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More "Infirmity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... then, that bald, gray old man, his hands trembling with constitutional infirmity and age, upon whose consecrated head the vials of tyrannic wrath had been outpoured. Among the crowd of slaveholders who filled the galleries he could seek no friends, and but a few among those immediately around him. Unexcited, he raised his voice, high-keyed, as was usual with him, but clear, ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... shepherd's trade, And strictly meditate the thankless Muse? Were it not better done, as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair? Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears, And slits the ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... now alone and she made her way to Bridgepoint where an older half brother was already settled. This brother was a heavy, lumbering, good natured german man, full of the infirmity that comes of excess ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... passes through it, makes it appear dim, and by its moisture or dryness changes it in colour. In like manner it may thus appear through the visual organ, that is, the eye, which on account of some infirmity, or because of fatigue, is changed into some degree of dimness or into some degree of weakness. So it happens very often, owing to the membrane of the pupil becoming suffused with blood, on account of some corruption produced by weakness, that things all appear of ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... a bell rang and then a spring released the door of the cage immediately over the hole which your ball had entered, so that it swung open. The little pig within, after watching the previous infirmity of your aim with dejection, if not contempt, had pricked up his ears on the sound of the bell, and now smiled a gratified smile, irresistible in infectiousness, and trotted out, and, with the smile dissolving into an expression of absolute beatitude, slid voluptuously down the plank: ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... I have thus proceeded. Of any attention ever arrested by the pages forming the object of this reference that rigour of discrimination has wholly and consistently failed, I gather, to constitute a part. In which fact there is perhaps after all a rough justice—since the infirmity I speak of, for example, has been always but the direct and immediate fruit of a positive excess of foresight, the overdone desire to provide for future need and lay up heavenly treasure against the demands of my climax. If ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... was more than thirty years since Cyrus had taken the trouble to turn his unhappiness into philosophy—for, aided by time, he had become reconciled to his wife as a man becomes reconciled to a physical infirmity. Except for that one eventful hour in April, women had stood for so little in his existence, that he had never stopped to wonder if his domestic relations might have been pleasanter had he gone about the business of selection as carefully as he picked and chose the ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... and bandaged. It was impossible, however, to stop him gnawing at the dressings; the paw could not be cured, and the bones not having knitted, it hung limp like the sleeve of a man who has lost an arm. His infirmity, however, did not prevent his being jolly, lively, and full of fun, and he managed to race along quite fast on ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... see the individual form lost in the immensity of the objects with which he is surrounded; to see all ranks and ages blended in the exercise of common devotion; to see all distinction forgotten in the sense of common infirmity, suits the spirit of that religion which was addressed to the poor as well as to the rich, and fits the presence of that Being before whom ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye presented your members as servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity, even so now present your members as servants to righteousness unto sanctification. 20 For when ye were servants of sin, ye were free in regard of righteousness. 21 What fruit ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... that she was fond of a surreptitious pinch of snuff, and that, at the age of seventy- three, she wore flowers in her cap. There was a tradition in the house that she was not so deaf as she pretended; that she feigned this infirmity in order to possess herself of the secrets of her lodgers. But I never subscribed to this theory; I am convinced that Madame Beaurepas had outlived the period of indiscreet curiosity. She was a philosopher, on a matter-of-fact basis; she ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... complaints and humours have existed in all times; yet as all times have not been alike, true political sagacity manifests itself, in distinguishing that complaint which only characterises the general infirmity of human nature from those which are symptoms of the particular distemperature of our own ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... residence here, and could only account for it by our being so much taken up with the more obvious wonders of our novel situation. I have since learned, however, that this want of observation is a sad and very common infirmity of human nature, there being hundreds of persons before whose eyes the most wonderful things are passing every day who nevertheless, are totally ignorant of them. I therefore have to record my sympathy with such persons, and to recommend to them a course of conduct which I have ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... slaves, or their individual condition, you, Mr. Mendenhall, and your associates, who have been active in getting up this petition, call upon me forthwith to liberate the whole of them. Now let me tell you, that some half a dozen of them, from age, decrepitude, or infirmity, are wholly unable to gain a livelihood for themselves, and are a heavy charge upon me. Do you think that I should conform to the dictates of humanity by ridding myself of that charge, and sending them ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... to finish. Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Beethoven were not slaves to their own professionalism; no doubt they could laugh at it themselves. But there is always a danger that we shall be enslaved by it; and it is the business of criticism to free us from that slavery, to make us aware of this last infirmity of great artists. We are on our guard easily enough against a professionalism that is out of fashion. The Wagnerian of a generation ago could sneer at the professionalism of Mozart; but the professionalism of Wagner seemed to him to be inspiration made constant and certain by a new musical invention. ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... by no means a large class—the grave, dignified, self-possessed, well-mannered waiter; smooth-shaven, spotlessly clean, noiseless, smug and attentive. He generally walks with a slight limp, an infirmity due to his sedentary habits and his long acquaintance with his several employers' decanters. He is never under fifty, is round of form, short in the legs, broad of shoulder, and wears his gray hair cut close. He has had a long and ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... their apostrophe and simile were wonderful. Geography and history furnished great attractions, and they developed ability to master them. In mathematics they did not do so well, on account of the lack of training to think consecutively and methodically. It is a mistake to believe this a mental infirmity of the race; for a very large number of the students in college at the present time do as well in mathematics, geometry, trigonometry, mensuration, and conic sections as the white students of the same age; and some of ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... existed in both colonies; but Judge Pedder did not participate the political sympathies of Judge Forbes, and made no pretence to popular applause. To those who check the abuses of irresponsible power something is due; but when the balance of human infirmity is struck, it will not be always found in ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... first a shell-fish in appearance, and from that, sticking upon old wood, became in time a bird. After some consideration, they unanimously burst out into laughter, believing it altogether false; and, to say the truth, it was the only thing true he had discoursed with them: that was his infirmity, though otherwise a person of most excellent parts, and a very ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... and his family were domiciled in the home of Captain Jose de la Guerra, a friend of his, who met him at the landing to render all the assistance in his power. The captain's house was a large one, and Don Raimundo was led to this plan on account of the growing infirmity of his wife. ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... Merritt's about the trees. They had been repeated, because people thought such ideas queer and showing lack of common-sense. He had heard them unthinkingly, but now, standing on Squire Merritt's door-step, looking at his old tree pensioners, whom he would not desert in their infirmity, he remembered, and the great man's love for his trees gave him reason, with a sudden leap of faith, to believe in his kindness towards him. "I'm better than an old tree," reasoned Jerome, and raised the knocker again boldly and ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... which, though at the first it did much dash and abash my spirit, yet being still by them desired and entreated, I consented to their request, and did twice at two several assemblies (but in private), though with much weakness and infirmity, discover my gift amongst them; at which they not only seemed to be, but did solemnly protest, as in the sight of the great God, they were both affected and comforted; and gave thanks to the Father of mercies, for the grace ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... been struck by Madame de la Fayette's words, inspired by so much friendliness. I never let myself forget the fact that I am growing old; but I must confess that I was simply astonished at what she said, because I do not yet feel any infirmity to keep me in mind of my advancing years. I think of them, however, and find that life offers us hard conditions: here have I been led, in spite of myself, to the fatal period at which one must die—old age. I see it; old age has ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... the good news told him; for first Artasyras, and, next to him, you assured him of the decease of Cyrus." Mithridates retired without complaint, though not without resentment. But the unfortunate Carian was fool enough to give way to a natural infirmity. For being ravished with the sight of the princely gifts that were before him, and being tempted thereupon to challenge and aspire to things above him, he deigned not to accept the king's present as a reward for good news, but indignantly crying out and appealing ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... article which stands by itself on the firm foundation of Faith, I shall render joyous praise for the finished work to Him from whom the invitation comes. But if human nature has failed to reach beyond its limits, whatever is lost through my infirmity must be made good by ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... continue to be easier for a time to strike the colored man than to strike off his shackles. There is a mean and low side of humanity, a sort of defiled infirmity, that runs into a disposition to strike the helpless. This is the bravery of ruffianism. There is apt to be a shrinking away from duty, when the contest involves a conflict with arrogant power. This is the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... "Miss Maitland, accept my compliments; you possess the key to a sex no fellow can unlock. And, now I have found an interpreter, I begin to be interested in this little comedy. The first act is just over. There will be half an hour's wait till the simulatrix of infirmity comes running back with the pilgrims of the Rhine. Are they 'the pilgrims of the Rhine' or 'the pilgrims of Love?' Time will show. Play to recommence with a verbal encounter; you will be one against three; for all that, I ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... such as have permission to retire from the service on a stated pension, on account of age or infirmity. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... and it has been eminently successful, and therefore I commend it to others, treating with pity the infirmity of those who ignorantly condemn it, as "They know not what ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill
... deceived, and this shows that our faith was in excess of our knowledge. Sometimes, indeed, it is quite independent of knowledge. We trust people because we like them, or because they like us. This infirmity is well known to sharpers and adventurers, who invariably cultivate a pleasing manner, and generally practise the arts of flattery. The same principle holds good in religion. It was sagaciously ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... sense are needed,—stern study, and logical generalization of scattered truths, and patient observation of the characters of men, and the wisdom that comes from sorrow and passion, and a sage's experience of things actual, embracing the dark secrets of human infirmity and crime. But despite all that has been said in disparagement or disbelief of "mute, inglorious Miltons," we maintain that there are natures in which the divinest element of poetry exists, the purer and more delicate for escaping from bodily form and evaporating ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it is, then it is certainly not worth coming to church for. Preaching, if it is of the right kind, is the voice of God. This we venture to say while well aware of its imperfections. In the best of preaching there is a large human element beset with infirmity; yet in all genuine preaching there is conveyed a message from Heaven. And, while it is good for people to go to church that they may speak to God, it is still better to go that He may speak to them. Nor, where God is authentically heard speaking ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... saw him was not only so decrepit that he hobbled along the stage, and so bent in the middle that his body formed an angle with his lower limbs, almost as acute as that of a mounted telescope, but was so encumbered by infirmity and high living that upon any violent exertion of the lungs he puffed very painfully; yet even in that state we have heard him speak the part of Rhadamistus in Zenobia, with all the fire, rapidity, and animation of youth, his fine person ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... times, sufferers were regarded with awe, as being possessed by a spirit. Witch doctors among savages, and founders and expounders of differing creeds among more civilized peoples, have taken advantage of this infirmity to claim divine inspiration, and the power of ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... Detraction to object the worst That may be told, and utter all it can; It cannot find a blemish to be enforced Against him, other than he was a man, And built of flesh and blood, and did live here, Within the region of infirmity; Where all perfections never did appear To meet in any one so really, But that his frailty ever did bewray Unto the world that he was ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... vain attempted to make me speak; a harsh guttural sound was all which I would utter to express pain or pleasure. At last, being convinced that I was dumb, he exchanged me with a slave-merchant for a beautiful Circassian girl. He did not state my supposed infirmity, but gave it as a reason for parting with me, that I was too young, and required to be taught. As soon as the bargain was struck, and the merchant had received the money which had been given by Ali to effect the ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... is all American, with the exception of a glass eye. The substitute optic is alien. Gary tried to enlist in the U. S. Marine Corps at their recruiting station in Louisville, Ky., but was rejected when his infirmity was discovered by Sergeant G. ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... fortunes in the realm, and the number of subjects removed from activity by even moderate affluence is remarkably small. Likewise, the number of persons reckoned in the non-producing class, through dissipation or infirmity, is insignificant. And, more potent than all these reasons uniting to assist in the expansion of Japanese industry and thrift, is the intense patriotism of the people, stimulated by glorious success in two wars against foreign nations of overwhelming populations, as ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... shrunken arm, and then, as though ashamed of this allusion to his own personal infirmity, he ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... front of him, rose the lengthy and fishy person with the cowhide boots and enormous hands. His name was Josiah Badger and he was, according to Trumet's estimate, "a little mite lackin' in his top riggin'." He stuttered, and this infirmity became more and more ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... fared far better, had it not been for his heart, which was soft and underdone. A kind word made a fool of him; and hence most of the scrapes he got into. Two or three wags, aware of his infirmity, used to "draw him out" in conversation whenever the most crabbed and choleric old ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... controverted, that there was an innate predilection in the mind of Lord Byron to mystify everything about himself: he was actuated by a passion to excite attention, and, like every other passion, it was often indulged at the expense of propriety. He had the infirmity of speaking, though vaguely, and in obscure hints and allusions, more of his personal concerns than is commonly deemed consistent with a correct estimate of the interest which mankind take in the cares of one another. But he lived to feel and to rue the consequences: to repent he could ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... monks were more innocent. The garden was always a great place of resort, and gardening a favourite pastime. We may be sure there was much lamentation and grumbling at St. Alban's when Abbot John de Maryns forbade any monk, who from infirmity could only be carried on a litter, from entering the garden at all. Poor old fellows! had their bearers been disorderly and trodden upon the flower-beds? Bowls was the favourite and a very common diversion among them; but in ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... this Home has been made a Christian Home, and its inmates taught to believe that only in coming to God in Christ as their infinite divine Saviour, and touching the hem of his garments, is there any hope of being cured of their infirmity, has its great ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... extreme leniency to me, unworthy, that the doctor was able to tolerate my own defection from the elder faith in medicine; and I could not feel his kindness less caressing because I knew it a concession to an infirmity. He said something like, After all a good physician was the great matter; and I eagerly turned his clemency to praise of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... other, still more sadly. "That I may be only the more unhap—unwilling to lose you?" And she turned away her head. Amelia began to give way to that natural infirmity of tears which, we have said, was one of the defects of this silly little thing. George Osborne looked at the two young women with a touched curiosity; and Joseph Sedley heaved something very like a sigh out of his big chest, as he cast ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Ivar never drank, and Alexandra thought at once that one of his spells had come upon him, and that he must be in a very bad way indeed. She ran downstairs and hurried out to meet him, to hide his infirmity from the eyes of her household. The old man fell in the road at her feet and caught her hand, over which he bowed his shaggy head. "Mistress, mistress," he sobbed, "it has fallen! Sin and death for the young ones! ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... attend the funeral of my poor old aunt, who died on Thursday. I own I am thankful that the good creature has ended all her days of suffering and infirmity. She was to me the "cherisher of infancy," and one must fall on these occasions into reflections which it would be commonplace to enumerate, concerning death, "of chance and change, and fate in human life." Good God, who could have foreseen all this but four months back! ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... of Athens then, which were found in very deed somewhat later to be the infirmity of Greece as a whole, when, though its versatile gifts of intellect might constitute it the teacher of its eventual masters, it was found too incoherent politically to hold its own against Rome:—those evils of Athens, ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... infirmity Of childish questioning and discontent. Whate'er befalls us is divinely meant— Thou Truth the clearer for thy mystery! Make us to meet what is or is to be With fervid welcome, knowing it is sent To serve us in some way full excellent, Though we discern ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... organs must be deficient in true vital force and energy. It is often noticeable that a child apparently strong and vigorous, may have but little power to resist disease, or may even be strongly predisposed to some infirmity." The colored women in the section under discussion who become mothers, are usually multiporae long before ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... he could not be prevailed upon to charge. This was the more unfortunate for the insurgents, as the leading of a party of the Macphersons had been committed to MacGregor. This, it is said, was owing to the age and infirmity of the chief of that name, who, unable to lead his clan in person, objected to his heir-apparent, Macpherson of Nord, discharging his duty on that occasion; so that the tribe, or a part of them, were brigaded with their allies ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... following rather lengthy sentence:—"If the devil were in a laughing mood, what could seem more grimly humorous to him than the vision of a fair young spirit striving consciously after ethereal perfection, but overweighted unconsciously by the bonds and fetters of human infirmity and passion, and dragged at last headlong down the abysmal descent to perdition?" "Abysmal" is ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... were passing behind the silent and motionless couple looked at them compassionately. A whole legend of devotion was attached to them. He had married her in spite of her infirmity, touched by her affection for him, it ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... fellow, who had stood loitering till the hurricane whistled round his ears, making towards me, as rapidly as his apparently palsied limbs would permit. Upon his nearer approach, he appeared rather to have suffered from infirmity than years. He wore a brownish-black coat, or rather shell, which, from its dimensions, had never been intended for the wearer; and his inexpressibles were truly inexpressible. "So," said I, as he seated himself on the bench, and shook the rain ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... his chair quite still, as indeed he always was, but now it was a deathlike quietness, without the least sign of the wonderful mobility of feature and cheerfulness of voice and manner which made people so soon grow used to his infirmity—sat until his room was prepared. Then he suffered himself to be carried to his bed, which, for the first time in his life, he refused ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... My story early—not misled, I trust, By an infirmity of love for days Disowned by memory—ere the breath of spring 615 Planting my snowdrops among winter snows: [p] Nor will it seem to thee, O Friend! so prompt In sympathy, that I have lengthened out With fond and feeble tongue a tedious tale. Meanwhile, my hope has been, that ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... write these lines, you whom I do not know, though I know that you are still fighting or that you have returned broken from the trenches. I have met you in the street, wearing an almost shamefaced air, doing your best to conceal some infirmity; but in your eyes I have read the intensity of your inward agony. I know the terrible hours through which you have lived, and I know that those who have endured like trials end by having like souls.... I know your doubts; I share your uneasiness. I know how you are obsessed with the question, ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... "nerves" is the only one in the household who will eat sparingly and chew his food slowly. But now and then I find an intelligent, sympathetic man who will do so because it is helpful to his wife. He sympathizes with her infirmity, and with fine self-denial eats as she does. And note this: he usually derives benefit from so doing. Time after time when I have put a nervous woman under this regimen, and then her husband elected to go along with her, I have had the man come to me and say: ...
— How to Eat - A Cure for "Nerves" • Thomas Clark Hinkle
... emphatically denies the assertion that the poor must always be with us. The productive capacity of society is now so great that none need want, and all are able to earn their livelihood, and more, except where they are prevented from doing so by sickness, infirmity, or by the existence of laws and customs which the individual cannot himself, acting alone, remove."[196] "There is a demand for the labour of every man under any well-ordered social system. If there is a waste of men now, it is the fault of the wage ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... during the day, had retired to his own apartment, for there were some moments when, in the sadness of his thoughts, he sought that solitude which he so impatiently fled from at others)—each of the circle had some story to relate equally veracious and indisputable, of an infirmity cured, or a prayer accorded, or a sin atoned for at the foot of the holy tomb. One story peculiarly affected Lucille; the narrator, a venerable old man with gray locks, solemnly declared himself a witness of ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... experience, romance? Was this all there was to life and love? What was the sense, the end? Her dissatisfaction reproached the Cosmos, grew to that Weltschmerz which is merely low spirits and reduced vitality, not "an infirmity ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... inheritance of feverish passion, there was added another, and to him a heavy and life-long burden. A physical defect in a healthy nature may either pass without notice or be turned to a high purpose. No line of his work reveals the fact that Sir Walter Scott was lame. The infirmity failed to cast even a passing shade over that serene power. Milton's blindness is the occasion of the noblest prose and verse of resignation in the language. But to understand Pope, we must remember that ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... Felipe's master were immediately reported to Hideyoshi. They roused him to hot anger. He is reported to have cried: "What! my States are filled with traitors, and their numbers increase every day. I have proscribed the foreign doctors, but out of compassion for the age and infirmity of some among them, I have allowed their remaining in Japan. I shut my eyes to the presence of several others because I fancied them to be quiet and incapable of forming bad designs, and they are serpents I have been cherishing in my bosom. The traitors are entirely employed ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the moral courage of her son had developed. In her code of manhood there was no tolerance for infirmity of purpose, and mental fear was as degrading and as disintegrating as physical cowardice. He had been a man of the world in the miniature world that the miles of mountains had enclosed around him. He had ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... and my people might have kept the knowledge from me, out of consideration for my infirmity,' she said. 'I should be very angry if it were so. I should hate to be treated ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Evidently, these companions were all three on intimate terms, as was natural enough, since a great many childish impulses were softly creeping back on the simple-minded old man; insomuch that, if no worldly necessities nor painful infirmity had disturbed him, his remnant of life might have been as cheaply and cheerily enjoyed as the early playtime of the kitten and the child. Old Dr. Dolliver and his great-granddaughter (a ponderous title, which seemed ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... publication, I saw poor Janet was entirely thrown out, though, like a jaded hunter, panting, puffing, and short of wind, she endeavoured at least to keep up with the chase. Or, rather, her perplexity made her look all the while like a deaf person ashamed of his infirmity, who does not understand a word you are saying, yet desires you to believe that he does understand you, and who is extremely jealous that you suspect his incapacity. When she saw that some remark was necessary, she resembled exactly in her ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... rarest interval we do meet, an individual who is able to preserve his personality as Nature meant it to live, we feel an attraction towards him such as is irresistible. Now I would challenge those who knew him to say whether they ever knew any other man so free from this great human infirmity as Tennyson. The way in which his simplicity of nature would manifest itself was, in some instances, most remarkable. Though, of course, he had his share of that egoism of the artist without which imaginative genius may become ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... am right glad to hear that you are with child, although your infirmity is very grievous unto me. Consider and tell me those things that you deem will be to your healing, and I will seek and ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... much wrinkled, and with more than one Button missing. His Face, too full to be handsom, was likewise marred by the Effects of some scrofulous Disorder; and his Head was continually rolling about in a sort of convulsive way. Of this Infirmity, indeed, I had known before; having heard of it from Mr. Pope, who took the Trouble to make ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... it short—don't prose—don't hum and haw. "The author had doubtless no ambition to enter his name on the honorable and ancient roll of gentlemen prosers; probably he conceived himself not at all tainted with the asthmatic infirmity of humming and hawing; but, as to "cutting it short," how could he be sure of meeting his lordship's expectations in that point, unless by dismissing the limitations that might be requisite to fit the idea for use, or ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... any clergy, should show themselves vicious beyond the fair bounds allowed to human infirmity, and to those professional faults which can hardly be separated from professional virtues, though their vices never can countenance the exercise of oppression, I do admit that they would naturally have the effect of abating very much of our indignation against the tyrants ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... dear Father, as you do bear it all, how can we wish that God should spare you one trial or infirmity, which, we know, are, in His providence, making you daily riper and riper for Heaven? I ought not to write to you like this, but somehow the idea of our ever meeting anywhere else has so entirely passed from my mind, that I try to view things with reference ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... event of a tournament, which was the grand spectacle of that age, felt as much interested as the half-starved citizen of Madrid, who has not a real left to buy provisions for his family, feels in the issue of a bull-fight. Neither duty nor infirmity could keep youth or age from such exhibitions. The passage of arms, as it was called, which was to take place at Ashby, in the county of Leicester, as champions of the first renown were to take the field in the presence of Prince John himself, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... De Pais's Sword drawn, and ready to kill his Daughter, who lay all in Tears at his Feet. He with-held his Hand; and asking the Cause of his Rage, he was told all that Atlante had confess'd; which put Vernole quite beside all his Gravity, and made him discover the Infirmity of Anger, which he used to say ought to be dissembled by all wise Men: So that De Pais forgot his own to appease his, but 'twas in vain, for he went out of the House, vowing Revenge to Rinaldo: ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... symbols, on the ground that these were only schetically worshipped by them, the honor passing from them to the prototype. And since we live in bodies, and can scarcely, conceive of any thing without having some image or phantasm, we may therefore be indulged in this infirmity of human nature (at least in the vulgar) to worship God under a corporeal image, as a means of preventing men from ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... was promptly shot off at me in a brief tone of voice. I made with my head and my hand a courteous gesture, by which I seemed to sympathize gently with the infirmity that was thus revealed to me, after which I sat down, feeling more easy. I had drawn my adversary's fire. Honor seemed to ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... which arguments fall short of a tolerable standard of proof, though they cannot be exhibited as definite breaches of logical principles. Logicians, therefore, might be excused from discussing them; but out of the abundance of their pity for human infirmity they usually describe and label the chief classes of these 'extra-logical fallacies,' and exhibit a ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... criticism, to the memory, there to exercise the mind to the last of life, to be the amusement of our declining years, and, when all the other faculties for receiving pleasure are impaired by old age and infirmity, to cast the sunshine of delight over the last moments ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... other Night upon this Topick, and in made such a strong Impression upon me, that it produced a very odd Dream. As it is the Weakness of Women, and old Men, to be fond of telling their Dreams to their Friends, I hope my Readers will excuse me this Infirmity ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... May or early in June, rebuking backsliders, and denouncing the Queen's rumoured marriage with any infidel, "and all Papists are infidels." Papists and Protestants were both offended. There was a scene with Mary, in which she wept profusely, an infirmity of hers; we constantly hear of her weeping in public. She wished the Lords of the Articles to see whether Knox's "manner of speaking" was not punishable, but nothing could be done. Elizabeth would have found ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... passions, abandons itself[3] to indolence and sensuality, when it has indulged for a season in pernicious gratifications, and when bodily strength, time, and mental vigor, have been wasted in sloth, the infirmity of nature is accused, and those who are themselves in fault impute their delinquency ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... the rays of light is too great, as in over-convexity of the cornea, or the crystalline lens, or the vitreous humor, or all of them, the image is formed a little in front of the retina. Persons thus affected cannot see distinctly, except at a very short distance. This infirmity is called near, or short-sightedness. This defect is in a great measure obviated by the use of concave glasses, which scatter the luminous rays, and thus counterbalance the too strong refracting ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... boys who attended Salsette Academy mention that martinet, Major Pater. Although his infirmity—or injury—precluded his having anything to do with the drilling of the pupils of the academy, in the schoolroom he was the most stern of all the ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... defect of such a nature that all can recognize it as making certain precautions impossible, he will not be held answerable for not taking them. A blind man is not required to see at his peril; and although he is, no doubt, bound to consider his infirmity in regulating his actions, yet if he properly finds himself in a certain situation, the neglect of precautions requiring eyesight would not prevent his recovering for an injury to himself, and, it ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... them, and something of the mule, and something of a soul trying to wander out of the forest of misfortune; his little, tip-tilted nose that never grew on pure-blooded Frenchman; under a scant moustache his thick lips, disfigured by infirmity of speech, whence passed so continually a dribble of saliva—sick British workman was stamped on him. Yet he was passionately fond of washing himself; his teeth, his head, his clothes. Into the frigid winter he would go, and stand at ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... of old age every day of their lives, and sometimes hourly during the day. When this goes on for three, four, five or ten years, it is too much for the most of humanity. It is taken as an accepted fact that old age means infirmity, and the break comes, not really because the body is weak and worn out, but because the mental state has contributed too much to the idea that they are no longer young and cannot be youthful, and are getting too old to enjoy things that others ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... there is no foundation for any high or supernatural views of inspiration in either the Gospels or Epistles. There is no appearance in those writings that their authors had any extraordinary gift, or that they were free from error or infirmity; St. Paul hesitated in difficult cases, and more than once corrected himself; one of the gospel historians does not profess to have been an eye-witness of the events described by him; the evangelists do not agree as to the dwelling-place of Christ's parents, ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... course of my life I have suffered, like many others, from nameless afflictions—nameless because they do not exist. No one can localize this strange infirmity or realize it. You only know you have a sensation of depression. In every other respect I was perfectly well, yet I thought it was necessary to see a doctor. So it was, if I wished ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... under the majesty of his spirit that might otherwise have grown into a revolting and self-sufficient pride. It is so vain to struggle against these fetters and restraints; God knows what we need, and it may be ever the mightiest souls that are curbed while on earth by some physical infirmity. ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... with furs, a tiger-skin over his knees, his pale hands clasping his wrappings together at the throat. He was considerate for my mother's comfort, as a host should be, and he betrayed an eager curiosity and interest concerning my infirmity; which showed his care for me, but which I resented as an intrusion. For I had reached the point when it was easy for me to endure the fact that I was unlike other men in my physical strength, but was not yet sufficiently ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... Joshua and Elizabeth to yield to infirmity, and retire from active life. The hard work of the new country told seriously upon even strong constitutions. Some of the members of their society older, and some even younger, than themselves ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... For we have not a High Priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, BUT WAS IN ALL POINTS TEMPTED AS WE ARE, yet without sin; who can have compassion on the ignorant, as he also himself is compassed with infirmity, and though a Son, yet learned obedience by the ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... the crushed tigno. It is not easy to believe that others are more successful, but the popular renown of the specific survives in spite of all, probably thanks to a simple accident of identity between the name of the remedy and that of the infirmity: the Provencal for "chilblain" is tigno. From the moment when the chilblain and the nest of the Mantis were known by the same name were not the virtues of the latter ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... him.—Good God! a year ago he worshipped you! I believe there was something you told him—some pointer you gave him at one time about work, that made an immense impression on him.—You mean something to him. Me, he dislikes. He knew months ago that I—well, saw something of his infirmity. But, while I don't believe in him, this affair mustn't go on. The fellow could have learned to paint. He's killing himself now, not physically, but mentally and morally.—The whole city's waked up to him. His pace ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... found a sure refuge from themselves. The weakness that shrunk from the censure or the scorn of others, could be poured out to her as to one whose mission upon earth was to pity and to heal; for she knew the whole range of human infirmity, and that the wisest have the roots of those frailties that conquer the weak. But in restoring the fallen to their connexion with the honoured, she never held out a hope that they might parley with their temptations, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... Lady Landale, "(excuse me pray—it's becoming quite an infirmity) so that is settled. I hope it will storm to-night, that the wind will blow and howl—and then I snuggle in the feather bed in that queer old room and try and fancy I am happy Molly ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... darkness) that it bore the first gentleman's name. It was a mischance, sir, but so far as I can see one that might have happened to anybody. You say that even after apologising—for on reflection I am always willing to apologise for any conduct into which my infirmity of temper may have betrayed me—it is impossible for me to continue here as your assistant. I am glad, then, that prudence counselled me to provide two strings to my bow, and engage myself to Dr. Mathers of Bath, on the chance that you proved unsatisfactory; and I thank you for ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... listening to stories of sin and sorrow and misery. It is only the consciousness of the immense good he is doing that sustains the confessor in the sacred tribunal. He is one "who can have compassion on the ignorant and erring, because he himself is also encompassed with infirmity."(468) ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... children, may be powerful enough as motives to hold you always in the future above its enticements. But, trusting in these alone, you can never dwell in complete safety. You need a deeper work of cure than it is possible for you to obtain from any earthly physician. Only God can heal you of this infirmity. ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... boys, as he called him, tripped him up at school, and he fell on his hip. It kept him in bed for a year, and he's never been the same since; he will always be a cripple," grieved the mother. She wiped her eyes; she never could think of her boy's infirmity without weeping. "And what seemed the worst of all," she continued, "was that the boy who did it never expressed any regret for it, or acknowledged it by word or deed, though he must have known that Ben knew who hurt him. He's a man here, now; and sometimes Ben meets him. But Ben ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... Miss Arnold is called for by friends to play on the piano at an evening entertainment. Mrs. Brown and I, being left alone, begin a conversation of the personal kind, which is the only resource among the poor. If she had had any infirmity—a wooden leg or a glass eye—she would naturally have begun by showing it to me, but as she had been spared intact ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... entertainment of his own time, Defoe took the surest way of writing for the entertainment of all time. Yet if he had never chanced to write Robinson Crusoe, he would now have a very obscure place in English literature. His "natural infirmity of homely plain writing," as he humorously described it, might have drawn students to his works, but they ran considerable risk of lying in utter oblivion. He was at war with the whole guild of respectable writers who have become classics; ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... his name in the roll of martyrs. The worth of a man must be measured by his life, not by his failure under a single and peculiar trial. The Apostle, though forewarned, denied his Master on the first alarm of danger; yet that Master, who knew his nature in its strength and its infirmity, chose him for the rock on which ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... as the King calleth him!" exclaimed Sir Thomas. "A man I have ever thought wore the motley rather from excess, than infirmity, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... which it is really of much consequence what the tribunal is, the proposition might probably be reversed; besides which, the cause of error, whether arising from the intricacy of the case or from some common prejudice or mental infirmity, if it acted upon one judge, would be extremely likely to affect all the others in the same manner, or at least a majority, and thus render a wrong instead of a right decision more probable the more ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... from literary labour, Smollett once went to revisit his family, and to embrace the mother he loved; but such was the irritation of his mind and the infirmity of his health, exhausted by the hard labours of authorship, that he never passed a more weary summer, nor ever found himself so incapable of indulging the warmest emotions of his heart. On his return, in a letter, he gave this melancholy narrative of himself:—"Between friends, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... conduct from the moment of his retirement from office, in consequence of his Free Trade vote and speech in '79, had been, with occasional exceptions, arising mostly from bodily infirmity, as energetic and consistent as that of Grattan himself, saw no sufficient constitutional guarantee in mere acts of Parliament repealing other acts. He demanded "express renunciation" of legislative supremacy on the part of England; while Grattan maintained the sufficiency of "simple repeal." It ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... gives rise to these objections, and at the same time renders it so difficult to give a satisfactory answer to them, is the natural infirmity and unsteadiness both of our imagination and senses, when employed on such minute objects. Put a spot of ink upon paper, and retire to such a distance, that the spot becomes altogether invisible; you will find, that upon your return and nearer approach the spot first becomes visible by ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... all his hearers than you have. This is what makes the matter hopeless. If a farmer talks to you about his pigs or his poultry, or a physician about his patients, or a lawyer about his briefs, or a merchant about stock, or an author about himself, you know how to account for this, it is a common infirmity, you have a laugh at his expense and there is no more to be said. But here is a man who goes out of his way to be absurd, and is troublesome by a romantic effort of generosity. You cannot say to him, 'All this may be interesting to you, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... in the Tertiary or some other period, some female monkeys were less hirsute than others, and that they naturally preferred males possessing similar characteristics. These divergencies were thus commenced, and, by continuous "sexual selection," the infirmity (for such he regards the loss of hair) was propagated until the race was almost entirely denuded or bereft of this covering. In the same way he accounts for nearly all the differentiations of the race, among the various tribes now or formerly inhabiting the ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... indeterminate; the features with their slight twist to the left; the complexion, once fair, and now reddened by years and ill-health; the hair, of a yellowish grey; the head and shoulders with their nervous infirmity. Only the eyes still possessed some purity of colour. Through all their timidity or wavering, they were still blue and sweet; perhaps they alone explained why a good many persons—including her ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... after the manner of men, because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness, and to iniquity, unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness, unto holiness. For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. What fruit had ye then in those ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... help it, you are in an abnormal condition, you have lost self-control,—it is a mild type of mental derangement. You must attack your bad habit of worrying as you would a disease. It is definitely something to be overcome, an infirmity that you are ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... not far from his heart to put him in minde of dilection and loue to the woman. Lastly, a bone from the left side, to put the woman in minde, that by reason of her frailty and infirmity she standeth in need of both the one and the other ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 44, Saturday, August 31, 1850 • Various
... employed here, signifies exalted to the right hand of God. "Perfection" (bringing unto the end) "was not by the Levitical priesthood." "The law perfected nothing, but it was the additional introduction of a better hope by which we draw near unto God." "The law maketh men high priests which have infirmity, which are not suffered to continue, by reason of death; but the word of the oath after the law maketh the Son perfect for evermore," bringeth him to the end, namely, an everlasting priesthood in the heavens. That Christian believers ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... truthful speech—the consummate tact of direct attention. Looking ever to the All-Wise Disposer of events, he relied on that Providence which helps men by giving them high hearts and hopes to help themselves with the means which their Creator has put at their service. There was no infirmity in his conduct over which charity must fling its veil; no taint of selfishness from which purity averts her gaze; no dark recess of intrigue that must be lit up with colored panegyric; no subterranean passage to be trod in trembling, lest there be stirred ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... frocks, invariably too large, hung round her as if they had nothing under them. Above a deformed and puny body she had a sweet little doll-like head, a tiny round face, pale and exquisitely delicate. Her infirmity almost became graceful. Her body swayed gently at every step with a ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... was near-sighted, and this infirmity had deterred him from an amusement which he would have enjoyed very much; but that day, however, he wished to make the attempt, and, having expressed this. wish, the Duke of Montebello handed him a gun, and M. de Beauterne had the honor of giving the Emperor his first lesson. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... it is a duty, that God hides Himself only in light and love, that He calls upon us to become spirits, to possess ourselves and to possess Him in the measure of our strength and that it is our incredulity, our spiritual cowardice, which is our infirmity ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cried the man; and entirely forgetful of his infirmity, he took three or four paces toward them, with his ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... peculiarities in Mr Sudberry's character, he was afflicted with a chronic tendency to dab his pen into the ink-bottle and split it to the feather, or double up its point so as to render it unserviceable. This infirmity, coupled with an uncommon capacity for upsetting ink-bottles, had induced him to hire a small clerk, whose principal duties were to mend pens, wipe up ink, and, generally, to attend to ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... said, on leaving his eastern home, after peace had been declared, for the then verge of civilization—the Ohio. Here the soldier lived to see the wilderness blossom like the rose, and here he died, grieving that infirmity prevented his flying from the din of the sledge hammer, and the busy hum of mechanical life. Mr. Duncan's father, in the vigor of manhood, crossed the Mississippi, and settled at the Cold Springs, a region then isolated from civilization, ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... of March 1823, Lord St Vincent was seized with a general feeling of infirmity which portended his speedy dissolution. He had a violent and convulsive cough; yet his intellects were strongly turned upon public events, and he expressed an anxiety to know all that could be known of events in France, which was then disturbed; of the Spanish revolution, which then threatened to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... suddenness. Everywhere the condition of the houses showed how hastily they had been abandoned; and the wild hurry of flight was shown still more clearly in the case of the woman—whose surroundings gave evidence that she had been a person of consequence—deserted in her age or infirmity and ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... from Zululand in T'Chaka's time—and she told me that all the people whom I had seen had died of fever. When they had died the other inhabitants of the kraal had taken the cattle and gone away, leaving the poor old woman, who was helpless from age and infirmity, to perish of starvation or disease, as the case might be. She had been sitting there for three days among the bodies when I found her. I took her on to the next kraal, and gave the headman a blanket ...
— Long Odds • H. Rider Haggard
... A king of Bavaria singing Wagner's operas among rocks and lakes; a brother of the king of Bavaria resembling Sigismund de Calderon by his epilepsy and insanity; Prince Rudolph showing that the double infirmity inherent in the paternal lineage of Charles the Rash and in the maternal line of Joanna the Mad continues in the Austrians; a recent king of Prussia itself shutting himself up in his room as in a gaol, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... he said? I have observed that the murderer dies with courage and firmness in many instances, but that does not make me think that it sanctified his crime; in fact, it makes no impression upon me one way or the other. When a man through old age or infirmity approaches death the intellectual faculties are dimmed, his senses become less and less, and as he loses these he goes back to his old superstition. Old age brings back the memories of childhood. And the great bard gave in the corrupt and besotted Falstaff—who ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... am undertaking? I have come to Paris this winter with the idea of collecting some; but if my horrible cold continues, my stay here will be useless! Am I going to become like the canon of Poitiers, of whom Montaigne speaks, who for thirty years did not leave his room "because of his melancholic infirmity," but who, however, was very well "except for a cold which had settled on his stomach." This is to tell you that I am seeing very few people. Moreover whom could I see? The war has opened many abysses. I have not ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... resistance. When he could free his eyes from the cloak he looked at the rescuer, who, unaware of his infirmity, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... is also represented in the Scripture as one who prays. We read in Rom. viii. 26, R. V., "And in like manner the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity; for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." It is plain from this passage that the Holy Spirit is not merely an influence that moves us to pray, not merely an illumination that teaches ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... not by fierce opposition to push doubt into error. When a drunkard died, he remembered that "his mother was an habitual drinker, and he was nursed on milk-punch, and the thirst was in his constitution"; so he hoped "that God saw it was a constitutional infirmity, like any other disease." He reduced the dogma of Total Depravity to the simple proposition, "that men by nature do not love God supremely, and their neighbor as themselves." He stoutly resisted the attempt to overawe belief, either his own or another's. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... bond of marriage to a squaw and to settle among the redskins, the coureurs de bois were none the less drones among their compatriots; they did not make up their minds to establish themselves in places where they might have become excellent farmers, until through age and infirmity they were rather a burden ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... habituated him to his present condition. Meek, uncomplaining, and zealous in the discharge of his duties, he has been allowed to hold his situation long beyond the usual period; and he will no doubt continue to hold it, until infirmity renders him incapable, or death releases him. As the grey-headed old man feebly paces up and down the sunny side of the little court-yard between school hours, it would be difficult, indeed, for the most intimate of his former friends to recognise their once gay and happy associate, in the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... God and holy Church? Child, if our holy Father the Pope were to tell me himself that she was there, I would not believe him. Do the angels go to Purgatory? Nay, I do verily believe that, seeing her infirmity, Christ our Lord did all the work of salvation for her, and that she sings now before ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... World for the benefit of members of the Convention. But if she were a confiding miss of "sweet sixteen," instead of the "strong-minded woman" that she is, and the blushes of all those brilliant signs were transfused into her own lovely cheeks, we suspect (such is the infirmity or the perversity of "those odious men") that she would make more conquests than she can reasonably expect to do with the intellectual blaze and brilliancy of this week's Revolution—splendid new signs and all. We fear the time is rather distant when ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... merely the speaking of a man. If it is, then it is certainly not worth coming to church for. Preaching, if it is of the right kind, is the voice of God. This we venture to say while well aware of its imperfections. In the best of preaching there is a large human element beset with infirmity; yet in all genuine preaching there is conveyed a message from Heaven. And, while it is good for people to go to church that they may speak to God, it is still better to go that He may speak to them. Nor, where God is authentically heard speaking to the heart, ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... mistress, with others their associates: see to what a condition they have reduced me by their incantations and witchcraft:" upon which he laid bare his arm, all shrivelled and decayed. But the counsellors, who knew that this infirmity had attended him from his birth, looked on each other with amazement; and, above all, Lord Hastings, who, as he had since Edward's death engaged in an intrigue with Jane Shore,[*] [20] was naturally anxious concerning the issue of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... professionalism; no doubt they could laugh at it themselves. But there is always a danger that we shall be enslaved by it; and it is the business of criticism to free us from that slavery, to make us aware of this last infirmity of great artists. We are on our guard easily enough against a professionalism that is out of fashion. The Wagnerian of a generation ago could sneer at the professionalism of Mozart; but the professionalism of Wagner seemed to him to be inspiration made constant and certain ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... England, materials for the early History of the State. An application made by Dr. Woods to Sir Thomas Phillipps revealed the existence of Hakluyt's Discourse. Dr. Woods set to work to edit this valuable document, but a fire destroyed most of his materials, and was followed by physical infirmity which forbade literary labour. Dr. Charles Deane's familiarity with the topics suggested by the matter in hand, and his position as a "Collaborateur" of Dr. Woods for some months, at once pointed him out as the right man to do the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... there were Lancastrian exiles who might take up the report. Her only safety was in being known, to the few who did meet her, as the convent-bred maiden whose home had been destroyed, and who was content to gain a livelihood as the assistant whom his wife's infirmity made needful. As to Sir Leonard, the knight's own grace and gratitude had endeared him, as well as the professional pleasure of curing him, and for the lady's sake he ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... no such thing here as poverty or lack of employment. There is work for all who are able to do it; and those who, by reason of age or infirmity, are unable to work, are all honourably provided for, so that they can live in the same comfort as though they did work. This is not charity or privilege, but the ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... toleration of helplessness which characterizes even relationship in its attendance upon chronic suffering and weakness, but to have acquired an unconscious habit of turning it to account. In his present sensitive condition, he even fancied that they flirted mildly over their parent's infirmity. ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... will not call her a ship twice in the same half-hour) leaked. She leaked fully, generously, overflowingly, all over— like a basket. I took an enthusiastic part in the excitement caused by that last infirmity of noble ships, without concerning myself much with the why or the wherefore. The surmise of my maturer years is that, bored by her interminable life, the venerable antiquity was simply yawning with ennui at every seam. But at the time I did not know; I knew generally very little, and ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... walking about as actively 261:15 as the youngest member of the company. This old man was so lame that he hobbled every day to the theatre, and sat aching in his chair till his cue was spoken, - a signal 261:18 which made him as oblivious of physical infirmity as if he had inhaled chloroform, though he was in the full pos- session of his ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... powerful emotion in these vast regions; and when beneath these immense domes you hear some old man dragging his feeble steps along the polished marble, watered with so many tears, you feel that man is imposing even by the infirmity of his nature which subjects his divine soul to so many sufferings; and that Christianity, the worship of suffering, contains the true guide for the conduct ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... object the worst That may be told, and utter all it can; It cannot find a blemish to be enforced Against him, other than he was a man, And built of flesh and blood, and did live here, Within the region of infirmity; Where all perfections never did appear To meet in any one so really, But that his frailty ever did bewray Unto the world that ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... ascribe to my own imbecility. No fault in thee Lord but in my infirmity, And want of respect in such gifts as ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... old [200] gentleman shewing himself at that instant, caused them to forbear the chase, and shelter themselves behind trees. He then endeavored to effect an escape, by flight, and the Indians followed after him. Age and consequent infirmity, rendered him unable long to continue out of their reach; and aware that they were gaining considerably on him, he wheeled to shoot. Both instantly sprang behind trees, and Morgan seeking shelter in the same manner, got behind a sugar, which ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... lame, aged, bedrid, or by real infirmity of body are unable to work, and otherwise incapable to provide for themselves, on proof made that it is really and honestly so they shall be taken into a college or hospital provided for that purpose, and ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... in the best things; for we hold those longest we take soonest, as the first scent of a vessel lasts, and the tint the wool first receives; therefore a master should temper his own powers, and descend to the other's infirmity. If you pour a glut of water upon a bottle, it receives little of it; but with a funnel, and by degrees, you shall fill many of them, and spill little of your own; to their capacity they will all receive and be full. And as it is fit to read the best authors to youth first, so ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... will always happen that in the space of ground on which a hundred men shall live, there will be always a number of persons who, by age and infirmity, are incapable of doing personal service, and as such persons are generally possessed of the greatest part of property in any country, their portion of service, therefore, will be to furnish each man with a blanket, which will make a regimental coat, jacket, and breeches, or clothes ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... clung to him through thirty years of practical life. Furthermore, if it must be admitted that he looked somewhat older than his sixty years, that fact was not to be accounted for by any acknowledged infirmity, unless, indeed, the stiff leg he had brought with him from his four years' service should ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... my country, and his people my brothers and sisters. He prays God to bless me and preserve me. How soft and gentle—how full of good-will and patience—are the manners of the blind in all countries! Full fed flesh and the prosperous are proud and cruel, those stricken with infirmity and misery show the milk of human kindness. This poor old gentleman prays all the day long. Prayer is his daily bread. The Arabs ask me if Said is my slave. I tell them the English have no slaves, and that it is against their religion, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... been heard in favor of downing the gallows. As usual the voice is a trifle vague and it babbles. Clear speech is the outcome of clear thought, and that is something to which Theosophists are not addicted. Considering their infirmity in that way, it would be hardly fair to take them as seriously as they take themselves, but when any considerable number of apparently earnest citizens unite in a petition to the Governor of their State, to commute the death sentence of a convicted assassin ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... the Second, generally conveyed from place to place by stage waggons. In the straw of these vehicles nestled a crowd of passengers, who could not afford to travel by coach or on horseback, and who were prevented by infirmity, or by the weight of their luggage, from going on foot. The expense of transmitting heavy goods in this way was enormous. From London to Birmingham the charge was seven pounds a ton; from London to Exeter twelve pounds a ton. [144] This was about ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... since he last appeared on our stage. Women had ceased to possess much attraction for his jaded eyes: gaming and speculation had gradually spread over the tastes once directed to other pursuits. His vivacity had deserted him in great measure, as years and infirmity began to stagnate and knot up the current of his veins; but conversation still possessed for and derived from him its wonted attraction. The sparkling jeu d'esprit had only sobered down into the quiet sarcasm; and if his wit rippled less freshly to the breeze of the ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of his natural character, and was accused, accordingly, of insulting arrogance and bad-heartedness. In this reversed character, we repeat, it was never our chance to see him. We know it from hearsay, and we mention it in connection with this sad infirmity of physical constitution; which puts it upon very nearly the ground of a ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... version. John, like all pious people, when he heard the lion's voice, followed by the "seven thunders," was filled with solemn awe, anticipating the coming dissolution of all things. It was not the only instance of his weakness and misapprehension, (ch. xix. 10;) nor is this infirmity peculiar to the apostle John; for we find other disciples mistaking "the times and the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power." (2 Thess. ii. 1-3.) These Thessalonians had misapprehended the language of Paul in his ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... the empire could rival him. He was the head of the Fudai Daimios. His family was called the Dodai or foundation-stone of the power of the Tokugawa dynasty. His ancestor, Ii Nawo Massa, had been lieutenant-general and right-hand man of Iyeyas. Ii Kamon No Kami, owing to the mental infirmity of the reigning Shogun, had lately become his regent. Bold, ambitious, able, and unscrupulous, Ii was the Richelieu of Japan. From this time on till his assassination on March 23, 1860, he virtually ruled the empire, ...
— The Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga
... usual calm dignity of demeanour, and thus adding to the strange fright that was growing upon Aurelia. "But you must understand that I would not—even in semblance—have dreamt of your being apparently linked to age, sorrow, and infirmity, save that—strange as it may seem—Lady Belamour has herself put into my hands the best means of protecting you, and finally, as I trust, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wrongs of life. That we should have any crosses to suffer at all; that there should be death and sickness and disease; that there should be poverty and misery, distress and worry, labor and sorrow; that there should exist any of these things, is to our infirmity, if we forget our sins and the sins of our race that have caused these evils, a trial and a test of fidelity. But still more is it difficult, except to minds that are deeply religious, to meet with the gentleness and serenity of faith the positive injuries—the ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... formula, ever after stereotype with him, that there are three concurring causes in the process of conversion: 'the Word of God, the Holy Spirit, and the human will, which, indeed, is not idle, but strives against its infirmity.'" (520.) ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... quickness of perception which most persons with his infirmity possess under such circumstances, transferred his glance from the professor to the young lady, and at once arrived at a pretty correct understanding of the difficulty. He was not embarrassed, for it had probably never occurred to him that his deafness was so much a defect as a difference of organization, ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... healthy-minded men he had an inherent suspicion of the abnormal. He could not but fear that persons unusually constituted in body must be the victims of some corresponding crookedness of spirit. But as the evening drew on he became easy on this point. Whatever Richard's physical infirmity, his nature was wholesome enough. Therefore when, at close upon ten o'clock, Lady Calmady arrived in person to insist that Dickie must go, there and then, straight to bed, she found a pleasant scene ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Presbytery, a single rival who is in any sense his match. The late Dr. Gibson was frequently accustomed to tackle him, and perhaps he sometimes did so successfully; but while the latter was undoubtedly an able debater, he lost ground from his impetuosity of temper—an infirmity to which Dr. Buchanan never gives way. In all circumstances he is cool, calculating, unruffled; he measures the full meaning and effect of every sentence; he can be fierce and withering, and still maintain a calm and composed ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... though at the first it did much dash and abash my spirit, yet being still by them desired and entreated, I consented to their request, and did twice at two several assemblies (but in private), though with much weakness and infirmity, discover my gift amongst them; at which they not only seemed to be, but did solemnly protest, as in the sight of the great God, they were both affected and comforted; and gave thanks to the Father of mercies, for the ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... voice: there be many imperfect sentences, many broken speeches, and many displaced words: according as the party that prayed, was either prevented with the swiftness of his thoughts, or interrupted with vehemency of joy or grief, or forced to surcease through infirmity, that he might recover more strength and cheerfulness by interminding God's former promises and benefits."[243] George Wither finds that the style of the Psalms demands a verse translation. "The language of the Muses," he declares, "in which the Psalms ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... the 5th of November found Seabury in Aberdeen. One might reasonably have supposed that all difficulties were now surmounted. But it was not so. It is not necessary to go into details; they would simply set forth a painful story of human infirmity and self-seeking. It is enough to say that while Seabury was travelling northward a letter—inspired at least by a clergyman in America—was sent from London to the Scottish Primus, containing a personal attack on the bishop-elect, ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... descended from the ancient Indians to the present lords of the soil. The Spanish historians who have written upon the conquest of Mexico, all mention the knowledge which the Mexican physicians had of herbs. It was supposed by these last, that for every infirmity there was a remedy in the herbs of the field; and to apply them according to the nature of the malady, was the chief science of these primitive professors of medicine. Much which is now used in European pharmacy is due to the research of Mexican doctors; such as sarsaparilla, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... remedy. Asaph began to cure himself when, instead of saying, "All things are against me," he said, "This is my infirmity," my fault; I am enough to turn a beehive sour. His cure was almost perfect when he said, "I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High." The cure for the blues is simple, then. First, own up to it that the largest part of your ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... but he is old enough to be my father; and if he were ever animated enough to be in love, must have long outlived every sensation of the kind. It is too ridiculous! When is a man to be safe from such wit, if age and infirmity will not ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... friend "E. V. K." has shown himself curiously unaffected by "that last infirmity of noble minds,"—his "clear spirit" heeds all too little its urgent "spur." The following sonnets are all we can pilfer from him. They ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... according to circumstances. In some instances the younger men and women were bound out to service for periods varying from three to twelve weeks. In others they were left free to maintain themselves by their own efforts, the state to provide for such as were incapable, through age or infirmity, of performing manual labour. Hundreds of those who were placed under control escaped and wandered, footsore and half clad, from town to town in the hope of meeting their relatives or of finding means to return to their former homes. Little record has been preserved of the journeyings of these ...
— The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline • Arthur G. Doughty
... and grow luminous,—uttering its fragment of the truth. Last, the voice of old age, and authority and matured experience, and divine illumination, old age encompassed by much doubt and weariness and human infirmity, a solemn, pondering voice, which, with God somewhere in the clear-obscure, goes sounding on a dim and perilous way, until in a moment this voice of the anxious explorer for truth changes to the voice of the unalterable justicer, the armed doomsman ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... strange to the attentive reader of Shakespeare. Hamlet seems the natural result of the mixture of father and mother in his temperament, the resolution and persistence of the one, like sound timber wormholed and made shaky, as it were, by the other's infirmity of will and discontinuity of purpose. In natures so imperfectly mixed it is not uncommon to find vehemence of intention the prelude and counterpoise of weak performance, the conscious nature striving to keep up its self-respect by a triumph ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... these months have an enervating effect on the system generally. In so far as the heat of summer produces disease, it at the same time tends to produce crime. Persons suffering from any kind of ailment or infirmity are far more liable to become criminals than are healthy members of the community. The intimate connection between disease and crime is a matter which must never be forgotten. In the present instance, however, the closeness of this connection ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... parties existed in both colonies; but Judge Pedder did not participate the political sympathies of Judge Forbes, and made no pretence to popular applause. To those who check the abuses of irresponsible power something is due; but when the balance of human infirmity is struck, it will not be always found in ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... at the moment of need. In her eagerness she committed the mistake of asking how he felt now, and received a tart reply. There was nothing the matter with him, nothing unusual—only his old complaint, increasing years and infirmity; still he was not to be treated ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... out of hearing, you may have noticed that I made no reply to this affecting speech. The old gentleman has grown quite deaf of late years,—an infirmity which was once a source of untold misery to his friends, to whom he was constantly appealing for their opinions, which they were obliged to shout in his ear. But now, happily, the world has about ceased ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... both have contributed splendid talents, spotless integrity, ardent patriotism, and disinterested sacrifices to the formation and administration of this Government, and that both have required a liberal indulgence for a portion of human infirmity and error. The revolutionary wars of Europe, commencing precisely at the moment when the Government of the United States first went into operation under this Constitution, excited a collision of sentiments and of sympathies which kindled all the passions and imbittered ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... disease with a stoicism worthy of the sages of antiquity and he had no illusion about the implacable illness which slowly but surely would result in his premature death. A constantly increasing deafness was his greatest trouble. This cruel infirmity had made frightful progress when, in 1899, the Arenes de Beziers opened its doors for the second time to Dejanire. In spite of everything, including his ill health which made the trip very painful, he wanted to see his work once more. He heard nothing, however—neither the artists, ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... one emotion than by another. For the strength of every emotion is defined by a comparison of our own power with the power of an external cause. Now the power of the mind is defined by knowledge only, and its infirmity or passion is defined by the privation of knowledge only: it therefore follows, that that mind is most passive, whose greatest part is made up of inadequate ideas, so that it may be characterized more readily by its passive ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... knocked down a hundred beggarly pandours, who respect neither sex nor infirmity. For the benefit of those who are not satisfied, I will state that I call myself Colonel Fougas of the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... manhood, it is my infirmity to look back upon those early days. Do I advance a paradox, when I say, that, skipping over the intervention of forty years, a man may have leave to love himself, without the imputation ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... had failed to catch, and Moina obeyed, but with so bad a grace, the Mme. d'Aiglemont had never permitted herself to make her modest request again. Ever since that day when Moina was talking or retailing a piece of news, her mother was careful to come near to listen; but this infirmity of deafness appeared to put the Countess out of patience, and she would grumble thoughtlessly about it. This instance is one from among very many that must have gone to the mother's heart; and yet nearly all of them might have ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... ophthalmology in a diagnosis of optical diseases, tell us of a symptom of infirmity which they call pseudoblepsis, or 'false sight.' Legal vision exhibits, now and then, a corresponding phase of unconscious perversion of sight, whereby objects are perceived that do not exist, and objects present become transformed, distorted; and such an ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... that others are more successful, but the popular renown of the specific survives in spite of all, probably thanks to a simple accident of identity between the name of the remedy and that of the infirmity: the Provencal for "chilblain" is tigno. From the moment when the chilblain and the nest of the Mantis were known by the same name were not the virtues of the latter obvious? So ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... heal their pains, they have recourse to another expedient, which however does not always prove equally efficacious; that is, to apply red hot iron to the part affected. Indeed, these Arabs are subject to few diseases. I have seen many old people, of both sexes, who were oppressed with no kind of infirmity. Sore eyes, and colics, are the most usual disorders among them. Children, above all, are exposed to these, though in other respects strong and robust. In the morning it is difficult for them to open their eyelids. With regard to the colic, I think it is occasioned by the verdigris which ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... public record, on the ground that the gross disparity between this punishment and that imposed for other more serious fines made it cruel and unusual, and as such, repugnant to the Bill of Rights.[14] No constitutional infirmity was discovered in a measure punishing as a separate offense each act of placing a letter in the mails in pursuance of a single ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... perfunctory letters, written with indifference by the daughter, and with difficulty by Mrs. Manstey, whose right hand was growing stiff with gout. Even had she felt a stronger desire for her daughter's companionship, Mrs. Manstey's increasing infirmity, which caused her to dread the three flights of stairs between her room and the street, would have given her pause on the eve of undertaking so long a journey; and without perhaps, formulating these reasons she had long ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... Bedott observed, we are all poor creatures. 'I do not speak as one that is exempt:' doubtless I have my full share of infirmity." ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... sufficient importance to convert the meagre pittance of a middling laird's younger brother into a decent maintenance, it is not improbable that a shrewd Scots wife may have thought his devotion to philosophy and poverty to be due to mere infirmity of purpose. But she lived till 1749, long enough to see more than the dawn of her son's literary fame and official importance, and probably changed her mind about "Davie's" force ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... much struck by the solemn figure of the mother, a very old woman, as she walked toward her old home with some of her remaining children. I had not thought to see her again, knowing her great age and infirmity. She was like a presence out of the last century, tall and still erect, dark-eyed and of striking features, and a firm look not modern, but as if her mind were still set upon an earlier and simpler scheme of life. An air of dominion cloaked her ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... difficult that I shall either have to relinquish it with shame or pursue it with opprobrium. Be that as it may, I neither do, nor ever shall judge it a fault, to support opinion by arguments, where it is not sought to impose them by violence or authority I maintain, then, that this infirmity with which historians tax the multitude, may with equal reason be charged against every individual man, but most of all against princes, since all who are not controlled by the laws, will commit the very same faults as are committed ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... times, and that of Principal Tulloch in our own more peaceful days. Nor did he cease to interest himself in the work of the Church which he loved so well and had served so faithfully. Perhaps it was to show his love for the Church as much as to gratify his own feelings that, amid great bodily infirmity, he undertook the journey to Edinburgh, in May 1898, to attend the General Assembly. He was unable, indeed, to be present there more than once or twice, and when on one occasion he occupied the Moderator's chair for a few minutes, a thrill of respectful sympathy ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... still shelter themselves against the storms of life. Christianity not only rescued a part of the population of the Roman empire from degradation and ruin; it not only had glorious witnesses or its transcendent power and beauty in every land, thus triumphing over human infirmity and misery as no other religion ever did; but it has also proved itself to be a progressively conquering power by the great and beneficent ideas which were planted in the minds of barbarians, as well as oriental Christians, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... the first gentleman's name. It was a mischance, sir, but so far as I can see one that might have happened to anybody. You say that even after apologising—for on reflection I am always willing to apologise for any conduct into which my infirmity of temper may have betrayed me—it is impossible for me to continue here as your assistant. I am glad, then, that prudence counselled me to provide two strings to my bow, and engage myself to Dr. Mathers of Bath, on the chance that you proved unsatisfactory; and I thank you for the month's salary, ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... (the last census date) there were 23.01 persons per thousand of population over 15 years of age, unable to work from sickness, accident and infirmity. Of these 12.72 were due to sickness and accident, ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... of the colours as he saw them, nor the wall of stars on either hand; and Brother Ambrose fell sick because of the exceeding great longing he had to limn the Holy City, and was very sad; but our Prior bade him thank God and remember the infirmity of the flesh, which, like the little grey cloud, veiled Jerusalem to ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... be conspicuously put up in the school): Provided that the Minister may, on the application of the Board, sanction the establishment of special classes for backward children—that is, children who, through physical infirmity, absence from school, or otherwise, are below the average standard of education reached by other children of ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... of his imagination, which led him to plan nobly; an accomplished writer; and as he was found worthy of the warm and unchanging friendship of Franklin, that sage who sought for excellence while he looked with a kindly eye upon human infirmity, we, too, may peruse the virtues of the man and smile ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... land, so that henceforth it may bear no fruit nor blade of grass, and be fit for nothing but a sepulchre for their unhallowed carcasses! So, on they go; and old George Jacobs has stumbled, by reason of his infirmity; but Goodman Proctor and his wife lean on one another, and walk at a reasonably steady pace, considering their age. Mr. Burroughs seems to administer counsel to Martha Carrier, whose face and mien, methinks, are milder and humbler than they were. Among ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... seem to have produced effects so decisive as would result from a similar disorganization in Broadway or Washington Street; for the charioteers still "drave them heavily." Hence we may infer that the wheels were of rude workmanship, making the chariots little less liable to the infirmity of friction than those Western vehicles called mud-boats, used to navigate semi-fluid regions which pass on the map for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... the bite of a dog, is surely excusable, and yet we ought to constrain him. In like manner, the man who cannot govern his passions, nor restrain them by the fear of the laws, though excusable on account of the infirmity of his nature, can nevertheless not enjoy peace, nor the knowledge and the love of God; and it is necessary that ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... son's love had supported her. She long had struggled with infirmity, Lingering to human life-scenes; for to die, 15 When fate has spared to rend some mental tie, Would many wish, and surely fewer dare. But, when the tyrant's bloodhounds forced the child For his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... could not bear to keep her blessings wholly to herself, she had set apart one corner of the grounds for a row of picturesque cottages, in which she had established a number of pensioners whom age or infirmity had rendered destitute, and whom she constantly visited with presents from her dairy or her fruit-trees. Roaming about the lawns and walks, which she had made herself, in a muslin gown and a plain straw hat, she could ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... his most intimate acquaintances called him, was destined to murder Alessandro; and it is worthy of notice that the Duke had received frequent warnings of his fate. A Perugian page, for instance, who suffered from some infirmity, saw in a dream that Lorenzino would kill his master. Astrologers predicted that the Duke must die by having his throat cut. One of them is said to have named Lorenzo de' Medici as the assassin; and another described ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the last infirmity of the determined reader in bed is his final decision to sit up and read in that fashion. Nothing could be better—for a certain more or less brief period. At the expiration of a few minutes, you realize that you are getting a sort ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... master were immediately reported to Hideyoshi. They roused him to hot anger. He is reported to have cried: "What! my States are filled with traitors, and their numbers increase every day. I have proscribed the foreign doctors, but out of compassion for the age and infirmity of some among them, I have allowed their remaining in Japan. I shut my eyes to the presence of several others because I fancied them to be quiet and incapable of forming bad designs, and they are serpents I have been ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... if one knew it. But Gerarde, who calls the plant Red Rattle, (it having indeed much in common with the Yellow Rattle), says, "It groweth in moist and moorish meadows; the herbe is not only unprofitable, but likewise hurtful, and an infirmity of the meadows." ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... with me, rebukes, commands, and dastards me. I have no conscience of marble, to resist the hammer of more heavy offences: nor yet so soft and waxen, as to take the impression of each single peccadillo or scape of infirmity. I am of a strange belief, that it is as easy to be forgiven some sins as to commit some others. For my original sin, I hold it to be washed away in my baptism; for my actual transgressions, I compute and reckon ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... the bare floor of the room, as this interrogatory was put; and there issued, from a door on the right hand; first, a feeble candle: and next, the form of the same individual who has been heretofore described as labouring under the infirmity of speaking through his nose, and officiating as waiter at the public-house ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... a just cause, must bring its spiritual punishment? Could the lust of blood be changed by a document into the love of one's brother? "I gave my youth in that war," he thought, "and I won from it—what? Disillusionment." With the reflection he felt again the exhaustion of the nerves, the infirmity of purpose against which he had struggled ever since his return. "If there were only something worth fighting for, worth believing in! If I could only believe earnestly, ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... did not increase his self-respect. He abandoned shaving as a dangerous exercise, and being shaved in a barber's shop meant exposure of his infirmity. He could not see that his clothes were properly brushed, and since he had never taken any care of his personal appearance he became every known variety of sloven. A blind man cannot deal with cleanliness till he has been some months used ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... whom their mayor gives false certificates of infirmity and marriage, who do not turn out when ordered out, who desert by hundreds on the way to headquarters, who form mobs and use guns in defending themselves against the troops,—such were the fruits of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... From the infirmity of our natures, and our proneness to evil, there is nothing so corrupting as the statistics of vice. Can young females remain pure in their ideas, who read with indifference details of the grossest nature? Can the youth of a nation ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... agony of which she was so long the victim, her peculiar fastidiousness of scent and touch are remembered. Throughout the whole of her illness she had adopted every measure to conceal, even from herself, the effects of her infirmity. She constantly held in her hand a large fan of Spanish leather, and saturated her linen with the most powerful perfumes. Her sense of contact was so acute and irritable that it was with the utmost difficulty that cambric could be ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... was translated from Chichester, and held the see for twenty years, when, owing to advanced age and increasing infirmity, he resigned in 1856. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate
... of the house she felt the infirmity of her knees; but in other respects, though she had been out only once before since her illness, she was conscious of a sufficient strength. A disinclination for any enterprise had prevented her from taking ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... dress, and stayed with him about two months, watching the order of his life, and the purity of his manner; how frequent he was in prayers, how humble in receiving brethren, severe in reproving them, eager in exhorting them; and how no infirmity ever broke through his continence, and the coarseness of his food. But, unable to bear longer the crowd which assembled round Antony, for various diseases and attacks of devils, he said that it was not consistent to endure in the desert the crowds of cities, but that he must rather begin ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... and far into the night, Herald Square was filled with a surging throng watching the bulletins from the chamber of death. It was a dignified end. There must have been a good deal of innate nobility in William McKinley. With all his vacillation and infirmity of political purpose, he must have been a man whose mind was saturated with fine thoughts, for to the very last, in those hours of weakness when the will no longer sways and each word is the half-unconscious muttering of the true self, he shone forth with unexpected grandeur ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... many things," said The Master gently, "but not in all. Remember that you have much to learn, hijo mio. I have taught you to prepare my little medicine, it is true. That is so you can take my place if age infirmity shall carry me away." The Master folded his hands with an air of pious resignation. "But you must learn policy. The Senorita Canalejas belongs to the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... smartish pull, they do say, from Knowl. I know a spell of it, only so far as the "Cat and Fiddle," near the Lunnon-road. Come up, will you? Would you like to come in first and talk a bit wi' the governor? Father, you know, he's a bit silly, he is, this while.' I found that the phrase meant only bodily infirmity. 'He took a pain o' Friday, newralgie—something or other he calls it—rheumatics it is when it takes old "Giblets" there; and he's sitting in his own room; or maybe you'd like better to come to your bedroom first, for it is dirty work travelling, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... have mentioned a part—was made about three weeks before his death, about which time, finding his strength to decay by reason of his constant infirmity, and a consumptive cough added to it, he retired to his chamber, expressing a desire to enjoy his last thoughts to himself in private, without disturbance or care, especially of what might concern this world. And that none of his Clergy—which are more numerous ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... and to the children which charmed him, and he did not know from what other existing source anything comparable to it could be supplied. Mrs Hopgood seldom went to church. The church, to be sure, was horribly dead, but she did not give that as a reason. She had, she said, an infirmity, a strange restlessness which prevented her from sitting still for an hour. She often pleaded this excuse, and her husband and daughters never, by word or smile, gave her the least reason to suppose that they ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... levity of the vulgar. Such complaints and humours have existed in all times; yet as all times have not been alike, true political sagacity manifests itself, in distinguishing that complaint which only characterises the general infirmity of human nature from those which are symptoms of the particular distemperature of our own ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... her. He needed her, as he had never felt the need of anyone before; his nature clamoured for her, imperiously, as it clamoured for light and air. He had no concern with anyone but her—her only—and he could not let her go. It was not love; it was a bodily weakness, a pitiable infirmity: he even felt it degrading that another person should be able to exercise such an influence over him, that there should be a part of himself over which he had no control. Not to see her, not to be able to gather fresh strength from each chance meeting, meant that the grip life had ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... petticoat, at her own corner of the fire on some tempestuous evening; now sitting each at her window, looking out upon the summer landscape sloping far below them towards the firth, and the field-paths where they had wandered hand in hand; or, as age and infirmity grew upon them and prolonged their toilettes, and their hands began to tremble and their heads to nod involuntarily, growing only the more steeled in enmity with years; until one fine day, at a word, a look, a visit, or the approach of death, their hearts would melt and the chalk boundary ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her; but she wasn't the sort to have stuck at that. "I'd have worked my hands to the bone for 'im, Poll, if 'e'd ONLY said the word." The one drawback to marriage with "you know 'oo" would have been his infirmity. "Some'ow, Polly, I can't picture myself dragging a husband with a gammy leg at my heels." From this, Tilly's mind glanced back to the suitor who had honourably declared himself. Of course "old O." hadn't a great deal of the gentleman about him; and their ages were ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... acts, and to show that his misconduct was the natural, or rather the necessary and inevitable result of the circumstances to which he was exposed, and nothing more than the every-day issues of human infirmity. If in discharging the office of a biographer, and canvassing the character of the dead, we are compelled to utter truths that will be unwelcome to many a heart, and to speak lightly of the bad members of a profession for the good ones of which we have a high respect, let it be ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... straight into the eyes of each and found his way out with the astonishing certainty of movement that made so many forget his infirmity. Possibly he was not desirous of encountering Draycott's embarrassed gratitude again, for in less than a minute they heard the swirl of ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... son of a Norman farmer. As long as his father and mother lived, he was more or less taken care of; he suffered little save from his horrible infirmity; but as soon as the old people were gone, an atrocious life of misery commenced for him. A dependent on a sister of his, everybody in the farmhouse treated him as a beggar who is eating the bread of others. At every meal the very food he swallowed was made a subject ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... Paradise. But out of Paradise our first parents were driven long ago, as anon I was to be from mine. For, as the Maid passed, I doffed my cap and waved it, since to shout "Noel" with the rest, I dared not, because of my infirmity. Now, it so fell that, glancing around, she saw and knew me, and bowed to me, with a gesture of her hand, as queenly as if she, a manant's child, had been a daughter of France. At that moment, noting the ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... health. The sober man digests with comfort; he is not overpowered by the weight of aliments; his ideas are clear and easy; he fulfills all his functions properly; he conducts his business with intelligence; his old age is exempt from infirmity; he does not spend his money in remedies, and he enjoys, in mirth and gladness, the wealth which chance and his own prudence have procured him. Thus, from one virtue alone, generous ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... with the half-apologetical air observable in a certain kind of Americans when some accident obliges them to confess the infirmity of the natural feelings. They do not ask your sympathy, and you offer it quite at your own risk, with a chance of having it thrown back upon your hands. The contributor assumed the risk so far as to say, "Pretty rough!" when the stranger paused; and ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... a remarkable passage in Paul's Roman letter about prayer and God's will.[39] "And in like manner the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered; and He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, that He maketh ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... runs on, its perpetual game to look with considerate good-nature at every object in existence, and dismiss it with a benison." While wit, the purely intellectual quality, sparkles and stings, humor, "touched with a feeling of our infirmity," would "gently scan thy brother ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... from the blindness and infirmity of his passion for Miss Walladmor: merely to see her—is perhaps some relief to his unhappy mind: that however is a gratification he can seldom have; for she now rarely stirs out of the castle. His old anxieties ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... never hear how it happened? One of the big boys, as he called him, tripped him up at school, and he fell on his hip. It kept him in bed for a year, and he's never been the same since; he will always be a cripple," grieved the mother. She wiped her eyes; she never could think of her boy's infirmity without weeping. "And what seemed the worst of all," she continued, "was that the boy who did it never expressed any regret for it, or acknowledged it by word or deed, though he must have known that Ben knew ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... activity of his movements; and from this circumstance, as well as from the skill with which the foot was disguised by means of long trousers, it would be difficult to conceive a defect of this kind less obtruding itself as a deformity; while the diffidence which a constant consciousness of the infirmity gave to his first approach and address made, in him, even lameness a source ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 474 - Vol. XVII. No. 474., Supplementary Number • Various
... Bible—find out and understand all I can; and on the strength of that, swallow the rest in a lump, by simple faith. Think me vain, if you will. Worldly greatness requires so much littleness to grow up in, that an infirmity more or less is not a matter ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... Statesman, who, in a long, a stormy, and at length an unfortunate administration, had many political opponents, almost without a personal enemy; who has retained, in his fall from power, many faithful and disinterested friends; and who, under the pressure of severe infirmity, enjoys the lively vigor of his mind, and the felicity of his incomparable temper. Lord North will permit me to express the feelings of friendship in the language of truth: but even truth and friendship should be silent, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... madness, who brags how many several persons he hath cured of it. Felix Platerus (de Mentis Alienat. cap. 3) reports of a woman in Basel whom he saw, that danced a whole month together. The Arabians call it a kind of palsie. Bodine, in his fifth book, speaks of this infirmity; Monavius, in his last epistle to Scoltizius, and in another to Dudithus, where you may read more of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... an evening school in the village; that is to say, she was a ridiculous old woman of limited means and unlimited infirmity, who used to go to sleep from six to seven every evening, in the society of youth who paid two pence per week each, for the improving opportunity of seeing her do it. She rented a small cottage, and Mr. Wopsle had the room up stairs, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... mausoleums cost from 4000l. to 5000l. Yet all the powerful, the wealthy, and the poor have descended to the dust from whence they sprung; and here, as everywhere else, nothing can disguise the fact that man, the feeble sport of passion and infirmity, can only claim for his inheritance at last the gloom of a silent grave, where he must sleep with the dust of his fathers. I observed only one verse of Scripture on a tombstone, and it contained the appropriate prayer, "So ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... the wisest men when they permit themselves to be perturbed with passion, and speak as in a fever, or as with the tongue of the foolish and the forward. And although thou hast been hasty to mark my infirmity, yet I grieve not that thou hast been a witness to it, seeing that the stumbles of the wise may be no less a caution to youth and inexperience, than is the fall ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... facts, official proofs of which exist in the Captain General's Office, clearly disprove the statement of Borrow, who ungrateful for the generous hospitality which he has received, and for the consideration displayed towards him on account of his infirmity, and out of deference to the request of the British Vice- Consul, makes an unfounded complaint against the very authorities who have used attentions towards him which he is certainly not deserving; it being worthy of ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... always inspiriting: he had escaped being a Pharisee, but he had not escaped that low estimate of possibilities which we rather hastily arrive at as an inference from our own failure. Lydgate thought that there was a pitiable infirmity of ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Pride was ever yet high enough to lift its possessor above the trials and fears and frailities of humanity. No human hand ever built the wall, nor ever shall, that will keep out affliction, pain, and infirmity. Sickness and sorrow, trouble and death, are dispensations that level everything. They know none, high nor low. The chief wants of life, the great and grave necessities of the human soul, give exemption ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... had been repeated, because people thought such ideas queer and showing lack of common-sense. He had heard them unthinkingly, but now, standing on Squire Merritt's door-step, looking at his old tree pensioners, whom he would not desert in their infirmity, he remembered, and the great man's love for his trees gave him reason, with a sudden leap of faith, to believe in his kindness towards him. "I'm better than an old tree," reasoned Jerome, and raised the knocker ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... I do not deny—was it not open to cite him, even though the citer were a bishop? Why, yes—uneasily one answers, yes; but still the case records a strange alteration, and still one could have wished to hear such a doctrine, which ascribes human infirmity (nay, human criminality) to every book of the Bible, uttered by anybody rather than by a father of the Church, and guaranteed by anybody rather than by an infidel, in triumph. A boy may fire his pistol unnoticed; but a sentinel, mounting ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... be adequate motives for a certain amount of saving, even if capital yielded no profit. There would be an inducement to lay by in good times a provision for bad; to reserve something for sickness and infirmity, or as a means of leisure and independence in the latter part of life, or a help to children in the outset of it. Savings, however, which have only these ends in view, have not much tendency to increase the amount of capital ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... his birthright for a mess of pottage, Gen. xxv. 29. When we yield to these propensities of the flesh, we lay a snare for our own souls, and expose our weakness to an adversary, ever ready to take advantage of our infirmity. It is a common fault in children to desire with greedy appetite such food as is pernicious, and to wish for more than even a mouth opened wide requires—till at length they learn to lust after forbidden things. And what ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... care was then the delight of many an unsophisticated laird's helpmate; and, to the contented Lady of Staneholme, it had quite made up for the partial deprivation of social intercourse to which her infirmity had subjected her. Joan, Madge, and Mysie, wearied of haughty Nelly after they had grown accustomed to the grand attire she wore, denied that they had ever been dazzled with it, and ceased to believe that she had danced minuets in the Assembly Rooms before Miss Jacky ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... Glory's old infirmity came back upon her, and she felt hot and humiliated. But her vanity was not so much wounded by the work that she was offered as her honour was hurt by the work she was doing. Mrs. Jupe's absences from home were now more frequent ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... and sailing-ships, as a rule, go to Santa Cruz; and the fame of our vessel having been spread abroad by our visitors of Friday, many of the poor people had come from villages far away over the mountains. We could not help feeling a certain respect for the determined way in which physical infirmity was mastered by curiosity for, though many experienced very serious inconvenience from the motion of the vessel, they still persevered in ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... We have known persons apparently travelling for pleasure, who were afraid to turn a few miles to the right or the left, for fear of subjecting themselves to the reproach of their own conscience for infirmity of purpose. They had "chalked out a route," and acted as if they had sworn a solemn oath to follow it. This is to be a slave among the boundless dominions of nature, where all are free. As the wind bloweth wherever it listeth, so move the moods of men's minds, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... King, "it is strange that thou, one of the most impatient fellows alive, should have so little sympathy with the like infirmity in our blunt and fiery cousin, Charles of Burgundy. Why, man, I mind his blustering messages no more than the towers of this Castle regard the whistling of the northeast wind, which comes from Flanders, as well ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... to allow the measuring and sod-turning to be continued. Why should a place of worship opposite to his gate be considered by him as an injury? Why should the psalm-singing of Christian brethren hurt his ears as he walked about his garden? And if, through the infirmity of his nature, his eyes and his ears were hurt, what was that to the great purport for which he had been sent into the parish? Was he not about to create enmity by his opposition; and was it not his special duty to foster love and goodwill among his people? After all he, ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... judgment, and sent home, by the delightful process of criticism, to the memory, there to exercise the mind to the last of life, to be the amusement of our declining years, and, when all the other faculties for receiving pleasure are impaired by old age and infirmity, to cast the sunshine of delight over the last ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... crave your pardon humbly for my vehemence, Prince of Clarence. I suddenly remember me that humility is the proper virtue of knighthood. Your Grace does indeed set a notable example of that virtue to the peers of England; and my poor brother's infirmity of pride will stand rebuked for aye, when he hears that George Plantagenet bore ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... He admits, however, that the intemperate, profligate, and criminal classes, whose duration of life is low, do not commonly marry; and it must likewise be admitted that men with a weak constitution, ill health, or any great infirmity in body or mind, will often not wish to marry, or will be rejected. Dr. Stark seems to have come to the conclusion that marriage in itself is a main cause of prolonged life, from finding that aged married men still have a considerable ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... peasantry. Little heed was paid to the admonitions of Count John, who was of a hotter temper than was the tranquil Prince. The stadholder gave way to fits of passion at the meanness and the insolence to which he was constantly exposed. He readily recognized his infirmity, and confessed himself unable to accommodate his irascibility to the "humores" of the inhabitants. There was often sufficient cause for his petulance. Never had praetor of a province a more penurious civil list. "The ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... disease is inherited. The following causes are considered in the inheritance of scrofula: great age, close relationship and infirmity of the parents; but the germ of scrofula is planted in the child by parents that are themselves afflicted with tuberculosis or scrofula. This is most frequently observed in children that have descended from parents, who were scrofulous in their youth ...
— Prof. Koch's Method to Cure Tuberculosis Popularly Treated • Max Birnbaum
... well for man that there is one Being who sees the suffering heart as it is, and not as it manifests itself through the repellances of outward infirmity, and who, perhaps, feels more for the stern and wayward than for those whose gentler feelings win for them human sympathy. With all his singularities, there was in the heart of Uncle Lot a depth of religious sincerity; but there are few characters where religion does any thing ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... contempt for money, stubborn persistence in the right, and courage in the face of danger. Some people thought him too ambitious, for even with philosophers 6 the passion for fame is often their last rag of infirmity. After Thrasea's fall Helvidius was banished, but he returned to Rome under Galba and proceeded to prosecute Eprius Marcellus,[251] who had informed against his father-in-law. This attempt to secure a revenge, as bold as ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... Cochegrue; and his creditors, the blockheads, citizens, and others, whose pockets he slit, called him the Mau-cinge, since he was as mischievous as strong; but he had moreover his back spoilt by the natural infirmity of a hump, and it would have been unwise to attempt to mount thereon to get a good view, for he would incontestably have run ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... resource, I would come to them and be married from their house. I made up my mind, and promised: then I implored him to be careful in his interview with my brother, for my sake—to calm his own natural anger, and to remember Edmund's infirmity. He promised, but I saw that he was slightly piqued by my dwelling so much on Edmund's feelings rather than on his. Ah! Nelly, he had never seen one ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... in which he lived, and which is for no other reason worthy of our knowledge,'—all proclaim his supremacy. Like many great men,—like Julius Caesar, with his epilepsy—or Sir Walter Scott and Byron, with their lameness—or Schleiermacher, with his deformed appearance,—a physical infirmity beset Alfred most of his life, and at last carried him off at a comparatively early age. This was a disease in his bowels, which had long afflicted him, 'without interrupting his designs, or souring ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... invalids, who have unfortunately a sensitive palate, and have been accustomed to a luxurious variety of savoury sauces, and highly seasoned viands; those who, from the infirmity of age, are become incapable of correcting habits created by absurd indulgence in youth, are entitled to some consideration; and, for their sake, the Elements of Opsology are explained in the most intelligent manner; ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
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