97 Languid Quotes

Following is our list of languid quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about languor.

Quick Jump To

Famous Languid Quotes

It is the just doom of laziness and gluttony to be inactive without ease and drowsy without tranquility. — Samuel Johnson

Thou seest how sloth wastes the sluggish body, as water is corrupted unless it moves. — Ovid

One who does not rouse themself when it is time to rise, who, though capable, is full of sloth, whose will and thought are weak, that lazy and idle person will never find their way to true knowledge. — Buddha

The sleepy like to make excuses. — Benedict of Nursia

Too indolent to bear the toil of writing; I mean of writing well; I say nothing about quantity. [Lat., Piger scribendi ferre laborem; Scribendi recte, nam ut multum nil moror.] — Horace

Let us be lazy in everything, except in loving and drinking, except in being lazy. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

What is undeniable is that when comforts and convenience sap our energies and idealism, inactivity secretes sloth in to our minds like a poison in the blood. — Os Guinness

I'm barely prolific and incredibly lazy. — Tom Petty

Great talents, by the rust of long disuse, Grow lethargic and shrink from what they were. — Ovid

Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre. — Albert Camus

It's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care — Ron Livingston

Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction. - Anne Frank

Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction. — Anne Frank

Rest is the sweet sauce of labor. — Plutarch

Lazy people tend not to take chances, but express themselves by tearing down other's work. — Ann Rule

Lazy people are always anxious to be doing something. — Marquis De Vauvenargues

Short Languid Quotes

  • Pensive they sit, and roll their languid eyes. — John Keats
  • As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold. — Jonathan Swift
  • Poor little Foal of an oppressed race! I love the languid patience of thy face. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  • Books are a languid pleasure. — Michel de Montaigne
  • Indolence, languid as it is, often masters both passions and virtues. — Francois de la Rochefoucauld
  • A languid janitor bears His lantern through colonnades And the architecture swoons. — Wallace Stevens
  • The wind came in languid gusts like whispered reminders. — James Franco

Alice In Wonderland Quotes

She is pure Alice in Wonderland, and her appearance and demeanor are a nicely judged mix of the Red Queen and a Flamingo. — Truman Capote

You cannot live your life to please others. The choice must be yours. - Anne Hathaway

You cannot live your life to please others. The choice must be yours. — Anne Hathaway

If you don't know where you are currently standing, you're dead. - Samuel Beckett

If you don't know where you are currently standing, you're dead. — Samuel Beckett

A curse on this game. How can you stick at a game when the rules keep on changing? I shall call myself Alice and play croquet with the flamingos. In Wonderland everyone cheats and love is Wonderland, isn't it? — Jeanette Winterson

You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret... All the best people are! - Lewis Carroll

You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret... All the best people are! — Lewis Carroll

It takes all the running you can do just to keep in the same place. - Lewis Carroll

It takes all the running you can do just to keep in the same place. — Lewis Carroll

Everybody has won, and all must have prizes. — Lewis Carroll

The hurrier I go, the behinder I get. — Lewis Carroll

Yes, that's it! Said the Hatter with a sigh, it's always tea time. — Lewis Carroll

In Alice in Wonderland one had to run fast to stand still, in the stock markets, one who stands still can really make money fast. — Thomas Phelps

Languor Quotes

Sometimes...we don't want to feel like a postmodern, postfeminist, overstretched woman but, rather, a domestic goddess, trailing nutmeggy fumes of baking pie in our languorous wake. — Nigella Lawson

Summer for prose and lemons, for nakedness and languor. — Derek Walcott

If in an actor there appears an utter vacancy of meaning, a frigid equality, a stupid languor, a torpid apathy, the greatest kindness that can be shown him is a speedy sentence of expulsion. — Samuel Johnson

Who looks at me, beholdeth sorrows all, All pain, all torture, woe and all distress; I have no need on other harms to call, As anguish, languor, cruel bitterness, Discomfort, dread, and madness more and less; Methinks from heaven above the tears must rain In pity for my harsh and cruel pain. — Geoffrey Chaucer

Isn’t desire always the same, whether the object is present or absent? Isn’t the object always absent? —This isn’t the same languor: there are two words: Pothos, desire for the absent being, and Himéros, the more burning desire for the present being. — Roland Barthes

Among the numerous luxuries of the table...coffee may be considered as one of the most valuable. It excites cheerfulness without intoxication; and the pleasing flow of spirits which it occasions...is never followed by sadness, languor or debility. — Benjamin Franklin

The languor of Youth - how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost! — Evelyn Waugh

Academical disputation gives vigor and briskness to the mind thus exercised, and relieves the languor of private study and meditation. — Isaac Watts

Night is here. All is at rest. My eyes close in order to see without actually understanding the dream that flees before men infinite space; and I experience the languorous sensation produced by the mournful procession of my hopes. — Paul Gauguin

Adults forget the depths of languor into which the adolescent mind decends with ease. They are prone to undervalue the mental growth that occurs during daydreaming and aimless wandering — E. O. Wilson

Languish Quotes

I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute! — Frederick Douglass

Whenever men take the law into their own hands, the loser is the law. And when the law loses, freedom languishes. — Robert Kennedy

Inch by inch I conquered the inner terrain I was born with. Bit by bit I reclaimed the swamp in which I'd languished. I gave birth to my infinite being, but I had to wrench myself out of me with forceps. — Fernando Pessoa

History will remember the inhabitants of this century as the people who went from Kitty Hawk to the moon in 66 years, only to languish for the next 30 in low Earth orbit. At the core of the risk-free society is a self-indulgent failure of nerve. — Buzz Aldrin

He [man] abuses equally other animals and his own species, the rest of whom live in famine, languish in misery, and work only to satisfy the immoderate appetite and the still more insatiable vanity of this human being who, destroying others by want, destroys himself by excess. — Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night, Brother to Death, in silent darkness born; Relive my languish, and restore the light. — Samuel Daniel

A thousand trills and quivering sounds In airy circles o'er us fly, Till, wafted by a gentle breeze, They faint and languish by degrees, And at a distance die. — Joseph Addison

No disease is more dangerous than a bad husband, for if a woman catches that Pox, she'll languish from it her entire life. — Sabrina Jeffries

Daughter of heaven and earth, coy Spring, With sudden passion languishing, Teaching barren moors to smile, Painting pictures mile on mile, Holds a cup of cowslip wreaths Whence a smokeless incense breathes. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

As long as more people will pay admission to a theater to see a naked body than to see a naked brain, the drama will languish. — George Bernard Shaw

People Writing About Languid

Name Quotes Likes
Read quotes by Ovid

Ovid
quotes on love, death

714 3612
Read quotes by Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson
quotes on writing, life and love

1736 7561
Read quotes by Buddha

Buddha
quotes on peace, peace of mind and death

1250 5513
Read quotes by Benedict of Nursia

Benedict of Nursia
quotes on education, religion and death

24 1116
Read quotes by Horace

Horace
quotes on love, augustus and education

926 4340
Read quotes by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
quotes on god, friendship and bible

62 310

More Languid Quotes

Prayer pulls the rope below and the great bell rings above in the ears of God. Some scarcely stir the bell, for they pray so languidly. Others give but an occasional pluck at the rope. But he who wins with heaven is the man who grasps the rope boldly and pulls continuously, with all his might. — Charles Spurgeon

A life without purpose is a languid, drifting thing; Every day we ought to review our purpose, saying to ourselves: This day let me make a sound beginning, for what we have hitherto done is naught! — Thomas a Kempis

Words can do wonderful things. They pound, purr. They can urge, they can wheedle, whip, whine. They can sing, sass, singe. They can churn, check, channelize. They can be a "Hup two three four." They can forge a fiery army of a hundred languid men. — Gwendolyn Brooks

Not a breath of air stirred over the free and open prairie; the clouds were like light piles of cotton; and where the blue sky was visible, it wore a hazy and languid aspect. — Francis Parkman

Budapest in late May is a city of lilacs. The sweet, languid, rather sleepy smell of lilacs wafts everywhere. And it is a city of lovers, many of them quite middle-aged. Walking with their arms around each other, embracing and kissing on park benches. A sensuousness very much bound up (it seems to me) with the heady ubiquitous smell of lilacs. — Joyce Carol Oates

She was indeed a girl of exquisite beauty. She was one of those languid women made of dark honey smooth and sweet and terribly sticky. — Patrick Süskind

When I first came out, I thought, I want to walk like a real woman, I don't want to do mincing steps. And there was some girl I saw walking up Holloway Road in Islington who had this long languid walk and I thought, that's what I like, so I incorporated her walk into mine. — Eddie Izzard

Then a sentimental passion of a vegetable fashion must excite your languid spleen, An attachment a la Plato for a bashful young potato, or a not-too-French French bean! — W. S. Gilbert

How happy he whose toil Has o'er his languid pow'rless limbs diffus'd A pleasing lassitude; he not in vain Invokes the gentle Deity of dreams. His pow'rs the most voluptuously dissolve In soft repose; on him the balmy dews Of Sleep with double nutriment descend. — John Armstrong

I saw old Autumn in the misty morn Stand shadowless like silence, listening To silence, for no lonely bird would sing Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn, Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;- Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright With tangled gossamer that fell by night, Pearling his coronet of golden corn. — Thomas Hood

Nightfall. “What a strange word. ‘Night’ I get. But ‘fall’ is a gentle word. Autumn leaves fall, swirling with languid grace To carpet the earth with their dying blaze. Tears fall, like liquid diamonds Shimmering softly, before they melt away. Night doesn’t fall here. It comes slamming down. — Karen Marie Moning

Slum kids die slowly, their lives eroded at so languid a pace that even they would have trouble tracing the disintegration. To the children of war death explodes like a car bomb. — Roger Rosenblatt

Toil is the portion of day, as sleep is that of night; but if there be one hour of the twenty-four which has the life of day without its labor, and the rest of night without its slumber, it is the lovely and languid hour of twilight. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Listen to the Water-Mill: Through the live-long day How the clicking of its wheel Wears the hours away! Languidly the Autumn wind Stirs the forest leaves, From the field the reapers sing Binding up their sheaves: And a proverb haunts my mind As a spell is cast, "The mill cannot grind With the water that is past. — Sarah Doudney

Over there, in Europe, all was shame and anger. Here it was exile or solitude, among these languid and agitated madmen who danced in order to die. — Albert Camus

Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds, Exhilirate the spirit, and restore The tone of languid nature. — William Cowper

Man, it seems, is not able to bear the languid rest on Nature's bosom, and when the trumpet sounds the signal of danger, he hastens to join his comrades, no matter what the cause that calls him to arms. He rushes into the thickest of the fight, and amid the uproar of the battle regains confidence in himself and his powers. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Bluebell,” she said, remembering from Erotique. “Pretty name.” “I call Dmitri Dark Overlord.” “Shae,” Dmitri said and the female vampire rose at once to walk quickly into the house. “Now, pretty Bluebell” another languid stroke across her skin “tell the Overlord what you discovered. — Nalini Singh

As a young child I wanted to be a writer because writers were rich and famous. They lounged around Singapore and Rangoon smoking opium in a yellow pongee silk suit. They sniffed cocaine in Mayfair and they penetrated forbidden swamps with a faithful native boy and lived in the native quarter of Tangier smoking hashish and languidly caressing a pet gazelle. — William S. Burroughs

In doing good, we are generally cold, and languid, and sluggish; and of all things afraid of being too much in the right. But the works of malice and injustice are quite in another style. They are finished with a bold, masterly hand; touched as they are with the spirit of those vehement passions that call forth all our energies, whenever we oppress and persecute. — Edmund Burke

Watering places - the sports of the field - cards! never-failing cards! - the assembly - the theater - all contribute their aid - amusements are multiplied, and combined, and varied, 'to fill up the void of a listless and languid life;' and by the judicious use of these different resources, there is often a kind of sober settled plan of domestic dissipation, in which with all imaginable decency year after year wears away in unprofitable vacancy. — William Wilberforce

It is a mistake to imagine, that the violent passions only, such as ambition and love, can triumph over the rest. Idleness, languid as it is, often masters them all; she influences all our designs and actions, and insensibly consumes and destroys both passions and virtues. — Francois de la Rochefoucauld

[Personal] industry must be faint and languid, which is not excited by the sense of personal interest. — Edward Gibbon

By affliction prayer is quickened, for our prayers are very apt to grow languid and formal in a time of ease. — John Newton

Prayer as it comes from the saint is weak and languid; but when the arrow of a saint's prayer is put into the bow of Christ's intercession it pierces the throne of grace. — Thomas Watson

I would rather produce my passions than brood over them at my expense; they grow languid when they have vent and expression. It is better that their point should operate outwardly than be turned against us. — Michel de Montaigne

Young men are as apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are to think themselves sober enough. They look upon spirit to be a much better thing than experience; which they call coldness. They are but half mistaken; for though spirit without experience is dangerous, experience without spirit is languid and ineffective. — Lord Chesterfield

Certainly, we do not need to be soothed and entertained always like children. He who resorts to the easy novel, because he is languid, does no better than if he took a nap. — Henry David Thoreau

Cold hearts are not anxious enough to doubt. Men who love will have their misgivings at times; that is not the evil. But the evil is, when men go on in that languid, doubting way, content to doubt, proud of their doubts, morbidly glad to talk about them, liking the romantic gloom of twilight, without the manliness to say,--I must and will know the truth. That did not John. Brethren, John appealed to Christ. — Frederick William Robertson

A man who from the beginning has long been soaked in the languid atmosphere of a woman, the scent of her hands, her bosom, her knees, her hair, her lithe and flowing clothes, Sweet bath, suavely Scented with ointments, has acquired a delicacy of skin, a refinement of tone, a kind of androgyny without which the toughest and most virile of geniuses remains, when it comes to artistic perfection, an incomplete being. — Charles Baudelaire

I have often been surprised that Mathematics, the quintessence of Truth, should have found admirers so few and so languid. Frequent consideration and minute scrutiny have at length unravelled the cause: viz . that though Reason is feasted, Imagination is starved; whilst Reason is luxuriating in its proper Paradise, Imagination is wearily travelling on a dreary desert. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Most men in a brazen prison live, Where, in the sun's hot eye, With heads bent o'er their toil, they languidly Their lives to some unmeaning taskwork give, Dreaming of nought beyond their prison-wall. — Matthew Arnold

Do not shorten the morning by getting up late, or waste it in unworthy occupations or in talk; look upon it as the quintessence of life, as to a certain extent sacred. Evening is like old age: we are languid, talkative, silly. Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death. — Arthur Schopenhauer

To carry the spirit of peace into war is a weak and cruel policy. When an extreme case calls for that remedy which is in its own nature most violent, and which, in such cases, is a remedy only because it is violent, it is idle to think of mitigating and diluting. Languid war can do nothing which negotiation or submission will do better: and to act on any other principle is, not to save blood and money, but to squander them. — Thomas B. Macaulay

Under the strain of this continually impending doom and by the sleeplessness to which I now condemned myself, ay, even beyond what I had thought possible to man, I became, in my own person, a creature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly weak both in body and mind, and solely occupied by one thought: the horror of my other self. — Robert Louis Stevenson

How have you left the ancient love That bards of old enjoyed in you! The languid strings do scarcely move! The sound is forced, the notes are few! — William Blake

In the afternoon they came unto a land In which it seemed always afternoon. All round the coast the languid air did swoon, Breathing like one that hath a weary dream. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

I have always had a love for American geography, and especially for the landscapes of the South. One of my pleasures has been to drive across it, with no one in the world knowing where I am, languidly absorbing the thoughts and memories of old moments, of people vanished now from my life. — Willie Morris

The Proustian aquarium: grotesque and gorgeous fish drifting with languid fins through a subaqueous medium of pale violet polluted ink. — Edward Abbey

In Conclusion

Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of languid quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about languid to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.

Citation

Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of languid quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.

Embed HTML Link

Copy and paste this HTML code in your webpage