succeeded by prostration and superstition ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... to realize the happy prospect of relief from their sufferings which was before them. With rare exception, every face was sad with care and hunger; there was no brightening of the countenance or lighting up of the eye, to indicate a thought of anything beyond a painful sense of prostration of mind and body. Many faces showed that there was scarcely a ray of ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... occasions have been seen evident proofs of the utter prostration of that class which once domineered over the entire nation. When the famous Merino attempted, in the summer of 1851, to assassinate Isabella II., and also during the political convulsions of July 1854, from the results of which the liberal party remained triumphant, so fearful were ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous

... utter weariness. Remorse was unknown to him; the finer fibres upon which that chord is struck had not been employed in the fabrication of his heart. But there is a mental fatigue which is a spurious kind of remorse, and has all the anguish of the nobler feeling. It is an utter weariness and prostration of spirit—a sickness of heart and mind—a bitter longing to lie down and die—the weariness of a beaten hound rather than of ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... a case that presented just the symptoms you mentioned. High-school girl broken down from trying to lead her classes, lead her fraternity, lead her parents, lead society——the Lord only knows what else. Gone all to pieces! Pretty a case of nervous prostration as you ever saw in a person of fifty. I began on fractional doses with it, and at last got her where she can rest. It did precisely what you claimed it ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... of what medical men call malignity in the case of Maurice Kirkwood. The most alarming symptom was a profound prostration, which at last reached such a point that he lay utterly helpless, as unable to move without aid as the feeblest of paralytics. In this state he lay for many days, not suffering pain, but with the sense of great weariness, and the feeling that he should never ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... admirers have in general. I looked on pictures as things to be avoided, connoisseurs looked on them as things to be imitated; and that, too, with such a deference and humbleness of submission, amounting to a total prostration of mind and original feeling; as must serve only to fill the world with abortions." But he was very agreeable, and I endured the visit, I trust, without the usual courtesies of life ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various

... hour later his family found him in a syncope at the foot of the piano, and sent for a doctor. Racah's eyes were open, but only the whites showed. The pulse was strangely intermittent, the heart muffled, and the doctor set it down to nervous prostration brought on by strenuous attendance at church. It was Holy Week and ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... Kennedy?" asked the doctor imploringly. "You remember I told you the other day about this case—that there was something queer about it, that after a few treatments I was afraid to carry on any more and refused to do so? She really has dermatitis and nervous prostration, exactly as she alleges in her complaint. But, before Heaven, Kennedy, I can't see how she could possibly have been so affected by the few treatments I gave her. And to-night, just as I was leaving the office, I received a telephone call from her husband's ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... the peritoneum or lining of the belly, and is more marked lower down. If the animal survives, the inflammation tends to become chronic and attended by a whitish mucopurulent discharge. If, on the contrary, it proves fatal, death is preceded by extreme prostration and weakness from the general ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... Naples was not then to be made under fifteen or twenty days, and all was over before we could hope that the intelligence even of his wife's illness had reached John. Both Mrs. Temple and I remained at Worth in a state of complete prostration, awaiting his return. When more than a month had passed without his arrival, or even a letter to say that he was on his way, our anxiety took a new turn, as we feared that some accident had befallen him, or that the news of his wife's death, which would then be ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner

... unsatisfied longing in the lover's heart, to which neither can respond; the desire to be loved! Hence, the perfect peace of reciprocated love. If its laws are violated, nature seeks revenge in the utter depression or prostration of the vital energies. Thus has the Divine Law-giver engraven His command on our very being. To love is, therefore, a duty, the fulfillment of which should ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... had now been a long time awake, and this, with the prostration of my strength from mental suffering, had at length deadened the nerve of pain; so that, despite all my misery, ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... querulously asked the kind officer, as he passed his arm through that of his subaltern,—"why will you persist in feeding this love of solitude? What possible result can it produce, but an utter prostration of every moral and physical energy? Come, come, summon a little fortitude; all may not yet be so hopeless as you apprehend. For my own part, I feel convinced the day will dawn upon some satisfactory solution of ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson



Words linked to "Prostration" :   algidity, breakdown, crack-up, submission, movement, unwellness, shock, illness, heat hyperpyrexia, motility, move, malady, nervous prostration, prostrate, sickness, heatstroke, motion, compliance



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