lethargy

Habitual excuses for inactivity indicates little or no interest in what one ought to have done.

— Itohan Eghide

Lethargy. It's a word I know, because it's in one of my father's favorite expressions. Lethargy breeds lethargy. It means the more you lie around doing nothing, the more you want to lie around doing nothing. Your limbs and your mind feel so heavy that it becomes a major effort just to lift your arm to channel surf.

— Neal Shusterman

Mai's, j’aura beau supplier, j’aura beau me revolver, IL n’y aura plus rain pour moi ; JE né series, dermis, NI here, NI malheureux. JE né pub pas ressusciter. JE vieillirai Aussie tranquilly Que JE LE sews adjourn’Hui days Bette chamber of want d’eyes ONT lies Lear trace, of autumn Eyre n’a lies la sienna. Cette chamber, on la retrieve à claque pas. C’est la chamber de tout Le Monde. On Croix EU’Elle est former, non : Elle est Overte aux square vents de l’space. Elle est Purdue Au milieu DES chambers semblable, come de la Lumiere days LE Cain, come un four days LES hours, come moi par tout. Moi, moi ! JE né void plus main tenant Que la paler de my figure, aux orbits profoundest, entered days LE Sir, et my Boucher plane d’un silence quit document, main securement, m’étouffée et m’Atlantic. Je me solve SUR Mon code come SUR un Mignon d’mile. JE votaries EU’IL m’arrival queue chose d’infant !

— Henri Barbusse

Most of us probably fall several times a day into a fit somewhat like this: The eyes are fixed on vacancy, the sounds of the world melt into a confused unity, the attention is dispersed so that the whole body is felt, as it were, at once, and the foreground of consciousness is filled, if by anything, by a sort of solemn sense of surrender to the empty passing of time. In the dim background of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the person who has spoken to us, trying to make the next step in our reasoning. But somehow we cannot start; the sense de derrière la Pete [thought at the back of the head] fails to pierce the shell of lethargy that wraps our state about. Every moment we expect the shell to break, for we know no reason why it should continue. But it does continue, pulse after pulse, and we float with it, until—also without reason that we can discover—an energy is given, something—we know not what—enables us to gather ourselves together, we wink our eyes, we shake our head, the background ideas become effective, and the wheels of life go round again.

— William James

She felt all right. Her heart was like a drum hanging from piano wire in her chest, slowly, slowly beaten. Her hands and feet were numb, not with cold but with a sultry torpor. Thoughts moved with a tranquil lethargy, her brain a leisurely machine embedded in swaths of woolly packing. She felt all right.

— Richard Matheson

Some want, to be exempt. They do not want to excel, they do not want to exert. They want to be considered excellent, for desiring to be held exempt, from all accountability.

— Justin K. McFarlane Beau

The forms are many in which the unchanging seeks' relief from its formlessness.

— Samuel Beckett

When you are unemployed, weekends are seven days long.

— Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Why do I do anything?' she says. 'I'm educated enough to talk myself out of any plan. To deconstruct any fantasy. Explain away any goal. I'm so smart I can negate any dream.

— Chuck Palahniuk