"Weak-minded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... keep me humble, so that he can use me to this end. For I tell you, friends," and the Doctor struck the table near him a mighty blow with his fist by way of emphasis, "that God can use no man who feels his own importance, and is inclined to take all the glory to himself. He is simply a weak-minded bungler, who gets into the way and frustrates whatever designs God might otherwise have ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... valuable horse was lost, belonging to a farmer in New England. A number of his neighbors turned out to try and find the horse. They searched all through the woods and fields of the surrounding country, but in vain. None of them could find the horse. At last a poor, weak-minded fellow, who was known in that neighborhood as "simple Sam," started to hunt the horse. After awhile he came back, bringing the stray horse with him. The owner of the horse was delighted to see him. He stroked and patted him, ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... said this, the weak-minded Dhritarashtra regarded fate as supreme and unavoidable. And the king deprived of reason by Fate, and obedient to the counsels of his son, commanded his men in loud voice, saying—'Carefully construct, without loss of time, an assembly house of the most beautiful description, to be called ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... "is a Roman Catholic priest, who sometimes appears in the character of an officer, and assumes the name of captain; but more generally takes the garb, title, and behaviour of a physician, in which capacity he wheedles himself into the confidence of weak-minded people, and by arguments no less specious than false, converts them from their religion and allegiance. He has been in the hands of justice more than once for such practices, but he is a sly dog, and manages matters with so much craft, that hitherto he has escaped for a short ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... habitual world. They produced horrible strains in his mind. They might, he hoped, be misreported so as to seem more violent or less justifiable than they were. They might be the acts of stray criminals, and quite disconnected from the normal operations of the war. Here and there some weak-minded officer may have sought to make himself terrible.... And as for the bombardment of cathedrals and the crime of Louvain, well, Mr. Britling was prepared to argue that Gothic architecture is not sacrosanct ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... a handsome soldier named Alcibiades, and he had not been asked because, having quarreled with the Government of Athens, he had left that town. The thought that Alcibiades might have proved a true friend did not soften Timon's bitter feeling. He was too weak-minded to discern the fact that good cannot be far from evil in this mixed world. He determined to see nothing better in all mankind than the ingratitude of Ventidius and ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... already described as an indolent, weak-minded man, had promised Mr. Brooke the government of the country; but, among other obstacles with which he would have to contend in accepting it, I do not think my friend calculated on jealousy, low cunning, and ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... imagine. It harbors the weak-minded, the vicious, and the unfortunate runaway girls, thieves' consorts, and women of the streets. It is, I think, a little like hell, if there really is such a ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... denounced as a quack, or, at the best, a visionary mystic, who had deluded the young with the mummeries of a free-masonry; had turned the weak-minded into shallow enthusiasts and grim ascetics; and as having conspired against a state which had given him an honourable refuge, and brought disorder and bloodshed upon it. Between such contradictory statements, it is difficult ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... rest and refreshment life afforded him,—to "suffer gladly" the insistent trivialities of hill-station life, merely, forsooth, because a woman had asked it of him. He anathematised himself for an inconsistent weak-minded fool. But he had no intention of breaking ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... had so much work on his hands in England that he left France alone. Yet France was wretched, because when the wise Charles V. died in 1380, he left two children, Charles the Dauphin, and his brother, Louis of Orleans. They were only little boys, and the Dauphin became weak-minded; moreover, they were both in the hands of their uncles. The best of these relations, Philip, Duke of Burgundy, died in 1404. His son, John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, was the enemy of his own cousin, Louis of Orleans, brother of the Dauphin Charles, who was now ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... one hundred and nineteen were known to be feeble-minded, and only forty-two known to be normal. The families tended to be large, sometimes very large, most of them in many cases dying in infancy or growing up weak-minded.[31] ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... alcohol in any form will do him harm and tend to augment the dyspepsia. Secondly, because, often in times of great mental strain, combined with exposure, a glass of spirits will give great temporary relief (which is of itself a dangerous fact for a weak-minded man), but this will always be followed by depression, and will in reality be doing great harm instead of lasting good. Spirituous liquor may be necessary for a few, but these should use it under medical advice if at all. It is a hard thing for many men to give up their grog, but there is not a man ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... an inferior position, reared in a sterner school of discipline and struggle, is a beautiful and consistent creation, constantly showing masculine energy and endurance, yet losing nothing of womanly charm. Ruth, in "The Wept of the Wish-ton-Wish," Hetty Hutter, the weak-minded and sound-hearted girl, in "The Deerslayer," Mabel Dunham, and the young Indian woman, "Dew of June," in "The Pathfinder," are further cases in point. No one can read the books in which these women are represented and say that Cooper was wanting in the power of delineating ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... the temptation of writing it!) And the means—the means! Such means you would never divine! It is mesmerism. She is thrown into the magnetic trance twice a day; and the progress is manifest; and the hope for the future clear. Now, what do you both think? Consider what a case it is! No case of a weak-minded woman and a nervous affection; but of the most manlike woman in the three kingdoms—in the best sense of man—a woman gifted with admirable fortitude, as well as exercised in high logic, a woman of sensibility and of imagination certainly, but apt to carry her reason unbent wherever ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... to have a great crowd of friends, do you? It is only weak-minded people like myself who flop on any stranger's neck with protestations of undying affection. It is the easiest thing in the world for any Douglas that ever was to make friends: I think because we are always willing to laugh at the feeblest jest. Nothing endears one ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... a modest attempt to blow up Parliament, the King and his Counsellors. James of Scotland, then King of England, was weak-minded and extravagant. He hit upon the efficient scheme of extorting money from the people by imposing taxes on the Catholics. In their natural resentment to this extortion, a handful of bold spirits concluded to overthrow the government. ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... only beg, Mother dear, that you won't have a row with Owen's dear little vacillating, weak-minded ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... and they were singing, 'Nearer my God to Thee.' In the midst of their song the raft struck a large tree and went to splinters. There were one or two wild cries and then silence. The horror of that time is with me day and night. It would have driven a weak-minded ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... objects. Cricket, Rowing, Volunteering, and such-like, are healthy, and easily obtainable recreations. Gambling, drinking, loitering, are not to be thought of for a moment, they are the curse of the lazy and weak-minded. Theatres are very good if you keep out of the cheap and nasty ones. Music halls are much better avoided. I do not say that it is necessarily wrong to go there, or that you are certain to come to harm if you frequent them, but there is more chance of temptation, and an inferior ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... again, were probably the happiest of his life. In 1664 or 1665 he married Lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the Earl of Berkshire. About a hundred pounds a year were thus added to his income. The marriage is said not to have been a happy one, and perhaps it was not, for his wife was apparently a weak-minded woman; but the inference from the internal evidence of Dryden's plays, as of Shakespeare's, is very untrustworthy, ridicule of marriage having always been a common stock in trade of ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... any and every doctrine, though tending to the instant disorganization of society. To lecture against war, and against taxes as directly supporting war, would wear a most colourable air of truth amongst all weak-minded persons. And these would soon appear to have been but the first elements of confusion under the improved views of spiritual rights. The doctrines of the Levellers in Cromwell's time, of the Anabaptists in Luther's time, would exalt themselves upon the ruins of society, if governments ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... their avarice and sensuality, would simply transfer them to new objects of desire. Shrewd enough to discern Christ's greatness, instinctively believing what he said to be true, they would set out with a triumphant eagerness in pursuit of the heavenly riches, and laugh at the short-sighted and weak-minded speculator who contented himself with the easy but insignificant profits of a worldly life. They would practise assiduously the rules by which Christ said heaven was to be won. They would patiently turn the left cheek, indefatigibly walk the two miles, they would bless with effusion those who cursed ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... she appealed to Strong, who had not the air of being their accomplice, but seemed to her a rather weak-minded ally of her own. Strong had seated her by the window, and was teaching her to admire his collections, while Wharton and Hazard were talking with the rest of the party on the other side ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... shrewd move. While the other nations refused to exchange the Russian prisoners they held, Napoleon sent home 6,000 of these captives, newly clad and armed, under their own leaders, and without demanding ransom. This was enough to win to his side the weak-minded Paul, whose delight in soldiers he ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... attention. Weakness and fasting and horror had overpowered a delicate body and a sensitive mind, and he lay senseless by the shattered relic of happier times. Antoine the gaoler (a weak-minded man, whom circumstances had made cruel), looked at him with indifference while the Jacobin remained in the place, and with half-suppressed pity when he had gone. The place where he lay was a hall or passage in the prison, ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... too much hard work about it for him. He soon gives up trying it at all, and prefers to eke out an uncertain existence by sponging upon good-natured old Irish women and generous but weak-minded young artisans who have left their native village to follow him and enjoy the advantage of ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... mistrust a witness who makes use of an imperfect or some other form not habitual to him. I presuppose that he is a weak-minded person who has allowed himself to be persuaded; I believe that he is not altogether reliable because he permits untrue forms to express his meaning, and I fear that he neglects the content for the sake of the form. The simple person who quietly and ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... much too keenly to continue in such a light strain. He was no weak-minded, pleasant conversationalist, but a prophet, who knew how to speak hard ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... if it existed her brother and sister would have got at it long ago. Malipieri sank in her estimation as soon as he mentioned it. He was only a Venetian, of course, and could not be expected to know much about Rome, but he must be very weak-minded if he could be imposed upon by such nonsense. Her delicate lip curled with ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... good effected by the cajolery of M. Fouche, and the hope of a happy reconciliation, now disappeared. Consternation seized the weak-minded; indignation, men of a generous spirit. The committee, disappointed of the hope of obtaining Napoleon II., or the Duke of Orleans; who, according to the expression of the Duke of Wellington, would have been only an usurper of a good family; ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... that Des Maizeaux, if he was weak-minded, was not absolutely dishonest) had no effect on Mrs. Collins. The manuscripts were never returned. What their contents were, no one now can inform us. We are justified, however, in supposing that as those eight volumes were the ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... instead of her own. It may be that if she had felt sure of Elizabeth, she would have gone through with the proposed policy; distrusting the English Queen she resolved to end it. She made a desperate and successful attempt to recover her ascendancy over her weak-minded son. She played upon his terrors, and prepared for one of the most ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... jargon has always been a favourite weapon of theologians, and it is a very effective weapon against weak-minded, or ignorant, or superstitious, or ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... wipe out the social disgrace of leaving neglected wanderers on the highways of human effort who are unable to find the path of safety and of success, and to make a protected place of guidance and possible training for all the weak-minded and abnormal. We can, now we increasingly understand, do more than this; we can help with ever more ingenious and devoted care to give the merely slow and backward a better chance at life's opportunities and help to make these least able to adjust themselves ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... I never said that my practice always squared with my principles. Helpless and troublesome creatures have sometimes an insinuating way with them, which forms an additional reason for avoiding them, especially if one is weak-minded. And——" ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... picked up a mistress named Miss Gregory—removed to Dublin, and sent for his son to join him. He seemed very fond of the boy, and the woman Gregory for a time pretended to share in this affection, until she conceived the idea of supplanting him. She easily persuaded her weak-minded lover to go through the form of marriage with her, under the pretence that his wife was dead, took the title of Lady Altham, and fancied that some of her own possible brood might succeed to the title, for the estates were by this time well-nigh gone. With this purpose in her mind she ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... was started in the large hewn-log school-house on the roadside known as "Hall's Free School". Few people knew the plain, homely, hard-working man, or wholly understood him. Some thought him stingy, some weak-minded, some only queer, and at first his benefaction was hardly comprehended; but in time quite a little oasis began about the little fountain, which the poor farmer's bequest had opened under the big oaks by the wayside, ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... interested in a wounded Uhlan captain who was in that hospital. He began by trying to bribe our poor Nicko, thinking the chocolate peddler too weak-minded to be patriotic. He was mistaken," and the major nodded. "Had the Uhlan not died of his wounds I believe I should have got something of ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... eleventh hour, when an excellent opportunity presents itself for the accomplishment of that object, you seek to dissuade me from my purpose. Have I entirely mistaken your character? Are you really as weak-minded, and as devoid of courage and spirit, as your language would seem to indicate? When that young ruffian mutilated you in Philadelphia, didn't you consider that you acted perfectly right? Well, this Livingston has destroyed the happiness of my life, and transformed me ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... manage. As I told you, he loaded me with precious things; after which he left me to sit at home with his weak-minded wife, while he went on a trading voyage, as was his wont. A horse brought me to Nidaros; gold bought me a passage with Arnor Gunnarsson, and his ship ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... made his maiden speech at a meeting for the abolition of the slave-trade, speaking in a low tone, and with 'the prettiest foreign accent.' While she was driving up Constitution Hill, an attempt was made upon the Queen's life by a weak-minded youth, but luckily neither of the pistol shots took effect. There have been at least seven other happily futile attempts on the life of ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... romantic!" said Hilda, with a smile. "You seem, from such circumstances, to have brought yourself to consider our very prosaic housekeeper as almost a princess in disguise. I, for my part, look upon her as a very common person, so weak-minded, to say the least, as to be almost half-witted. As to her accent, that is nothing. I dare say she has seen better days. I have heard more than once of ladies in destitute or reduced circumstances who have been obliged to take to housekeeping. After all, it ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... weak-minded. I know it. But if it doesn't thunder any more I'll keep up. Ever since I was a child the sound of thunder paralyzed me. Thank God, Mrs. Yocomb is ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... only with her husband before myself. Not very passionate. I know nothing about masturbation or homosexuality in her case. Very broad hips, large breasts, and well-developed nates. Deserted by her husband. No children. Rather foolish and weak-minded. Penetration difficult ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... possession of the poor, uneducated woman's brain, and threatened to undermine her influence over her. She cut short her visit to her at this point, and returned home uncomfortable and disturbed, wishing she had never offered the shelter of her roof to her nephew's unhappy and weak-minded wife. ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... "You weak-minded old gazabo, is it to hear ye singin' topical songs thot Oi came down from Archery road? ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... selfish ends. What said Jesus—that He came to send a sword? Of course He did. Every idea is a sword. What a God He was! He was the first who ever cared for the people—for the real people, the poor, the ignorant, the fools, the weak-minded, the slaves. The Greeks and Romans thought nothing of these. I salute thee, O Thou Son of the People!" and Caillaud took down a little crucifix which, strange to say, always hung in his room, and reverently inclined himself to it. "A child of the people," he continued, "in everything, ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... restrain your impatience—but we must have the boy settled first, and the count will have been dead a longer time then, and we shall not give so much scandal to the weak-minded fools that were his friends, for it will be dangerous to have so many events happen ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... madam,' rejoined the old gentleman, with vivacity, 'to find in you a person superior to the absurd terrors of weak-minded people. If you will do me the honor to accompany me to Reade street, I will go over the house with you, and if you are pleased with it, the bargain shall ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... replies Remy de Gourmont; Tolstoy may be wildly mistaken, but he is never weak-minded. We think it is his strength, his intensity that sends him caracoling on a dozen different roads ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... against it in the most plausible manner. Courteous and kind to all, few could be offended at his frank avowal of infidel principles, or resent his keen, half-jovial sarcasms upon the peculiarities of some weak-minded, though sincere ...
— Children's Edition of Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer • S. B. Shaw
... enjoy the trouble of laying before you a variety of things to choose from, and except in first-class shops he does not seem to care much whether you buy or not. The result often is, that you either are strong-minded enough not to buy at all, or so weak-minded as to take das erste beste that is put before you. Either is unsatisfactory. So far has this custom of knowing everything proceeded, that at a leading dressmaking establishment in Melbourne when a friend of mine was ordering a dress, the fitter after the lady had chosen the ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... yourself. This is dementia; but I shall NOT let you be demented. Think of what you are saying. Bring her back to you! Is that the way of God? I thought you were a man; this is the talk of a weak-minded girl." ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... to the reasons of his stay in Beorminster. Mr Mosk, being as obstinate as a mule, was not likely to tell Cargrim anything he desired to learn. Bell, detesting the chaplain, as she took no pains to conceal, would probably refuse to hold a conversation with him; but Mrs Mosk, being weak-minded and ill, might be led by dexterous questioning to tell all she knew. And what she did know might, in Cargrim's opinion, throw more light on Jentham's connection with the bishop. Therefore, the next morning, Cargrim called on ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... not profess to include all that may come under the head of Folk Lore, such, for example, as the reading of dreams and cups, spaeing fortunes by cards or other methods—that class of superstitions by which designing persons prey upon weak-minded people. ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... this matter was very brief. Blinky lasted just long enough to make a great discovery, to brag about it as was Blinky's way, and then pass on to find his reward in whatever hereafter is set apart for weak-minded crooks whose heads are not hard enough to withstand the crushing impact ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... because the description is strictly accurate. It is, quite simply and literally, a Bill for incarcerating as madmen those whom no doctor will consent to call mad. It is enough if some doctor or other may happen to call them weak-minded. Since there is scarcely any human being to whom this term has not been conversationally applied by his own friends and relatives on some occasion or other (unless his friends and relatives have ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... expression!" said she. "Young women of Bridget-Mary's age and temperament will think of marriage in convents as much as outside them. Further, I dread delay, entertaining as I do the very certain conviction that this weak-minded man who has thrown your daughter over will be back, begging Bridget-Mary to forgive him and reinstate him in the possession of her affections before another two months are over our heads. That little cat-eyed, squirrel-haired ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... and easy day for weeks past, and I have got to feel at last almost beaten by it.' He goes on to tell how he has been chaffed with the characteristic freedom of barristers for his consequent silence at mess. It is 'thoroughly weak-minded of me,' he adds, but he will find a 'pretty straight road through it in one direction or another.' Gradually the attractions of India became stronger. 'It would be foolish,' he says, 'when things ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... brothers who had invited him to join the party, one, we have seen, was the hunter, Mestigoit; another, the sorcerer; and the third, Pierre, whom, by reason of his falling away from the Faith, Le Jeune always mentions as the Apostate. He was a weak-minded young Indian, wholly under the influence of his brother, the sorcerer, who, if not more vicious, was far more resolute and wily. From the antagonism of their respective professions, the sorcerer hated the priest, who lost no opportunity of denouncing ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... that Plum and Jasniff and Merwell were!" cried Phil. "He was one of the weak-minded kind who thought it was smart to follow the ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... and awful, of care for the body after the soul has gone, is furnished by certain well-known lines written by a man not commonly regarded as weak-minded or prejudiced; and engraved by his direction on the stone that marks his grave. If I am wrong, I am content ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... to be pointed, and, therefore, should never be in the hands of the wicked or foolish, any more than firearms. It is potential or otherwise, in exact proportion to the artist's wisdom and dynamic mentality, and is useless in the hands of the idiotic or weak-minded. A Magic Wand requires brains and vigorous mental force to make it effective, just as the steam engine requires an apparatus for generating the steam, that moves it. With a determined will, and a mental conception of one's inward power, any ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... him now not repugnant as a false one, but merely pitiable as a weak, child-like character. The falsity now seemed rather on his part than on hers. He believed that Harry had gone much farther in treachery than Katie. Katie, he thought, was merely a weak-minded flirt; while Harry had become a traitor in allowing himself to fall in love with her. Even for Harry he could now make some allowances; and since he had found out his own feelings, he had less jealousy, ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... but their own; at least, it is safe to say that few well-regulated and economically administered modern charities would have the patience of the Abbot of Clairvaux, who, instead of calling up the weak-minded tombeor and sending him back to the world to earn a living by his profession, went with his informant to the crypt, to see for himself what the strange report meant. We have seen at Chartres what a crypt may be, and how easily ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... has been said, it may confidently be asserted, that a universal remedy still remains as great a desideratum as the philosopher's stone; and either can only obtain credit with the weak-minded, the credulous, or the fanatic. One of the most unfortunate circumstances in the history of such medicines, is the insinuating and dangerous method, by which they are puffed into notice. And as we have little of the beneficial effects ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... Her confidence died with her gayety; her vanity began to suffer. And she caught at her admission that Jean Isbel was different; she resented it in amaze; she ridiculed it; she laughed at her naive confession. She could arrive at no conclusion other than that she was a weak-minded, ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... most interesting thing is that there is no legislation whatever of any kind on the subject of women's suffrage—showing distinctly the refluent wave. In 1903 New Hampshire rejects a constitutional amendment for women's suffrage. Kansas restricts the marriage of epileptic and weak-minded persons. Several States reform their divorce laws, and Pennsylvania adopts Southern ideas giving divorce for a previous unchastity discovered after marriage. This matter has so far been covered by no Northern State, though it had been law from all ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... to-day at the multiplication of the number of insane, weak-minded, imbeciles, and paupers who must be supported by the taxation of the people and helped in a thousand ways by the altruism of individuals and groups. Unless along with this excessive altruistic care, scientific principles of breeding, of prevention, and of care ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... very much, who never wear gloves to conceal their hands. It is true, there are some queer specimens of humanity attracted to our festival, but all are welcome. I am pretty sure to meet once more that weak-minded and whimsical fellow, generally weak-bodied too, who prefers a crooked stick for a cane; perfectly useless, you would say, only bizarre, fit for a cabinet, like a petrified snake. A ram's horn would be as convenient, and is yet more curiously twisted. He brings that much indulged ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... hand slapped his back and the mouth parted to show ugly blackened teeth and the old man laughed so hard spittle spotted his beard. "As if you didn't know," he managed to say. "As if you didn't know, Martin Pinzon. It's that weak-minded sailor again, the one who claims to have a charter for three caravels from the Queen herself. Drunk as Bacchus and there's his pretty little daughter trying to get him to come home again. I tell you, Martin ...
— My Shipmate—Columbus • Stephen Wilder
... I should think she was not that weak-minded sort of woman to give way to such sentiment, much less to be made so extremely wretched by it. For I do tell you, my dear, her state is simply that of the ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... If Ruskin had stuck to his last as Mazzini did, he might have made a revolution in England. I'm not a Socialist, never was, any more than Mazzini, and there was something fine to me about the way he told these boiling, ignorant, weak-minded mobs of Italian workmen that they had duties as well as rights. There's too much talk of rights nowadays. Anybody would think that because a man works with his hands and takes wages, he's free to do as he pleases. I remember the Old Man once when I had trouble ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... boys he said, to be law-abidin' citizens as their Pa wuz, and a protection to the Govermunt, and to be ready to man the new warships, if a war broke out. But her babies wuz real pretty and cunning, and she wuz so weak-minded she couldn't enjoy the thought that if our male statesmen got to scrappin' with some other nation's male law-makers and made another war, of havin' her grown-up babies face the cannons. I spoze it wuz when she wuz so awful tired she ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... excellent. Miss ZELIE DE LUSSAN, gifted with a light, pleasant voice, sang admirably. Can't have "Trop de Zelie." Mr. BARTON McGUCKIN, as Don Jim-along-Jose, did all that can be done with this weak-minded soldier. No holes to be picked in Mr. McG.'s performance, though there was a portion of his costume that would have been the better for the attention of Signor SOANSO, the Spanish tailor. Perhaps he is one of the "Renters" of Drury Lane. The strongest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... A poor post hack, on the contrary, will go on several paces after his rider has reined him in. Why is that? Because he is weak. So it is with the mind and intellect. He who is strong leaves off speaking when he pleases, because he has great control over himself, and readiness of judgment. A weak-minded man speaks much, but loses himself in his own thoughts, nor thinks of finishing what he has to say. Look at all the homilies and sermons of the ancient Fathers and observe how short they were, yet ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... sufficiently strong and willing to continue his policy of crushing the weak and incidentally erect some monuments to his own memory. After much consideration as to how the strong would derive the most benefit from his ill-gotten goods, he concluded that the weak-minded and sickly creatures who were bred from the system he abetted and the over-worked and under-fed laborer would have no opportunity to read books, so he established hundreds of Moundbuilder libraries ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... the most superior girl I ever knew. Men always laugh at strong-minded women; but I'm sure I don't know why. I can't think how any human being with duties and responsibilities can be either more useful or more agreeable for being weak-minded." ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... humanity, but the stars of his firmament were merely atmospheric—pretty fancies, external likenesses. That the grandest thing in the world is to be an accepted poet, is the despotic craze of a vast number of the weak-minded and half-made of both sexes. It feeds poetic fountains of plentiful yield, but insipid and enfeebling flow, the mere sweat of weakness ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... schools for the deaf, dumb, blind, weak-minded, and crippled children, supported by the state, and reform schools for the correction and restraint of the depraved. Technical schools, with day and night classes, for teaching the trades to young men and women, four schools ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... It is not enough, as Professor Giddings says, to reward every man according to his performance; we must find a way to enable every man to achieve his potential performance. The plan of proportioning rewards to efficiency must be modified by mercy for the weak-minded and weak-bodied. It must be supplemented by earnest efforts to provide health, education, and favorable environment for all, and, by the limitation of the right of inheritance, that all may have, so far as possible, approximately equal opportunity. It must beware of judging efficiency ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... Saint Bartholomew's Day (1572) was a horrible incident of Catherine's policy of "trimming." Fearing the undue influence over the king of Admiral de Coligny, an upright and able Huguenot leader, the queen-mother, with the aid of the Guises, prevailed upon the weak-minded Charles IX to authorize the wholesale assassination of Protestants. The signal was given by the ringing of a Parisian church-bell at two o'clock in the morning of 24 August, 1572, and the slaughter ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... latter cases, attributes the victory of the common rat over the large Mus coninga to its superior cunning; and this latter quality may probably be attributed to the habitual exercise of all its faculties in avoiding extirpation by man, as well as to nearly all the less cunning or weak-minded rats having been continuously destroyed by him. It is, however, possible that the success of the common rat may be due to its having possessed greater cunning than its fellow- species, before it became ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... easily imagine the terror into which a weak-minded person would be cast by having the Pope's dire curses pronounced against him, were it not known that he who is authorised to fulminate the ecclesiastical censure and bans, may, for a moderate pecuniary consideration, or by a mortification of the flesh, or good works, have the woes ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... visit to the spot; often, as his prototype divined, had the mimic would-be desperado sat trembling on his hoary screw, revolvers ready, while the red eyes of the coach dilated down the road; and as often had the cumbrous ship pitched past unscathed. The week-kneed and weak-minded youth was too vain to feel much ashamed. He was biding his time, he could pick his night; one was too dark, another not dark enough; he had always some excuse for himself when he regained his room, still unstained by crime; and so the unhealthy excitement was deliciously maintained. To-night, as ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... "I wouldn't expose myself too much, Josiah. You remember the pa that took his weak-minded child to the ball, and told him to set still and not speak or they ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... his father and grandfather flourishing health and a robust constitution, he had also from them strong love for his native territory, a passion for the chase, and a horror of the constraint and decorum exacted by worldly obligations. He was a spoiled child, brought up by a weak-minded mother and a preceptor without authority, who had succeeded in imparting to him only the most elementary amount of instruction, and he had, from a very early age, taken his own pleasure as his sole rule of life. He lived side ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... well alive to the fact that Madame Hsing was, by nature, simple and weak-minded, and that all she knew was to adulate Chia She so as to ensure her own safety. That she was, in the next place, ever ready, so greedy was she, to grasp as much hard cash and as many effects, as she could lay hold of, for her own private gain. That she left all family matters, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... murder was discovered, a baby was born to Mrs. Rudge, the wife of the steward—a pretty boy, though with a birth-mark on the wrist as red as blood, and a strange look of terror on the baby face. He was named Barnaby, and his mother loved him all the more because it was soon seen he was weak-minded, and could never be in his right senses. She herself, poor woman! seemed never able to forget the ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... they had the right of receiving all merchandise coming from the West Indies. Now, to disembark these ingots at the port of Vigo was depriving them of their rights. They complained at Madrid, and obtained the consent of the weak-minded Philip that the convoy, without discharging its cargo, should remain sequestered in the roads of Vigo until ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... and forcible arguments how unreasonably I act in leading the life I do; but as they know, that if I escape from this evil I shall fall into another still greater, perhaps they will set me down as a weak-minded man, or, what is worse, one devoid of reason; nor would it be any wonder, for I myself can perceive that the effect of the recollection of my misfortunes is so great and works so powerfully to my ruin, that in spite of myself I become at times like a stone, without feeling or consciousness; ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... stable, was a queer fellow who went by the name of Andy. His real name was Anderson. He was weak-minded and childish, his lack of intellect taking the form of silliness rather than of stupidity. Indeed, he was bright and quick in his way, but it was a very foolish and nonsensical way. He was famous among all the boys of the neighborhood, for using strange and amusing words, and especially for a system ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... say, miss, and I think you're honest, but you may be mistaken. I saw her meet-up with fine young fellies in the East; I could see they admired her—but she turned them down easily. She's no weak-minded chippy, as I know on me own account—the more ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... powerful.... The INFAME—You are well aware that I speak of superstition only; for as to the Christian religion, I respect and love it, like you. Courage, Brethren! Preach with force, and write with address: God will bless you.—Protect, you my Brother, the Widow Calas all you can! She is a poor weak-minded Huguenot, but her Husband was the victim of the WHITE PENITENTS. It is the concern of Human Nature that the Fanatics of Toulouse be confounded." (The case of Calas, SECOND act of it, getting on the scene: a case still memorable to everybody. Stupendous bit of French judicature; and Voltaire's noblest ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... fellow with a craze, sir,' said Mr. Dick, 'a simpleton, a weak-minded person—present company, you know!' striking himself again, 'may do what wonderful people may not do. I'll bring them together, boy. I'll try. They'll not blame me. They'll not object to me. They'll not mind what I do, if it's wrong. I'm only Mr. Dick. And who minds Dick? Dick's ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... which might be expressed without the preliminary unmanning of aestheticism; and his distinction lies in the fact that he uttered them with vehemence and intensity. In Victorian times the average citizen thought of poetry as a somewhat weak-minded, effeminate pursuit—as very often it was. The poet who might be persuaded of the sublimity of his calling had necessarily to steel himself against the abuse of the matter-of-fact persons who have no traffic in poetry; and in so doing he lost the advantage of ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... for a well-dressed prosperous, comfortable wife and mother, who was in danger of losing her figure from an overabundance of good living; but with us she was a town character, like Old Man Givins, the drunkard, or the weak-minded Binns girl. When she passed the drug-store corner there would be a sniggering among the vacant-eyed loafers idling there, and they would leer at each other ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... ought to read it. The universities began to think of offering the scarlet gown of their most honourable degree to the assailant of Price and the Dissenters. The great army of the indolent good, the people who lead excellent lives and never use their reason, took violent alarm. The timorous, the weak-minded, the bigoted, were suddenly awakened to a sense of what they owed to themselves. Burke gave them the key which enabled them to interpret the Revolution in harmony with their ...
— Burke • John Morley
... Lincoln, to ''unt with Lord 'Enry'; and some at Louth, to ''unt with'—he didn't know who. What a fine flattering, well-spoken world this is, when the speaker can raise his own consequence by our elevation! One would think that 'envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness' had gone to California. A weak-minded man might have his head turned by hearing the description given of him by his friends. But hear the same party on the running-down tack!—when either his own importance is not involved, or dire offence makes it worth his while' to cut off his nose to spite his face.' No one would recognize ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... no more?" sobbed Clarinda, for she was weak-minded, and could not bear to think that Bony never, never let ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... movements of the unfettered brain, was stung with compunction and considerable shame. Horace would be furious when he knew; more furious with Edith than Lucia. Therefore Edith was furious with Sophia Roots, the cause of this disaster, who must have known that even if Lucia was too weak-minded to refuse her most improper invitation, that invitation ought never to have been given. Edith had her pride, the pride of all the Jewdwines and the Hardens; and her private grievances gave way before a family catastrophe. She did not want Lucia at Hampstead; ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair |
