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More "Powerless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... your children be if you should be healthy in body, and happy in mind, so as to beget in them a constitutionally healthy and vigorous physiology, along with a serene and happy frame of mind! Words are utterly powerless in answer, and so is everything but a lifetime of consequent happiness or misery! Learn and obey, then, the laws of life and health, that you may both reap the rich reward yourself, and also shower down upon your children after you, blessings many and most exalted. Avoid excesses of all kinds, ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... circumstance which would turn the tide in my favor. This was all I could do, for, with my hands securely tied behind me, I was powerless. The skipper had renewed his devotions to the bottle as soon as he waked, and it was possible that the liquor might win the victory ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... this half-fright which gave her a slight shiver. The Duke brought up a chair and seemed to be exerting all his charm and animation for the Countess, but it was easy to see that all this charm, all this wit, were intended for the pretty creature who appeared powerless to resist his ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... spirit keeps its watch upon thee, as indeed, though thou knewest it not, it has done ever since we parted yonder in the Place of Life? Can I help it if, like some mother who sees her little child at play upon a mountain's edge, my soul is torn with agony when I know thee in dangers that I am powerless to prevent or share? What are the lives of a few half-wild huntsmen that I should let them weigh for a single breath against thy safety, seeing that if I slew these, others would be more careful of thee? Whereas if I slay them not, they or their fellows may even ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... a moment by the extraordinary ingenuity of a seventeen-year-old schoolboy, was now resuming the offensive and was winning all along the line from the first. Lupin's two great adversaries, Shears and Ganimard, were put away. Isidore Beautrelet was disabled. The police were powerless. For the moment there was no one left capable ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... really alarmed; he saw clearly how real and earnest Jenny's menaces were. There are persecutions against which the law is powerless. But he dissimulated his alarm under the blandest ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... substitute crept down the stairs—caught and powerless. He followed his wife who knelt sobbing beside their bed. She was not to be comforted, nor to be moved. She repulsed him and ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... Burmans contains many excellent moral precepts and maxims, which, however being without sanction or example, are utterly powerless to mould the character of the ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... Persian Gulf and the Adriatic; they seized the Imperial throne of China; they slew the Caliph in Bagdad; they founded dynasties in India. The fanaticism of Christianity and the fanaticism of Mohammedanism were alike powerless against them. The valor of the bravest fighting men in Europe was impotent to check them. They trampled Russia into bloody mire beneath the hoofs of their horses; they drew red furrows of destruction across Poland and ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... kindred race, and the two together brought the Greeks under; whereupon these last contrived to come to terms with the Syrians, and persuaded them to join in an attack on the late allies. Against the combined Greeks and Syrians the Jews were powerless, and in the massacre which ensued they lost above 50,000 men. The remnant withdrew to Otesiphon; but even there the malice of their enemies pursued them, and the persecution was only brought to an end by their quitting the metropolitan cities altogether, and withdrawing ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... which ran "Shokoe Creek." The boys of this region, from generation to generation, had been renowned for exceeding pugnacity. Between them and the city boys constantly-recurring quarrels were so bitter that sometimes men were drawn in through sympathy with their boys. The law seemed powerless to put an end ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... with no torturing introspection. The exaggerated pessimism in this part of his outcry is explained by his own statement, that he lived in a transition time, when the old faith was (as he held) dead, and the new one (partly realized in our own generation) as yet 'powerless to be born.' Arnold's poetry, therefore, is to be viewed as largely the expression, monotonous but often poignantly beautiful, of a temporary mood of questioning protest. But if his conclusion is not positive, it is at least not weakly despairing. ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... on his forehead, as it struck him on the side with its horn, and being a remarkably tall and powerful man, a struggle ensued, which continued until his wrist was severely sprained, and his arm was rendered powerless; he then fell, and after receiving two or three blows, ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... a foolish thing and fell in love with a good and clever girl. Once in love, of course, everything was bent and deflected to be seen through that medium and I believed that nothing else mattered or ever would. Then came the sequel, and being powerless to resist, I was going to marry. For some cowardly reason I funked poverty, and the thought of escaping it made me agree to marry Sabina, knowing all the time it must prove a failure. That was my second big mistake, and the third was asking her ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... in force provide sufficient penalties for the punishment of such offenses after they have been committed, and provided the parties can be found, but the Executive is powerless in many cases to prevent the commission of them, even when in possession of ample evidence of an intention on the part of evil-disposed persons ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... swirled madly and chaotically during those moments when she strained against the rawhide strength of the arms that held her powerless, and they seemed ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... temple of the almighty Beelzebub, Steam God of Jarmuth. Without his hot breath no wheel would turn, our armies would be powerless and this land would perish under the ice of the outer world." The dark eyed officer's eye fell speculatively upon his bound and dust-covered prisoner. "Perchance, dog of a spy, thou wilt die during to-day's fourth division[2] together with Altara, ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... for you, Bella? I do. What makes my misery now, but to see you there, and know of no way of helping you? Father of mercy! it seems too much to have to stand by powerless while ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... been for two years in the hands of the municipal authorities at Reims. But during these two years France had been the football of the employers and accomplices of these assassins. The municipal authorities had been powerless to prevent these murders, which were committed in the public streets and under the protection of the Procureur-Syndic of the department, the official representative at Reims of the 'Minister of Justice,' Danton, at Paris. They were ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... were protected and Spanish citizens put to death by the English queen. Philip and Alva could not effectively resent and hardly dared to protest against the treatment, because they felt themselves powerless. As so often, the island kingdom was protected by the ocean and by the proved superiority of her seamen. After a score of petty fights all the way from the Bay of Biscay to the Pacific Ocean, Spanish sailors had no desire for a trial of ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... trembled as she named the holy name; a baptism of fire streamed through her, stronger than her frame could bear, and she bent down, more powerless even than ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... the hardest,—he being supposed to control every province, and have every official under his orders, and yet being powerless in regard to two or three departments, the business of which he did not understand. The officers of those departments went each his own way; and all unity of action in the establishment was lost. This is enough to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... The serpent that tried to swallow the sun each morning, but the Sun-god cast a spell on it and rendered it powerless.] ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... might be accomplished. In those days of laxity, divorce was an easy matter. In this case there was no family influence upon the part of the wife to be set up in opposition—but merely an old centurion, ignorant and powerless. A few writings, for form's sake—and the day that sent the weeping wife from the door might install the manumitted and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... stood motionless even after the footsteps had died away in the distance. It seemed as though a mystic spell had been woven about them, which, for the time, they were powerless ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... have done!' she sighed, leaning towards the world. 'My poor children are plunged in misery, and by my fault. Their suffering is my crime, and I will expiate it. God Himself, who only thinks through me, would be powerless to restore them to their pristine purity. That which is done is done, and the creation will remain for ever imperfect. But, at least, I will not forsake my creatures. If I cannot make them happy, like me, ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... room, Bobinette experienced a strange, a penetrating emotion. She felt as though something around her in which she had moved safely, was cracking; with a sudden and terrible lucidity she saw herself marching forward, powerless to draw back, marching helplessly towards an abyss—an abyss which was about to engulf her! She trembled, trembled violently. She was encompassed by vague and ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... under which, "and by virtue of the treaty of cession by France to the United States, of the Province of Louisiana," they asked admission to the Union as a State. Among other provisions of that Constitution was a section rendering the State Legislature powerless to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves without the consent of the owners, or to prevent emigrants to that State from bringing with them slaves. On June 15th of the same year, Arkansas was, under that Constitution, admitted ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... he exclaimed, coming toward her. "Oh, it can't be a dream. You are there, aren't you?" She was a pitiable object as she stood there, powerless to retreat, shaking like a leaf. He took her by the shoulder. "Yes—it is you. Good Lord, what does it mean? What has happened? How did you ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... property in man,—no, not even in black men. And the rage exerted against me on the part of the slave-holders grew entirely out of my preaching that doctrine. Actions, as everybody knows, speak louder than words. By virtue of my actions proclaiming my opinion on that subject, I became at once, powerless as I otherwise was, elevated, in the minds of the slave-holders, to the same high level with Mr. Giddings and Mr. Hale, who they could not help believing must have been my ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... besides, self-convicted of wrong in what seemed to him a violation of the precept, Remember the sabbath-day, &c. as he had been taught to regard that precept. But once having given way, he felt almost powerless to resist the influence that now ...
— No and Other Stories Compiled by Uncle Humphrey • Various
... observe how the news had been accepted by the two other divisions of the world. The East was enthusiastic; America was divided. But in any case America was powerless: the balance of the world was overwhelmingly ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... who has so lightened for us the sorrow of mere bereavement, and made quick-coming death a little thing—for some of us, indeed, a lovely thing—has not taught us how to bear the sufferings of those we love, the woful ache of pity for pangs we are powerless to relieve and can only ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... treaty of Arras. Nevertheless, in spite of the king's successes at Montereau and during his passage through Central and Northern France, the condition of the country was still so bad in 1440, the disorder was so great, and the king so powerless to apply a remedy, that Richemont, disconsolate, was tempted to rid and disburden himself from the government of France and between the rivers [Seine and Loire, no doubt] and to go or send to the king for that purpose. But one day the prior of the Carthusians ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... touch us!" burst in the leader, sudden spirit and defiance in his tone, well knowing how powerless were the military in face of civil law. "We're no poor devils of dog-robbers. We demand protection and a fair trial—a jury of our peers; that means no hide-bound gang of soldiers. You can't prove we sold so ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... He was frightened now, for the snake is the hereditary enemy of the iguana. The boy struggled to free himself, but ineffectually. He tried to call out but found himself dumb. He tried to shut his eyes, or turn them from the snake, but was powerless to do so. The snake crawled on to him and licked him. Then it went away, leaving the boy as one paralysed. Next came a huge figure to him, having in its hand a gunnai or yam stick. The figure drove this into ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... each directly lead up to in science? What was the intellectual generation that sprang from each of them? I only repeat what the men of science have themselves pointed out. The man of genius was continued by the English analysts of the eighteenth century, comparatively powerless and obscure followers of the renowned master. The man of intelligence was continued by successors like Bernoulli, Euler, Lagrange, and Laplace, the greatest ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... but it was his firmly-announced intention to leave the world a better, happier, purer place than he had found it; against the danger of any relapse to earlier conditions after his disappearance from the scene, he was, of course, powerless to guard. 'Tis not in mortals to insure succession, and Egbert ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... of all literature shows that even with the youngest and weakest author criticism is quite powerless against his will to do his own work in his own way; and if this is the case in the green wood, how much more in the dry! It has been thought by the sentimentalist that criticism, if it cannot cure, can at least kill, and Keats was long alleged in proof of its efficacy ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... perspective of Mr Bergson's philosophy now perhaps begin to appear. Certainly I am the first to feel how powerless a slender resume really is to translate all its wealth ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... personal violence while passing the door of an adjoining house in the dark, I was seized from behind, enveloped in a sack, which was tied over my head and shoulders, in a manner which both gagged me and rendered me powerless to move my arms. My feet were also tied together, and in this condition I was dragged into a cupboard under the stairs and there left for the night. My impression is that two or three strong persons were engaged in the outrage, although the pinioning was performed by only one. I was released ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... sorrow and trouble, tell me what I can do!" "Why, what is wrong?" I asked. "All my young men are dying, and I cannot help them, nor prevent it; they are under a spell of the wicked Curumbers who are killing them, and I am powerless." "Pray explain," I said; "why do the Curumbers behave in this way, and what do they do to your people?" "Oh, Madam, they are vile extortioners, always asking for money; we have given and given till we have no more to give. I told them we had no more money and then they said,—All ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... justified. But I, an outsider, interfered in a quarrel that was not mine own, spoiled sport for you, in short lost you the lassie. You followed her to Scotland; 'twas I that drove you back to England when Montagu was powerless. From first to last I am the rock on which your love bark has split. If your cause has spelled failure I ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... the voice of Kelson, drowned in a crash of thunder which words are powerless to describe, and as the good ship swung round responsive to the touch of her helm, all was again Egyptian darkness, and the wind rushed upon us with the howl and roar of a thousand hungry wild beasts. The Ariadne answered her helm like a tender-mouthed colt, but she was not quick enough for the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... but she held her hands fast around his, so tight, and yet afraid that she should touch one of the leaves. Then Death blew on her hands, and she felt that it was colder than the cold wind, and her hands fell down powerless. ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... 'savage shooting at the sun.' It may be so, sir. But the Committee will remember that in the remarks I made I did not address myself to the gentleman who has so unnecessarily interposed in this debate. And why did I not, sir? Not because I thought I should be as powerless as he describes me, but because I had seen him so often so unmercifully kicked and cuffed and knocked about, so often run over on this floor, that I thought he was beneath my notice, and utterly insignificant. Sir, the gentleman says he is reminded by my ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... absent themselves from most of the weekly meetings. Again, it was an illusion of these leaders, to put forward the most irresponsible persons at their command, as the mouth-pieces and official representatives of the Order, to the end that if detected, the theory of crazy, powerless fools, could be wielded upon public sentiment by an undisturbed partisan press, to save the scheme from thorough investigation ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... responsibilities in this matter nor can he delegate it to the mother. She may be the one big factor in the development of her boy's character and yet there is one time when all her carefully laid plans may go awry, when for a little while her restraining influence is powerless to save. No father can, in fairness to the children he has brought into the world, say that when he has made the home and furnished it, when he has fed and clothed his wife and children he has done all that he ought ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... Royal birth is the gift of fortune, and is but valued as such. In adoption we can use a free judgement, and if we wish to choose well, the voice of the country points the way. Think of Nero, swollen with the pride of his long line of royal ancestry. It was not Vindex with a powerless province at his back, nor I with a single legion that freed Rome's shoulders of that burden: it was his own cruelty and profligacy. And that was before there was any precedent for the conviction of ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... what I saw during my travels in Hungary in 1875-76, I should say the evil described by Mr Boner ten years before has in no way abated. The Wallacks pursue their ruthless destruction of the forests, and the law seems powerless to arrest the mischief. At present there is wood and enough, but the time will come when the country at large must suffer from this reckless waste. There are about twenty-three million acres of forest in Hungary, including almost the only oak-woods ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... too spent for the effort of speech. His hard-drawn breath laboured in great sobs; his limbs were powerless and unstrung in utter relax after hard service. Failure in his endeavour induced a stupor of misery and despair. In addition was the wretched humiliation of open violence and strife with his brother, and the distress ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... escape through it like water through an unstopped hole at the bottom of a leathern bag. The mind in the first instance should be sought to be restrained by the Yogin after the manner of a fisherman seeking at the outset to render that one among the fish powerless from which there is the greatest danger to his nets. Having first subdued the mind, the Yogin should then proceed to subdue his ears, then his eyes, then his tongue, and then his nose. Having restrained these, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... in Italy was now virtually ended, for, although during four years more Hannibal stood at bay in a corner of Bruttium, he was powerless to prevent the restoration of Roman authority throughout Italy. Nothing now remained to Carthage outside of Africa, except the ground on which Hannibal ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... difficulty. In estimating the chances of a possible invasion, it was pointed out how entirely dependent Henry was upon his people: he had only one castle in London, and only a hundred yeomen of the guard to defend him.[886] He would, in fact, have been powerless against a united people or even against a partial revolt, if well organised and really popular. There was chronic discontent throughout the Tudor period, but it was sectional. The remnants of the old nobility always hated Tudor methods of government, ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... on his side, the devotion all on hers. She was invaded by a flood of tenderness toward the man. Was he not her cousin, a gentleman, and helpless as any new-born child? Nothing should be wanting that a strong woman could do for a powerless man. ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... permanence combined, sobriety and permanence to brilliancy and fugacity. It must be the wish of every real artist to leave behind him a lasting record of his skill, a permanent panorama of those hues of nature which in life he loved so well. To effect this, genius alone is powerless: there must be first a proper choice of materials, and next a proper use of them. The painter's pigments are the bricks wherewith the mortar of his mind must be mixed, either to erect an edifice that shall endure ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... Ministry resigned. Prof. Dahlmann, one of the protagonists of the Schleswig-Holstein movement, was commissioned to form a new Ministry. His efforts resulted only in failure. The conviction grew that the German Parliament was powerless. Presently the Parliament revoked its own decision, approving the armistice by 258 over 236 votes. After all, it was plain that the most momentous German question of the day had been settled independently of united Germany by Prussia standing alone. In South Germany the revolutionists were ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... abroad, and to interfere on behalf of every petty princedom oppressed by a powerful neighbour, and every downtrodden subject of some foreign power. It is these same men who wish to dissolve the Union, and to impose obligations at home upon an inadequate army which would leave us powerless abroad. And the longer war delays in coming, the greater will be the danger when it comes. With the increase in armaments, this country must undergo a proportionate sacrifice. If compulsory service should be adopted, it ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... their seats with shouts and execrations. One man leaped for the electric switch to turn out the light, but Frank reached him at a bound and felled him to the floor. Pistols were drawn, but the doughboys knocked them out of the conspirators' hands, and in a twinkling had the men gripped and powerless. ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... better a little while ago madame," replied the young man, "when you said that time is powerless against members of ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Powerless were the ladies, and the brothers scourged them sore. Their shifts and their sullies throughout the blood did stain. Of scourging the two ladies wearied the ...
— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon
... an enemy is a danger. But men are tough-skinned and hard to kill. Is it not so? And even a woman enemy is often powerless to hurt. But when a woman hates a woman, then the case is different. A woman is easy to hurt. A little blow, even a breath on her reputation or to her pride, and the woman is wounded beyond repair. Is it ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... he had never felt so small, so powerless—and as to courage, what was the good of it? he thought. He was so helpless that even flight seemed of no use; and though she kept on whispering, "Go to Doramin, go to Doramin," with feverish insistence, he realised that for him there was no refuge ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... whatever they pleased. Faction was opposed by faction in the field and in the Diet. The national assembly was dissolved by the veto, the laws were disregarded, and brute force prevailed on every side. The miserable peasants in vain besought the protection of their brutal yet powerless lords. Bands of robbers infested the roads, and hunger invaded the cottages. The country rapidly declined in wealth, population, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... the interchange of place, indicated above, occurs. Weak states (images) become strong; strong states (perceptions) become weak. The impressions from without are powerless to fulfill their regular function of inhibition. We find the simplest example of this state in the exceptional persistence of certain dreams. Ordinarily, our nocturnal imaginings vanish as empty phantasmagorias at the inrush of the perceptions ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... crystalline perception of what Mrs. Willoughby's invitation means to Judith. Women appear to find a morbid satisfaction in the fiction that their sex is actuated by a mysterious nexus of emotions and motives which the grosser sense of man is powerless to appreciate. In her heart of hearts it is a prodigious comfort to a woman to feel herself misunderstood. Even she who is most perfectly mated, and is intellectually convinced that the difference of sex is no barrier to his complete knowledge of her, loves to cherish some ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... willing but most real bondservant of Christ [i. 1.]. His relations with Christ so fill him with peace and the power of peace, that extremely irritating rivalry and opposition at Rome does not irritate him, but occasions holy joy, and the suspense about life and death in which Nero keeps him is powerless, wholly because of Christ [i. 12, etc.], to evoke anything but a statement of the dilemma of blessings which life and death in the Lord are to him [i. 21, etc.]. On the other hand, as the whole Epistle ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... accomplish that in which the law was powerless?—Hummel. Who could drive to the uttermost ends of the earth persons against whom not a shadow of suspicion had previously rested?—Hummel. Who dictated to the chiefs of police of foreign cities what they should or should not do in certain cases; and who could, at the beckoning of his little ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... grace and adoration of his all-absorbing love, the heroic order of his manly beauty thrilled the heart of Fern Fenwick with its irresistible charm. The kisses claimed by a lover's privilege, she was powerless to deny. Nay! she did not try to hide the shining light of a great happiness from the adoring eyes of such a noble lover, whose magnetic presence stilled the tumult of her fluttering heart with the ecstatic calm of a measureless content; ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... slight swerving of the heart, That words are powerless to express, And leave it still unsaid in part, Or say ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... her just the same. She had always considered Kenneth's life an open book. She thought she knew his every action, his every thought. The mere suggestion that her husband might have other interests, other attachments of which she knew nothing took her so by surprise that she was disarmed, powerless to answer. The innuendo that he might be unfaithful had gone through her heart like a knife. Of course it was quite ridiculous. He was not that kind of man. It was true he had often gone away on trips that seemed unnecessary, and now she came to ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... appear as soon as possible with an illustration. Wolff can also arrange that, and in case it were necessary, why, in Heaven's name, the sketch can be paid for. The State of Weimar will not be ruined by it. Pereat Philistia and its powerless foolery!!! ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... is rare, but it is believed to be even more powerful than waname and is used in the same way as the latter; the drink produced from it is also strongly intoxicating. Robbers are powerless to steal anything where Sunami calls ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... seemed cut nearly in half; a wound fourteen inches in length from the lower part of the belly passed up his flank, completely severing the muscle of the hind leg, and extending up to the spine. His hind leg had the appearance of being nearly off, and he dragged it after him in its powerless state, and, with a fierce bark, he rushed upon three legs once more to the fight. Advancing to within six feet of the boar, I could not even see him, both he and the dogs were so perfectly concealed by the thick underwood. Suddenly the boar charged. I jumped upon a small rock and hoped ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... by a thrilling touch upon the cold glass, that I have been feeling my way exactly in the opposite direction from what I imagined. Strange how ideas of direction and distance are lost when the sight is powerless! Touch may find out mistakes, but cannot always prevent them. Touch may convince me that I have arrived at my bureau, but it is too careless to perceive (what the poor, straining eyes would have discovered at a glance) ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... a candle in one hand, and with the other carefully shading the flame, glide noiselessly into my room. She was clad in a loose red gown, and a great rope of hair hung over one shoulder. Again those red-gold eyes looked into mine; again I heard that low musical laugh; and this time I felt powerless either to speak or to move. She leaned down, nearer and nearer to me; her eyes gradually assumed a fiendish and terrible expression; and with a sucking noise, which was horrible to hear, she fastened her crimson lips to the little wound in my neck. I remembered nothing more until the morning. ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... elephants are dependent upon certain natural phenomena over which neither rajah nor maharaja, nor viceroy, nor emperor, nor council of state has control, and before which even the great Mogul on his bejeweled throne stood powerless. It is possible to ameliorate the consequences, but it is not ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... not hurt any one, and another was immediately ignited. This one exploded over the very heads of the troops, and many of them must have been killed. Those who were not either killed or wounded turned about and began to run, and their leaders were powerless to make them stand their ground. One shell followed another from the cruiser, and hundreds must have been killed outright among the insurgents. Finally they were all running, and it was soon perceived that the Americans had advanced, and were now ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison
... give in and with a melancholy heart to do what I could to help in the simple preparations for this crazy undertaking, realizing all the while that the only real help must come from above, since in such a case man was powerless. I should add that after consultation, Ragnall gave up the idea of adopting a Kendah disguise which was certain to be discovered, also of starting at night when the ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... glass. An indescribable thrill passed through her as she perceived that the eyes of the reflected image were open, gazing wonderingly at her, and under the curious unexpectedness of the sight she became as if spellbound, almost powerless to turn her head and regard the original. However, by an effort she did turn, when there he lay asleep the same ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Lord commanded the man to stretch forth his hand. He might have pleaded that it was powerless; but no, the Lord had given him power at the moment he desired him to exert it; and just so to every Christian, God is a God of all grace, and will give to each of us the peculiar grace we need; but we must not lock it ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... she must reveal—what hitherto she had partly hidden—the importunity and unbrotherly disloyalty of Hugh's love. She must also awaken fresh distress in Paul's mind, already overburdened with grief for the loss of his mother. Probably Paul would be powerless to interpret his brother's strange language. And if he should be puzzled, the more he must be pained. Perhaps Hugh Ritson's threat was nothing but the outburst of a distempered spirit—the noise of a bladder that is emptying itself. Still, Greta's nervousness ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... He was left powerless. He puffed and grew dizzy as Bill Wrenn danced delicately about him, for he could do nothing without back-street tactics. He did bloody the nose of Bill and pummel his ribs, but many cigarettes and much whisky told, and he was ready to ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... is; used every scrap of influence he possessed to help her. But the duke, who was a Protestant (the princess was of course a Catholic), the duke persuaded all the Protestant States in the Diet to vote in his favour. The Emperor of Austria was powerless, the Pope was powerless. And the Diet annulled ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... Marie with a contemptuous gesture. "Even his ready eloquence must prove powerless beside the experience of the past. Henceforward there can be no trust or fellowship between the widow of Henry the Great and her ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... objected to my leaving a jar of jelly with my friend. It would spoil the good order of the ward, and all delicacies were to be given into the care of the Sisters. I found one of them who was quite willing to take charge of anything I wished to leave, but was powerless in the matter of vermin. It was the ward master's business to attend to that. It was the business of the Sisters to look after the clothing when it came from the laundry, put it in order, and give it out ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... even less difficult to blame the Rangars afterward for the death of any priest who might succumb during the ensuing struggle. He counted on the populace, more than on his own organized forces, to make the Rangars powerless when the time should come for them to try to take the upper hand. The mob would suffer in the process, but its fanaticism—its religious prejudice and ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... passage that, in all relations of life, Christ regards the kingdom of God as the more powerful, victorious, finally overcoming all opposition, and the kingdom of darkness as powerless, falling in ruins ever more and more. Yet, how do most of you have so little confidence in your faith, and wrap it carefully in the cotton of isolation, lest it take cold from any draught of the world; while others are ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... result of the national biography and of the national character, not the work of a few individuals whose names have been preserved by capricious Accident as heroes and legislators. Yet there is no doubt that, while comparatively powerless for good, the individual despot is capable of almost infinite mischief. There have been few men known to history who have been able to accomplish by their own exertions so vast an amount of evil as the king who had just died. If ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... going about as well and hearty as usual, and suddenly it'll strike you to earth like lightning, and it may leave you powerless to move for weeks and sometimes even years. You may know all that's going on around you but not be able to speak or make a sign. Mr. Potter isn't as bad as that, but he's speechless. With him the end may come any time, yet he may linger on for ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... and France powerless we should become more or less dependent upon German good-will, and it is highly probable, indeed I regard it as a certainty, that before long, in such an event, the Monroe Doctrine would cease to exercise any important influence on world events. It would become a thing of the ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... man! Pundita, he was murdered, and I am powerless to avenge him. It was Umballa; but what proof have I? None, none! Well, for me there is left but one thing; to leave Allaha for good. We two shall go to some country where honor and kindness are ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... table-talk of Earley[38] was powerless to seduce this staunch partisan from his political allegiance; and, just at this period, he was meditating the most skilful and the most resounding blow which he ever struck ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... the fact that his overmastering sensation came without the slightest volition of his own. He had had nothing to do with it, his will was powerless. He was betrayed like a fortified city whose gate had been thrown open by an unsuspected, a concealed, traitor inside. In an instant he had been invaded, his being levelled, his peculiar pride overthrown. He ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... JOBS ARE BONES. The phrase was an incessant iteration in Saxon's brain. Much as she might have wished it, she was powerless now to withdraw from the window. It was as if she were paralyzed. Her brain no longer worked. She sat numb, staring, incapable of anything save seeing the rapid horror before her eyes that flashed along ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... the worst of all vices in a horse which has to carry a side-saddle, because a lady, by reason of her side position and her inability to lower her hands to the same extent as a man, is utterly powerless on a rearer. I have seen men slip off over the animal's tail, when he was standing on his hind legs, but this is a feat which a woman is unable to accomplish, as I found when a horse reared and came over with ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... happy with Richard. Oh, Roger, I am a cold devil to you...." She was indeed. For when she received Peacey's letter saying blandly that there was nothing in his life of which he need feel ashamed, and realised that the game was up and she was powerless, she was glad. She sat down and wrote her bluffing answer, a warning that if the child was not sent back within a week she would come down to Dawlish and fetch it, with an infamous fear lest it might be efficacious. And when Peacey wrote back, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... shores?—Even during the most arduous prosecution of war, the cause of humanity, and the progress of civilization, would be eminently promoted by these noble and generous efforts, for the rescue of those, whom the fury of the elements had divested of all hostile character, and thrown helpless and powerless on a foreign coast. ...
— An Appeal to the British Nation on the Humanity and Policy of Forming a National Institution for the Preservation of Lives and Property from Shipwreck (1825) • William Hillary
... aided him, for the fellow offered barely a show of opposition. His astounded faculties had no more than recognised the call for resistance when he was powerless in Lanyard's hands. Swung bodily away from the wheel, he went over the rail to the forward deck like a bag of sugar. Immediately Lanyard turned to ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... number of circulars sent to me quoting abstract remarks that I had made relative to nut culture in general, and this has been applied concretely in circulars; the context did not go with it. I asked a lawyer what I could do about it, and after going over the question he said that I probably was powerless. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... and has fled before one might catch the sound, the far hope of science, the glimpse that comes to dying eyes and is voiced in fragments by dying lips. Here without penetrating the great reserve or tracing any principle to its beginning, was the truth about both. And St. George was powerless to receive it. ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... obedient to the words of a eunuch as if we were entirely helpless. We are the refuge of all helpless persons. Yet, when people see us so, why would they not say that in respect of the acquisition of our objects we are entirely powerless? Reflect on this that I say. It has been laid down that (a life of) renunciation should be adopted, only in times of distress, by kings overcome with decrepitude or defeated by foes. Men of wisdom, therefore, do not applaud renunciation ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... in various French colonies, states in his Untrodden Fields of Anthropology that it is a mistake to imagine that the negress is very amorous. She is rather cold, and indifferent to the refinements of love, in which respects she is very unlike the mulatto. The white man is usually powerless to excite her, partly from his small penis, partly from his rapidity of emission; the black man, on account of his blunter nervous system, takes three times as long to reach emission as the white man. Among the Mohammedan peoples of West Africa, Daniell remarks, as ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... a chair with an all-gone feeling and a lightness in the top of her head. She felt as if the world, the flesh, and the devil had suddenly dropped down upon the house and were carrying off her children bodily, and she was powerless to prevent it. She could not keep the pain of it out of her eyes; yet she did not know what to say in this emergency. None of the things that had always seemed entirely convincing in forming her own opinions ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... catch of her breath, and the hand which she had placed gently on his bowed head fell suddenly away. When he raised his head to look at her, she was staring past him into the deepening twilight of the tundra, and it seemed as if something had stricken her so that for a space she was powerless to ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... and Stamboul spectacles, hidden by the palms, beside the table with its empty bottles and its broken glass, how could I believe it such? I turned away, as if to avoid the sight of the crushing of some innocent thing which I was powerless to aid, and strode ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... at the time, but her record was against her. She lay a day or two in a police cell, and by the time it was clear that it was not rum this time, the mischief was done. Probably it would have been done anyhow. The woman was worn out. What now lay on the hospital cot was a mere wreck of her, powerless to move or speak. She could only plead with her large, sad eyes. As she tried to make them say that which was in her soul, two big tears rolled slowly down the wan cheeks and fell on the coarse sheet. The visitor understood. What woman ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... gone, good dame. But what if she Has made mistake, and thread of gold Is not enough to draw our son From out the Ogre's cruel hold? Canst think of nought, your Majesty? Of nothing else? Must we stand here And powerless lift no hand to speed The rescue of our ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... that with the academic or clerical prig, when the mind has long been permitted to run in a deep, platitudinous groove from which it is at last powerless to escape, the resemblance to a prig in fiction is sometimes more than fanciful. It is real. For there is no doubt that prigs have a horrid family likeness to each other, whether in books or in real life. I have sometimes felt as the puzzled mother of some long-lost ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... wonderfully serve the purpose of the picture. There is not one among its three-and-twenty heads of which the same remark might not be made. Neither will we treat of great effects produced by means quite powerless in other hands for such an end, or of the prodigious force and colour which so separate this work from all the rest exhibited, that it would scarcely appear to be produced upon the same kind of surface by the same description of instrument. The bricks and stones and timbers ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... her hand fell powerless to her side; but when he added: 'He gave it to Privy Seal!' she cast the tongs into the brands to save herself from ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... his blows were powerless to help, as James, in a frenzy of rage and alarm, gripped the girl's wrist, and twisted it. "Let it go! Let it go, you fool!" he cried brutally, "or I will ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... and the waves racing up madly astern, when, dividing, they would tower up on either side of our frail craft, threatening destruction for the moment ere they rolled onward again—we, all the while, fleeing before the fury of the storm we knew not whither, powerless alike to shape a course ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... father than with the friend. The young man again looked at both his companions, endeavoring to penetrate their real meaning, or their real feelings, with the utmost strength of his intelligence; but his look was powerless upon the smiling countenance of the musketeer, or upon the calm and composed features of the Comte de la Fere. "Where are you going, Raoul?" inquired the latter, seeing that Bragelonne was preparing to ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... which knives and pistols would be freely used; and not unfrequently a dead body would rise to the surface of the water in one of the docks with marks of violence upon it. The civil authorities were powerless to prevent crime. "Inter arma silent leges!" The agents and employes of the different blockade-running companies, lived in magnificent style, paying a king's ransom (in Confederate money) for their household expenses, and nearly monopolizing the ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... little John had gained by marrying her! She could do nothing for him; she was powerless even to help her own son, who was compelled to adopt miserable subterfuges and swallow his pride on every occasion. She opened her purse and took out the check, intending to destroy it in her rage, but she was stopped by the miserable thought that, after ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... object of the Federals was to remove negroes from their owners; but for the lives of these poor people they cared nothing, or, assuredly, they would not have forced them, on an unprotected river steamer, to pass riflemen and artillery, against which gunboats were powerless. On the following day, the 27th, the two remaining gunboats and transport attempted to pass Caudle's position; and the former, much cut up, succeeded, but the transport was captured. Colonel Caudle had one man wounded, and the battery one killed—its commander, Captain Cornay, who, with Mouton, ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... his eyes than an assumed stammer, a sham deafness, or a convalescent pallor put on for the occasion. East and west are alike in his sight. The retired registrar, the pensioned usher aspiring late in life to some petty magistrature, are powerless to touch his heart. For him in vain does the youthful volunteer allow his uniform to peep out beneath his student's gown: he will not profit by the patriotic indulgence he counted on inspiring. His sayings in the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of the gods, he brought low the glory of the powerless Swedes, doing their king to death and crushing him with the ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... obligations to other nations. The mob of a single city may at any time perform acts of lawless violence against some class of foreigners which would plunge us into war. That city by itself would be powerless to make defense against the foreign power thus assaulted, and if independent of this Government it would never venture to perform or permit the performance of the acts complained of. The entire power and the whole duty to protect the offending city or the offending community ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... of music, but could only hear a tune, made manifest to him by the dry mechanism of the instruments and his own ears, with no address to any mystery within him, without a whisper in it of the past, or of the future, powerless upon him as the sound of last year's running water, or the rushing of last ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... presently up came the master of the garden, who, seeing it in this plight, was wroth with sore wrath and coming up to them said, "Woe to you! What fashion is this? Did I not stipulate with you that ye should do no damage in the garden?" Quoth they, "Thou knowest that we are powerless to come at any of the fruit, for that one of us is a cripple and cannot rise and the other is blind and cannot see that which is before him; so what is our offense?" But the master answered, "Think ye I know not how ye wrought and how ye have gone ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... Feck, quantity, portion. Feckless, feeble, powerless. Fell, strong and fiery. Fey, unlike yourself, strange, as if urged on by fate, or as persons are observed to be in the hour of approaching death or disaster. Fit, foot. Flit, to depart. Flyped, turned up, turned in-side out. Forbye, in addition to. Forgather, to fall in with. Fower, four. Fushionless, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "long-continued and intemperate interference" of the Northern people with slavery. But it was of the most serious consequence that, while he condemned secession as unconstitutional, he also declared himself powerless to prevent it. His duty "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed" he knew no other way to perform except by aiding federal officers in the performance of their duties. But where, as in South Carolina, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... cheers. Rutford, ever tactless where boys were concerned, was unwise enough to make a speech from the steps condemning, in his usual bombastic style, a demonstration which he ought to have known he was quite powerless to punish or to prevent. When he had finished, the School cheered more derisively than before. After Bill, he left the Yard, ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... evident that he gloated on this idea that the body of the lady of the feathers was forever useless for good, and even powerless to do much effective evil. He seemed to revel in the notion that she was simply a thing powerless, negative, and ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... revenge herself upon me," cried the queen, whose countenance began to brighten up once more. "I fear neither her nor her whole set. All their arrows will fall powerless at my feet, for the love of my husband and my pure conscience form the protection which secures me. And what can these people accomplish against me? They can slander me, that is all. But their calumnies will, in the ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... this region, from generation to generation, had been renowned for exceeding pugnacity. Between them and the city boys constantly-recurring quarrels were so bitter that sometimes men were drawn in through sympathy with their boys. The law seemed powerless to put an end to this state ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... the girl swirled madly and chaotically during those moments when she strained against the rawhide strength of the arms that held her powerless, and they seemed ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... frail and powerless being, nevertheless he is safe from all animals destitute of voice; and at the same time those other animals of greater strength, although they bravely endure the violence of weather, cannot be safe from man. And the result is, that reason does ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... confidence were not displayed by some of the British divisions. The very strength of our artillery was sapping the old reliance on the rifle, and when the barrage stopped the infantry often seemed to be powerless to defend the ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... yet the best swimmer in the world would have been drowned ere he reached it, as the water was so bitterly cold, that when I was bailing for my life, and, consequently, in pretty violent exercise, my hands became quite benumbed and almost powerless. ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... age. Perhaps the solid, square compactness of the buildings has much to do with this. They appear as though built to defy time. Even the shadow of the venerable trees and the ancient ivy's telltale embrace seem powerless to break the ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... would he could find no explanation of the puzzle and his friends were equally powerless to ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... religion of humanity. But the Rabbins shut out those enlarging influences, confining their religion within the narrow traditions of one people. The process by which they conserved the old belief helped to quench its spirit, so that it became an antique skeleton, powerless beside the new civilization which had followed the wake of Alexander's conquests. Rabbinical Judaism proved its incapacity for regenerating the world; having no affinity for the philosophy of second causes, or for the exercise of reason beneath the love of a Father who sees ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... the flaming rivers of molten lava, which come pouring forth, followed by the night of cold, ice, and snow: when we consider these, and the great lapse of time necessary for their accomplishment, how powerless are mere words to set forth the grandeur and the resistless sweep of nature's laws, and to paint the insignificance and trifling nature of man and ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... against this disaster would have been folly—nay, madness. In presence of Nature's grand convulsions man is powerless. ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... Grits,' who were ever denouncing French Canada's 'special privileges,' was a great source of weakness to them in their own province. It was, however, the hostility of a section of the Catholic hierarchy which was most effective in keeping these agitators long in a powerless minority. In the early days of the party this hostility was not unwarranted. Many of the young crusaders had definitely left the fold of the Church to criticize it from without, to demand the abolition of the Pope's temporal power in Europe and of ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... better than I did, and can feel and show some sympathy in them. Of course the life of a physician is necessarily one of self-denial, spent as it is amid scenes of suffering and sorrow, which he is often powerless to alleviate. But there is besides the wear and tear of years of poverty; his bills are disputed or allowed to run on year after year unnoticed; he is often dismissed because he cannot put himself in the place of Providence and ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... At every attempt of Shyuote to rise or to roll over, she pushed his face back into the moist ground, she pulled his hair, thumped his shoulders, and boxed his ears. She was in earnest, and Shyuote was powerless in her firm grasp. He could not even scream, for a thick coating of soil had fastened itself to his features, had penetrated into eye, mouth, and nostrils. His fate was as melancholy as it was ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... raise one hand, the left, in which was the seat of pain, he became aware that his arm was stiff and powerless. He could not ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... the programme of a Crystal Palace Concert. This was of itself sufficient to turn Lancelot's head away from all but thoughts of Fame, even if Mary Ann had not been luckless enough to be again discovered cleaning the steps—and without gloves. Against such a spectacle the veriest idealist is powerless. If Mary Ann did not immediately revert to the category of quadrupeds in which she had started, it was only because of Lancelot's supplementary knowledge of the creature. But as he passed her by, solicitous as before ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... more melancholy than these reprisals in painting, by a pack of cards, in the presence of stakes for the roasting of smugglers and of the cauldron for the boiling of counterfeiters. The diverse forms assumed by thought in the realm of slang, even song, even raillery, even menace, all partook of this powerless and dejected character. All the songs, the melodies of some of which have been collected, were humble and lamentable to the point of evoking tears. The pegre is always the poor pegre, and he is always the hare in hiding, the fugitive mouse, the flying bird. He hardly complains, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... from the Cross, "My God! my God! why hast Thou forsaken me?" And I arose and raised my hand, and said those same words too. Then I opened the door, and she sprang into my arms. She was wild and excited, and friend Afton was with her, but powerless to do anything. I let her weep close to me and cry out and laugh—do just as she would until she sank exhausted. Then I talked with her calmly and dispassionately, and she clung to me and would not be removed. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... my meaning. I am talking of a man who is full of courage and determination, yet just because he is only one is powerless. A lion might be killed by rats if there were ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... by a small force of local police, went up to the mines to investigate. They found themselves powerless; "keep yourselves out of danger," they were told, "and let us settle our own affairs." The carnage was in full swing; it was hell let loose. Not content with killing, they mutilated each other's corpses, bit off noses, gouged out eyes, ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... least, soon or late, your day of reckoning must come, and you, too, may be betrayed as I have been. Rather should you ask me to forgive your soul the insults that in your hour of triumph you have not been ashamed to heap upon one who is powerless to avenge them," and he urged his ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... destruction of Lady Glyde's identity. If either Marian or Mr. Hartright attempted to assert that identity, they would publicly expose themselves to the imputation of sustaining a rank deception, they would be distrusted and discredited accordingly, and they would therefore be powerless to place my interests or Percival's secret in jeopardy. I committed one error in trusting myself to such a blindfold calculation of chances as this. I committed another when Percival had paid the penalty of his own obstinacy and violence, ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... farewell to love, the beginning of an anguish which shall torture your soul to death? Have you lost him?' For moments it was as though life fought with the last and invincible enemy. On the spot where she had been standing she sank powerless to her knees, clinging to the nearest object, her head ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... be shot if you don't" retorted Leslie, in a quiet, concentrated tone of voice that made the man addressed involuntarily shudder. "It is no good, men," he continued, "your comrades are prisoners ashore and utterly powerless to help you. The game is up. We are here to regain possession of this ship, and we mean to do it. And if either of you is foolish enough to offer resistance, you will ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... punishment to be as full as he could make it. Not content to kill the Marquis as the Marquis had killed Philippe, he desired that he should first know himself as powerless to avert that death as Philippe had been. Nothing less would content Andre-Louis. M. le Marquis must begin by tasting of that cup of despair. It was in the account; part of ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... customary clear-headedness, Comrade Asher, you have got home on the bull's-eye first pop. Comrade Windsor is indeed the boss. A man of intensely masterful character, he will brook no opposition. I am powerless to sway him. Suggestions from myself as to the conduct of the paper would infuriate him. He believes that radical changes are necessary in the programme of Cosy Moments, and he means to put them through if it snows. ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... deferred the Huguenot massacre for a dozen years. During the period in which the Queen Regent was resolved to play her fast and loose policy, all the persuasions of Philip and the arts of Alva were powerless to induce her to carry out the scheme which Henry had revealed to Orange in the forest of Vincennes. When the crime came at last, it was as blundering as it was bloody; at once premeditated and accidental; the isolated ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... hardships of life, from the hatred of the peoples, from legal disabilities, and social outlawry; they feel that they cannot hope for any lasting amelioration of their situation so long as they must live as a powerless minority among a hostile majority. They desire to become a nation, to rejuvenate themselves by close contact with mother earth, and to become once more the masters of their destiny. This Zionist ...
— Zionism and Anti-Semitism - Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil • Max Simon Nordau
... without steering. Set them on a finely broken horse, on a colt, or a restive horse, and they become helpless children—the powerless prisoners of the brutes they bestride. How often does one see one's acquaintance in this distressing situation, with courage enough to dare what man dare, but without the power to do what the rough-rider has just done! First comes the false indication of the rider, then the confusion and hesitation ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... inland; I have not beheld the sea now for many years. I never saw it without emotion; I now view it with awe. What an emblem of eternity!—Its dominion is alone reserved to Him, who made it. Changing yet changeless—ever varying, yet always the same. How weak and powerless is man! how short his span of life, when he is viewed in connexion with the sea! He has left no trace upon it—it will not receive the impress of his hands; it obeys no laws, but those imposed upon it by Him, who called it into existence; generation after generation has looked upon it as we ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... other cases, we approach this Epistle with a very strong guarantee of its authenticity, which can only be invalidated by solid and convincing proofs, and against which hypothetical combinations and ingenious surmises are powerless [105:2]. Whether the objections adduced by the impugners of this Epistle are of this character, the reader ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... irritated at the manner in which he was approached. Louis XIV. was treating him as a vassal of France rather than as an independent sovereign. But he felt himself to be weak, and comparatively powerless to resent the insult. So he first temporised, then vacillated, and being again pressed by the French king, he eventually yielded. The amnesty was declared to be at an end, and the Vaudois were ordered forthwith to become members of the Church of Rome. An edict was issued on the 31st of ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... of harmonious relief or variety in such a case could of course be found only in an interlude of pure fancy; any touch of graver or deeper emotion would simply have untuned and deranged the whole scheme of composition. A lesser poet might have been powerless to resist the temptation or suggestion of sentiment that he should give to the little loves of Anne Page and Fenton a touch of pathetic or emotional interest; but "opulent as Shakespeare was, and ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... streams touched were sometimes great whirls (one not many yards from our boat) that looked as if they would suck anything down. Sometimes among all this were great smooth parts of the sea, still in a whirling trouble, which were surrounded by the mad currents. We seemed entirely powerless among ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... other tropical port in this respect. Its principal streets give you the impression of walking through an English town,—not an old-time town, but a new one, plain almost to commonplaceness, in spite of Nelson's monument. Even the palms are powerless to lend the place a really tropical look;—the streets are narrow without being picturesque, white as lime roads and full of glare;—the manners, the costumes, the style of living, the system of business ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... arises. You stand trembling and weak with fear. Why are you powerless to move? Why do you tremble? And yet you believe that the mind has but little influence upon the body. You are for a moment dominated by a fit of anger. For a few hours afterwards you complain of a violent headache. And still you do not seem to realize that the thoughts and emotions ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... were singing jubilantly. She lay there a moment, wondering why she was so stiff and uncomfortable. Then she was aware that she was still dressed, and memory came back in a rush, with a pain so overwhelming that she felt utterly powerless to get up and face the day which lay ahead of her, and all the stretch ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the roof; whether the bats flew to the east or the west when he first saw them; or whether the Jack o'lanterns sailed near the ground (when they were carried by a little Jack), or whether they were high (when a tall Jack bore them), it made no difference. His herbs were powerless, and Dame ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... fairly intelligent young man, who only asked to be allowed to work to live! But how was I to make them smart for this injustice? I could not take the scorpion they gave me when I asked them for an egg, and make it sting every individual composing the nation. I was powerless, utterly powerless, to punish them, and therefore the only thing that remained for me to do ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... which deprived me of breath and power of utterance: it darted through my body like lightning, causing the most excruciating pain that I have ever felt during my life. I had to halt the party, and was lifted from the saddle completely powerless. After dismounting, the pain became so violent, and the torture so excessive, that I thought my career in the world was coming quickly to a close. I was completely paralysed, and a cold perspiration was pouring in streams over my face and body. Recollecting I had got a mixture of laudanum and other ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... a terrifying thought that life is at the mercy of the multiplication of these minute bodies, it is a consoling hope that Science will not always remain powerless before such enemies, since for example at the very beginning of the study we find that simple exposure to air is sufficient at ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... and canvas-back ducks, and rare brands of champagne, in lordly dining-halls, or your place is certain to be secondary. You may, if a man, have the manners of a Chesterfield and the wit of a Balzac; you may, if a woman, be beautiful as Mary Stuart and brilliant as DeStael, and yet, powerless to "entertain," you can fill no lofty pedestal. "Position" in New York means a corpulent purse whose strings work as flexibly as the dorsal muscles of a professional toady. And this kind of toady has an exquisite flair for your greatness and dignity ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... introspection. The exaggerated pessimism in this part of his outcry is explained by his own statement, that he lived in a transition time, when the old faith was (as he held) dead, and the new one (partly realized in our own generation) as yet 'powerless to be born.' Arnold's poetry, therefore, is to be viewed as largely the expression, monotonous but often poignantly beautiful, of a temporary mood of questioning protest. But if his conclusion is not positive, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... of Versailles where, dreaming of a distant tragic past, she found ever new strength to meet the present. Death claimed her not far from there, in Paris, at a moment when her daughter in America, her son in Africa, were powerless to reach her. But souls like unto hers leave their mark in passing through the world; and, though in a foreign land, separated from all who had been dear to her, she received from two friends such devotion as few women deserve in life, and ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... Mr. Wohlfart!" cried Lenore, again reaching out her hand. Alas! the warning hare, the crows, would have been powerless to break the spell which attracted the fur glove to the Danish leather; something ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... expectation and prophecy of his success in those about him make it easier for a painter to soar, and may touch his work with an indefinable glow that the approval of honest and astute electors or solid burghers may have been utterly powerless ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... preserved for a time the decaying body. They could not restore vitality; they warded off the blows of fate. They could only keep the empire from falling until the forces of enemies were organized. No generalship could have saved Rome. The great military emperors must have felt that they were powerless against the combination of barbaric forces. The soul of Theodosius must have sunk within him to see how fruitless were his victories, how barren any victories to such a diseased and crumbling empire. Diocletian retired, in the plenitude of his power, to die of a broken heart. The utmost the ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... dead. In the light of this subsequent revelation how easy to account for his loving Mary, too. Never would she be Mary again to him! Fay Larkin and the Sago Lily were one and the same. She was here, near him, and he was powerless for the present to help her or to reveal himself. She was held back there in that gloomy hall among those somber Mormons, alien to the women, bound in some fatal way to one of the men, and now, by reason of her weakness in the trial, surely to be hated. Thinking of ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... river-bed was choked with heaps of slain. A few, who escaped from the river, were pursued and cut down by the Syracusan horse. Nicias had held out until the last moment; but when he perceived that all was lost, his men being powerless either to fight or fly, he made his way to Gylippus, and implored him to stop the useless carnage. "I surrender myself," he said, "to you and the Spartans. Do with me as you please, but put an end to this butchery of defenceless men." Gylippus ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... rules, forbidden to do this and that, taught to think that his one duty was to be magnificently attired, to acquire graceful arts of posture and courtesy, subtly and gently prevented from obeying natural and simple impulses, made powerless—a crowned slave; so that, instead of being the freest and sincerest thing in the world, it became the prisoner of respectability and convention, just a ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... faction little love was lost. Only when some scheme of deviltry joined them together in common interests, as the massacre of the Huguenots at Amboise, were Catherine and the Guise brothers at one, and this triumvirate even Queen Mary was powerless ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... she sighed, leaning towards the world. 'My poor children are plunged in misery, and by my fault. Their suffering is my crime, and I will expiate it. God Himself, who only thinks through me, would be powerless to restore them to their pristine purity. That which is done is done, and the creation will remain for ever imperfect. But, at least, I will not forsake my creatures. If I cannot make them happy, like me, I can make myself unhappy, like them. ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... at the door of her chamber, were beheaded, and, their gory heads affixed to pikes, were carried by the windows of the carriage, and pressed upon the view of the wretched captives with every species of insult and derision. La Fayette was powerless. He was borne along resistlessly by this whirlwind of human passions. None were so malignant, so ferocious, so merciless, as the degraded women who mingled with the throng. They bestrode the cannon singing the most indecent and insulting songs. "We shall now have bread," ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... its trials as well as its triumphs. It is powerless to assert itself against the sordid interests of everyday life. The greatest book ever written, the finest picture ever painted, appeals in vain to minds preoccupied by selfish and secret cares. On entering Lord Loring's gallery, Father Benwell found ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... gathering of rich harvests of furs had begun, and British and American fur-traders were seeking these treasures on every hand. But at the beginning of these harvests the Cayuses were sickening and dying, and the mission was powerless ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... my young friends, to put a stop to this tremendous evil. It is your duty, and it should be your pleasure, to give that tone to the public sentiment, without which, in governments like this, written laws are powerless. ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... was, she rather regretted when he went, for he was clever and intelligent, and glad to be employed in any errand in the town; and though spurning the remonstrances of Susan, given as they were, though very reasonable in themselves, with ill-timed and powerless warmth, was beginning to be influenced by Fanny's services and gentle persuasions; and she found that the best of the three younger ones was gone in him: Tom and Charles being at least as many years as they were his juniors distant from ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Prince. Suddenly he knew that he had had, no right to attempt this thing. He had given his word, almost, his oath, to the King, to protect and watch over the boy. And here he was, knowing now that mischief was afoot, and powerless. He ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... feast of All-Hallows, when the witches meet to renew their vows. On this night thou must be as they, and must join their company. Still thou mayest hide thyself under any form thou shalt choose; but it shall abide upon thee until midnight. Till then thy spells are powerless. On no other day ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... the one hand, between a nation which believes in political liberty and national autonomy, where the Press is free and where the rulers are responsible to public opinion, and, on the other hand, a nation where public opinion is still muzzled or powerless and where the masses are still under the heel of an absolute government, a reactionary party, a military Junkerthum, and ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... have been intelligible. But the voice which in general led to such solemn service—so thrilling in its sweetness, that the most indifferent could not listen to it unmoved—now lay hushed and mute, powerless even to breathe the sobs that crushed her heart. And when the psalm ceased, and the prayer for the dying followed, with one mighty effort Henriquez raised himself, and clasping his hands, uttered distinctly the last solemn words ever spoken by his race, and then sunk back—and there ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... ministry unpopular, and thus deprive them of all hope of saving the monarchy. In vain did they appeal to the queen, and implore her, by her feelings as a mother, to bend the king to their wishes. The queen herself was for a long time powerless. At last the king seemed to hesitate, and gave Dumouriez a private meeting in the evening. In this conversation he ordered Dumouriez to present to him three ministers, to succeed Roland, Claviere, and Servan. Dumouriez at once named Vergennes for finance, Naillac for foreign affairs, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... lay on the chilly ice, never once thinking where I was, and all the while calling frantically to him; but I might as well have called to a stone. When I rose up, fully impressed with the necessity of securing for the lad rest and warmth, and fully realized, for the first time, my powerless situation (that I was even apparently unable to save myself, still less the boy), my heart seemed to give way entirely, and I sank down once more beside him. A prayer to Heaven for succor, which I had no thought could ever come to me, rose to my lips, ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... no longer bridled; the savages got drunk, the traders were enriched, and the colony was in jeopardy. Sure of being supported by the governor, the merchants listened to neither bishop nor missionaries. Grieved at seeing his prayers as powerless as his commands, Mgr. de Laval decided to carry his complaint to the foot of the throne, and he set sail for France in the autumn of 1662. "Statesmen who place the freedom of commerce above morality of action," says Jacques de Beaudoncourt, "still consider that the ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... Riches are nothing to me. Bribery may do much in other parts of the Empire, but it is powerless in the Trogzmondoff. I shall die in the room adjoining this, as my predecessor died. I am quite as much a prisoner in the Trogzmondoff as is your Highness. No man who has once set foot in this room, either as Governor, employee, or prisoner, is allowed to see the mainland again, ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... that noble but unfortunate race who once peopled the continent of North America. War has slain its thousands, but alcohol its tens of thousands; and the fortitude which could bear without shrinking the most cruel inflictions of torture, has proved powerless to resist the seductions of strong drink. It is to be feared a heavy retribution awaits the white man, the pitiless author of ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... Vahlika, and Kripa and said, 'Ye have yourselves witnessed all that hath happened in the assembly of the Kurus, viz., how wicked Duryodhana, like an uneducated wretch, left the court from anger, and how king Dhritarashtra also describeth himself to be powerless. With the permission of you all, I shall now go back to Yudhishthira.' Saluting them, that bull amongst men, Sauri then mounted his car and set out. And those heroic bulls amongst the Bharatas, those mighty bowmen, viz., Bhishma, Drona, and Kripa, and Kshattri, and Aswatthaman ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... provisions and spun its cocoon wherein to sleep the slumber akin to death, the necessary period of preparation for its future life, these other enemies hasten to the nests whose fortifications are powerless against their hideously ingenious methods. Soon on the sleeper's body lies a nascent grub which feasts in all security on the luscious fare. The traitors who attack the larvae in their lethargy are three in number: an Anthrax, ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... dreadful August. With each day of that appalling retreat Larry's agony deepened. The reports were vague, but one thing was clear—the drive was going relentlessly forward, and the French and the British armies alike were powerless to stay the overwhelming torrent. The check at the Marne lifted the gloom a bit. But the reports of that great fight were meagre and as yet no one had been able to estimate the full significance of that ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... voice, "what was I formerly? What am I now? Consult among yourselves and reply. A man like me sinks when he does not continue to rise. What shall we say, then, when he really sinks? I have no more money, no more credit; I have no longer anything but powerful enemies, and powerless friends." ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to them that have it and is more a leaning upon the Lord than a willing of one that willeth. And yet all the leaning on the Lord in Christendom fails if there be not a will of him that willeth to back it up. God and the man are powerless without ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... counted on finding her when they found her father, and now here lay Wren unconscious of her loss, and Blakely, realizing it all—cruelly, feverishly realizing it—yet so weakened by his wounds as to be almost powerless to march or mount and go in search ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... laborious teaching I am for a power indebted, By which I can move even mountains And in different places set them: Yet although these mighty wonders I can do to-day, I'm helpless By the voice of my desire To draw towards me one fair vestal. And the cause why I am powerless To subdue that beauteous virgin Is that by a God she's guarded, Whom, now knowing by His blessed Grace bestowed, I come to acknowledge As the Infinite, the Eternal. Yes, the great God of the Christians I now openly confess here. And though true it is I am Still of hell the slave and servant, ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... finding them splendid (notwithstanding that St. Jerome assured me that the back of the tunic wrinkled badly), I went downstairs with a complacent smile which I was powerless to banish from my face, and sought Woloda, trying the while to affect unconsciousness of the admiring looks of the servants, who came darting out of the hall and corridor to gaze upon me with ravished eyes. Gabriel, ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... terrible strain upon her, begged her to stop. But Althora had gained the vision that was always before her loved one's eyes—a world of death and disaster—and he, here where the bolt would be launched, and powerless to prevent. She could not ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... shook his head slowly, with an arrogant smile. It then occurred to George that this man differed strangely from all other men—because the sinister spell of the war had been powerless over him alone. All other men bore the war in their faces and in their gestures, but this man ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... the usual ornamentation of the triangular spaces on the facades of stairs. This is a representation of a combat between a lion and a bull, or (perhaps, we should rather say) a representation of a lion seizing and devouring a bull; for the latter animal is evidently powerless to offer any resistance to the fierce beast which has sprung upon him from behind, and has fixed both fangs and claws in his body. [PLATE LVI., Fig. 4.] In his agony the bull rears up his fore-parts, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... man, would send its armies to our shores. Under what standard would we rally to preserve our liberty? There would be no Union—without it there would be no strength; and those who, united, could defy the world in arms, divided would be weak and powerless. Such are the ultimate results of disunion. Let us take the first step, and all may be lost forever. That step is nullification by Carolina, then her secession—then, as she truly tells us in her address, 'the separation of South Carolina would inevitably produce ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... lead, and almost powerless. With one hand he knew he could not hang on. Nor did he try longer than for that one desperate instant when he shot his fist through the loop. The wall of water swept him away, but the ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... to be called such? The deep danger, the only one that made him, as an idea, positively turn cold, would have been the possibility of her seeking him in marriage, of her bringing up between them that terrible issue. Here, fortunately, she was powerless, it being apparently so provable against her that she had a husband ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... off his sombrero, drank in the scene. How he loved it all! It was the Seer's dream, but the Seer could have no part in it. It was Barbara's Desert, but Barbara was shut out—exiled. It was his work, but he was powerless to do it. The Seer had told him to stay for his work's sake. He smiled grimly, remembering the Manager's words. Barbara had told him to stay, but the girl knew nothing of conditions—how could she know? Jefferson Worth had told him to ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... best to keep Gerald away, she appeared to be quite powerless in the matter; and it was therefore useless to go to her. Besides, he had every inclination to avoid her. He had ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... baffled rage. He had been trapped. These men had conspired to save his late employer from his clutches. They had lied, deliberately, and he was powerless against their combined assertions, although he knew the falsity of ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... Oh how powerless Leslie felt, that he could not effectually help Maud and her mother, that he could not rescue them from danger, and place ...
— Leslie Ross: - or, Fond of a Lark • Charles Bruce
... Portsmouth, the forts were powerless against the assaults of these winged demons of the air. They were able to use their terrible projectiles with reckless profusion, because only twenty-two miles away at Calais there were inexhaustible stores from which they could replenish ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... be a young man to-morrow, instead of a day older than I am to-day, I should be powerless to merit such a ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... worth thinking of; just one of those articles written to order, to please the narrow-minded set of subscribers upon whom the circulation depends. But he's upset by it. He says it is the misrepresentation that hurts him so; that, though he can stand a fair attack, he can't stand lies that he's powerless to refute and stop from spreading. That's just Trewe's weak point. He lives so much by himself that these things affect him much more than they would if he were in the bustle of fashionable or commercial life. So he wouldn't come here, ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... over.... But the hand which had been raised fell back powerless on the coverlet, and a few moments later Alexyei ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... dropped into a chair with an all-gone feeling and a lightness in the top of her head. She felt as if the world, the flesh, and the devil had suddenly dropped down upon the house and were carrying off her children bodily, and she was powerless to prevent it. She could not keep the pain of it out of her eyes; yet she did not know what to say in this emergency. None of the things that had always seemed entirely convincing in forming her own opinions seemed adequate ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... to a shabby merchant, who has his little beggarly shop in the bazaar; to a small officer, who ekes out his wretched pension by swindling, and who gets his pay in bad coin. Mahometanism pays in pewter now, in place of silver and gold. The lords of the world have run to seed. The powerless old sword frightens nobody now—the steel is turned to pewter too, somehow, and will no longer shear a Christian head off any shoulders. In the Crusades my wicked sympathies have always been with the Turks. They seem to me the better ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wellnigh stigmatized as heretical, nor the civil and religious wars of the seventeenth century, nor even the dragonnades of Louis XIV., have been able to outroot it. The levelling edicts of the first French Revolution were powerless against it. The Provencal, or Langue d'Oc, if you will, the Gascon, the Auvergnat, are spoken to this day in their respective provinces, universally spoken by the people, who in many instances do not understand French at all. They must be preached ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... people, and, indeed, I met with no insult or cold treatment either from the working class or upper classes in Bavaria—only some surprise as at a rare visitor. For there are extremely few English people there now. The famous picture-galleries are still powerless to attract the American art pilgrim, though that is due more to the difficulty of obtaining permission to reside than to lack of interest in the collections. Possibly next year the police may relent. The food shortage is not so menacing. Moreover, the village of Ober-Ammergau proposes once more ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... corrected her mistake, but was, of course, powerless to do so. Bitterly she regretted her tactlessness and folly. But she could do nothing, and to add to her distress, she saw that Jimbo shrank from her in a way that could not long escape the watchful eye of the mother. But, if the boy shed tears of fear ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... Andre firmly, "you would not force me to quit the country to the detriment of my honour. If I have made you feel some of the bitterness and sorrow that have spoiled my own young days because of my cowardly enemies, it is not from a poor spirit, but because I was powerless, and knew it, to take any sort of striking vengeance for their secret insults, their crafty injuries, their underhand intrigues. It was not because my arm wanted strength, but because my head wanted a crown. I might have put an end to some ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Nothing could divide us permanently, really. Perhaps even Death would be powerless ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... I was sure myself where the truth of the matter began. The conviction that it would end disastrously had been driven into me by all the successive shocks my sense of security had received. I began to ascribe an extraordinary potency to agents in themselves powerless. It was as if Schomberg's baseless gossip had the power to bring about the thing itself or the abstract enmity of Falk could ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... country, remaining unsolved through the years, have at last reached an acute stage where they demand solution. This solution must come now in some form—either in harmony with the Constitution or in defiance of it. The Federal Government has been and still is absolutely powerless to act because of constitutional limitation; the State governments have the sole power, but heretofore no way has been provided for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... poor, and of slight consequence in the world to-day, but at least it has been vouchsafed me to understand what a strong man and a king can feel when there are those who would thwart his will. At present, I am powerless, as little able to give effect to my energies as Richard himself when pent in an Austrian prison, but I do ask that some Blondel shall free me, no matter what the ransom, and that Fate shall set me a task worthy of the man who fought and dreamed and planned ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... the question from the other side, we find in animals complex organs of sense, richly supplied with nerves, but the function of which we are as yet powerless to explain. There may be fifty other senses as different from ours as sound is from sight; and even within the boundaries of our own senses there may be endless sounds which we cannot hear, and colors, as different as red from green, of which we have no conception. These and a thousand other questions ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... and finally drove it out; now it is coming back as a novelty. The Futurists are gazing backward.) 2d: Against the superficial and elementary archaism founded upon flat tints, which, by imitating the linear technique of the Egyptians, reduces painting to a powerless synthesis both childish and grotesque. 3d: Against the false claims of belonging to the future put forward by the Secessionists and the Independents, who have installed new academies no less trite and attached to routine than the preceding ones. 4th: We demand for ten years the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... doubted of her recovery. She continued delirious for more than a fortnight, and there were distinct putrid symptoms, her throat and glands ulcerating, and breaking in two places outside. For longer than a week she had not a lucid moment, became extenuated and powerless. We had to lift her into the baths and out; involuntary discharges from the bowels and the bladder took place; petechiae appeared, and every thing indicated a steady decay. Neither acids nor chloride of lime seemed to have any effect; the only thing, ...
— Hydriatic treatment of Scarlet Fever in its Different Forms • Charles Munde
... hold up as "better and deeper than satisfied the last century" is a remedy which has been tried once already: and its failure was so palpable, that all the evil of the eighteenth century was but the reaction from that enormous evil which this remedy, if it be one, had at any rate been powerless to cure. Apostolical succession, the dignity of the Clergy, the authority of the Church, were triumphantly maintained for several centuries; and their full development was coincident, to say the least, with the corruption alike of Christ's religion and Christ's Church. So far were they ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... of living as they please when they are bachelors, and then having their word of honour believed in when they choose to enter the married state. As long as women are powerless to put an end to that horrible privilege or to make themselves independent of it, so long will one half of the world continue to be sacrificed on account of the other half—on account of the other half's lack of self-control. That one privilege turns out to be more powerful than all the ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... powerless, he was no longer an enemy," Stephen replied. "He was a criminal, it is true; but the temptation had been great. The man saw a chance of possessing himself of what to him was a fabulous treasure; better men than he have yielded to such a temptation; ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... subsequently discovered, in the handwriting of Zebek-Dorchi, and the important evidence of the Russian captive Weseloff, who was carried off by the Kalmucks in their flight, that beyond all doubt Oubacha was powerless for any purpose of impeding, or even of delaying the revolt. He himself, indeed, was under religious obligations of the most terrific solemnity never to flinch from the enterprise, or even to slacken in his zeal; ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... inevitable. One day in 1856, after the adjournment of the Senate, a Southern member of Congress entered the Chamber, and finding Sumner seated, with his legs under an iron desk screwed to the floor, and, therefore, helpless for defense, with a heavy walking-stick the assailant beat the powerless man into insensibility, two of his friends protecting him from those who would interfere in his murderous assault. Having lost enough blood to soak through the carpet and stain the very floor, unconscious, and hovering between life and death, Sumner was carried to a sofa, thence to his hotel. From ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... wandered in the wilderness, In passion's grave nigh sinking powerless: Now deeply I repent, in sore distress, That I kept not the ...
— Hebrew Literature
... I was told, for the harems of the emperor and his favorites. It made my old companion clench his fists to see those poor white women marching past to their horrid fates, and, though I shared his sentiments, I was as powerless to alter their destinies ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and such long vigils, her head reeled, and she staggered to her couch. A cold shudder crept over her limbs; all was dark as night about her; she tried to clasp her hands in prayer and could not, for they were numb and powerless. "This is welcome death!" thought she, and her lips parted with a happy smile. Her head fell backward on the pillow, and ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... greenstone and exchanging hospitalities. But for once he met his match. The Kaiapois waited until they had eight of the chiefs inside their stockades, and then killed them all. Amongst the dead was Te Pehi, Rauparaha's uncle and adviser, who three years before had visited England. Powerless for the moment, Rauparaha could but go home, vow vengeance, and wait his opportunity. After two ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... time numberless tender things in his mind, which he meant to tell her, but feeling also, while he smarted under the sting of self-reproach (for the indiscretion he had committed), Tai-yue give him a rap, he was utterly powerless to open his lips, much though he may have liked to speak, so he kept on sighing and snivelling to himself. With all these things therefore to work upon his feelings, he unwillingly melted into tears. He tried to find his handkerchief to dry his ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... freedom of action, but in order to attach them to my cause:[371] that as things stand now, supposing the consuls to choose to take part against me, they can do so without let or hindrance, but if they wish to do anything in my favour they are powerless if the tribunes object. For as to what you say in your letter, that, if your party had not consented, they would have obtained their object by a popular vote—that would have been impossible against the will of the tribunes.[372] So I fear, on the one hand, that I have lost ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... try in that century was one which led to most beneficient results. For many generations the great scourge of Europe was the smallpox. Often the disease was as violent as the plague (S474), and carried off nearly as many victims. Medical art, seemed powerless to deal with it, and even in years of ordinary health in England about one person out of ten died of this loathsome pestilence. In the early part of George I's reign, Lady Mary Montagu, then traveling to Turkey, wrote that the Turks were in the habit of inoculating their children for ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... determining action. Thoughts and feelings are but indices which show in the mirror of the mind certain changes that are proceeding in the matter of the brain, and are as inefficient in influencing those changes as the shadow of a cloud is powerless to direct the movements of that of which ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... they had deserved and to make them turn to Him, the Most Just of Judges delivered them to a barbarous people." In truth, the mass of the land had never been converted to Catholic Christianity at all, and a heretical society was powerless against Moslem sincerity and swords. Only in the north was Catholicism supreme, and thence came in later days the reconquest. But Catholics lived on all over Spain under their conquerors in ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... letter had been here some days when I returned. I must tell you that Zoe disappeared in my absence. I don't know where and cannot learn. I am fearful for her; and there are many possible complications. But I am powerless to do anything at this time. She may never return. She may fall into strange hands and make some new relations which will come back upon me and upon any one I cared for with embarrassing results. I am ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... advice, energy, activity, money, credit, all his resources whatsoever, were all made useless. If she had been possessed of the old fabled influence, and had turned those who looked upon her into stone, she could not have rendered him more completely powerless (so it seemed to him in his distress of mind) than she did, when she turned her unyielding face to his in ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... the more earnestly insisted upon, because it is from our loose and lazy notions on the subject, that eloquence in every department is suffering so much, and that the pulpit especially has become so powerless, where the most important things that receive utterance upon earth, are read like schoolboys' tasks, without even the poor pains to lay emphasis on the right words, and to pause in the right places. And this, because we fancy that, if nature ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... the affair, and tries to explain that he was more accustomed to a boat than she was, while he reasoned that she would naturally be more familiar with an ice cream freezer. It certainly looks to us to have been a cold-blooded transaction, and while the young man might have been rattled, and powerless to grasp the situation as he would if he had it to do over again, the girl is certainly justified in ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... Maine report, acted like a mutinous school of bad boys who had not been taught the first principles of breeding and dignity; the few gentlemen in it hardly tried to make themselves heard, and even the Speaker was powerless to quell a couple of hundred tempers all rampant at once. Every conceivable insult was heaped upon the head of the President as he delayed his War Message from day to day, hoping against hope, and gaining what time he could to strengthen ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... door of Westminster Abbey, but the way was barred to her. A fortnight afterwards, when King George had gone to Ireland to arouse the nation's loyalty, his wife had passed where Privy Council ushers and yeomen of the guard were powerless, where the enmity of man had no voice in the judgment of God. She had been attacked by severe illness, and in the course of five days she died, in the middle of a wild storm of thunder, wind, and rain. The night before, a boatful of Methodists had rowed up the Thames, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... "I am powerless. I only implore you to take what valuables you may find and let us proceed unharmed—" she cried, rapidly, eager ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... her noblest impulses, and sunk sullenly into obscurity. Oh, what a fool a man is to make woman a slave! He forgets that though he may succeed in keeping her down, chained and fettered by drudgeries, she will be revenged; that though powerless, she will instinctively learn to hate him; and if she cannot defy him she will scorn him,—for not even a brute animal will patiently submit to cruelty, still less a human soul become reconciled to injustice. And what is the possession of a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... office. The incumbents refused to get out. It was very simple. They merely charged illegality in the elections and wrapped up the whole situation in the interminable red tape of the law. The Grangers were powerless. The courts were in ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... though diamond-strewn: Haughty and dazzling, yet no voice of peace, But words of dull negation darkly fell From Reason's goddess in her brilliant sheen! No secret bears she from the silent grave; She stands appalled before its dark abyss, And shudders at its gloom with all her lore, All powerless to ope its grass-grown door. Can Pallas e'er the loved and lost restore? Hear her wild Raven shriek: 'Lenore! ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Theobald, the Devil is also symbolized by the spider, for it dreads the sun as much as the Evil One dreads the Church, and is more apt to weave its net by night than by day, thus imitating Satan, who attacks man when he knows him to be sleeping and powerless ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
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