"Helpless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this, Maggie—it must not be, it shall not be. As I said before, death would be better." They stood in front of the canal locks and Maggie looked with a beating heart on the deep water that a ray from a crescent moon faintly indicated. "A woman is helpless until she finds her lord, he who shall save, the saviour who shall bring her home safe to the fold. He exists! and all are in danger till they find him. Some miss him—they wander into misery and ruin; those that find him are led to happiness and content. ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... oath to refute the story of the spy with the result that I in my turn was to save an unfortunate, and, as I believe, a half-crazed creature from an immediate and a cruel death. Is it not so, lady?" and helpless in the net of circumstance, not knowing indeed what else to do, Lysbeth bowed ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... seriously alarmed. Mrs. Clem Hodson had gone back to Philadelphia. She had no one to consult, no one to apply to. She felt quite helpless. Even Bourget could give her no solace. She had a weak imagination, but it now began to trouble her. As she lay upon her sofa, she, always feebly, imagined many things. But oftenest she saw a vague vision of Mr. Craven and Mr. Arabian fighting a duel because of ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... powerless than insects,—their houses and possessions have less stability than the spider's web which swings its frail threads across broken columns in greater safety than any man-made bridge of stone,—and terror, mad, hopeless, helpless terror, possesses every creature brought face to face with the dire cruelty of natural forces, which from the very beginning have played havoc with struggling mankind. Struck by the hand of God!—and ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... see? Don't leave me!" and for the first time he removed his hand from his throat, and taking her head between his palms, gazed wistfully into her face. He tried to speak again, but could not, and glanced up at us with a helpless expression which I shall never forget. Maitland, his eyes riveted upon the old gentleman, whose thoughts he seemed to divine, hurriedly produced a pencil and note-book and held them toward him, but he did not see them, for he had drawn Gwen's face down to ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... finger of winter has touched them. The errand-woman has just brought me my letters. Poor little woman, what a life! She spends her nights in going backward and forward from her invalid husband to her sister, who is scarcely less helpless, and her days are passed in labor. Resigned and indefatigable, she goes on without complaining, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... are like me, a poor helpless sinner, that must, as well as yourself, perish in his sins, unless God, of his infinite mercy and grace, pluck him as a brand from the burning, and make him an instance of distinguishing love and favour. There is no difference; we ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... every family an inquisition, every father and mother inquisitors, and all the children helpless victims. One of his homes would give an exceedingly vivid idea of hell. At the same time, Mr. Wesley was a believer in witches and wizards, and knew all about the Devil. At his request God performed many miracles. On several occasions he ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... tore up the wall of the hut, she asked Tooni for her new blue silk with the flounces, the one that had been just sent out from England, and her kid slippers with the rosettes. Tooni, wiping away her helpless tears with the edge of her head covering, had said, 'Na, memsahib, na!' and stroked the hot hand that pointed, and then the mistress had forgotten again. As to the little pink baby, three days old, it blinked ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... weak to struggle much. There had been a few sharp paroxysms of delirium, such as Norah had seen, during which David Linton had been forced to hold the old man down with unwilling force. But the struggles soon brought their own result of helpless weakness, and the Hermit subsided into restless unconsciousness, broken by feeble mutterings, of which few coherent words could be caught. "Dick" was frequently on the fevered lips. Once he smiled suddenly, and Mr. Linton, bending down, heard ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... of the matter again. With Lorraine's assistance he carried Brit into Thurman's cabin, laid him, stretcher and all, on the bed and hurried out to catch and harness the team of work horses. Lorraine waited beside her father, helpless and miserable. There was nothing to do but wait, yet waiting seemed to her the one thing ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... upon her track. She distinguished them with morbid acuteness through the speed of her own flight. They were mingled steps—a feeble hurrying footfall, and an iron tread. She threaded a group of bystanders, and, weak and helpless as she was, prepared to dive into a mirk close. Not that black opening, Nelly Carnegie, it is doomed to bear for generations a foul stain—the scene of a mystery no Scottish law-court could clear—the Begbie murder. But it was no seafaring man, with Cain's red right ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... and helpless at the young man. She did not know how to tell him what all the difference in ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... this house that Key set out September 4, 1814, to negotiate for the release of Dr. Beanes, one of his friends, who, after having most kindly cared for British soldiers when wounded and helpless, was arrested and taken to the British fleet as a prisoner in revenge for his having sent away from his door-yard some intoxicated English soldiers who were creating disorder and confusion. Key, in company with Colonel ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... Hyde was dead; nineteen years of petulant, helpless, hopeless wretchedness were at last over, and all that his daughter cared to live for was gone; she was an orphan, without near relatives, without friends, old, and tired out. Do not despise me that I say "old," you plump and rosy ladies ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... own body, shield her mother's heart from the dagger of the assassin. Her son, but seven years old, clung to his mother's hand, gazing with a bewildered look of terror upon the hideous spectacle. The vociferations of the mob were almost deafening. But the aspect of the group, so lovely and so helpless, seemed to disarm the hand of violence. Now and then, in the endless crowd defiling through the room, those in the advance pressed resistlessly on by those in the rear, some one more tender hearted would speak a word of sympathy. A young girl came crowded along, neatly ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... while the battle for freedom goes on around them, they will only sink the more apathetically into servitude and a deep trance, perhaps occasionally interrupted by furious fits of frenzy, followed by helpless exhaustion. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... retired spot in the neighborhood of the village, digging a grave sufficiently large to receive it pouring in a quantity of water slightly warmed, putting a piece of cloth upon the infant's mouth, placing it in the grave, filling this up with earth, and leaving the helpless child, thus buried alive, a memorial of their own affecting degradation, and the relentless barbarism of their gloomy superstition, and a painful illustration of the truth of God's word, which ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... little Robin Wright was thus launched upon the sea of Time blew the sails of that emigrant ship—the Seahorse—to ribbons. It also blew the masts out of her, leaving her a helpless wreck on the breast of the palpitating sea. Then it blew a friendly sail in sight, by which passengers and crew were rescued and carried safe back to Old England. There they separated—some to re-embark in other ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... Mr. Laing's opinions on this point, and show very clearly his utter incapacity for elementary philosophic thought. Here, as elsewhere, as soon as he leaves the bare record of facts and embarks in any kind of speculation, he shows himself helpless; however, he tries to fortify his own courage and that of his readers, with "it is clear," "it ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... pick off what was left sticking to the Mias' lips, and then pull open its mouth and see if any still remained inside; afterwards lying down on the poor creature's stomach as on a comfortable cushion. The little helpless Mias would submit to all these insults with the most exemplary patience, only too glad to have something warm near it, which it could clasp affectionately in its arms. It sometimes, however, had its revenge; for when the monkey wanted to go away, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... with a sprained ankle can't put their foot to the ground for weeks; and I shall only want a dressing-gown, you know, to lie on the sofa in." With that, Mrs. Ellison placed her hand tenderly on Kitty's head, like a mother wondering what will become of a helpless child during her disability; in fact she was mentally weighing the advantages of her wardrobe, which Kitty would now fully enjoy, against the loss of the friendly strategy which she would now lack. Helpless to decide the ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... dit, Report, retort, rejoinder, repartee, Mole-hill and mare's nest, fiction up-to-date, Babble of booklets, bicker of debate, Aspect of A., and attitude of B.— A waste of words that drive us like a sea, Mere derelict of Ourselves, and helpless freight! ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... cloud, April was nearly over. They had been married two years, and Clementine had just discovered for the first time that there was something resembling a secret or a mystery in her household. The Pole, let us say it to his honor, is usually helpless before a woman; he is so full of tenderness for her that in Poland he becomes her inferior, though Polish women make admirable wives. Now a Pole is still more easily vanquished by a Parisian woman. Consequently Comte Adam, pressed by questions, did not even attempt the innocent roguery of selling ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... hoarsely, standing suddenly motionless, the flush of rage dying out of his countenance, and a look of helpless suffering taking its place. ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... so, but he did deprive them of their strength, by which at first they were enabled to stand, and left them no more than dead men. O helpless state! O how beggarly and miserable are the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... you, and so must Lady Ailesbury, that my courage fails me, and I dare not meet you at Paris, As the period arrived when the gout used to come, it is never a moment out of my head. Such a suffering, such a helpless condition as I was in for five months and a half, two years ago, makes me tremble from head to foot. I should die at once if seized in a French inn; or, what, if possible, would be worse, at Paris, where I must admit every body.—I, who you know can hardly bear to see even you when ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... he could carry this resolve into effect, he was smitten with a dire disease, and in a few days lay on the damp floor of his poor hut, as weak and helpless as ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne
... broadside, she upset, and rolled the whole party over and over into about three feet of water. All scrambled as well as they could to the shore; but in a moment we saw with dismay that one of the ladies was floating away on the retreating wave, and Thornton was plunging after the helpless form. Meanwhile the party on the parade had rushed frantically round to the bay, shouting and ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... make a mock of me and my authority," she protested. She was still rather helpless, rather breathless and confused, like one who has suddenly been hurled ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... with his Leither, for the furtherance of which he was reported to be even now arraying himself upstairs. The complacence with which Aunt Molly regarded the threatened alliance—all possible objections being answered in her mind by a helpless, "If she is the girl he loves?"—was most provokingly characteristic of the Cooneys' fatal shiftlessness. And they were popular, too, in their way, and Chas might easily have married some socially prominent girl with money, instead of bringing a nameless saleslady ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the full exercise of these public duties. Often are these posts used for the promotion of private interests, to the serious injury of those of the community. The results fall upon the taxpayers. Modern society cannot think of undertaking a thorough change in these conditions. It is powerless and helpless. It would have to remove itself, and that, of course, it will not. Whatever the manner in which taxes be imposed, dissatisfaction increases steadily. In a few decades, most of our municipalities will be unable to satisfy their needs under their present form of administration and of raising revenues. ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... by the drops of blood on the ground, until he arrives at the cabin in the settlement, when the Little Deer enters invisibly and strikes the neglectful hunter with rheumatism, so that he is rendered on the instant a helpless cripple. No hunter who has regard for his health ever fails to ask pardon of the deer for killing it, although some who have not learned the proper formula may attempt to turn aside the Little Deer from his pursuit by building a fire behind them ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... laudanum which soon composed him and he rested very well.- this is at least a strong mark of parental affection. they all appear extreemly attentive to this sick man nor do they appear to relax in their asceduity towards him notwithstand he has been sick and helpless upwards of three years. the Chopunnish appear to be very attentive and kind to their aged people and treat their women with more rispect than the nations of the Missouri.- There is a speceis of Burrowing squirrel common ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... struck the American commander with surprise. [He hardly knew what to do; but he allowed some parley and Weatherford made a speech, ending thus:] "General Jackson, you are a brave man: I am another. I do not fear to die. But I rely on your generosity. You will exact no terms of a conquered and helpless people, but those to which they should accede. . . . You have told us what we may do and be safe. Yours is a good talk and my nation ought to listen to it. They shall listen to it!" . ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... enamelling you do at home with Aspinall's and the hairs of the brush come out and it is gritty-looking, but smooth, like the handles of ladies very best lace parasols. And whoever had abandoned the helpless perambulator in that lonely spot had done exactly as H. O. said, and covered it with leaves, only they were green and some of them had ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... called, and where is she from, and how do they call papa, and how do they call mamma. He has broken out into sweat, the poor fellow, from the effort, the cap is at the back of his neck, the whiskered face is such a kindly and woeful and helpless one, while the voice is gentle, so gentle. At last, what do you think? As the girl has become all excited, and has already grown hoarse from tears, and is shy of everybody—he, this same 'roundsman on the beat,' stretches out two of his black, calloused fingers, the index and the little, and begins ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... the Dobrudja to attack Roumania from the south. Thus, the very trick that the French wished Roumania to work upon Bulgaria was now worked upon her by the central powers. France and England were helpless. They sent one of the best of the French generals to teach the Roumanians the latest science of war, but men and guns they could not send. Look at the map and see how Roumania was shut off from all ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... hadst thought well; and all this hast thou lost for lack of a word here and there to some great man, and a little winking of the eyes amidst murder and wrong and unruth; and now thou art nought and helpless, and the hemp for thee is sown and grown and heckled and spun, and lo there, the rope for thy gallows-tree!—all ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... condition: if you ever again, by word or deed, do any sort of injury to any human being or to any helpless animal, I will have you punished, punished in full for all you have done wrong in the past. Do ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... too hard lately—sometimes far into the night. I could have stopped you from coming; but, somehow, I wanted you—" and she held him close in her arms, and laid her cheek against his. "I get so lonely, my boy, and feel so helpless sometimes." ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... quarrelsome in breweries, for fear that thou mayest be denounced forthwith for words which have proceeded from thy mouth, and of having spoken that of which thou art no longer conscious. Thou fallest, thy members helpless, and no one holds out a hand to thee, but thy boon-companions around thee say: 'Away with the drunkard!' Thou art wanted for some business, and thou art found rolling on the ground like an infant." In speaking of what a man owes to his mother, Ani ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... excessively thick, lustreless black hair, the hollow, black, lifeless but beautiful eyes, the low, prominent brow, the aquiline nose, the livid pallor of the smooth skin, a certain tragic line near the delicate lips, and in the slightly sunken cheeks, something abrupt, and at the same time helpless in the movements, elegance without gracefulness... in Italy all this would not have struck me as exceptional, but in Moscow, near the Pretchistensky boulevard, it simply astonished me! I got up from my ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... experience was repeated. In 1917 and 1918 the leaders of the Equal Suffrage Party were absorbed in war work and had no time to waste in so helpless and disagreeable a task. They realized that they would soon be enfranchised by a Federal Amendment, the only hope of the women ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... The term "indirect evidence" may be used for all evidence as to fact in which reasoning consciously plays a part. Without it we should be helpless in large regions of our intellectual life, notably in science and history, and constantly in everyday life. Clearly the line between direct and indirect evidence is vague and uncertain; it is one of the first things learned in psychology that our perceptions and judgments of ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... had a long chat with her. She expects you to go back over all the old ground, how you were brought in helpless, how the doctor came to you, and how you took all the messes she prepared for you like a good boy. I'm afraid, Mr. Graham, you ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... prison above. Gazing through the aperture, they perceived not many feet below what had once been the castle ditch, now dry, and forming a portion of the archduke's gardens. With a joyous heart and an elastic bound, Ibrahim reached the soft turf beneath. The more timid and helpless Hassan lowered himself by clinging to a remaining iron bar, and with the aid of his companion was soon on his feet, enjoying, with many thanks to Allah, the fresh air of heaven and the consciousness of escape from captivity. The gates of the palace gardens ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... ready for martyrdom. The other Christians take the summons as best they can, some joyful and brave, some patient and dignified, some tearful and helpless, some embracing one another with emotion. The Call Boy goes ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... feeling of isolation, almost of fear, took possession of him. He knew the trapper was somewhere, but half a mile above him. He was glad of this unseen companionship, and yet he realized that he was helpless to find his way back to the shanty. Big Shanty Brook had lost men ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... things were going on now, and the family was helpless with dismay. So long they had toiled, and such an outlay they had made! Ona stood by, her eyes wide with terror. Those frightful bills—how they had haunted her, each item gnawing at her soul all day and ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... precious a privilege it is for two or three to be gathered together. His companion had not been able to come. (The entire neighborhood knew that Mrs. Pitts had been laid low by an attack of erysipelas, and that she was, at the moment, in a dark bedroom at home, helpless under elderblow.) ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... calmness of the air amid such a scene of menacing wildness. Even the ship came into the picture to aid the impression of intense expectation; for with her canvas reduced, she, too, seemed to have lost that instinct which had so lately guided her along the trackless waste, and was "wallowing," nearly helpless, among the confused waters. Still she was a beautiful and a grand object, perhaps more so at that moment than at any other; for her vast and naked spars, her well-supported masts, and all the ingenious and complicated hamper of ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... we will stop giving you men. Look at mother. Four sons torn from her in one month, and none of you ever asked her if she wanted war. You keep us here helpless. We don't want dreadnoughts and armies and fighting, we women. You tear our husbands, our sons, from us,—you never ask us to help you find a better way,—and haven't we anything ...
— War Brides: A Play in One Act • Marion Craig Wentworth
... uncombed hair, peep out of the paper windows, while the men hurry down to the street and join the procession in large numbers, making fun at the expense of the poor wretches, and even insulting them; while the latter, hang helpless and defenceless from their crosses, their bodies livid with cold, pain and starvation. Occasions such as these, are regular orgies for the soldiers, and those who follow the mournful cortege. Not a wine-shop on the road-side is left unvisited, and continual halts ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... snatched up the ax, with a strange cry—something between rage and terror. He tried—fiercely, desperately tried—to go on with his work. No! strong as he was, he could not use the ax. His hands were helpless; they trembled incessantly. He went to the fire; he held his hands over it. They still trembled incessantly; they infected the rest of him. He shuddered all over. He knew fear. His own thoughts ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... the tall women hovering about to view the captive. The circle about him then broke, and men stood aside for a newcomer. Ross had believed that his original captors were physically imposing, but this one was their master. Lying on the ground at the chieftain's feet, Ross felt like a small and helpless child. ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... crossed in love? Still more shall his wife be taken in hand, and receive what even the late Mr. Smallweed would have considered a thorough "shaking-up"? "If they were all starving," declares the energetic narrator, "she could not earn a cent in any way whatever, so utterly helpless is this fine Southern lady. She will not sleep, unless the light is kept burning all night in her room, for fear 'something might happen'; and when a slight matter crosses her feelings, she lies ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... queer, appealing innocence.... He was like a child, even if it was a spoilt, selfish child. When she held his dark head in the crook of her arm, he was her child, her little boy.... And perhaps one day she would hold, through her love for him, a real child there, a child who was really innocent and helpless and weak—a child without grossness to scare her or hardness to wound her—her own child, ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... to go on with the operation, but Ernest stopped them. His feelings revolted at thus punishing a school-fellow, however richly he might have deserved punishment, who had been rendered so utterly helpless. ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... her go with the helpless despair of a man on a spar who watches the lifeboat put off with its last load for the shore. The young ladies, almost before nurse was gone, began to run along the rows of chairs, falling down once in twelve, and rapidly toning down the pretty pink of their ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... submission. The combat was therefore renewed, with extreme fury on the one side, and uncommon efforts of courage on the other, and the assailants were a second time repulsed; but one of those who had boarded the vessel and afterwards made his escape represented to the Achinese the reduced and helpless situation of their enemy, and, fresh supplies coming off, they were encouraged to return to the attack. De Sousa and his people were at length almost all cut to pieces, and those who survived, being desperately wounded, were overpowered, ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... and monopolists, but it is too early for that degradation for you and me, Senator Clayton. The rights of a man involve all progress; progress, indeed, is for man, not man for progress. As a son of Maryland, if he came helpless and penniless to me, I would not let this gentleman ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... Cairo, and I could not go to him. And though that made me feel helpless, and almost mad with inaction, yet in my heart I dreaded meeting him, seeing him, taking in the bitterness of it through the eyes. I was a coward, you see, and my love for him a poor thing at the best. But there are some who will understand ...
— The Comrade In White • W. H. Leathem
... the hollow, which Kent reached with a sigh of relief, he dismounted and hastily started a little fire on a barren patch of ground beneath a jutting sandstone ledge. The calf, tied helpless, lay near by, and the cow hovered close, uneasy, but lacking courage ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... linnaea. The charm of these first bidders for the year's favor is neither in the ethereal texture, the depth or delicacy of tint, nor the large-lobed, blood-stained, ancient leaves. This imponderable soul gives them such a helpless air ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... his chair. Attention, indeed! He knew what that meant. The matter would be submitted to M. P. The old devil had not a leg to stand on, he lacked even a crutch, and in that impotent, dismembered and helpless condition he would be thrown out of court. A ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... the butler and he had the sensation of chaff scattering before a strong wind. In truth Mrs. Oglethorpe was an impressive figure and quite two inches taller than himself. He could only stare at her in helpless awe, the more so as he had recognized her at once. Leadership might be extinct, but Mrs. Oglethorpe was still a power in New York Society, with her terrible outspokenness, her uncompromising standards, her ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... little snort that was half laughter and half self-pity. She pounded on the door again and dropped her arm, feeling old and tired and nearly helpless. ...
— Hex • Laurence Mark Janifer (AKA Larry M. Harris)
... I believe it," cried Emma, "that Jem, Who so helpless and poor us'd to be, Has made this nice basket without any help, And as neatly ...
— The Keepsake - or, Poems and Pictures for Childhood and Youth • Anonymous
... stupid alarm and helpless confusion of these easy-going monks, when their new Superior came down among them hissing with a white heat from the very hottest furnace-fires of a new religious experience, burning and quivering with the terrors of the world to come,—pale, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... to come at the Terran. Then Shann saw the fall of rock, the stone which pinned a double-kneed leg to the floor. And in a circle about the prisoner were the small, crushed, furred things which had come to prey on the helpless to be slain themselves by the well-aimed stones which were the Throg's ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... And just lately the reaction has come. He has played with me just as he would sit and pull the legs out of a spider to watch its agony. I have been one of his favourite amusements. And even now, if he came into this room I think that I should be helpless. I should probably fall at his ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the Puritans might rage, they were helpless; authority to restrain acting was vested in the Lord Mayor, his brethren the Aldermen, and the Common Council. The attitude of these city officials towards the drama was unmistakable: they had no more love for the actors than had the Puritans. ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... with herself—"Sophia Martineau, those girls are placed, to put it figuratively, at your door, and take them up you must. Gold you have none to bestow, but you can give interest; you can, in short, rouse others to help the helpless. This is your bounden duty, and you had better ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... the jungles of the laurel. Instead, all the clifty defiles of the ranges were filled with the roar of flames and the crackling of burning timbers as town after town was given to the firebrand, and the homeless, helpless Cherokees frantically fleeing to the densest coverts of the wilderness,—that powerful truculent tribe!—sought for shelter like those "feeble folk the conies" in the hollows ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... allow me to take that envelope containing papers, Miss Badlam?" Mr. Gridley asked, with a suavity and courtesy in his tone and manner that showed how he felt for her sex and her helpless position. ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and a guide, as far as Cordova (twenty-six leagues). I shall have to pay a great price, it is true, but I have money, praised be God, who inspired me with the idea of putting fifty sovereigns in my pocket when I left London. I should otherwise be helpless. From Cordova I must endeavour to obtain horses to Val de Penas (twenty leagues), which is half way to Madrid. Were I at Val de Penas, I should feel comparatively at ease; for from thence I know the road, having ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... and objects, in his continual wanderings. Disappointments he had had, and dangers in plenty; but only such as rouse a brave and cheerful spirit to bolder self-reliance and invention; not those deep sorrows of the heart which leave a man helpless in the lowest pit, crying for help from without, for there is none within. He had seen men of all creeds, and had found in all alike (so he held) the many rogues, and the few honest men. All religions ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... race, in a premature unnatural manner, undermine the very foundation of virtue, and spread corruption through the whole mass of society! As a class of mankind they have the strongest claim to pity! the education of the rich tends to render them vain and helpless, and the unfolding mind is not strengthened by the practice of those duties which dignify the human character. They only live to amuse themselves, and by the same law which in nature invariably produces certain effects, they soon only afford ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... but she had been burnt, horribly burnt: how much so you may guess from the supple dissimulation of such a bold clear-visaged girl. She conquered the sneers of the world in her soul: but her sensitive skin was yet alive to the pangs of the scorching it had been subjected to when weak, helpless, and betrayed by Evan, she stood with no philosophic parent to cry fair play for her, among the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... coarse and degrading, whose good instincts had been cherished, whose faculties had been harmoniously trained. He was not a hero: he was not prepared to espouse to the death Little Lizay's cause—to risk everything for the shrinking, helpless woman and for his own manhood—to die rather than strike her. He was only a slave, used from his cradle to the low and cruel and brutalizing. But he had the making of a man in him: his nature was one that could never become utterly base. But there was no help, no hope, for either of them in anything ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... was rising up within him. All a father's protective instinct of his offspring burst forth. Revenge entered into his soul. He beat the air with clenched fists, and with distended eyes saw the muzzles of rifles presented at his helpless boy. ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... on the breakwater. He was prepared for the shock, and caught the hands of two men, who, with ropes round their waists, waded into the water as far as they dared. Billy was washed ashore at the same moment, almost in a state of helpless exhaustion, and all were hauled out of the sea amid the wild ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... stranger, whom I had so long wished to view, to a respectable father, and with what maternal fondness I should have pressed them both to my heart!—Now I kissed her with less delight, though with the most endearing compassion, poor helpless one! when I perceived a slight resemblance of him, to whom she owed her existence; or, if any gesture reminded me of him, even in his best days, my heart heaved, and I pressed the innocent to my bosom, as if to purify it—yes, I blushed to think that its purity had been sullied, by allowing ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... paces, the muleteer hauled on the rope; it tightened round the neck of the unlucky Jaime, and even lifted him a little from the ground. He strove to rise to his feet from the sitting posture in which he was, but his bonds prevented him. Stumbling and helpless, he fell over on one side, and would inevitably have been strangled, had not Paco given him more line. The fear of death came over him. He trembled violently, and his face, which was smeared with ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... thinking I am going back into my own body, knowing that I shall wed Christina? But I am not glad; I am very miserable. I shall not go with Jan's soul, I feel it; my own soul will come back to me. I shall be again the hard, cruel, mean old man I was before, only now I shall be poor and helpless. The folks will laugh at me, and I shall curse them, powerless to do them evil. Even Dame Toelast will not want me when she learns all. And yet I must do this thing. So long as Jan's soul is in me, I love Christina better than myself. I must do this for her ...
— The Soul of Nicholas Snyders - Or, The Miser Of Zandam • Jerome K. Jerome
... while the truce lasted, I never ceased pitying ourselves and congratulating the king and those with him, as, like a helpless spectator, I surveyed the extent and quality of their territory, the plenteousness of their provisions, the multitude of their dependants, their cattle, their gold, and their apparel. And then to turn and ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... gulfs of sorrow, When the helpless feet stretch out And find in the deeps of darkness No footing so solid as doubt, Then better one spar of Memory, One broken plank of the Past, That our human heart may cling to, Though ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... in his stocking cap and Wellington boots, but he had a monkey-jacket over his blue guernsey. Except for a parcel in a red print handkerchief, this was all his kit and luggage. He felt a little lost amid all the bustle, and looked helpless and unhappy. The busy preparations on land and shipboard had another effect on Philip. He sniffed the breeze off the bay and laughed, and said, "The sea's calling me, Pete; I've half a ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... of nine thousand of them broke into Meaux, where the wife of the dauphin, with above three hundred ladies, had taken shelter: the most brutal treatment and most atrocious cruelty were justly dreaded by this helpless company: but the Captal de Buche, though in the service of Edward, yet moved by generosity and by the gallantry of a true knight, flew to their rescue, and beat off the peasants with great slaughter. In other civil ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... woman," he blurted out, as they trudged along towards the shack. They knocked on the door. There was no reply. Then just as Wingate suggested forcing it in case she were ill and lying helpless within, a long, low call from the edge of the canyon startled them. They turned and had not followed the direction from which the sound came more than a few yards when they met her coming towards them on snowshoes; in her arms she bore a few faggots, and ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... his feigning, for as long as these men did not seek to injure her, why should he incur their further notice? He lay on the rug, quite as though he was helpless; but she knew he was alert and was ready, if occasion arose, to show much more agility than the Chinamen or the old ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... charming people that one meets, from the boy sitting on the cart-shaft, with all sorts of old love-histories hinted in his clear skin and large eye, to the wizened labourer in his quaint-cut, frowzy clothes, bill-hook in hand, a symbol of the patient work of the world. So helpless a crowd, so patient in trouble, so bewildered as to the meaning of it all; and zigzagged all across it, in nations, in families, in individuals, the jagged lines of evil, so devastating, so horrible, so irremediable; and even worse ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... person visible. I called but nobody came. Returning to the yard I discovered a place where I could get over the fence, and so I escaped into the street. Immediately I searched the sky for the mysterious car, but could see no sign of it. They were gone! I almost sank upon the pavement in a state of helpless excitement, which I could not have explained to myself if I had stopped to reason; for why, after all, should I take the thing so tragically. But something within me said that all was wrong. A policeman ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... compared to the dear doctor, and an angel has wings. Well, so had this admirable chicken, a bird that was grown for the use of the table, produced like a vegetable. A dear bird that was never allowed to run about and weary itself as our helpless English chicken is; it lived to get fat without acquiring any useless knowledge or desire of life; it became a capon in tender years, and then a pipe was introduced into its mouth and it was fed by machinery ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... charge of his Equatorial Province. He forced the Egyptian soldiers, who garrisoned this and one or two other posts on the Nile and robbed on their own account, to plough and plant; he arrested all slave-hunters within reach and freed the slaves; he succoured the poor, protected the helpless, and sent durra to ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... and earthly, subject to household conditions and domestic jars. The inner details of her life he had only conjectured. She had been a lovely wonder, predestined to an orbit in which the whole of his own was but a point; and this sight of her leaning like a helpless, despairing creature against a wild wet bank filled him with an amazed horror. He could no longer remain where he was. Leaping over, he came up, touched her with his finger, and said tenderly, "You are poorly, ma'am. What ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... was compelled to turn with it. On his first impulse the thought of swimming the stream came to him, but he dismissed it, lest some swift warrior might come up and open fire while he was in the water, in which case, being practically helpless, he might become an easy victim. So he turned with the stream and, keeping its bank close on his left, he fled eastward. But he was fully aware that the change in the course of the river brought to him a new and great danger. ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... charitable orphan-girl stayed late one Saturday evening in the bath-house,[58] after washing the poor and helpless, when the Devil and his mother and three sons drove up in a coach drawn by four black stallions, with harness adorned with gold and silver, and asked her hand for one of his sons. But the maiden fled back into the bath-house, after making the sign of the cross on the threshold, and ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... at the poor capering, patient brutes, the oxen drag these immense wagons over the sharp boulders and dazzling rocks, grinding them in pieces, cutting themselves with sharp stones, pulling as though to break their hearts under the tyranny of the stones, not less helpless and insensate than they. Here and there you may see an armed sentry, as though in command of a gang of convicts, here and there an official of some society for the protection of animals, but he is quite useless. ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... task, he stood back, and wondered if there was anything else he could do before Pennington came back with Mrs. O'Mara, and with or without a doctor. He felt helpless, and as if he had to stand there and watch her die. He got water and tried to make her drink it—ineffectually—he filled a hot water bottle and brought it in, and then thought better of it. She had a fever already. Then he thought ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... daimyo converted in the sixteenth century were dead or dispossessed or in banishment; the great Christian generals had been executed; the few remaining converts of importance had been placed under surveillance, and were practically helpless. ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... must tell our strange story quickly for the benefit of your world as well as ours, and others, too. We cannot so much as annoy. We are helpless to combat them. ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... found in Boston," Guy explained when we were alone. "She is so young and helpless, and wanted one so badly, that I concluded to humor her for a time, especially as I had not the most remote idea how to pin on those wonderful fixings which she wears. It is astonishing how many things it takes to make up the tout ensemble of a fashionable woman," ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... the people was typical of London gazers. No one made any remark, or offered any suggestion; they simply stared with all their eyes and souls, absorbed in the unbought excitement of the spectacle. They were helpless, idealess, interested and unconcerned. ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... call somewhat hard—he found him less disposed to explode with wrath than he had been in previous conferences. Already the spirit of the impetuous young soldier was broken, both by the ill health which was rapidly undermining his constitution and by the helpless condition in which he had been left while contending with the great rebellion. He had soldiers, but no money to pay them withal; he had no means of upholding that supremacy of crown and church which he was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to its marrow, and agitated now and then by an icy shiver, threw out its boughs in a sort of feverish panic as if to shake the water from them, and roared the wild note of a creature in torture. At times a damp snow stilled all to helpless silence, broken by a passing groan or the cry of some frozen bird or rattle of some body falling on the boughs. Then once more the wind flung itself with fury on the woods, dug into their depths with its teeth, tore off boughs, and with a roar ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various |
