Listless Quotes

Ethan looked at her with loathing. She was no longer the listless creature who had lived at his side in a state of sullen self-absorption, but a mysterious alien presence, an evil energy secreted from the long years of silent brooding. ~ Edith Wharton

Oh to break loose like the chinook
salmon jumping and falling back,
nosing up to the impossible
stone and bone-crushing waterfall ...
Time to grub up and junk the year's
output, a dead wood of dry verse:
dim confession, coy revelation,
liftings, listless self-imitation,
whole days when I could hardly speak,
came pluming home unshaven, weak
and willing to read anyone
things done before and better done ... ~ Robert Lowell

The answer to Russia's problems lies here, in Russia. . . . The church is the key. If Russia's guiding force is not religion, then her people will be listless. We can have Western laws, independent judges, perhaps even parliaments -- but only if they grow gradually out of a spiritual renewal. That has to come first. ~ Edward Rutherfurd

It did not seem to matter whether I was present or not. After a time I became resentful, feeling that the flowers mocked me, blooming in defiance of my listless misery. ~ Sally Brampton

Sometimes she sat and let her mind go blank and her eyes go out of focus, so that she watched the slow, jerky movements of the motes that floated across her pupils. They amazed her as a child. Now she saw them as a reflection of how she moved, floating listlessly through the world, occasionally bumping into another body without acknowledgment, and then floating on, free and alone. ~ Robert Goolrick

Sea Longing"
A thousand miles beyond this sun-steeped wall
Somewhere the waves creep cool along the sand,
The ebbing tide forsakes the listless land
With the old murmur, long and musical;
The windy waves mount up and curve and fall,
And round the rocks the foam blows up like snow,--
Tho' I am inland far, I hear and know,
For I was born the sea's eternal thrall.
I would that I were there and over me
The cold insistence of the tide would roll,
Quenching this burning thing men call the soul,--
Then with the ebbing I should drift and be
Less than the smallest shell along the shoal,
Less than the sea-gulls calling to the sea. ~ Sara Teasdale

Emptiness. He saw no one, only a large chamber with pewlike rows of seats and, at the far end, a casket surrounded by flowers. Off in a small sideroom an old-fashioned reed pump organ and a few wooden folding chairs. The mortuary smelled of dust and flowers, a sweet, stale mixture that repelled him. Think of all the Iowans, the thought, who've embraced eternity in this listless room. ~ Philip K. Dick

For years, my life has been flat. I'm not sure how else to describe it. I've never admitted it before. I'm not depressed, I don't think. That's not what I'm saying. Just flat, listless. So much has felt accidental, unnecessary, arbitrary. It's been lacking a dimension. Something seems to be missing. ~ Iain Reid

Mearth appeared angry and disappointed briefly, but then she just gazed at the ground. " ... It must be horrible, feeling all alone, is it?" she asked.
"Oh, not really," said Alecto, his eyes lifeless, his voice listless. "I'm going to be forgotten by someone who I can't forget, though. That will be terrible ... but maybe it's better if she does forget me altogether. ~ Rebecca McNutt

The scariest thing is that nobody seems to be considering the impact on those wild fish of fish farming on the scale that is now being proposed on the coast of Norway or in the open ocean off the United States. Fish farming, even with conventional techniques, changes fish within a few generations from an animal like a wild buffalo or a wildebeest to the equivalent of a domestic cow.

Domesticated salmon, after several generations, are fat, listless things that are good at putting on weight, not swimming up fast-moving rivers. When they get into a river and breed with wild fish, they can damage the wild fish's prospects of surviving to reproduce. When domesticated fish breed with wild fish, studies indicate the breeding success initially goes up, then slumps as the genetically different offspring are far less successful at returning to the river. Many of the salmon in Norwegian rivers, which used to have fine runs of unusually large fish, are now of farmed origin. Domesticated salmon are also prone to potentially lethal diseases, such as infectious salmon anemia, which has meant many thousands have had to be quarantined or killed. They are also prone to the parasite Gyrodactylus salaris, which has meant that whole river systems in Norway have had to be poisoned with the insecticide rotenone and restocked. ~ Charles Clover

We pull on to the road, where our only company are the wandering cattle, who have become commonplace as traffic lights. Lethargic and listless, they look like they've been roaming the roads of Guinea since the dawn of time. And no doubt they will continue to long after we're gone. ~ Tom Hiddleston

I AM RESTLESS
AM restless. I am athirst for far-away things.
My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance.
O Great Beyond, O the keen call of thy flute!
I forget, I ever forget, that I have no wings to fly, that I am bound in this spot evermore.
I am eager and wakeful, I am a stranger in a strange land.
Thy breath comes to me whispering an impossible hope.
Thy tongue is known to my heart as its very own.
O Far-to-seek, O the keen call of thy flute!
I forget, I ever forget, that I know not the way, that I have not the winged horse.
I am listless, I am a wanderer in my heart.
In the sunny haze of the languid hours, what vast vision of thine takes shape in the blue of the sky!
O Farthest end, O the keen call of thy flute!
I forget, I ever forget, that the gates are shut everywhere in the house where I dwell alone! ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Excessive chemicals eventually inhibit your immune system (the defence against infections and illnesses) making you vulnerable to viruses of every shape and size. They will lower the production of serotonin (making you feel listless and joyless as in depression) and can eventually, if they remain virulent, cause heart disease, hardening of the arteries, type 2 diabetes and certain cancers. Inadvertently stress will destroy you both mentally and physically unless you change the way you think about it and relate to it. With ~ Ruby Wax

In June the bush we call
alder was heavy, listless,
its leaves studded with galls,
growing wherever we didn't
want it. ~ Denise Levertov

Kill the imagination and you kill the soul. Kill the soul and you're left with a listless, apathetic creature who can become hopeless or brutal or both. ~ Marion Woodman

He saw the white paper as the great universe of nonexistence. A single stroke would give rise to existence within it. He could evoke rain or wind at will, but whatever he drew, his heart would remain in the painting forever. If his heart was tainted, the picture would be tainted; if his heart was listless, so would the picture be. If he attempted to make a show of his craftsmanship, it could not be concealed. Men's bodies fade away, but ink lives on. The image of his heart would continue to breathe after he himself was gone. ~ Eiji Yoshikawa

The wretchedest shantytowners we'd seen yet, they were slumped in the ashes, arranged in postures of such listless torpor that for a moment I mistook even the ones who were sitting upright for dead. Their hair and bodies were blacked with ash and grease, and their faces so afflicted with pits and scars that I wondered if they were lepers. As ~ Ransom Riggs

A sentence can offer a moment of quiet, it can crackle with energy or it can just lie there, listless and uninteresting. What makes the difference? The verb. ~ Constance Hale

What we need as Christians is to be able to feed ourselves. How many there are who sit helpless and listless, with open mouths, hungry for spiritual things, and the minister has to try to feed them, while the Bible is a feast prepared, into which they never venture. ~ Dwight L. Moody

One listless day followed another, with nothing to distinguish one from the next. You could have changed the order and no one would have noticed. ~ Haruki Murakami

Better to sink with tempests raging o'er
Masts all dismantled and hull gaping wide
Than rest and rot on some unclouded shore
The idle plaything of the listless tide.

Better the grime of battle on the brow,
With grim defeat to crush thy dying hand
Than through long years of peace to tyrant bow
Or dwell captive in a strangers land.

Better the castle with beleaguered gate,
By battle's lightning shivered in a day
Than peaceful walls in pomp of sullen state,
Through centuries sinking to a dull decay.

Better resolve to win thy heart's desire,
And striving bravely, die in the endeavor
Than have the embers of some smothered fire
Lie smouldering in thy saddened soul forever. ~ Sam Davis

I am only about half alive a large part of my strength is consumed in sitting up or walking. My nervous system is a shattered wreck, and I am absolutely bored & listless save when I come upon something which peculiarly interests me. However so many things do interest me, & interest me intensely, in science, history, philosophy, & literature; that I have never actually desired to die, or entertained any suicidal designs, as might be expected of one with so little kinship to the ordinary features of life. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

There was some kind of scuffle two hundred yards down the street, again strangely noiseless, and a huddled knot of men opened up to reveal two brawlers being separated and pulled away from their fight. What I saw next gave me a fright: in the farther distance, beyond the listless crowd, the body of a lynched man dangling from a tree. The body was slender, dressed from head to toe in black, reflecting no light. It soon resolved itself, however, into a less ominous thing: dark canvas sheeting on a construction scaffold, twirling in the wind. ~ Teju Cole

When language in common use in any country becomes irregular and depraved, it is followed by their ruin and degradation. For what do terms used without skill or meaning, which are at once corrupt and misapplied, denote but a people listless, supine, and ripe for servitude? ~ John Milton

You know when you've got nothing in particular to do, nothing to stay awake for? When your life is just routine and it doesn't feel like it belongs to you, how you feel tired and listless and everything seems like too much effort?
Well, it's like that, but it's much worse, because everything is much worse these days. Everything that's bad is worse, believe me. There are whole Neighborhoods out there where no one has anything to do all their lives. They're born, and from the moment they hit the table, there's nothing to do. They clamber to their feet occasionally, realize there's nothing to do and sit down again. They grow up, and there's nothing to do; they grow up, and there's still nothing. They spend their whole lives indoors, in armchairs, in bed, wondering who they are. ~ Michael Marshall Smith

The room shall speak, it must catch me up and hold me, I want to feel that I belong here, I want to hearken and know when I go back to the front line that the war will sink down, be drowned utterly in the great home-coming tide, know that it will then be past for ever, and not gnaw us continually, that it will have none but an outward power over us ... Nothing stirs; listless and wretched, like a condemned man, I sit there and the past withdraws itself. And at the same time I fear to importune it too much, because I do not know what might happen then. I am a soldier, I must cling to that. ~ Erich Maria Remarque

George Macdonald said, 'If you knew what God knows about death you would clap your listless hands', but instead I find old people in North America just buying this whole youth obsession. I think growing older is a wonderful privilege. I want to learn to glorify God in every stage of my life. ~ Elisabeth Elliot

Work or suffering found her listless and dejected, powerles and repining; but gaiety expanded her butterfly's wings, lit up their gold-dust and bright spots, made her flash like a gem, and flush like a flower. ~ Charlotte Bronte

...glimpses through the clouds of numerous and enormous Second Free Zone residential arks and barges lumbering through their selective tracks like a slow-motion game of hide and seek played by listless, blunt whales. ~ Kieran Shea

I learned to move silently in the background, a dirty, neglected little kid with no voice, no wants, and who made no trouble so as not to call the wrath of the eight or so tweaking adults who lived there down on me. I drifted, faded, and became a listless, ghostlike scavenger who took what she could get. I lived mostly in my head and for a while actually convinced myself that I was a survivor of one of those catastrophic earthquakes or tornadoes I used to see on the Weather Channel,a dazed, bewildered, and emotionless girl picking her way through an endless landscape of foul and stinking rubble to try and come out on the other side. ~ Laura Wiess

I knew you had taste. Though your lack of hat is rather shocking."
"Oh, fie on this country and its inordinate affection for hats. I would sooner love every child alive than I would wear a hat. My head is perfectly covered by my hair."
"But the sun! We Albens have a terrible fear of letting it touch more of our bodies than absolutely necessary."
"Which would explain the dour and listless spirit that pervades this country. Perhaps if you gave the sun a bit more attention, it would be flattered and come out more often. ~ Kiersten White

Consider the sea's listless chime: Time's self it is, made audible. ~ Dante Alighieri

I have seen slower people than I am and more deliberate ... and even quieter, and more listless, and lazier people than I am. But they were dead. ~ Mark Twain

The longer we spent on Tarawa the more Sylvia and I came to realize that to live on Tarawa is to experience a visceral form of bipolar disorder. There is the ecstatic high, when you find yourself swept away in a lagoonside maneaba rumbling to the frenzied singing and dancing of hundreds of rapturous islanders. And there are the crushing lows, when you succumb to a listless depression, brought about by the unyielding heat, sporadic sickness, pitiless isolation, food shortages, and the realization that so much of what ails Tarawa, the overpopulation and all its attendant health and social problems, need not be as bad as it is. ~ J. Maarten Troost

it's a long lane that has no turning," "the weariest day draws to an end," etc., seemed false and vain sayings, so long and so weary was the pressure of the terrible times. Deeper and deeper still sank the poor. It showed how much lingering suffering it takes to kill men, that so few (in comparison) died during those times. But remember! we only miss those who do men's work in their humble sphere; the aged, the feeble, the children, when they die, are hardly noted by the world; and yet to many hearts, their deaths make a blank which long years will never fill up. Remember, too, that though it may take much suffering to kill the able-bodied and effective members of society, it does NOT take much to reduce them to worn, listless, diseased creatures, who thenceforward crawl through life with moody hearts and pain-stricken bodies. The ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

What would your church (and the worldwide church) look like if everyone was as committed as you are? If everyone gave and served and prayed exactly like you, would the church be healthy and empowered? Or would it be weak and listless? ~ Francis Chan

Though it may take much suffering to kill the able-bodied and effective members of society, it does not take much to reduce them to worn, listless, diseased creatures, who thenceforward crawl through life with moody hearts and pain-stricken bodies. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

As soon as I decided I'd have to dig down still deeper to uncover the root of my listless withdrawal from life, I became aware of some interference from the past distracting and confusing my thoughts, causing me a sensation that was at the same time oppressive, expectant and empty. In these somewhat contradictory feelings, I came to recognize my childish sense of having run down like a clock that needed someone to wind it before it could go again; and saw that I was now no less helpless than in those far-off days when I waited for somebody to take me by the hand and tell me what to do. On my own initiative I could do nothing, take no responsibility, make no decisions only watch my existence unroll. ~ Anna Kavan

Maybe I . . . shouldn't tell him what I thought I'd heard. Not until I knew more. How exactly would I put the revelation anyway? Jack's alive, but apparently he kept that little detail secret. Ah, but Matthew spilled the beans! Buying myself time, I waved Aric on.

I was scarcely listening as he began talking about Paul, of all people. How the EMT had grown worried when I'd been shut in with my grandmother for so long. How I had lost weight and become listless. The man had pleaded with me to get a checkup, even offering to source contraception after Aric and I had started sleeping together.

Wait. I glanced up. "After?"

Aric nodded. "He said you told him you had no need of contraception."

The hell? "I went to him and got a shot prior to us getting together. I told you about it."

"As I told him in turn, but he swears that never happened."

Real? Unreal? Had I . . . imagined my meeting with Paul? I'd already feared gaps in my memory; Gran had told me things that I'd had no recollection of. Was I now inventing memories?

Had I invented Jack's return?

In a soothing voice, Aric said, "I'm not angry, love. Just talk to me." He wasn't the first person to look at me as if I'd gone insane, like I was trouble with the possibility of rubble.

Won't be the last.

No. I refused this. I had heard Jack, and I had gotten that shot. "It did happen, which means Paul's a liar." But why would ~ Kresley Cole

Yellow, mellow, ripened days, Sheltered in a golden coating; O'er the dreamy, listless haze, White and dainty cloudlets floating; Winking at the blushing trees, And the sombre, furrowed fallow; Smiling at the airy ease, Of the southward flying swallow Sweet and smiling are thy ways, Beauteous, golden Autumn days. ~ Will Carleton

Vanity, or to call it by a gentler name, the desire of admiration and applause, is, perhaps, the most universal principle of humanactions ... Where that desire is wanting, we are apt to be indifferent, listless, indolent, and inert ... I will own to you, under the secrecy of confession, that my vanity has very often made me take great pains to make many a woman in love with me, if I could, for whose person I would not have given a pinch of snuff. ~ Lord Chesterfield

This was the neighborhood of the cheap addicts, whisky-heads, stumblebums, the flotsam of Harlem; the end of the line for the whores, the hard squeeze for the poor honest laborers and a breeding ground for crime. Blank-eyed whores stood on the street corners swapping obscenities with twitching junkies. Muggers and thieves slouched in dark doorways waiting for someone to rob; but there wasn't anyone but each other. Children ran down the street, the dirty street littered with rotting vegetables, uncollected garbage, battered garbage cans, broken glass, dog offal - always running, ducking and dodging. God help them if they got caught. Listless mothers stood in the dark entrances of tenements and swapped talk about their men, their jobs, their poverty, their hunger, their debts, their Gods, their religions, their preachers, their children, their aches and pains, their bad luck with the numbers and the evilness of white people. Workingmen staggered down the sidewalks filled with aimless resentment, muttering curses, hating to go to their hotbox hovels but having nowhere else to go. ~ Chester Himes

The multitude of men look satisfied and pleased; as if enjoying a full banquet, as if mounted on a tower in spring. I alone seem listless and still, my desires having as yet given no indication of their presence. I am like an infant which has not yet smiled. I look dejected and forlorn, as if I had no home to go to. The multitude of men all have enough and to spare. I alone seem to have lost everything. My mind is that of a stupid man; I am in a state of chaos.
Ordinary men look bright and intelligent, while I alone seem to be benighted. They look full of discrimination, while I alone am dull and confused. I seem to be carried about as on the sea, drifting as if I had nowhere to rest. All men have their spheres of action, while I alone seem dull and incapable, like a rude borderer.
(Thus) I alone am different from other men, but I value the nursing-mother (the Tao). ~ Lao-Tzu

This earthly body is slow and heavy in all its motions, listless and soon tired with action. But our heavenly bodies shall be as fire; as active and as nimble as our thoughts are. ~ John Wesley

Cities are fueled by the listless agony of workers providing services to other workers who barely acknowledge those services. ~ Helen Oyeyemi

As it turns out, that feeling of being lost or listless or never achieving your potential doesn't contain itself within any certain decade of life; it just lives in you until you learn how to cope with it or let it go. ~ Hannah Hart

Experience proves that in this life peace and satisfaction are had, not by the listless but by those who are fervent in God's service. And rightly so. For in their effort to overcome themselves and to rid themselves of self-love, they rid themselves of the roots of all passion and unrest. ~ Saint Ignatius

Gil sat baking in the sun for at least 45 minutes before one of the tour guides noticed him looking listless and leaning to his left side. As she approached him, she noticed that he had a stupid grin on his face.
"Are you all right, Mr. Cohen?" she asked as she tried to slowly help him to his feet.
His shirt was drenched with sweat and his skin was mostly clammy, signally that he was suffering from the middle stages of heat stroke.
"It's not so bad?" he muttered as he struggled to stand straight up. "What not so bad, Mr. Cohen?" one of the tour guides asked.
"Death," Gil stated in a glazed response.
The guide looked at the heat-stricken man who appeared to have amoment of clarity amidst all of the sweat and dehydration. "Why is death not so bad?" she pressed on. Gil took a big swig of Gatorade and replied, "Because life wasn't so great. ~ Phil Wohl

I can make another list because the choice is mine. A list of what to do. So I won't be listless ever again. ~ Johnny Rich

The bums were better dressed, younger, but just as listless. They sat around on the window ledges, hunched forward, getting warm in the sun and drinking the free coffee that W.F.I. offered. There was no cream and sugar, but it was free. ~ Charles Bukowski

As if a man's soul were not too small to begin with, they have dwarfed an narrowed theirs by a life of all work and no play; until here they are at forty, with a listless attention, a mind vacant of all material of amusement, and not one thought to rub against another, while they wait for the train. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Work in classrooms isn't significant work; it fails to satisfy real needs pressing on the individual; it doesn't answer real questions experience raises in the young mind; it doesn't contribute to solving any problem encountered in actual life. The net effect of making all schoolwork external to individual longings, experiences, questions, and problems is to render the victim listless. ~ John Taylor Gatto

G took her hand in his and traced his finger over the delicate skin of her arm. What she didn't realize was that he was scrawling the words of a poem he had recently written. It was inspired by his lady and he had spent many long hours trying to find the words that adequately conveyed the feelings of his heart.
There were many false starts, because at first he tried to capture the moment a horse fell in love with a ferret.
Shall I compare thee to a barrel to apples?
Thou art more hairy, but sweeter inside.
Rough winds couldn't keep me from taking you to chapel,
When finally a horse would take a bride...

And then he tried to wax poetic about the ferret alone ...

Shall I compare thee to a really large rat?
Thou art more longer, with less disease.
One would never mistake you for a listless cat ...
Nor a filthy dog, because my dog has fleas.

He could never confess his passion for poetry with those poetry examples. ~ Cynthia Hand

It is, in the imagination of combat's fans, the divinely listless loveplay that follows the orgasm of victory. It is called 'mopping up. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

We're not just any star stuff, most of which is humdrum hydrogen and listless helium. Our bodies include fancier ingredients like carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous, and a few other herbs and spices. ~ Seth Shostak

I remember as a child hearing of the horrors of life in the Soviet Union. There was supposedly only one kind of store, a gigantic windowless dispensary staffed by listless, surly functionaries selling cheaply made, generic goods. It sounds a lot like Wal-Mart. ~ Charles Eisenstein

Those whose eyes twenty-five and more years before had seen "the glory of the coming of the Lord," saw in every present hindrance or help a dark fatalism bound to bring all things right in His own good time. The mass of those to whom slavery was a dim recollection of childhood found the world a puzzling thing: it asked little of them, and they answered with little, and yet it ridiculed their offering. Such a paradox they could not understand, and therefore sank into listless indifference, or shiftlessness, or reckless bravado. There were, however, some - such as Josie, Jim, and Ben - to whom War, Hell, and Slavery were but childhood tales, whose young appetites had been whetted to an edge by school and story and half-awakened thought. Ill could they be content, born without and beyond the World. And their weak wings beat against their barriers, - barriers of caste, of youth, of life; at last, in dangerous moments, against everything that opposed even a whim. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

Energy in itself is a sort of redemption. No wonder we admire Satan. But if the Devil were listless, if he were a pale man in his underwear who watched television by day behind closed venetian blinds - oh if that were the devil I would fear him. ~ Edmund White

The strong family warrior has turned into a shell-shocked returning vet - listless, moody, with an invisible injury draining him of vitality. ~ Brian Boyle

At these moments I took refuge in the most perfect solitude. I passed whole days on the lake alone in a little boat, watching the clouds, and listening to the rippling of the waves, silent and listless. ~ Mary Shelley

And then it developed that Campbell was not going to go unanswered after all. Poor old Derby, the doomed high school teacher, lumbered to his feet for what was probably the finest moment in his life. There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters. But old Derby was a character now. ~ Kurt Vonnegut