"Powerless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... catch of her breath, and the hand which she had placed gently on his bowed head fell suddenly away. When he raised his head to look at her, she was staring past him into the deepening twilight of the tundra, and it seemed as if something had stricken her so that for a space she was powerless to ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... and Stamboul spectacles, hidden by the palms, beside the table with its empty bottles and its broken glass, how could I believe it such? I turned away, as if to avoid the sight of the crushing of some innocent thing which I was powerless to aid, and strode ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... at the time, but her record was against her. She lay a day or two in a police cell, and by the time it was clear that it was not rum this time, the mischief was done. Probably it would have been done anyhow. The woman was worn out. What now lay on the hospital cot was a mere wreck of her, powerless to move or speak. She could only plead with her large, sad eyes. As she tried to make them say that which was in her soul, two big tears rolled slowly down the wan cheeks and fell on the coarse sheet. The visitor understood. What woman ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... gone, good dame. But what if she Has made mistake, and thread of gold Is not enough to draw our son From out the Ogre's cruel hold? Canst think of nought, your Majesty? Of nothing else? Must we stand here And powerless lift no hand to speed The rescue of our ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... that with the academic or clerical prig, when the mind has long been permitted to run in a deep, platitudinous groove from which it is at last powerless to escape, the resemblance to a prig in fiction is sometimes more than fanciful. It is real. For there is no doubt that prigs have a horrid family likeness to each other, whether in books or in real life. I have sometimes felt as the puzzled mother of some long-lost ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... wonderfully serve the purpose of the picture. There is not one among its three-and-twenty heads of which the same remark might not be made. Neither will we treat of great effects produced by means quite powerless in other hands for such an end, or of the prodigious force and colour which so separate this work from all the rest exhibited, that it would scarcely appear to be produced upon the same kind of surface by the same description of instrument. The bricks and stones and timbers ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... her hand fell powerless to her side; but when he added: 'He gave it to Privy Seal!' she cast the tongs into the brands to save herself from ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... aided him, for the fellow offered barely a show of opposition. His astounded faculties had no more than recognised the call for resistance when he was powerless in Lanyard's hands. Swung bodily away from the wheel, he went over the rail to the forward deck like a bag of sugar. Immediately ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... his blows were powerless to help, as James, in a frenzy of rage and alarm, gripped the girl's wrist, and twisted it. "Let it go! Let it go, you fool!" he cried brutally, "or I will ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... and the waves racing up madly astern, when, dividing, they would tower up on either side of our frail craft, threatening destruction for the moment ere they rolled onward again—we, all the while, fleeing before the fury of the storm we knew not whither, powerless alike to shape a course ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... father than with the friend. The young man again looked at both his companions, endeavoring to penetrate their real meaning, or their real feelings, with the utmost strength of his intelligence; but his look was powerless upon the smiling countenance of the musketeer, or upon the calm and composed features of the Comte de la Fere. "Where are you going, Raoul?" inquired the latter, seeing that Bragelonne was preparing to ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... which knives and pistols would be freely used; and not unfrequently a dead body would rise to the surface of the water in one of the docks with marks of violence upon it. The civil authorities were powerless to prevent crime. "Inter arma silent leges!" The agents and employes of the different blockade-running companies, lived in magnificent style, paying a king's ransom (in Confederate money) for their household expenses, and nearly monopolizing the ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... little John had gained by marrying her! She could do nothing for him; she was powerless even to help her own son, who was compelled to adopt miserable subterfuges and swallow his pride on every occasion. She opened her purse and took out the check, intending to destroy it in her rage, but she was stopped by the miserable thought that, after ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... object of the Federals was to remove negroes from their owners; but for the lives of these poor people they cared nothing, or, assuredly, they would not have forced them, on an unprotected river steamer, to pass riflemen and artillery, against which gunboats were powerless. On the following day, the 27th, the two remaining gunboats and transport attempted to pass Caudle's position; and the former, much cut up, succeeded, but the transport was captured. Colonel Caudle had one man wounded, and the battery one killed—its commander, Captain Cornay, who, with Mouton, ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... his eyes than an assumed stammer, a sham deafness, or a convalescent pallor put on for the occasion. East and west are alike in his sight. The retired registrar, the pensioned usher aspiring late in life to some petty magistrature, are powerless to touch his heart. For him in vain does the youthful volunteer allow his uniform to peep out beneath his student's gown: he will not profit by the patriotic indulgence he counted on inspiring. His sayings in the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of the gods, he brought low the glory of the powerless Swedes, doing their king to death and crushing him with the ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... obligations to other nations. The mob of a single city may at any time perform acts of lawless violence against some class of foreigners which would plunge us into war. That city by itself would be powerless to make defense against the foreign power thus assaulted, and if independent of this Government it would never venture to perform or permit the performance of the acts complained of. The entire power and the whole duty to protect the offending city or the offending community ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... of music, but could only hear a tune, made manifest to him by the dry mechanism of the instruments and his own ears, with no address to any mystery within him, without a whisper in it of the past, or of the future, powerless upon him as the sound of last year's running water, or the rushing of last ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... presently up came the master of the garden, who, seeing it in this plight, was wroth with sore wrath and coming up to them said, "Woe to you! What fashion is this? Did I not stipulate with you that ye should do no damage in the garden?" Quoth they, "Thou knowest that we are powerless to come at any of the fruit, for that one of us is a cripple and cannot rise and the other is blind and cannot see that which is before him; so what is our offense?" But the master answered, "Think ye I know not how ye wrought and how ye have gone ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... Feck, quantity, portion. Feckless, feeble, powerless. Fell, strong and fiery. Fey, unlike yourself, strange, as if urged on by fate, or as persons are observed to be in the hour of approaching death or disaster. Fit, foot. Flit, to depart. Flyped, turned up, turned in-side out. Forbye, in addition to. Forgather, to fall in with. Fower, four. Fushionless, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "long-continued and intemperate interference" of the Northern people with slavery. But it was of the most serious consequence that, while he condemned secession as unconstitutional, he also declared himself powerless to prevent it. His duty "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed" he knew no other way to perform except by aiding federal officers in the performance of their duties. But where, as in South Carolina, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... cheers. Rutford, ever tactless where boys were concerned, was unwise enough to make a speech from the steps condemning, in his usual bombastic style, a demonstration which he ought to have known he was quite powerless to punish or to prevent. When he had finished, the School cheered more derisively than before. After Bill, he left the Yard, ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... evident that he gloated on this idea that the body of the lady of the feathers was forever useless for good, and even powerless to do much effective evil. He seemed to revel in the notion that she was simply a thing powerless, negative, and ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... revenge herself upon me," cried the queen, whose countenance began to brighten up once more. "I fear neither her nor her whole set. All their arrows will fall powerless at my feet, for the love of my husband and my pure conscience form the protection which secures me. And what can these people accomplish against me? They can slander me, that is all. But their calumnies will, in the ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... this region, from generation to generation, had been renowned for exceeding pugnacity. Between them and the city boys constantly-recurring quarrels were so bitter that sometimes men were drawn in through sympathy with their boys. The law seemed powerless to put an end to this state ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... the girl swirled madly and chaotically during those moments when she strained against the rawhide strength of the arms that held her powerless, and they seemed ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... frail and powerless being, nevertheless he is safe from all animals destitute of voice; and at the same time those other animals of greater strength, although they bravely endure the violence of weather, cannot be safe from man. And the result is, that reason does ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... confidence were not displayed by some of the British divisions. The very strength of our artillery was sapping the old reliance on the rifle, and when the barrage stopped the infantry often seemed to be powerless to defend the ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... yet the best swimmer in the world would have been drowned ere he reached it, as the water was so bitterly cold, that when I was bailing for my life, and, consequently, in pretty violent exercise, my hands became quite benumbed and almost powerless. ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... age. Perhaps the solid, square compactness of the buildings has much to do with this. They appear as though built to defy time. Even the shadow of the venerable trees and the ancient ivy's telltale embrace seem powerless to break the ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... would he could find no explanation of the puzzle and his friends were equally powerless to ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... religion of humanity. But the Rabbins shut out those enlarging influences, confining their religion within the narrow traditions of one people. The process by which they conserved the old belief helped to quench its spirit, so that it became an antique skeleton, powerless beside the new civilization which had followed the wake of Alexander's conquests. Rabbinical Judaism proved its incapacity for regenerating the world; having no affinity for the philosophy of second causes, or for the exercise of reason beneath the love of a Father who sees ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... the flaming rivers of molten lava, which come pouring forth, followed by the night of cold, ice, and snow: when we consider these, and the great lapse of time necessary for their accomplishment, how powerless are mere words to set forth the grandeur and the resistless sweep of nature's laws, and to paint the insignificance and trifling nature of man and ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... against this disaster would have been folly—nay, madness. In presence of Nature's grand convulsions man is powerless. ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... Grits,' who were ever denouncing French Canada's 'special privileges,' was a great source of weakness to them in their own province. It was, however, the hostility of a section of the Catholic hierarchy which was most effective in keeping these agitators long in a powerless minority. In the early days of the party this hostility was not unwarranted. Many of the young crusaders had definitely left the fold of the Church to criticize it from without, to demand the abolition of the Pope's temporal power in Europe and of ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... better than I did, and can feel and show some sympathy in them. Of course the life of a physician is necessarily one of self-denial, spent as it is amid scenes of suffering and sorrow, which he is often powerless to alleviate. But there is besides the wear and tear of years of poverty; his bills are disputed or allowed to run on year after year unnoticed; he is often dismissed because he cannot put himself in the place of Providence and ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... At every attempt of Shyuote to rise or to roll over, she pushed his face back into the moist ground, she pulled his hair, thumped his shoulders, and boxed his ears. She was in earnest, and Shyuote was powerless in her firm grasp. He could not even scream, for a thick coating of soil had fastened itself to his features, had penetrated into eye, mouth, and nostrils. His fate was as melancholy as it was ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... raise one hand, the left, in which was the seat of pain, he became aware that his arm was stiff and powerless. He could not ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... the programme of a Crystal Palace Concert. This was of itself sufficient to turn Lancelot's head away from all but thoughts of Fame, even if Mary Ann had not been luckless enough to be again discovered cleaning the steps—and without gloves. Against such a spectacle the veriest idealist is powerless. If Mary Ann did not immediately revert to the category of quadrupeds in which she had started, it was only because of Lancelot's supplementary knowledge of the creature. But as he passed her by, solicitous as before ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... more melancholy than these reprisals in painting, by a pack of cards, in the presence of stakes for the roasting of smugglers and of the cauldron for the boiling of counterfeiters. The diverse forms assumed by thought in the realm of slang, even song, even raillery, even menace, all partook of this powerless and dejected character. All the songs, the melodies of some of which have been collected, were humble and lamentable to the point of evoking tears. The pegre is always the poor pegre, and he is always the hare in hiding, the fugitive mouse, the flying bird. He hardly complains, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... from the Cross, "My God! my God! why hast Thou forsaken me?" And I arose and raised my hand, and said those same words too. Then I opened the door, and she sprang into my arms. She was wild and excited, and friend Afton was with her, but powerless to do anything. I let her weep close to me and cry out and laugh—do just as she would until she sank exhausted. Then I talked with her calmly and dispassionately, and she clung to me and would not be removed. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... my meaning. I am talking of a man who is full of courage and determination, yet just because he is only one is powerless. A lion might be killed by rats if there were ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... by a small force of local police, went up to the mines to investigate. They found themselves powerless; "keep yourselves out of danger," they were told, "and let us settle our own affairs." The carnage was in full swing; it was hell let loose. Not content with killing, they mutilated each other's corpses, bit off noses, gouged out eyes, ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... least, soon or late, your day of reckoning must come, and you, too, may be betrayed as I have been. Rather should you ask me to forgive your soul the insults that in your hour of triumph you have not been ashamed to heap upon one who is powerless to avenge them," and he urged his ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... destruction of Lady Glyde's identity. If either Marian or Mr. Hartright attempted to assert that identity, they would publicly expose themselves to the imputation of sustaining a rank deception, they would be distrusted and discredited accordingly, and they would therefore be powerless to place my interests or Percival's secret in jeopardy. I committed one error in trusting myself to such a blindfold calculation of chances as this. I committed another when Percival had paid the penalty of his own obstinacy and violence, ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... farewell to love, the beginning of an anguish which shall torture your soul to death? Have you lost him?' For moments it was as though life fought with the last and invincible enemy. On the spot where she had been standing she sank powerless to her knees, clinging to the nearest object, her head ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... be shot if you don't" retorted Leslie, in a quiet, concentrated tone of voice that made the man addressed involuntarily shudder. "It is no good, men," he continued, "your comrades are prisoners ashore and utterly powerless to help you. The game is up. We are here to regain possession of this ship, and we mean to do it. And if either of you is foolish enough to offer resistance, you will ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... punishment to be as full as he could make it. Not content to kill the Marquis as the Marquis had killed Philippe, he desired that he should first know himself as powerless to avert that death as Philippe had been. Nothing less would content Andre-Louis. M. le Marquis must begin by tasting of that cup of despair. It was in the account; part of ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... customary clear-headedness, Comrade Asher, you have got home on the bull's-eye first pop. Comrade Windsor is indeed the boss. A man of intensely masterful character, he will brook no opposition. I am powerless to sway him. Suggestions from myself as to the conduct of the paper would infuriate him. He believes that radical changes are necessary in the programme of Cosy Moments, and he means to put them through if it snows. ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... deferred the Huguenot massacre for a dozen years. During the period in which the Queen Regent was resolved to play her fast and loose policy, all the persuasions of Philip and the arts of Alva were powerless to induce her to carry out the scheme which Henry had revealed to Orange in the forest of Vincennes. When the crime came at last, it was as blundering as it was bloody; at once premeditated and accidental; the isolated ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... hardships of life, from the hatred of the peoples, from legal disabilities, and social outlawry; they feel that they cannot hope for any lasting amelioration of their situation so long as they must live as a powerless minority among a hostile majority. They desire to become a nation, to rejuvenate themselves by close contact with mother earth, and to become once more the masters of their destiny. This Zionist ...
— Zionism and Anti-Semitism - Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil • Max Simon Nordau
... without steering. Set them on a finely broken horse, on a colt, or a restive horse, and they become helpless children—the powerless prisoners of the brutes they bestride. How often does one see one's acquaintance in this distressing situation, with courage enough to dare what man dare, but without the power to do what the rough-rider has just done! First comes the false indication of the rider, then the confusion and hesitation ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... inland; I have not beheld the sea now for many years. I never saw it without emotion; I now view it with awe. What an emblem of eternity!—Its dominion is alone reserved to Him, who made it. Changing yet changeless—ever varying, yet always the same. How weak and powerless is man! how short his span of life, when he is viewed in connexion with the sea! He has left no trace upon it—it will not receive the impress of his hands; it obeys no laws, but those imposed upon it by Him, who called it into existence; generation after generation has looked upon it as we ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... other cases, we approach this Epistle with a very strong guarantee of its authenticity, which can only be invalidated by solid and convincing proofs, and against which hypothetical combinations and ingenious surmises are powerless [105:2]. Whether the objections adduced by the impugners of this Epistle are of this character, the reader ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... irritated at the manner in which he was approached. Louis XIV. was treating him as a vassal of France rather than as an independent sovereign. But he felt himself to be weak, and comparatively powerless to resent the insult. So he first temporised, then vacillated, and being again pressed by the French king, he eventually yielded. The amnesty was declared to be at an end, and the Vaudois were ordered forthwith to become members of the Church of Rome. An edict was issued on the 31st of ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... of harmonious relief or variety in such a case could of course be found only in an interlude of pure fancy; any touch of graver or deeper emotion would simply have untuned and deranged the whole scheme of composition. A lesser poet might have been powerless to resist the temptation or suggestion of sentiment that he should give to the little loves of Anne Page and Fenton a touch of pathetic or emotional interest; but "opulent as Shakespeare was, and ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... streams touched were sometimes great whirls (one not many yards from our boat) that looked as if they would suck anything down. Sometimes among all this were great smooth parts of the sea, still in a whirling trouble, which were surrounded by the mad currents. We seemed entirely powerless among ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... other tropical port in this respect. Its principal streets give you the impression of walking through an English town,—not an old-time town, but a new one, plain almost to commonplaceness, in spite of Nelson's monument. Even the palms are powerless to lend the place a really tropical look;—the streets are narrow without being picturesque, white as lime roads and full of glare;—the manners, the costumes, the style of living, the system of business ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... arises. You stand trembling and weak with fear. Why are you powerless to move? Why do you tremble? And yet you believe that the mind has but little influence upon the body. You are for a moment dominated by a fit of anger. For a few hours afterwards you complain of a violent headache. And still you do not seem to realize that the thoughts and emotions ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... were singing jubilantly. She lay there a moment, wondering why she was so stiff and uncomfortable. Then she was aware that she was still dressed, and memory came back in a rush, with a pain so overwhelming that she felt utterly powerless to get up and face the day which lay ahead of her, and all the stretch ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the roof; whether the bats flew to the east or the west when he first saw them; or whether the Jack o'lanterns sailed near the ground (when they were carried by a little Jack), or whether they were high (when a tall Jack bore them), it made no difference. His herbs were powerless, and Dame ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... fairly intelligent young man, who only asked to be allowed to work to live! But how was I to make them smart for this injustice? I could not take the scorpion they gave me when I asked them for an egg, and make it sting every individual composing the nation. I was powerless, utterly powerless, to punish them, and therefore the only thing that remained for me to do ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... which deprived me of breath and power of utterance: it darted through my body like lightning, causing the most excruciating pain that I have ever felt during my life. I had to halt the party, and was lifted from the saddle completely powerless. After dismounting, the pain became so violent, and the torture so excessive, that I thought my career in the world was coming quickly to a close. I was completely paralysed, and a cold perspiration was pouring in streams over my face and body. Recollecting I had got a mixture of laudanum and other ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... a terrifying thought that life is at the mercy of the multiplication of these minute bodies, it is a consoling hope that Science will not always remain powerless before such enemies, since for example at the very beginning of the study we find that simple exposure to air is sufficient at ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... and canvas-back ducks, and rare brands of champagne, in lordly dining-halls, or your place is certain to be secondary. You may, if a man, have the manners of a Chesterfield and the wit of a Balzac; you may, if a woman, be beautiful as Mary Stuart and brilliant as DeStael, and yet, powerless to "entertain," you can fill no lofty pedestal. "Position" in New York means a corpulent purse whose strings work as flexibly as the dorsal muscles of a professional toady. And this kind of toady has an exquisite flair for your greatness and dignity ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... introspection. The exaggerated pessimism in this part of his outcry is explained by his own statement, that he lived in a transition time, when the old faith was (as he held) dead, and the new one (partly realized in our own generation) as yet 'powerless to be born.' Arnold's poetry, therefore, is to be viewed as largely the expression, monotonous but often poignantly beautiful, of a temporary mood of questioning protest. But if his conclusion is not positive, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... of Versailles where, dreaming of a distant tragic past, she found ever new strength to meet the present. Death claimed her not far from there, in Paris, at a moment when her daughter in America, her son in Africa, were powerless to reach her. But souls like unto hers leave their mark in passing through the world; and, though in a foreign land, separated from all who had been dear to her, she received from two friends such devotion as few women deserve in life, and ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... Mr. Wohlfart!" cried Lenore, again reaching out her hand. Alas! the warning hare, the crows, would have been powerless to break the spell which attracted the fur glove to the Danish leather; something ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... expectation and prophecy of his success in those about him make it easier for a painter to soar, and may touch his work with an indefinable glow that the approval of honest and astute electors or solid burghers may have been utterly powerless ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... preserved for a time the decaying body. They could not restore vitality; they warded off the blows of fate. They could only keep the empire from falling until the forces of enemies were organized. No generalship could have saved Rome. The great military emperors must have felt that they were powerless against the combination of barbaric forces. The soul of Theodosius must have sunk within him to see how fruitless were his victories, how barren any victories to such a diseased and crumbling empire. Diocletian retired, in the plenitude of his power, to die of a broken heart. The utmost the ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... dead. In the light of this subsequent revelation how easy to account for his loving Mary, too. Never would she be Mary again to him! Fay Larkin and the Sago Lily were one and the same. She was here, near him, and he was powerless for the present to help her or to reveal himself. She was held back there in that gloomy hall among those somber Mormons, alien to the women, bound in some fatal way to one of the men, and now, by reason of her weakness in the trial, surely to be hated. Thinking of ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... river-bed was choked with heaps of slain. A few, who escaped from the river, were pursued and cut down by the Syracusan horse. Nicias had held out until the last moment; but when he perceived that all was lost, his men being powerless either to fight or fly, he made his way to Gylippus, and implored him to stop the useless carnage. "I surrender myself," he said, "to you and the Spartans. Do with me as you please, but put an end to this butchery of defenceless men." Gylippus ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... rules, forbidden to do this and that, taught to think that his one duty was to be magnificently attired, to acquire graceful arts of posture and courtesy, subtly and gently prevented from obeying natural and simple impulses, made powerless—a crowned slave; so that, instead of being the freest and sincerest thing in the world, it became the prisoner of respectability and convention, just a ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... faction little love was lost. Only when some scheme of deviltry joined them together in common interests, as the massacre of the Huguenots at Amboise, were Catherine and the Guise brothers at one, and this triumvirate even Queen Mary was powerless ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... she sighed, leaning towards the world. 'My poor children are plunged in misery, and by my fault. Their suffering is my crime, and I will expiate it. God Himself, who only thinks through me, would be powerless to restore them to their pristine purity. That which is done is done, and the creation will remain for ever imperfect. But, at least, I will not forsake my creatures. If I cannot make them happy, like me, I can make myself unhappy, like them. ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... at the door of her chamber, were beheaded, and, their gory heads affixed to pikes, were carried by the windows of the carriage, and pressed upon the view of the wretched captives with every species of insult and derision. La Fayette was powerless. He was borne along resistlessly by this whirlwind of human passions. None were so malignant, so ferocious, so merciless, as the degraded women who mingled with the throng. They bestrode the cannon singing the most indecent and insulting songs. "We shall now have bread," ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... its trials as well as its triumphs. It is powerless to assert itself against the sordid interests of everyday life. The greatest book ever written, the finest picture ever painted, appeals in vain to minds preoccupied by selfish and secret cares. On entering Lord Loring's gallery, Father Benwell found ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... gathering of rich harvests of furs had begun, and British and American fur-traders were seeking these treasures on every hand. But at the beginning of these harvests the Cayuses were sickening and dying, and the mission was powerless ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... my young friends, to put a stop to this tremendous evil. It is your duty, and it should be your pleasure, to give that tone to the public sentiment, without which, in governments like this, written laws are powerless. ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... was, she rather regretted when he went, for he was clever and intelligent, and glad to be employed in any errand in the town; and though spurning the remonstrances of Susan, given as they were, though very reasonable in themselves, with ill-timed and powerless warmth, was beginning to be influenced by Fanny's services and gentle persuasions; and she found that the best of the three younger ones was gone in him: Tom and Charles being at least as many years as they were his juniors distant from ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Prince. Suddenly he knew that he had had, no right to attempt this thing. He had given his word, almost, his oath, to the King, to protect and watch over the boy. And here he was, knowing now that mischief was afoot, and powerless. He ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... feast of All-Hallows, when the witches meet to renew their vows. On this night thou must be as they, and must join their company. Still thou mayest hide thyself under any form thou shalt choose; but it shall abide upon thee until midnight. Till then thy spells are powerless. On no other day ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... the one hand, between a nation which believes in political liberty and national autonomy, where the Press is free and where the rulers are responsible to public opinion, and, on the other hand, a nation where public opinion is still muzzled or powerless and where the masses are still under the heel of an absolute government, a reactionary party, a military Junkerthum, and ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... have been intelligible. But the voice which in general led to such solemn service—so thrilling in its sweetness, that the most indifferent could not listen to it unmoved—now lay hushed and mute, powerless even to breathe the sobs that crushed her heart. And when the psalm ceased, and the prayer for the dying followed, with one mighty effort Henriquez raised himself, and clasping his hands, uttered distinctly the last solemn words ever spoken by his race, and then sunk back—and there ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... ministry unpopular, and thus deprive them of all hope of saving the monarchy. In vain did they appeal to the queen, and implore her, by her feelings as a mother, to bend the king to their wishes. The queen herself was for a long time powerless. At last the king seemed to hesitate, and gave Dumouriez a private meeting in the evening. In this conversation he ordered Dumouriez to present to him three ministers, to succeed Roland, Claviere, and Servan. Dumouriez at once named Vergennes for finance, Naillac for foreign affairs, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... lay on the chilly ice, never once thinking where I was, and all the while calling frantically to him; but I might as well have called to a stone. When I rose up, fully impressed with the necessity of securing for the lad rest and warmth, and fully realized, for the first time, my powerless situation (that I was even apparently unable to save myself, still less the boy), my heart seemed to give way entirely, and I sank down once more beside him. A prayer to Heaven for succor, which I had no thought could ever come to me, rose to my lips, ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... no longer bridled; the savages got drunk, the traders were enriched, and the colony was in jeopardy. Sure of being supported by the governor, the merchants listened to neither bishop nor missionaries. Grieved at seeing his prayers as powerless as his commands, Mgr. de Laval decided to carry his complaint to the foot of the throne, and he set sail for France in the autumn of 1662. "Statesmen who place the freedom of commerce above morality of action," says Jacques de Beaudoncourt, "still consider that the ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... Riches are nothing to me. Bribery may do much in other parts of the Empire, but it is powerless in the Trogzmondoff. I shall die in the room adjoining this, as my predecessor died. I am quite as much a prisoner in the Trogzmondoff as is your Highness. No man who has once set foot in this room, either as Governor, employee, or prisoner, is allowed to see the mainland again, ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... that noble but unfortunate race who once peopled the continent of North America. War has slain its thousands, but alcohol its tens of thousands; and the fortitude which could bear without shrinking the most cruel inflictions of torture, has proved powerless to resist the seductions of strong drink. It is to be feared a heavy retribution awaits the white man, the pitiless author of ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... Vahlika, and Kripa and said, 'Ye have yourselves witnessed all that hath happened in the assembly of the Kurus, viz., how wicked Duryodhana, like an uneducated wretch, left the court from anger, and how king Dhritarashtra also describeth himself to be powerless. With the permission of you all, I shall now go back to Yudhishthira.' Saluting them, that bull amongst men, Sauri then mounted his car and set out. And those heroic bulls amongst the Bharatas, those mighty bowmen, viz., Bhishma, Drona, and Kripa, and Kshattri, and Aswatthaman ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... provisions and spun its cocoon wherein to sleep the slumber akin to death, the necessary period of preparation for its future life, these other enemies hasten to the nests whose fortifications are powerless against their hideously ingenious methods. Soon on the sleeper's body lies a nascent grub which feasts in all security on the luscious fare. The traitors who attack the larvae in their lethargy are three in number: an Anthrax, ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... dreadful August. With each day of that appalling retreat Larry's agony deepened. The reports were vague, but one thing was clear—the drive was going relentlessly forward, and the French and the British armies alike were powerless to stay the overwhelming torrent. The check at the Marne lifted the gloom a bit. But the reports of that great fight were meagre and as yet no one had been able to estimate the full significance of that ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... voice, "what was I formerly? What am I now? Consult among yourselves and reply. A man like me sinks when he does not continue to rise. What shall we say, then, when he really sinks? I have no more money, no more credit; I have no longer anything but powerful enemies, and powerless friends." ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to them that have it and is more a leaning upon the Lord than a willing of one that willeth. And yet all the leaning on the Lord in Christendom fails if there be not a will of him that willeth to back it up. God and the man are powerless without ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... counted on finding her when they found her father, and now here lay Wren unconscious of her loss, and Blakely, realizing it all—cruelly, feverishly realizing it—yet so weakened by his wounds as to be almost powerless to march or mount and go in search ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... laborious teaching I am for a power indebted, By which I can move even mountains And in different places set them: Yet although these mighty wonders I can do to-day, I'm helpless By the voice of my desire To draw towards me one fair vestal. And the cause why I am powerless To subdue that beauteous virgin Is that by a God she's guarded, Whom, now knowing by His blessed Grace bestowed, I come to acknowledge As the Infinite, the Eternal. Yes, the great God of the Christians I now openly confess here. And though true it is I am Still of hell the slave and servant, ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... finding them splendid (notwithstanding that St. Jerome assured me that the back of the tunic wrinkled badly), I went downstairs with a complacent smile which I was powerless to banish from my face, and sought Woloda, trying the while to affect unconsciousness of the admiring looks of the servants, who came darting out of the hall and corridor to gaze upon me with ravished eyes. Gabriel, ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... terrible strain upon her, begged her to stop. But Althora had gained the vision that was always before her loved one's eyes—a world of death and disaster—and he, here where the bolt would be launched, and powerless to prevent. She could not ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... shook his head slowly, with an arrogant smile. It then occurred to George that this man differed strangely from all other men—because the sinister spell of the war had been powerless over him alone. All other men bore the war in their faces and in their gestures, but this man ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... the usual ornamentation of the triangular spaces on the facades of stairs. This is a representation of a combat between a lion and a bull, or (perhaps, we should rather say) a representation of a lion seizing and devouring a bull; for the latter animal is evidently powerless to offer any resistance to the fierce beast which has sprung upon him from behind, and has fixed both fangs and claws in his body. [PLATE LVI., Fig. 4.] In his agony the bull rears up his fore-parts, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... man, would send its armies to our shores. Under what standard would we rally to preserve our liberty? There would be no Union—without it there would be no strength; and those who, united, could defy the world in arms, divided would be weak and powerless. Such are the ultimate results of disunion. Let us take the first step, and all may be lost forever. That step is nullification by Carolina, then her secession—then, as she truly tells us in her address, 'the separation of South Carolina would inevitably produce ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... lead, and almost powerless. With one hand he knew he could not hang on. Nor did he try longer than for that one desperate instant when he shot his fist through the loop. The wall of water swept him away, but the ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... to be called such? The deep danger, the only one that made him, as an idea, positively turn cold, would have been the possibility of her seeking him in marriage, of her bringing up between them that terrible issue. Here, fortunately, she was powerless, it being apparently so provable against her that she had a husband ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... off his sombrero, drank in the scene. How he loved it all! It was the Seer's dream, but the Seer could have no part in it. It was Barbara's Desert, but Barbara was shut out—exiled. It was his work, but he was powerless to do it. The Seer had told him to stay for his work's sake. He smiled grimly, remembering the Manager's words. Barbara had told him to stay, but the girl knew nothing of conditions—how could she know? Jefferson Worth had told him to ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... best to keep Gerald away, she appeared to be quite powerless in the matter; and it was therefore useless to go to her. Besides, he had every inclination to avoid her. He had ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... baffled rage. He had been trapped. These men had conspired to save his late employer from his clutches. They had lied, deliberately, and he was powerless against their combined assertions, although he knew the falsity of ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... Oh how powerless Leslie felt, that he could not effectually help Maud and her mother, that he could not rescue them from danger, and place ...
— Leslie Ross: - or, Fond of a Lark • Charles Bruce
... Portsmouth, the forts were powerless against the assaults of these winged demons of the air. They were able to use their terrible projectiles with reckless profusion, because only twenty-two miles away at Calais there were inexhaustible stores from which they could replenish ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... be a young man to-morrow, instead of a day older than I am to-day, I should be powerless to merit such a ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... worth thinking of; just one of those articles written to order, to please the narrow-minded set of subscribers upon whom the circulation depends. But he's upset by it. He says it is the misrepresentation that hurts him so; that, though he can stand a fair attack, he can't stand lies that he's powerless to refute and stop from spreading. That's just Trewe's weak point. He lives so much by himself that these things affect him much more than they would if he were in the bustle of fashionable or commercial life. So he wouldn't come here, ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... over.... But the hand which had been raised fell back powerless on the coverlet, and a few moments later Alexyei ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... dropped into a chair with an all-gone feeling and a lightness in the top of her head. She felt as if the world, the flesh, and the devil had suddenly dropped down upon the house and were carrying off her children bodily, and she was powerless to prevent it. She could not keep the pain of it out of her eyes; yet she did not know what to say in this emergency. None of the things that had always seemed entirely convincing in forming her own opinions seemed adequate ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... to a shabby merchant, who has his little beggarly shop in the bazaar; to a small officer, who ekes out his wretched pension by swindling, and who gets his pay in bad coin. Mahometanism pays in pewter now, in place of silver and gold. The lords of the world have run to seed. The powerless old sword frightens nobody now—the steel is turned to pewter too, somehow, and will no longer shear a Christian head off any shoulders. In the Crusades my wicked sympathies have always been with the Turks. They seem to me the better ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wellnigh stigmatized as heretical, nor the civil and religious wars of the seventeenth century, nor even the dragonnades of Louis XIV., have been able to outroot it. The levelling edicts of the first French Revolution were powerless against it. The Provencal, or Langue d'Oc, if you will, the Gascon, the Auvergnat, are spoken to this day in their respective provinces, universally spoken by the people, who in many instances do not understand French at all. They must be preached ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... people, and, indeed, I met with no insult or cold treatment either from the working class or upper classes in Bavaria—only some surprise as at a rare visitor. For there are extremely few English people there now. The famous picture-galleries are still powerless to attract the American art pilgrim, though that is due more to the difficulty of obtaining permission to reside than to lack of interest in the collections. Possibly next year the police may relent. The food shortage is not so menacing. Moreover, the village of Ober-Ammergau proposes once more ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... corrected her mistake, but was, of course, powerless to do so. Bitterly she regretted her tactlessness and folly. But she could do nothing, and to add to her distress, she saw that Jimbo shrank from her in a way that could not long escape the watchful eye of the mother. But, if the boy shed tears of fear ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... Andre firmly, "you would not force me to quit the country to the detriment of my honour. If I have made you feel some of the bitterness and sorrow that have spoiled my own young days because of my cowardly enemies, it is not from a poor spirit, but because I was powerless, and knew it, to take any sort of striking vengeance for their secret insults, their crafty injuries, their underhand intrigues. It was not because my arm wanted strength, but because my head wanted a crown. I might have put an end to some ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Nothing could divide us permanently, really. Perhaps even Death would be powerless ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... I was sure myself where the truth of the matter began. The conviction that it would end disastrously had been driven into me by all the successive shocks my sense of security had received. I began to ascribe an extraordinary potency to agents in themselves powerless. It was as if Schomberg's baseless gossip had the power to bring about the thing itself or the abstract enmity of Falk could ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... country, remaining unsolved through the years, have at last reached an acute stage where they demand solution. This solution must come now in some form—either in harmony with the Constitution or in defiance of it. The Federal Government has been and still is absolutely powerless to act because of constitutional limitation; the State governments have the sole power, but heretofore no way has been provided for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... poor, and of slight consequence in the world to-day, but at least it has been vouchsafed me to understand what a strong man and a king can feel when there are those who would thwart his will. At present, I am powerless, as little able to give effect to my energies as Richard himself when pent in an Austrian prison, but I do ask that some Blondel shall free me, no matter what the ransom, and that Fate shall set me a task worthy of the man who fought and dreamed and planned ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... the question from the other side, we find in animals complex organs of sense, richly supplied with nerves, but the function of which we are as yet powerless to explain. There may be fifty other senses as different from ours as sound is from sight; and even within the boundaries of our own senses there may be endless sounds which we cannot hear, and colors, as different as red from green, of which we have no conception. These and a thousand other questions ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... and finally drove it out; now it is coming back as a novelty. The Futurists are gazing backward.) 2d: Against the superficial and elementary archaism founded upon flat tints, which, by imitating the linear technique of the Egyptians, reduces painting to a powerless synthesis both childish and grotesque. 3d: Against the false claims of belonging to the future put forward by the Secessionists and the Independents, who have installed new academies no less trite and attached to routine than the preceding ones. 4th: We demand for ten years the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... doubted of her recovery. She continued delirious for more than a fortnight, and there were distinct putrid symptoms, her throat and glands ulcerating, and breaking in two places outside. For longer than a week she had not a lucid moment, became extenuated and powerless. We had to lift her into the baths and out; involuntary discharges from the bowels and the bladder took place; petechiae appeared, and every thing indicated a steady decay. Neither acids nor chloride of lime seemed to have any effect; the only thing, ...
— Hydriatic treatment of Scarlet Fever in its Different Forms • Charles Munde
... hold up as "better and deeper than satisfied the last century" is a remedy which has been tried once already: and its failure was so palpable, that all the evil of the eighteenth century was but the reaction from that enormous evil which this remedy, if it be one, had at any rate been powerless to cure. Apostolical succession, the dignity of the Clergy, the authority of the Church, were triumphantly maintained for several centuries; and their full development was coincident, to say the least, with the corruption alike of Christ's religion and Christ's Church. So far were they ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... of living as they please when they are bachelors, and then having their word of honour believed in when they choose to enter the married state. As long as women are powerless to put an end to that horrible privilege or to make themselves independent of it, so long will one half of the world continue to be sacrificed on account of the other half—on account of the other half's lack of self-control. That one privilege turns out to be more powerful than all the ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... powerless, he was no longer an enemy," Stephen replied. "He was a criminal, it is true; but the temptation had been great. The man saw a chance of possessing himself of what to him was a fabulous treasure; better men than he have yielded to such a temptation; ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... subsequently discovered, in the handwriting of Zebek-Dorchi, and the important evidence of the Russian captive Weseloff, who was carried off by the Kalmucks in their flight, that beyond all doubt Oubacha was powerless for any purpose of impeding, or even of delaying the revolt. He himself, indeed, was under religious obligations of the most terrific solemnity never to flinch from the enterprise, or even to slacken in his zeal; ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... inevitable. One day in 1856, after the adjournment of the Senate, a Southern member of Congress entered the Chamber, and finding Sumner seated, with his legs under an iron desk screwed to the floor, and, therefore, helpless for defense, with a heavy walking-stick the assailant beat the powerless man into insensibility, two of his friends protecting him from those who would interfere in his murderous assault. Having lost enough blood to soak through the carpet and stain the very floor, unconscious, and hovering between life and death, Sumner was carried to a sofa, thence to his hotel. From ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... wandered in the wilderness, In passion's grave nigh sinking powerless: Now deeply I repent, in sore distress, That I kept not the ...
— Hebrew Literature
... I was told, for the harems of the emperor and his favorites. It made my old companion clench his fists to see those poor white women marching past to their horrid fates, and, though I shared his sentiments, I was as powerless to alter their destinies ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and such long vigils, her head reeled, and she staggered to her couch. A cold shudder crept over her limbs; all was dark as night about her; she tried to clasp her hands in prayer and could not, for they were numb and powerless. "This is welcome death!" thought she, and her lips parted with a happy smile. Her head fell backward on the pillow, and ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... greenstone and exchanging hospitalities. But for once he met his match. The Kaiapois waited until they had eight of the chiefs inside their stockades, and then killed them all. Amongst the dead was Te Pehi, Rauparaha's uncle and adviser, who three years before had visited England. Powerless for the moment, Rauparaha could but go home, vow vengeance, and wait his opportunity. After two ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... time numberless tender things in his mind, which he meant to tell her, but feeling also, while he smarted under the sting of self-reproach (for the indiscretion he had committed), Tai-yue give him a rap, he was utterly powerless to open his lips, much though he may have liked to speak, so he kept on sighing and snivelling to himself. With all these things therefore to work upon his feelings, he unwillingly melted into tears. He tried to find his handkerchief to dry his ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... freedom of action, but in order to attach them to my cause:[371] that as things stand now, supposing the consuls to choose to take part against me, they can do so without let or hindrance, but if they wish to do anything in my favour they are powerless if the tribunes object. For as to what you say in your letter, that, if your party had not consented, they would have obtained their object by a popular vote—that would have been impossible against the will of the tribunes.[372] So I fear, on the one hand, that I have lost ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... try in that century was one which led to most beneficient results. For many generations the great scourge of Europe was the smallpox. Often the disease was as violent as the plague (S474), and carried off nearly as many victims. Medical art, seemed powerless to deal with it, and even in years of ordinary health in England about one person out of ten died of this loathsome pestilence. In the early part of George I's reign, Lady Mary Montagu, then traveling to Turkey, wrote that the Turks were in the habit of inoculating their children for ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... determining action. Thoughts and feelings are but indices which show in the mirror of the mind certain changes that are proceeding in the matter of the brain, and are as inefficient in influencing those changes as the shadow of a cloud is powerless to direct the movements of that of which ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... they had deserved and to make them turn to Him, the Most Just of Judges delivered them to a barbarous people." In truth, the mass of the land had never been converted to Catholic Christianity at all, and a heretical society was powerless against Moslem sincerity and swords. Only in the north was Catholicism supreme, and thence came in later days the reconquest. But Catholics lived on all over Spain under their conquerors in ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... letter had been here some days when I returned. I must tell you that Zoe disappeared in my absence. I don't know where and cannot learn. I am fearful for her; and there are many possible complications. But I am powerless to do anything at this time. She may never return. She may fall into strange hands and make some new relations which will come back upon me and upon any one I cared for with embarrassing results. I am ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... advice, energy, activity, money, credit, all his resources whatsoever, were all made useless. If she had been possessed of the old fabled influence, and had turned those who looked upon her into stone, she could not have rendered him more completely powerless (so it seemed to him in his distress of mind) than she did, when she turned her unyielding face to his in ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... the more earnestly insisted upon, because it is from our loose and lazy notions on the subject, that eloquence in every department is suffering so much, and that the pulpit especially has become so powerless, where the most important things that receive utterance upon earth, are read like schoolboys' tasks, without even the poor pains to lay emphasis on the right words, and to pause in the right places. And this, because we fancy that, if nature ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... the affair, and tries to explain that he was more accustomed to a boat than she was, while he reasoned that she would naturally be more familiar with an ice cream freezer. It certainly looks to us to have been a cold-blooded transaction, and while the young man might have been rattled, and powerless to grasp the situation as he would if he had it to do over again, the girl is certainly justified in ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... Maine report, acted like a mutinous school of bad boys who had not been taught the first principles of breeding and dignity; the few gentlemen in it hardly tried to make themselves heard, and even the Speaker was powerless to quell a couple of hundred tempers all rampant at once. Every conceivable insult was heaped upon the head of the President as he delayed his War Message from day to day, hoping against hope, and gaining what time he could to strengthen ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... door of Westminster Abbey, but the way was barred to her. A fortnight afterwards, when King George had gone to Ireland to arouse the nation's loyalty, his wife had passed where Privy Council ushers and yeomen of the guard were powerless, where the enmity of man had no voice in the judgment of God. She had been attacked by severe illness, and in the course of five days she died, in the middle of a wild storm of thunder, wind, and rain. The night before, a boatful of Methodists had rowed up the Thames, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... "I am powerless. I only implore you to take what valuables you may find and let us proceed unharmed—" she cried, rapidly, eager ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... her noblest impulses, and sunk sullenly into obscurity. Oh, what a fool a man is to make woman a slave! He forgets that though he may succeed in keeping her down, chained and fettered by drudgeries, she will be revenged; that though powerless, she will instinctively learn to hate him; and if she cannot defy him she will scorn him,—for not even a brute animal will patiently submit to cruelty, still less a human soul become reconciled to injustice. And what is the possession of a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... office. The incumbents refused to get out. It was very simple. They merely charged illegality in the elections and wrapped up the whole situation in the interminable red tape of the law. The Grangers were powerless. The courts were in ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... though diamond-strewn: Haughty and dazzling, yet no voice of peace, But words of dull negation darkly fell From Reason's goddess in her brilliant sheen! No secret bears she from the silent grave; She stands appalled before its dark abyss, And shudders at its gloom with all her lore, All powerless to ope its grass-grown door. Can Pallas e'er the loved and lost restore? Hear her wild Raven shriek: 'Lenore! ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Theobald, the Devil is also symbolized by the spider, for it dreads the sun as much as the Evil One dreads the Church, and is more apt to weave its net by night than by day, thus imitating Satan, who attacks man when he knows him to be sleeping and powerless ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans |
