"Impotent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... extinguishes every other terror that can settle itself in the heart of a man: it lessens and contracts the figure of the most exalted person: it disarms the tyrant and executioner, and represents to our minds the most enraged and the most powerful as altogether harmless and impotent. ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... punishment, he felt a fierce joy in the thought that his baseness would be atoned for in his own blood. Even when, unnerved and faint from the hideous ordeal, he flung himself upon his knees in the cell, he regretted only the impotent ravings that the torture had forced from him. He could have bitten out his tongue for his blasphemous utterings—not because they were blasphemous, but because their utterance, by revealing his agony, gave their triumph to his tormentors. When North found him, he was in the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... whose first object, I knew, had ever been to serve and glorify her Maker, should have been thus tortured and desolated by the cruelest calamity which the malignity of a demon could have devised? I railed and blasphemed, and even in my agony defied God with the impotent rage and desperation of a devil, in his ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... old names are forgotten, the old people fade off the face of the earth. The romance of Matthew Haygarth seemed to come to a lame and impotent conclusion in this dull record ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... this was Pietro Paolo Baglioni, whose fault, in the eyes of Machiavelli, was that he could not succeed in being 'perfettamente tristo.' Beautiful, but inhuman; passionate, but cold; powerful, but rendered impotent for firm and lofty deeds by immorality and treason; how many centuries of men like this once wasted Italy and plunged her into servitude! Yet what material is here, under sterner discipline, and with a nobler ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... you, such a creature has made a deeper impression on your imagination than on your heart. The terrible circumstances of our meeting also, the romantic origin of our acquaintance, may lead you into error in relation to sentiments which perhaps would be impotent, both against the enticements of the world ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... Then he sent the Legate to his brother, urging peace. Cornwall refused to listen. At last, driven into a corner, the King begged for time, and it was granted him, until the first Monday in Lent. When that day came, the nobles assembled in grand force at London, to come to a very lame and impotent conclusion. Earl Richard of Cornwall, the King's brother, suddenly announced that he and his new brother-in-law, Montfort, had effected a complete reconciliation. The other nobles were very angry at the desertion of their ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... numb and impotent sense of dread, she heard the devotees enter the chapel, one after another, and pass to their chosen seats with soft, gliding steps. With a sickening knowledge of approaching catastrophe, she saw another of the unconventional black-robed servants emerge ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... shame and anger, and who looked wildly about the room as though in search of some weapon to replace that of which he had been deprived. He might have served Cibber or Gibbons as a model for a statue of impotent rage. Two other officers dressed in the same blue uniform stood by their comrade, and as I observed that they had laid their hands upon the hilts of their swords, I took my place by Saxon's side, and stood ready to strike ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... from great flow of the worlds in conjunction.' Thereupon I instantly clasped the Succubus with passion by the light of a thousand million of stars, and I wished in clasping her to feel the nature of those thousand million creatures. Then by this great effort of love I fell impotent in every way, and heard a great infernal laugh. Then I found myself in my bed, surrounded by my servitors, who had had the courage to struggle with the demon, throwing into the bed where I was stretched a basin full of holy water, and saying fervent prayers to God. Then ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... to look for it in human nature, except it be in the influences of Christianity, self-interest, or public opinion? The last of these, we have seen, is upon a sliding-scale of an inefficiency which increases in proportion to the necessity for its influence, and is therefore all but impotent for good. ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... as it were in one long, vivid flash. The closed vista of memory opened to its far horizon-line, and past and present were pictured in a single instant of clear vision. The dread moment which had blighted his life returned in all its terror. He felt the convulsive spring in the form of a faint, impotent spasm,—the rush of air,—the thorns of the stinging and lacerating cradle into which he was precipitated. One after another those paralyzing seizures which had been like deadening blows on the naked heart seemed to repeat themselves, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... suddenly by the warm spring rains. "Medicine and surgery have kept pace with other improvements—inoculation and antiseptics, as already seen, rendering most of the germ diseases and formerly dreaded epidemics impotent; while through the potency of electrical affinity we form wholesome food-products rapidly, instead of having to wait for their production by Nature's slow processes. "The metric system, now universal, ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... and you commend yourself to your patron saint. "You must not address yourself to me, that one answers. Go to the other office. See St. Marcel (or Marchel), to make the impotent walk is entrusted ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... Philip's vacant chair, And pondered long her doubtful way; And, in her impotent despair, Lifted her longing eyes to pray, When on a ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... with themselves, suffered from the then convulsed state of the world. They asked him, "Where is thy God?" But he declined founding the believer's privileges on individual exemptions, or personal providences. "My God," said he, "in all his attributes, different from the false impotent Gods of the Heathen, is to be found wherever his worshippers are;—if I am carried into captivity, his consolations shall yet reach me;—if I lose the possessions of this life, my precious faith shall still supply their want;—and if I die, not as the suffering ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... flame of impotent anger. He had insulted her, trampled down the pride of her untamed youth, brushed away the bloom of her maiden modesty. And there was nothing she could do to make him pay. He was too insensitive to be reached by words, no matter how she pelted them ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... impotent with gout, Would have some cure for age found out. This king, from every species,— Call'd to his aid the leeches. They came, from quacks without degree To doctors of the highest fee. Advised, prescribed, talk'd learnedly; But ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... far be blind To my own faults, though patent to mankind, Nay, live in the belief that foul is fair, Than see and grin in impotent despair. There was an Argive nobleman, 'tis said, Who all day long had acting in his head: Great characters on shadowy boards appeared, While he looked on and listened, clapped and cheered: In all things ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... the horns which the swart vitpense dragged out, and then stood up shivering by its assailant, which, far from thinking of attacking again, lay upon its side, biting the grass and tearing at the ground in its impotent fury. ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... shews weakness, which is contrary to the nature of God. If he has the power, and not the will, it is malignity; and this is no less contrary to his nature. If he is neither able nor willing, he is both impotent and malignant, and consequently cannot be God. If he be both willing and able (which alone is consonant to the nature of God) whence comes evil, or why does he not prevent it?" Reflecting minds are still waiting for a reasonable solution of these difficulties; ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... waggle about their knees which told of hope deferred and spirit utterly gone. The pony was the better of the two. Its sprightly glance of amiability had changed into a gaze of humble resignation, whereas the aspect of the obstinate horse was one of impotent ill-nature. It would have bitten, perhaps, if strength had permitted, but ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... field the arrows of the natives were quite impotent. A bullet could strike the heart at twice or three times the distance at which an arrow could be thrown. The Spaniards, hotly pursued, retreated from this broken ground several miles back into the open plain. Many were slain. Here the rout was arrested by the cavalry and the discharges ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... their type stamped upon them for the seeing eye. The classical type is obese, with fat distributed everywhere, but more so in the lower abdomen and the lower extremities. They are slow and dull, and sexually inactive, often impotent. They are sometimes tall, but most often dwarfish, and may be subject to epileptic seizures. They recall the picture of what happens to young dogs partially deprived of the pituitary. Dickens delivered a perfect likeness of an extreme degree of the condition in the Fat Boy of the ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... up in impotent wrath from his inspection of the ruined meerschaum. Gavin had turned toward him and was babbling a torrent of apology for his own awkwardness. Milo was glumly silent as the contrite words beat about his ears. But Claire, shamed by her brother's ungraciousness, spoke up ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... exclusion from representation of a requisite number of States, reduce the minority to less than one-third. Congress by these means might be enabled to pass a law, the objections of the President to the contrary notwithstanding, which would render impotent the other two departments of the Government and make inoperative the wholesome and restraining power which it was intended by the framers of the Constitution should be exerted by them. This would be a practical concentration of all power in the Congress of the United States; ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... in. After consultation they decided that the most eminent surgeons of Paris must be consulted. It was a decomposition of the whole body, attended with symptoms rarely observed. The princes of medical science in Paris met at the bedside. They all confessed that their art was impotent to alleviate, much less to cure this dreadful disease. Murger's hours were numbered. The doctors insisted upon his being transported to the hospital. To the hospital he went: 'twas not for the first,—'twas for the last ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... Grecian races had become impotent and decrepit. The high destiny of man lay not with them, but with the younger race, for whom all earlier civilizations had but prepared ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... looked coldly after them. When they had gone, he again knelt down close to the two coffins, his white locks falling about his face, raised his clasped hands to his tremulous but impotent lips, and kept gazing, gazing fixedly first at one of his dear departed ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... back up the hill I glimpsed a man flying bareheaded from a doorway and pursuing the car with gestures of impotent fury. ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... a considerable army as general of the Church, and was now acting for Venice. Why he effected no diversion while the Imperial troops were marching upon Rome, and why he delayed to relieve the city, was never properly explained. Folk attributed his impotent conduct partly to a natural sluggishness in warfare, and partly to his hatred for the house of Medici. Leo X had deprived him of his dukedom, and given it to a Medicean prince. It is to this that Cellini probably refers in the cautious phrase which ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... destroys it, either way is fatal to the attributes without which God cannot exist. Is the world an experiment? is it a perishable form to which destruction must come? If it is, is not God inconsistent and impotent? inconsistent, because He ought to have seen the result before the attempt,—moreover why should He delay to destroy that which He is to destroy?—impotent, for how else could He ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... govern badly and oppressively; Maine has warned us that the dominance of the commonalty may end in the triumph of the mediocre, and a more than Chinese stagnation; Carlyle has denounced democracy as powerful for destruction, but impotent for building up, as helpless in the face of great emergencies, as incapable of choosing good leaders; Lecky has demonstrated the danger of the corruption of the democracy by evil politicians; Belloc has shown how ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... forward it has unceasingly declined, until it has sunk to the thing we now behold it;—disinherited of all power of inspiration over civilization; the impotent negation of all movement, of all liberty, of all development of science or life; destitute of all sense of duty, power of sacrifice, or faith in its own destiny; held up by foreign bayonets; trembling before the face of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... painters, and gradually brightening every palette. Nobody, as yet, admitted it, but the first blow had been dealt, and an evolution was beginning, which became more perceptible at each succeeding Salon. And what a stroke it would be if, amidst the unconscious copies of impotent essayists, amidst the timid artful attempts of tricksters, a master were suddenly to reveal himself, giving body to the new formula by dint of audacity and power, without compromise, showing it such as it should be, substantial, entire, so ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... of twenty-five years of expended and scientific experiments in the breeding exclusively of Bostons, I shall have to confess that there are many problems still unsolved. The rules and regulations that govern the production of many other breeds of dogs seem impotent here, the assumption that "like produces like" does not seem to hold good frequently in this breed, but perhaps the elements of uncertainty give an unspeakable charm to the efforts put forth for the production of the dogs which ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
... Spain, perhaps, might also be traced in an incident, promisingly romantic, but coming to a most lame and impotent conclusion, which occurred this afternoon to one of our party. While busily sketching, in the Martorana church, the previously mentioned mosaic of Roger's coronation, a hand protruded from the gilded ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... though, from the expression of every feature, it was evident that indignation and reproach made up the entire amount of everything she had to express. The outlaw was not easily influenced by anger so impotent as this; and, from his manner of receiving it, it appeared that he had been for some time accustomed to a reception of a like kind from the same person. He approached the young girl, who had now risen from her knees, and spoke to her ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... they could change partners, and continue their august dance again, whether in War or Peace. No end to the industrious wonder of the Gazetteer mind, to the dark difficulties of the Diplomatic. What bafflings, agonistic shufflings, impotent gazings into the dark; what seductive fiddling, and being fiddled to! A most sad function of Humanity, if sometimes an inevitable one; which ought surely at all times to be got over as briefly as possible. To be written ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... Vulgar!" she said to herself in impotent anger. She wished they could all know how she despised them. For she could act! She was still sure that she could play any part—except that of patient endurance. Yet, so far, hardship was all that life had offered her. A chance! ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... up the gentle slope among the cedars, hoping by a wide detour to dodge these importunates and lead his child to her own room, and there mount guard over her until the mother came. There is a sorrow that passeth understanding, and is known not of all men—the mute, helpless, impotent sorrow of the father who feels the heartache, and sees the suffering of a beloved child, and cannot even trust ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... fish below us, the white sails bellying before the breeze, the natives singing, the shore with its palms and little villages half hidden in green foliage slipping by, the mountains standing high against the sky, while on the other side of the barrier reef the surf pounded in impotent fury, throwing up a hedge of white, foaming spray. We seemed to be part ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... secrets of the heavens, and form a new system of astronomy. A Davy in his lonely meditations on the crags of Cornwall, or in his solitary laboratory, might discover the most sublime mysteries of nature, and trace out the most intricate combinations of her elements. But the meteorologist is impotent if alone; his observations are useless; for they are made upon a point, while the speculations to be derived from them must be on space. It is of no avail that he changes his position, ignorant of what is passing behind him and before; he desires to estimate the movements of space, and can ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... caused Conor, son of Dermid, and the son of Donald Kavanagh, and the son of Dermid's fosterer, who had been given him as hostages for the fulfilment of that treaty, so grossly violated in every particular, to be beheaded. Dermid indulged in impotent vows of vengeance against Roderick, when he heard of these executions which his own perjuries had provoked; he swore that nothing short of the conquest of Connaught in the following spring would satisfy his revenge, and he sent the Ard-Righ his defiance ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... be taken—it had to be realised not only that the Labour movement could give the secret of success to the woman movement by its method and organization, but that on the other hand, woman held the secret without which labour is impotent to reach its ends. Woman, by virtue of motherhood is the regulator of the birthrate, the sacred disposer of human production. It is in the deliberate restraint and measurement of human production that the fundamental problems of the family, ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... terrible moment for Grenfell when he saw his friend disappear beneath the icy waves. Would the cold so paralyze him as to render him helpless? Would he be caught under an ice pan? A hundred such thoughts flashed through Grenfell's mind as he stood, impotent to help because of the distance between them. Then to his great joy he saw Taylor rise to the surface and scramble out upon a pan ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... poor George wandered about at home, suffering such torment of mind as can hardly be imagined. Truly, in these days he paid for his sins; he paid a thousand-fold in agonized and impotent regret. He looked back upon the course of his life, and traced one by one the acts which had led him and those he loved into this nightmare of torment. He would have been willing to give his life if he could have undone those acts. But avenging nature offered ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... drove him mad. He made a thousand resolutions as to reading, writing, and employment for his mind. He attempted to learn whole pages by rote, and to fatigue himself to rest by exercise of his memory. But his memory would not work; his mind would continue idle; he was impotent over his own faculties. Oh, if he could only sleep while these horrid weeks were passing ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... that a new joy, against which she was powerless to fight, was filling her life. It was absurd, impossible, not to be thought of, and yet all the time his insistence delighted her. He had so much the air of one who has always his own way. She felt her powers of resistance becoming almost impotent, and she watched their dissipation with secret joy. How was it possible to resist a lover so confident, so authoritative, especially when her whole heart was filled with a passionate longing to throw everything else to the winds and to place her hands in his. Perhaps by to-morrow, ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had long been anticipated, and was the subject of violent political discussions. Japan at that time was threatened with civil war. Two parties were disputing concerning the proper successor to the worn-out Shogun, who had hitherto wielded the powers of the impotent Mikado. The head of one party was Ee Kamong No Kami, the head of the Fudai Daimios. By right he was to be appointed Regent in case of an emergency. The head of the other party was the Prince of Mito, one of the "three families," ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... make war impossible, they would do enough to give an excuse to the Potsdam war-party. For the rest, they would trust to the peace party—or alleged peace party—in Germany. In reality, there was no such peace party, or, if there was, it was an impotent thing. The servility of the German people rendered it quite unimportant! True democracy may be trusted in the matter of peace. Your tyrant whether he speaks with a popular voice, or whether he professes to be a God-given autocrat, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... canst thou be sure of that? Tyranny murders the hero in the night! His blood flows concealed from every eye. The people stunned and bewildered, lie buried in sleep, dream of deliverance, dream of the fulfilment of their impotent wishes, while, indignant at our supineness, his spirit abandons the world. He is no more! Deceive ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... salvos, the frame of the giant globe trembled and shuddered, shot out their tons of high-explosive shell. But the pirate commander had known accurately the strength of the liner, and knew that her armament was impotent against the forces at his command. His screens were invulnerable, the giant shells were exploded harmlessly in mid-space, miles from their objective. And suddenly a frightened pencil of flame stabbed brilliantly from the black hulk of the enemy. Through ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... Past. Oh, lay it to thy heart, my Italy, Fit honor to thy dead to pay; For, ah, their like walk not thy streets to-day! Nor is there one whom thou canst reverence! Turn, turn, my country, and behold That noble band of heroes old, And weep, and on thyself thy anger vent, For without anger, grief is impotent: Oh, turn, and rouse thyself for shame, Blush at the thought of sires so ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... an out and out challenge to him to strike her. When it came to the point he could not do it, of course. He turned away, wild with impotent rage. Must she always get the best of him? If there had only been a man of her people there that he could take it out on! He broke into passionate denunciations of her. It was a weird enough scene, there on the shore ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... jury asserted her to be an unviolated Virgin. This precaution in the Countess, no doubt, diminishes her character, and is a circumstance not favourable to her honour; for if her husband had been really impotent as she pretended, she needed not have been afraid of the search; and it proves that she either injured her husband, by falsely aspersing him, or that she had violated her honour with other men. But which ever of these causes prevailed, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... the least attention to this episode; they continued tugging at the gun. And would you believe it, the man with no mouth and jaw fell to helping again! The wheels struck a rise in the ground, and he waved his hands in impotent excitement, and then rushed at Jimmie, exposing to the horrified little machinist the full ghastliness of that ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... his place in the House of Lords, and, with a vehemence there unusual, declared that he saw 'the finger of God in this second Reformation,' and, pursuing the prophetic vein and manner, denounced 'woe to those who should presume to lift up their hands and voices in vain and impotent attempts to stem the flood of light that was bursting ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... known by reputation. But to that son himself, as he passed through the familiar haunts of his boyish days, it seemed as if he could perceive the figure of his grandmother sitting by the roadside and throwing stones at the procession as it went by. He could almost fancy the old woman aiming, in her impotent wrath, at that baneful influence which had trampled down her life, and with it, all she had gathered round her ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... be done? If he lost touch of Lawless for the night he was left impotent, whether to plan or carry forth Joanna's rescue. If, on the other hand, he dared to address the drunken outlaw, the spy might still be lingering within sight, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as he hailed the canoe of the floating restaurant where, thanks to him, Koupriane had been thwarted in impotent anger. He had himself taken to just below Staria-Derevnia and jumped out at the spot where he saw little Katharina disappear a few days before. He landed in the mud and climbed on hands and knees up the slope of a roadway which followed the bank. This bank led to the Bay of Lachtka, not far ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... climbing down those precipitous rocks. Corp was shouting, gesticulating, impotent. "How can you stand ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... ancient civilisation. When he died, after a most active and glorious reign of forty-five years, he left an immense empire in the most perfect state of peace (Fig. 9). But this magnificent inheritance was unfortunately destined to pass into unworthy or impotent hands, so that society soon fell back into anarchy and confusion. The nobles, in their turn invested with power, were continually at war, and gradually weakened the royal authority—the power of the kingdom—by ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... with such a supply for the present, and such hopes for the future, we no longer dreaded the impotent fury ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... this subject of control. Not only are the higher, more spiritual affections the most effective masters of the lower; they are the only effective masters. Public reprobation can do much, but it is ineffectual with large numbers of relatively unattached members of society, and it is impotent against secret vice. Motives of cautious fear are always weak with full-blooded and generous youth, and they are likely to become weaker with all men as medical science discovers ways to prevent or escape the most obviously fearful consequences ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... that at last "the great white plague," consumption, was to be conquered. Tuberculin did, indeed, cure certain minor forms of tuberculous disease, such as the skin affection known as lupus, but it soon became evident that it was almost impotent in the treatment of pulmonary consumption. It has, however, served to enable the veterinarian to make out the existence of tuberculous disease in cattle at an early stage of its course, and it is probable that by the slaughter of cattle thus found to be tuberculous much infection ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... were not altogether either fools or impostors; old wisdom is obtaining a fairer hearing day by day, and is found not to be so contradictory to new wisdom as was supposed. We are beginning, too, to be more inclined to justify Providence, by believing that lies are by their very nature impotent and doomed to die; that everything which has had any great or permanent influence on the human mind, must have in it some germ of eternal truth; and setting ourselves to separate that germ of truth from the mistakes which may have distorted and overlaid it. Let us believe, or at least hope, the ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... and tied just below me, and dosed—lucky beasts—with champagne by their officer-owners! Also we had the hose turned on us by some sailors, who were washing the boat-bridge above, and jeered at our impotent remonstrances. In two days we were fit for duty, and took our turn in ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... infallibly gets into high society, she has the triumph of refusing many matches and securing the best, and she wears some family jewels or other as a sort of crown of righteousness at the end. Rakish men either bite their lips in impotent confusion at her repartees, or are touched to penitence by her reproofs, which, on appropriate occasions, rise to a lofty strain of rhetoric; indeed, there is a general propensity in her to make speeches, and to rhapsodize at some length when she retires ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... inaugurated in connection with the burglary and whatever their progress in pursuit of the clue furnished by the garments discarded in the bath-room. And all the reassurances of Mrs. Gosnold were impotent to counteract apprehensions fostered by ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... these questions the French would appear to have aimed throughout at reducing the knights to as impotent a position as possible. The British, on the other hand, ostensibly desiring to see the strength of the order maintained, were chiefly interested in securing its neutrality. At the time of the signature of the preliminary treaty, Russia was the power that seemed to Great ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... lifted his hand as if he would command his nephew to be silent, but that imperious hand dropped feeble and impotent at his side. He stood in the center of the ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... his cowardice, but it was the very shadow of his defeat, and could not be separated from it. To have his confidence in his own knavery so shattered at a blow—to be within his own knowledge such a miserable tool—was like being paralysed. With an impotent ferocity he raged at Edith, and hated Mr Dombey and hated himself, but still he fled, and could ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... the reigning shogun did not produce any marked effect upon the policy of the government. Long before this time the custom of abdication, and the habits of luxury and effeminacy in which the family of the shogun was reared, had dragged the house down to the usual impotent level. The government was conducted by a system of bureaucracy which relieved the titular shoguns from all responsibility and allowed them to live in profitless voluptuousness. So that one died and another reigned in his stead without causing more ...
— Japan • David Murray
... up from the ground, clearing his hot eyes from the ashes that were in them, and putting aside his singed hair. He gave me a glance of hatred and impotent resistance (for I was stronger than he), and then cast a wild terrified look back. The skirmishers did not seem to remark that anybody had escaped, and he became gradually a little more composed. 'Who are they?' he ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... of Henrietta, a flight before the dawn. Saw, through a thick scent-drenched atmosphere, between the expiring lamp-light and broadening day, a deserted child beating its little hands, in the extremity of its impotent anguish, upon the pillows of a disordered unmade bed. Saw a man, too, worn and travel-stained from long riding throughout the night, lost to all decent dignities of self-control, savage with the animalism of frustrated passion, rage to ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... electric bell a moment before, and now the door opened and a servant stood awaiting her bidding. In his presence it was impossible for Victor to reply. For one moment he stood glaring at her, a picture of impotent fury, then slowly turned and left the room. As the house door closed behind him, the electric bell pealed once more, and the servant turned back to ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of themselves, which they might have done effectually, had they been united in their councils; but the usual disputes between their governors and assemblies, defeated every salutary plan that was proposed. Pennsylvania, the most powerful of the three, was rendered quite impotent, either for its own defence or that of its neighbours, by these unhappy contests; though, at last, the assembly of that province, sensible of the danger to which they were exposed, and seeing the absolute necessity ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... with all this strain—her little tender helpless woman's hand, formed only for soft occupations and softer caresses; it was not a hand which could help a man in such an emergency; it was without any grasp in it to take hold upon him, or force of love to part—a clinging impotent hand, such as holds down, but cannot raise up. He held it in a close tremulous pressure, as she stood looking down upon him, questioning him with eager hopeful eyes, and taking comfort in her ignorance from his silence, and the way in which he held her. Poor Louisa concluded ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... had burst up into the nineteenth century, and mastered a noble spirit. All Malcolm could afterwards remember was that he came to himself dealing Liftore merciless blows, his foot on his back, and his weapon the earl's whip. His lordship, struggling to rise, turned up a face white with hate and impotent fury. ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... before him a wide door of hope. He had changed into the service of Messrs. Liddell & Gordon; these gentlemen had begun to dabble in the new field of marine telegraphy; and Fleeming was already face to face with his life's work. That impotent sense of his own value, as of a ship aground, which makes one of the agonies of youth, began to fall from him. New problems which he was endowed to solve, vistas of new enquiry which he was fitted to explore, opened before him continually. His gifts ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... exclaimed helplessly when the door had closed on the last Polydore. I felt too limp and impotent to cope with the situation. ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... be accepted or rejected in part or in whole as it agrees with our canons of logic and our general science, while religion submits to the same process as do other departments of knowledge. But in Protestantism reason and the light of nature are in themselves as impotent as in the Roman Church. The Bible interpreted by man's unaided intelligence is as valueless as other writings, but it has a sacramental value when the Holy Spirit accompanies its teaching, and the power of God uses it and makes the soul capable of holiness. In all this the supernatural ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... fallen into the depth of want and distress, which, if aggravated, would prompt him to evil and even to crime. There are many examples of the extremes to which this kind of intelligence, at once ambitious, grasping, yet impotent, can transport its possessor. Vautrot, in awaiting better times, had relapsed into his old role of hypocrite, in which he had formerly succeeded so well. Only the evening before he had returned to the house of Madame de la Roche-Jugan, and made honorable amends for his ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... nevertheless, she was attentive to him,—and during the time of his terrible necessity even good to him. It is so natural to women to be so, that I think even Regan would have nursed Lear had Lear's body become impotent instead of his mind. There she sat close to his bed, and there from time to time Robinson would visit her. In those days they always called each other George and Maryanne, and were courteous to each ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... eyes an act of filial piety. The Necrophori have their share of these ancient barbarities. Full of days and henceforth useless, dragging out a weary existence, they mutually exterminate one another. Why prolong the agony of the impotent and ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... sickening fear as he looked at the Flopper; his lips moving without sound, his body trembling with emotional excitement. Still once again the Flopper's eyes swept the line of men and women and children, fast reaching toward a common ungovernable hysteria—and then he turned with an unbalanced, impotent, broken movement, flung out his good arm toward the Patriarch in piteous supplication, and, jerking ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... angles from the course taken by the air-craft. As a last farewell bullet whizzed harmlessly by, Harry, through the glasses, saw a familiar figure spring upright in the tonneau and shake his fist upward in impotent rage. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... where wit is always applauded,—especially when addressed to obvious self-interest. In those words the notary read the concentrated hatred of a man whose calculations had been balked by Nature herself, and who revenged himself upon the innocent object of an impotent love. This opinion was confirmed to some extent by the obstinate resolution of the doctor to leave nothing to the Rabouilleuse, saying with a bitter smile, when the notary again urged the ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... and results, he stands like a giant among a race of dwarfs, like one instructed, who judges from principles, among men of opinion, who merely stick results together, a methodical systematizer among well-meaning but impotent eclectics. The philosophy of the Illumination is related to that of Kant as argument to science, as halting mediation to principiant resolution, as patchwork to creation out of full resources, yet at the same time as wish to deed and as negative preparation to positive achievement. It was undeniably ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... 'as you say, it cannot amount to much. You are impotent, bound hand and foot in honour. You know me to be a man falsely accused, and even if you did not know it, from your position as my rival you have only the choice to stand quite still or ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... jargon, which is hardly less remote from pure language than is the coarse dialect of the people. Such are the natural perils of literature amongst aristocracies. Every aristocracy which keeps itself entirely aloof from the people becomes impotent—a fact which is as true in literature as it is in ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... for a minute or two, then, with a smothered oath upon his lips, he turned slowly to the door and opened it. Before leaving the room, however, he said, in a voice half-stifled by impotent passion— ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... moderation from the ill-success of first oppressions; on the contrary, all oppressors, all men thinking highly of the methods dictated by their nature, attribute the frustration of their desires to the want of sufficient rigor. Then they redouble the efforts of their impotent cruelty, which producing, as they must ever produce, new disappointments, they grow irritated against the objects of their rapacity; and then rage, fury, and malice, implacable because unprovoked, recruiting ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... initiates, at any rate) knew of the coming of him whom they regarded as an incarnation of Divine wisdom, and therefore were well aware of the astrological date of his birth. If, in after times, in their impotent rage they destroyed every accessible vestige of the birth, life and death of Him, who in his boundless mercy to all creatures had revealed their carefully concealed mysteries and doctrines in order to check the ecclesiastical torrent of ever-growing superstitions, yet there had ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... We are admitted to overhear their chat, and to watch their familiar gestures. It is interesting and curious to recognise, in circumstances which elude the notice of historians, the feeble violence and shallow cunning of Louis the Twelfth; the bustling insignificance of Maximilian, cursed with an impotent pruriency for renown, rash yet timid, obstinate yet fickle, always in a hurry, yet always too late; the fierce and haughty energy which gave dignity to the eccentricities of Julius; the soft and graceful manners which ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... stately tradition like the vapidness and vulgarity of so many earlier masters,[12] comes out already at S. Rocco. And principally in the scene of the Temptation, a theme rarely, if ever, treated before the sixteenth century, and which Tintoret has made unspeakably mean in its unclean and dramatically impotent suggestiveness: the Saviour parleying from a kind of rustic edifice with a good-humoured, fat, half feminine Satan, fluttering with pink wings like some smug seraph of Bernini's pupils. After this it is scarce necessary to speak of whatever is dramatically abortive (because successfully expressing ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... this time and that there may be long seasons of darkness—the chariot-wheels of God's Gospel may seem to drag heavily; but here is the promise, and yonder is the throne; and when Omniscience has lost its eyesight, and Omnipotence falls back impotent, and Jehovah is driven from His throne, then the Church of Jesus Christ can afford to be despondent, but never until then. Despots may plan and armies may march, and the congresses of the nations may seem to think ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... Much obliged," said Hart. "We'll disarm this bird and pack him back to the derrick." They did. Shorty almost wept with rage and pain and impotent malice. He cursed steadily and fluently. He might as well have saved his breath, for his captors paid not the least attention ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... without dollars? His purpose might be strong, but poverty, a Brobdingnagian giant, laid its hand on his shoulder, crushing him down, holding him there, impotent, until the stocky man and his cohorts of the private detective office should come over and get him—to send him to the little island he had thought of when ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... exhausting tenacity from which we emerge overwhelmed. Ursus, though differing from other men, was, as any other might have been, nailed to his post by that species of conscious reverie into which we are plunged by events all important to us, and in which we are impotent. He scrutinized by turns those two black walls, now the high one, then the low; sometimes the door near which the ladder to the gibbet stood, then that surmounted by a death's head. It was as if he were caught in a vice, composed ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... love," said Mrs Greenow, thereby resenting the impotent interference. "And look here, Captain Bellfield, suppose you both dine with me next Saturday. He always comes in on Saturday, and you might as well ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... carriages were so shattered that a portion of those in them were enabled to extricate themselves, but no less than forty were held fast; and of these such as were not so fortunate as to be crushed to death in the first shock perished hopelessly in the flames before the eyes of a throng of impotent lookers-on. Some fifty-two or fifty-three persons were supposed to have lost their lives in this disaster, and more than forty others were injured; the exact number of the killed, however, could never be ascertained, as the telescoping of the carriages on top of the two locomotives ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... efficacy. Then comes the dreadful doubt of one's own sanity, the terrible announcer that THAT doubt will soon become fear, and THAT fear certainty. Perhaps (still more dreadful) the FEAR will at last become a HOPE,—shut out from society, watched by a brutal keeper, writhing with all the impotent agony of an incarcerated mind, without communication and without sympathy, unable to exchange ideas but with those whose ideas are only the hideous specters of departed intellect, or even to hear the welcome sound of the human voice, except to mistake it for the howl of a fiend, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... linger on the impotent fury of Lord Alphingham when he discovered his well-conceived plans were utterly frustrated, and that his intended victim had eluded him, under the stern guardianship of the Duchess of Rothbury. In the first bitter moment of disappointment, ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... effect. Wutzler stood abject, a magician impotent against his swarm of familiars. Gradually the rats, silent and leaping, passed away into the darkness, as though they heard the summons ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... states. General Gates had lately emerged from the retirement in which he had been fain to hide himself after Camden, and had rejoined the army where there was now such a field for intrigue. An odious aroma of impotent malice clings about his memory on this last occasion on which the historian needs to notice him. He plotted in secret with officers of the staff and others. One of his staff, Major Armstrong, wrote ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... wreathing and intertwisting with his, in convulsive folds: then the turtle-billing kisses, and the poignant painless lovebites, which they both exchanged, in a rage of delight, all conspiring towards the melting period. It soon came on, when Louisa, in the ravings of her pleasure-frensy, impotent of all restraint, cried out: "Oh Sir!... Good Sir! pray do not spare me! ah! ah!..." All her accents now faultering into heart-fetched sighs, she closed her eyes in the sweet death, in the instant of which we could easily see the signs in the quiet, dying, languid posture of her late so furious ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... something horribly menacing in his rage. In the jumping light of the flames the face was that of a demon, a countenance twisted and tortured by the impotent lust to destroy. ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... spirits! till the cries Of dying Nature bid you rise; Not even your Britain's groans can pierce The leaden silence of your hearse; Then, oh, how impotent and vain This grateful tributary strain! Though not unmarked, from northern clime, Ye heard the Border minstrel's rhyme His Gothic harp has o'er you rung; The bard you deigned to praise, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... personages in this piece are of an abandoned and profligate character. Pierre is a man resolved to destroy and root up the republic by which he was employed, because his mistress, a courtesan, is mercenary, and endures the amorous visits of an impotent old lecher. Jaffier, without even the profession of any public principle, joins in the conspiracy, because he has been accustomed to luxury and prodigal expence and is poor. He has however no sooner entered into the plot, than he betrays it, and turns informer ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin |
