"Weakness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Preface states, it "was design'd as a Kind of Mirror to the present Rebellion"; and it provided the author with a part in which he could express, through the character of Lord Huntley, his own aversion to foreign influences in the land, to "French and Priest-rid Weakness" and "Romish Tyranny." This and his succeeding plays were obviously composed to provide parts for himself; so no others were published until he had retired. They were his stock in trade, since Macklin seldom maintained ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... him to relate the particulars of the atrocious conduct of his wife; upon which he said, "My lord, the sultana in your absence despatched to me a slave, desiring me to visit her, but I would not, and I put the slave to death that the secret might be hidden; hoping she might repent of her weakness, but she did not, and repeated her wicked invitation five times. On the fifth I was alarmed for your honour, and acquainted you of ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... faculties and quiet in his mind, but oppressed with a continued sleepiness. This has annoyed him so much that, between three and four this afternoon, he tried to go out riding, as his wont is every evening in good weather. The coldness of the weather and the weakness of his head and legs prevented him; so he returned to the fire-side, and settled down into an easy chair, which he greatly prefers to the bed." No improvement gave a ray of hope to Michelangelo's friends, and two days later, on the 17th, Tiberio Calcagni took up the correspondence ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... lieutenant. Behind the policeman walked, with bended white head and tottering limbs, the venerable Mr. Van Quintem. The old gentleman was partly supported, in his infirmity, by the boy Bog. It was a touching sight to see the confiding trust with which the weakness of sixty-eight clung to the strong arm of nineteen. Bog hung down his head modestly, and blushed. He was not seen even to look at the little veiled figure which sat in the middle of the room. But young Myndert Van Quintem looked at it, and bowed with the deepest respect. The bow was answered ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... the Germans had victories to cheer them on, the soldiers of the Allies had to keep up their courage under the perpetual strain of retreat. The administration had evacuated Paris. Everywhere it seemed that the weakness of France was becoming apparent. To the three armies in the field, those commanded severally by General Manoury, Sir John French, and General Lanrezac, the generalissimo steadily sent reenforcements. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... town, on December 23, and has saturated his system with a debauch of opium on the very eve of the day when he clearly means to kill Edwin. This was a most injudicious indulgence, in the circumstances. A maiden murder needs nerve! We know that "fiddlestrings was weakness to express the state of" Jasper's "nerves" on the day after the night of opium with which the story opens. On December 24, Jasper returned home, the hag at his heels. The old woman, when met by Edwin, has a curious film over her eyes; "he seems to know her." ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... amicably and adopt his policy. After becoming the partisan of Henry VIII. and the foe of Rome, he finally put the coping-stone to his inconsistencies by becoming a convert to Catholicism in 1543. But in spite of his indolence and weakness, he was still Regent of Scotland, when his brother, the Archbishop, was seized with that attack of periodic asthma which threatened to change vitally the course of Scottish politics. A very slight study of contemporary ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... Sometimes, however, this routine was varied, Hubbard now and then helping George with the canoe while I juggled with the packs until they returned to me. Despite the fact that we had fewer as well as lighter packs to carry than on the up trail, our progress was slower because of our increasing weakness. Whereas it had taken us three days on the up trail to portage the fifteen miles between Lake Mary and Windbound Lake, it now took us five days to cover the ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... she has the true as well as the technical chastity; and she is really the victim of inauspicious stars, and of the misconduct of other people—the questionable wisdom of her own father; the folly of Nelvil's; the wilfulness in the bad sense, and the weakness of will in the good, of her lover; the sour virtue and borne temperament of Lady Edgermond. Almost all her faults and not a few of her misfortunes are due to the "sensibility" of her time, or the time a little before her; for, as has been more than hinted already, Corinne, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... was chiefly a favourite among us, however, from his even and cheerful temper, and his ability of telling humorous stories, that used to set the barrack in a roar, and in which he never spared himself, if the exhibition of a weakness or absurdity gave but point to the fun. His narrative of a visit to Inverness, which he had made when an apprentice lad, to see a sheep-stealer hung, and his description of the terrors of a night-journey back, in which he fancied he saw men waving in the wind ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... young woman had counted too much on her physical strength and upon the supposed weakness of her frail antagonist. For Fouchette was like a cat in another respect,—she fought best on her back, where she was all hands and feet and teeth. Before the fat matron could find them between the beds the big girl was yelling for mercy and the whole section ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... said she, "I was bought by a man who keeps a number of cabs and horses, and lets them out. You look well off, and I am glad of it, but I could not tell you what my life has been. When they found out my weakness they said I was not worth what they gave for me, and that I must go into one of the low cabs, and just be used up; that is what they are doing, whipping and working with never one thought of what I suffer—they paid for me, and must get it out of me, they say. The man ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... repentance of their sins, but they have remission of their former sins. For to those who have been called before these days the Lord has set repentance. For the Lord, who knows the heart and foreknows all things, knew the weakness of men and the manifold wiles of the devil, that he would inflict some evil on the servants of God and would act wickedly against them. The Lord, therefore, being merciful, has had mercy on the works of His hands and has set repentance for them; and has intrusted ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... Cunningham appeared. He paused by the rail for a minute and looked up at the Cleighs, father and son. He was pale, and his attitude suggested pain and weakness, but he was not too weak to send up his bantering smile. Cleigh, senior, gazed stonily forward, but Dennison answered the smile by soberly shaking his head. Dennison could not hear Cunningham's laugh, but he saw the ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... in a trice," he observed, by way of saying something. "The little weakness will soon pass off; and then you must drink port wine—a pipe, if you can—and eat game and oysters. I'll get them for you, if they are to be had anywhere. Bless me! we'll make you as strong as Samson before ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... funeral dirge died away, and the volleys were fired over their graves, many a rugged man, whose heart was steeled by years of hardship and crime, shed tears like a child, for those bound to him by such ties as make all soldiers brothers. One of the worst men in the company excused this seeming weakness to a companion thus: "Tim, I haven't cried this twenty year; but they were all good boys, and my countrymen." The next day when the roll was called, and they answered not, we thought of their ghastly faces as we laid ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... position, that all moral evil comes of the body, wherein the soul is imprisoned, and of the desires which the body fastens upon the soul. Were that so, all sins would be sins of sensuality. But there are spiritual sins, not prompted by any lust or weakness of the body, as pride and mutiny, self-opinionatedness, rejection of Divine revelation. The objection turns on sins such as these. The answer is, that spiritual sins do not arise from any exigency of reason, but from a deficiency of reason; not from that faculty calling ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... of the English fleet took some days to reach Quebec, where the minds of the inhabitants were divided between hope and fear. Champlain was determined to await the arrival of the enemy, and to defend Quebec, without considering its weakness. Every one began to work to construct new intrenchments around the habitation, and to barricade the road which led to the fort. Each was given a post in the event of an attack, and a defence was determined ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... his eloquence. It is amidst scenes like these that we love to follow the Gaul, to picture to ourselves an old race and an old civilization, which combined in so strange a way the greatness and the savageness, the heroism in danger and weakness under temptation, of primeval and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... ambassadors of the Roman republic with scorn; he outrages all their pretensions to restore Rome to her old freedom and renown; insults their prayer that he will make her his capital, and heaps contempt upon the weakness and vileness of the people they represent. Giordano replies ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... liberty of the Romans, and contend in Utica against a man before whom Cato with Pompeius Magnus fled and gave up Italy; and shall we manumit our slaves to oppose Caesar, we who have only as much freedom as he shall choose to give? No, even yet, miserable wretches, let us know our own weakness, and deprecate the conqueror, and send persons to supplicate him." This was what the most moderate among the three hundred recommended; but the majority were forming a design on the senatorial class, with the hope that, if they seized them, ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... rapid steps to the place where she meant to select her rugs. Here the three spent a trying two hours. It was hard to please Miss Marcy with Japanese jute rugs, satisfactory in colouring though many of them were, when she longed to buy Persian pieces of distinction. If Juliet had a special weakness it was ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... The weakness of the Graeco-Bactrian kingdoms was shown by their sudden and complete overthrow. In the west the Arsacid empire had risen, and Mithradates I. and Phraates II. began to conquer some of their western districts, especially ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... and watched the fire fade from her face and the soft luminous glow of the appealing woman spring up, of the appealing woman who foregoes strength and panoplies herself wisely in her weakness. ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... entreat you to respect my weakness, but be generous enough to spare me for the sake of all the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... heart-rack none the less. Dalhousie was no lifelong friend like O'Neill, or even like Chas Cooney. But Vivian, having made his acquaintance most informally one night in the summer, had responded at sight to the unconscious claim of weakness; he had come to feel a strong bond, conceived splendid reformatory plans. The boy's fall and disgrace, coming like a crash from the blue, had been a severe shock to him, which would last. His self-exile, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... what I said—'More!' Said it twice, I believe. Glad you agree with me. The hymn says that weakness is sin, but there's no sin in havin' a weakness for ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... at his intelligent face and hoped he would come. Selfish, conceited, and self-sufficient as I may be, there is a strand of weakness made up in my composition that forces me to find the companionship of another intellect ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... almost invariably accorded to genius. Those who were not for him were bitterly against him. In their eyes he was either outrageously uncivil or insultingly rude. Dr Hake, although a close friend, saw Borrow's dominant weakness, his love of the outward evidences of fame. Dr Hake's impartiality gives greater weight to his testimony when he tells of Borrow's first meeting with Dr Robert Latham, the ethnologist, philologist and grammarian. Latham much wanted ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... quarter of the sky, but so long as they come from the sky we can bear them, for they are beyond the control of our own volition, and must be accepted, as we accept the gale or the lightning. It is the troubles which spring from our own folly and weakness, or from that of those with whom our lives are intertwined, which really crush us. Now Arthur knew enough of the world to be aware that there is no folly to equal that of a woman who, of her own free will, truly loving one man whom she can marry if she will sit, deliberately gives herself ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... of persons, to the tribunal of the consul, and requested that he would listen to a few words from him; and that he would order the century which had voted to be recalled. While all present were waiting impatiently to hear what it was he was going to ask, he alleged as an excuse the weakness of his eyes; observing, that "a pilot or a general might fairly be charged with presumption who should request that the lives and fortunes of others might be intrusted to him, when in every thing which was to be done he must make use of other people's eyes. Therefore he requested, that, if it ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... smiling girl, the creature full of fun and frolic whom she had learned to be fond of, first, for the sake of little Tom, and then for her own. Little Tom's friend, his playmate, who had found him out in his infant weakness and made his life so much brighter! And then Lucy asked herself what the Contessa could mean, what it was that made her own interference a sort of impertinence, why her protests had been received with so little of the usual ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... get out, but when her feet were on the ground she swayed and staggered like a drunken person from sheer sickness and weakness. ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... Spanish history begin with ALPHONSO III. (866—914) surnamed "the Great.'' Of him also nothing is really known except the bare facts of his reign and of his comparative success in consolidating the kingdom known as "of Galicia'' or "of Oviedo'' during the weakness of the Omayyad princes of Cordova. ALPHONSO IV. (924-931) has a faint personality. He resigned the crown to his brother Ramiro and went into a religious house. A certain instability of character is revealed ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... shouldn't wonder if you beat me after all. Well, I must go along and look arter my old man. He just let me run away now 'cause I told him I was kind o' crazy about the fashions; and he said 'twas a feminine weakness and he pitied me. So I come. Mrs. Dashiell has been a week to New London; but la! New London bonnets is ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... a voice devoid of any signs of weakness, but loaded to the breaking point with wrath, told in such language as had never been heard in Fairfield that the ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... of the ministers and others, who were sent to the galleys, seemed to exceed all. Chained to the oar, they were exposed to the open air night and day, at all seasons, and in all weathers; and when through weakness of body they fainted under the oar, instead of a cordial to revive them, or viands to refresh them, they received only the lashes of a scourge, or the blows of a cane or rope's end. For the want of sufficient ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... Howe been an efficient general it must have been either captured or entirely destroyed. Through the treason of Adjutant Demont, who had deserted to Lord Percy with complete information of their weakness, Forts Washington and Lee were captured, November 16th and 20th, with the loss of 150 killed and wounded, and 2,634 prisoners, besides valuable stores, small arms, and forty-three pieces of artillery. Manhattan Island was lost. General Charles Lee, with a considerable portion of the army, persistently ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... with the exaggeration that I have always put into everything I began to get excited, and I said to myself that if I did not get the first prize I must give up the idea of the stage as a career. My mystic love and weakness for the convent came back to me more strongly than ever. I decided that I would enter the convent if I did not get the first prize. And the most foolish illogical strife imaginable was waged in my weak girl's brain. I felt ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... Paine each gave Neddie Benson an arm, Blodgett and I pushed ahead to find the best footing, and the cook, once more palsied with fear, again came last. To this day I have not been able to account for Frank's strange weakness. In all other circumstances he was as ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... monophysite doctrines to their logical conclusions. Those who did not secede, unable to defend their own doctrinal position, retaliated with the counter-charge of tetratheism. This stroke was simply a confession of weakness. Monism was strangling their Christianity at every turn. Instead of breaking free from it, they pretended that their opponents were polytheists. The catholic, however, was neither monist nor pluralist. The incarnation was not ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... have posterity call you wise, seize your chance, while you have it, to be God's fool. Find the faith that can help you to play a man's part in the world; find in your faith the power which can grasp you by your weakness and sin, and lift you into strength and achievement. The Church needs you. For of all the institutions in Christendom the Church is stifled with safety, propriety, and conventional wisdom. It is ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... feel stronger after the crisis through which she had passed; she felt, more keenly than before, her weakness. More than ever, she felt the need of a strength that she could not find within herself. More than ever, she was afraid of the Life, that, from where she now stood, seemed so wide. Nor did she feel ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... inconclusive discussion upon that hardy annual, the alleged sale of honours. General PAGE CROFT attributed it to the secrecy of party funds and proudly declared that the. National Party published all the subscriptions it received, and heartily wished there were more of them. The weakness of his case and that of his supporters was that no specific instances of corruption were brought forward, if we may except Mr. BOTTOMLEY'S assertion that some years ago he might have had a peerage if he had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... a letter protesting against the weakness of the official stimulant inadvertently addressed his letter to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various
... the ruin of many persons; and his severity was increased by the vehemence of his anger. For wise men define passion as a lasting ulcer of the mind, and sometimes an incurable one, usually engendered from a weakness of the intellect; and they have a plausible argument for asserting this in the fact that people in bad health are more passionate than those who are well; women, than men; old men, than youths; and people in bad ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... dwelt a poor carpenter with his wife, two half-grown sons and a daughter. For two days the father had been oppressed by a feeling of weakness, and then, his body burning with fever, he lay raving in a corner on the floor of stamped earth. He was indifferent to everything and wished only to be left in peace. If his wife threw a rug over him he groaned, for the lymph glands, which swell up in large tumours, are exceedingly ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... produce tranquillity and happiness at home. Mischiefs and jealousies still lingered with those who had contended for liberty, and the chief Protestant sects, which have all erected their banners and had their camping-ground in the Church of England, were ready to welcome her weakness and overthrow because her priests and her people, for the most part, had been on the side of the Crown during the long struggle for independence. But it is not possible to destroy what God holds in His hand. The passions of ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... turned his face toward Nethermuir, he scorned himself for his weakness. It was a kind of madness that was on him, he thought—a madness that would surely come to an ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... 710.) In a way, Melanchthon may even be regarded as the indirect cause of the Smalcald War and its unfortunate issue, inasmuch, namely, as his vacillating and compromising attitude and his incompetent leadership created conditions of internal weakness among the Lutherans, which invited the aggression of ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... glory into which he would enter by his enthronement at God's right hand. As Luther pointedly puts it: "Therefore do I go, he saith, where I shall be greater than I now am, that is, to the Father, and it is better that I shall pass out of this obscurity and weakness into the power and glory in which the Father is." In the light of this interpretation the meaning of our Lord's words above quoted does not seem difficult. The Paraclete was to communicate Christ to his church,—his life, his power, his riches, his glory. In his exaltation all these were ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... shadow as she ushered in Mr. Challoner, and closed the door behind him. She had looked forward to this moment for days. To Oswald, however, it was an unexpected excitement and his voice trembled with something more than physical weakness as he greeted his visitor and thanked ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... also, that in spite of occasional short-comings, his character was held in general esteem. Certainly Catholic writers, since then and even in modern times, have sought to cast a stain on his later work by laying undue stress on this weakness of the Reformer's youth.[7] The simple question may be put to them, 'Are not Augustine and Jerome counted among your most distinguished saints? And yet you know, or ought to know, what they have confessed—things that Zwingli had never ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... army suddenly opened a bombardment of the town from Highgate, it would possibly not have caused greater astonishment and dismay. That very week shares had been sold on the Stock Exchange at a high premium; and now, by the culpable weakness of a few unquestionably honest and well-intentioned gentlemen, the hard-earned life's savings of aged and infirm men, the sole dependence of scores of widows and hundreds of orphans, was utterly gone. No wonder that pious, God-fearing men ground ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... sank into my boots, for in our business nerve is a sine qua non of success, and it looked to me as if Henriette was losing hers. She has probably lost at cards to-day, I thought, and it has affected her usual calmness. I must do something to warn her against this momentary weakness. With this idea in mind, when the opportunity presented itself ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... this doctrine tells us that God creates man out of nothing, forbids him something, but at the same time He does not give him the power to obey His commands. Ultimately God punishes him with eternal torture on account of his weakness. The body and soul will not be separated. He will not be set free from his body, because, if it be so, there will be the end of his suffering, which God does not like. All these sufferings and punishments ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda
... this Melhuish had been making good weather of his tale, though forced to break off once or twice by reason of his weakness. But here he came to a dead stop, which at first I set down to the same. But by-and-by I looks up. He was making a curious noise in his throat, and fencing with both hands to ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... a very careful discussion of Albert's strength in investigation and weakness in yielding to scholastic authority, see Kopp, Ansichten uber die Aufgabe der Chemie von Geber bis Stahl, Braunschweig, 1875, pp. 64 et seq. For a very extended and enthusiastic biographical sketch, see Pouchet. For comparison of his work with that of Thomas Aquinas, see Milman, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... fallen foe, and, drawing from his pocket the revolver and bowie-knife which rendered him a formidable person, he loosed his firm hold of him, as if it was an acknowledgment of weakness to hold him longer a close prisoner. Seizing the prostrate lawyer by the hair, he bade him rise, at the same time giving a sharp twist to the ornamental appendage of his cranium. But the hair yielded to the motion of his hand, and the entire scalp scaled off, bringing with it the huge parti-colored ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... feel it is altogether honorable to take my salary from M. E. and to go against what I know to be the strong desire of her life at the present time. On the other hand, my feelings of humanity are appealed to by Mr. Derringham's weakness, and by the very poor chance he will have of escaping M. E. when she begins her attack during his convalescence. I have felt more easy in conscience hitherto because I have merely stood aside, not aided the adversary, but now there is a parting of the ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... Salandri, was produced in 1879, but he had to wait eleven years before he obtained another hearing, his Menage d' artistes being produced by Antoine at the Theatre Libre in 1890. His plays are essentially didactic, being aimed at some weakness or iniquity of the social system. Blanchette (1892) pointed out the evil results of education of girls of the working classes; M. de Reboval (1892) was directed against pharisaism; L'Engrenage (1894) against corruption in politics; Les Bienssaiteurs ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... really care much. She had the habit of the girl; she respected her, she even loved her. The children, as she thought of them, had known each other from their earliest days; Jeff had persecuted Cynthia throughout his graceless boyhood, but he had never intimidated her; and his mother, with all her weakness for him, felt that it was well for him that his wife should be brave enough to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... was that Sister Faith spent all her time not devoted to necessary rest at the bedside of Monsieur. But, alas for the weakness of man, instead of the piety of her teachings impressing his soul, or the sacredness of her office shielding her from such passions, her great beauty had kindled in his heart the flame of a moral love. I as her father ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... who hastened her steps when addressed by a passer-by or crossed the roadway in sullen indignation, and who looked in contempt on the silks and satins which turned into the Empire, and she seemed to lose heart utterly. She had been walking all day and had not tasted food since the morning, and the weakness of the flesh brought a sudden weakness of the spirit. She felt that she could struggle no more, that the whole world was against her—she felt that she must have food and drink and rest. All this London tempted her, and the cup was at her lips. A young ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... Thousand Indians, Six only returned home, and so they dyed by the way; but if any of them chanced to faint, being tired with over-weighty Burthens, or through great Hunger and Thirst should be siezed with a Distemper; or too much Debility and Weakness, that they might not spend time in taking off their Fetters, they beheaded them, so the Head fell one way, and the Body another: The Indians when they spied the Spaniards making preparations for such Journeys, ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... were at direct variance, and were now making constant war upon each other. Hamilton regarded the federal constitution as inadequate in strength to perform its required functions, and believed that weakness to be its greatest defect; and it was his sincere desire, and his uniform practice, so to construe its provisions as to give the greatest strength to the executive in the administration of public affairs. Jefferson, on the other hand, contemplated all executive ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... passionate resolve. Do it? Why, of course she must do it! What was her pitiful pride in the balance against his life? He might never dream what so great a sacrifice cost her; might even despise her for such an exhibition of weakness; but she would know, and be the stronger in her own soul from the brave performance of duty. Besides, she intended to tell him the whole miserable story of her wrecked life—not now, not even to-night, but some time, on their way back into the world,—as ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... posts to the garrison living in the tunnels, so that warning could be given immediately in case of an enemy attack. These tunnels served an excellent purpose, but there is no question that had they been in use to any extent they might easily have become a great source of weakness, as they undoubtedly had a very demoralising effect on the troops who had ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... war to interfere with his subordinates he always took care to understand their duties from their own points of view so that he could control every part of the complex naval instruments of war—human and material alike—with a sure and inspiring touch. His one weakness as a leader was his generous inclination to give subordinates the chance of distinguishing themselves when they could have done more useful service in a ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... cause of freedom, and by their example will keep alive her worship in the hearts of men till happier generations shall learn to walk in her paths. Yes, sir, if we must fall, let our last hours be stained by no weakness. If we must fall, let us stand amid the crash of the falling Republic and be buried in its ruins, so that history may take note that men lived in the middle of the nineteenth century worthy of a better fate, but ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... how to make a rusty pelt look black. The former agent had accommodated himself to his customers. He had no objection to shutting one of his eyes, so long as the other could see a chance of doing a stroke of business for himself. He also had a convenient weakness in the sense of smell, when there was an old stock of pork to work off on the savages. But all of Dan Scott's senses were strong, especially his sense of justice, and he came into the Post resolved to play a straight game with both hands, toward the Indians and toward the ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... to disgorge, not merely a village, but all that he has taken. And if this be not done, if the peace-croakers attain their object, a cry of disappointment and anger will burst forth throughout Europe, and the nations, lifting their hands to God, will curse the pussillanimity and weakness of their princes. They would be justified in doing so; for it was not for this that brave men, at the first call of their king, left their families; it was not for this that they sacrificed their property on the altar of the fatherland. The women did not become nurses and sisters ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... sacrifice. If she had been guilty of loving too wildly well, or of drifting unconsciously into a situation where opportunity made temptation irresistible, there would be a certain reaction to pity after she had been definitely condemned. There are at times advantages in weakness, as women well know, ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... the door and drew it back—it struck his shoulder—and Ronicky gave way with a groan and stood with his head bowed. Inwardly he cursed himself. Doubtless she was used to men who bullied her, as if she were another man of an inferior sort. Doubtless she despised him for his weakness. But, though he gritted his teeth, he could not make himself firm. Those old lessons which sink into a man's soul in the West came back to him and held him. In the helpless rage which possessed him he wanted battle above all things in the world. If half a dozen ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... the Lincoln Cabinet reversed its position about Sumter. The pressure of New England and the West became too strong. What Sumter lacked in military importance, it made up in political significance. The Lincoln Government had already been taunted with weakness by the people who had placed it in office. Mr. Lincoln decided, against the better judgment of Mr. Seward, to make the issue ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... man, although he might often deep down in his heart deplore the weakness that had taken possession of him at sight of the captured silver fox, still, since it had brought Jim and him together, and revealed a new and entirely unsuspected bond between them, ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... calmer and apologized humbly for her weakness. "I don't think I could have borne it without you," she told him, with tremulous sincerity. "But I'm so dreadfully sorry to have given you ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... such things before," said the Scotchman, with a simple, shamed, apologetic look for his weakness. "It is only since coming here ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... Against this charge I may plead that, being a portrait-painter by profession, the habit of taking the best view of my subject, so long prevalent in my eye, has gone deeper, and influenced my mind:—and if to paint one's country in its gracious aspect has been a weakness, at least, to use the ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... merchandise, in land, or in any thing else. None of these are right, but they are necessary fruits of the folly and wickedness of men, and inevitable in the present condition of society. "I make my living, I know," he probably says, "from the weakness and wickedness of my fellow men; but so do the physician, the judge, the lawyer, the jailer, and the hangman." If we are not mistaken, in this way does Mr. Freeman make out a clear case to his own conscience; and to some small ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... He opened the door and walked in. It is a sign of weakness for a man to knock on the door of a business office, unless it is marked private, Nevertheless, the dingy glass had known the knock of many knuckles. A girl was hammering on the typewriting machine. She ceased only when she completed the page. ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... with the Bible, had no accurate knowledge of geology, and by resorting to the denunciation of their opponents, have excited a gross and unfounded prejudice against the cultivators of that science, and at the same time have awakened a disgust among intelligent students, who have inferred the weakness of their cause from the folly of its defense. The subject is discussed in the present volume with a large, philosophical comprehension, and with distinguished ability. Faithful to the substantial deductions ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... receiving her from her father in the ruined but beautiful little chapel that belonged to the house: all he requested, all he entreated, was that the marriage should be speedy. Then, with the power of one deeply skilled in deceitfulness, he wound up the whole by tender allusions to the weakness, the precariousness of Sir Robert's health, and the despair he might experience on his death-bed, if he expired with the knowledge that his beloved, and only child, had no ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... from her abstraction. Emotions which were beyond her own control had strangely affected her, and the humiliating idea that her moods had for a moment escaped beyond her guidance made her angry with herself for what she considered mere weakness. And passing quickly out of the boudoir, in the vague fear that solitude might deepen the sense of impotence and failure which insinuated itself slowly upon her, like a dull blight creeping through her heart and soul, she rejoined her ladies, the same great Queen as ever, with the same look of ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... Disfigur'd, that they long'd to stay and weep. But Virgil rous'd me: "What yet gazest on? Wherefore doth fasten yet thy sight below Among the maim'd and miserable shades? Thou hast not shewn in any chasm beside This weakness. Know, if thou wouldst number them That two and twenty miles the valley winds Its circuit, and already is the moon Beneath our feet: the time permitted now Is short, and more not seen remains to see." "If thou," I straight replied, "hadst weigh'd the cause For which I look'd, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... exploring hath driven thee — Freedom, thy Wife, hath uplifted thy life and clean shriven thee! Her shalt thou clasp for a balm to the scars of thy breast, Her shalt thou kiss for a calm to thy wars of unrest, Her shalt extol in the psalm of the soul of the West. For Weakness, in freedom, grows stronger than Strength with a chain; And Error, in freedom, will come to lamenting his stain, Till freely repenting he whiten his spirit again; And Friendship, in freedom, will blot ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... such a nice little kiddie," they said, apologetically, as though they felt they had been caught in some act of weakness. ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... going to faint; but the weakness passed, and then she arose in all the majesty of her ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... yourself: and you'd prove it fast enough if you got the chance, only of course in these piping times of peace unluckily you won't." He coloured suddenly to his temples. "Good God, Val! if there were any weakness left in you, could you have mastered ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... indeed were inclined to rule the law out of account, to disregard completely the historical element in development, and this was perhaps the chief weakness of the neo-vitalist systems which took their origin ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... instances the varied mental powers bestowed on men. He says, "The mind of one man is marked by infantile weakness, of another by a giant's strength. Nothing can elevate the former, nothing permanently depress and overpower the latter. . . . In the case of certain persons, the reasoning powers preponderate; in that of others, the imagination. ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... families for months and months. Up to the commencement of the war the Boer farmer hardly knew what it meant to be away from his family for a long time. Owing to this strong attachment to, one might almost say weakness for, their homes, the burghers often insisted on obtaining leave of absence to visit their families, and that at times when their services were most ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... Commander-in-Chief. There was really no one who could have been put over him; though in some respects it may be a weakness for the Crown, it is a great strength for ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... charm; Useless, alas! is all this Art; It's needless you should strongly arm, To take a too, too willing Heart: I hid my weakness all I could, And chid my pratling tell-tale Eyes, For fear the easie Conquest should Take from ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... of this prop to his hypothesis, as well as the best logician could shew him—yet so strange is the weakness of man at the same time, as it fell in his way, he could not for his life but make use of it; and it was certainly for this reason, that though there are many stories in Hafen Slawkenbergius's Decades full as entertaining as this I am translating, ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... one so fallen as the noblest of her sex, as one to be rewarded because of her weakness, as one whose life is happy, bright, and glorious, is certainly to allure to vice and misery. But it may perhaps be possible that if the matter be handled with truth to life, some girl, who would have been thoughtless, may be made thoughtful, or some parent's heart may be softened. It may also at ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... shall I to myself alone, The weakness of my bosom own? Why, mindful of my fame and pride, When my brave brethren had died; Why, with my friendly, ready knife, Drew I not forth my useless life? Was it a coward fear of death, That bade me treasure up my breath? Or had life yet some genial ray, That wooed ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... he had risen from bed with great difficulty, holding to my shoulder with a grip that almost made me cry out, and moving his legs like so much dead weight. His words, spirited as they were in meaning, contrasted sadly with the weakness of the voice in which they were uttered. He paused when he had got into a sitting ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... weakness stoutly; but the old man's importunities prevailed, and, by degrees, I told him, or rather his good-natured cross-examination moulded for me, a statement of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... it comes to condemning one of our fellows, and withdrawing our esteem from him, we should act from our own convictions only. But have we any right to make our heart a tribunal before which we arraign our neighbor? Where is the law? what is our standard of judgment? That which in us is weakness may be strength in our neighbor. So many beings, so many different circumstances for every act; and there are no two beings exactly alike in all humanity. Society alone has the right over its members of repression; as for punishment, ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... Madelene! How could he face her, after all that had happened. He bitterly regretted his weakness in permitting the girl to avow her love for him, in engaging himself ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... graceful honors, make it obsequious bows, strew its pathway with flattering compliments, and call it by all beautiful names. Such outward expressions, unless most judiciously made, are quite as likely to do it injury as direct abuse. Girlhood is full of tenderness and weakness. The germs of its future strength are its most perilous weaknesses now. Its mightiest energies often kindle the fires of its ruin. Its most salient points of character are often soonest invaded. Indeed, it can scarcely be said to have a character. It is forming one, but knows not yet what it will ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... out during his prolonged faint; he could not find the candles and the tinder-box, and he then resolved to rejoin Augustus Barnard at all hazards. He came out of the chest, and although faint from inanition and trembling with weakness, he felt his way in the direction of the trap-door by means of the rope. But, while he was approaching, one of the bales of cargo, shifted by the rolling of the ship, fell down and blocked up the passage. With immense ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... is the danger, the insurmountable evil of absolute power in any form—whether in a form of a despot like Louis XIV. or in that of the untrammelled human spirit that prevailed at the Revolution. Each human power has in itself a natural vice, a principle of weakness, to which there has to be assigned a limit. It is only by general liberty of all rights, interests and opinions that each power can be restrained within its legitimate bounds, and intellectual freedom enabled to exist genuinely and to the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... pain in his left arm and, in a sudden access of weakness, he leaned for support against the doorway. His senses left him for a moment, and when he came to, he saw a company of soldiers passing the spot where he stood. The next instant the butt-end of a musket pushed ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... room only eighteen feet square with but two small windows, and in a hot climate. After a night of such horrible torments as chill the blood to read, the morning showed a pile of one hundred and twenty-three dead men and twenty-three half dead that were finally recovered only to a life of weakness ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... was vexed by the interruption she did not show it. Indeed, she was aware of her companion's strange reiteration of the towns to be visited, since Mrs. Devar had already admitted a special weakness in geography, and during the trip from Brighton to Bournemouth was quite unable to name a town, a county, or a landmark. But the queer thought of a moment was dispelled by sight of the ruins of St. Dunstan's monastery ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... Mary almost trembled to find herself in them alone; but she was anxious to do what she considered her duty without the pain of contention. John Glegg was naturally an honest and well-intentioned man, but the weakness that had blasted his life adhered to him still. They were doubtless in terrible need of the guinea, and since it was not by any means certain that the real owner would be found, he saw no great harm in appropriating it; but Mary wasted ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... country to be felt, there must, first of all, be a country; but Germany is split into petty useless monarchies, chiefly characterized by their oppression of their subjects, by pride, slavery, and unutterable weakness. Formerly, when Germany was attacked, each of her sons made ready for battle, her princes were patriotic and brave. Now, may Heaven have pity on the land; the princes, the counts, and nobles march hence ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... negli animali sono molto securi segni della loro natura, negli nomini del lor cervello,"—he goes on to say, "Be it excusable in the French to alter and impose the mode on others, 'tis no less a weakness and a shame in the rest of the world, who have no dependence on them, to admit them, at least to that degree of levity as to turn into all their shapes without discrimination; so as when the freak takes our ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... this man strong,' and 'hath given him perfect soundness.' Ah! we can part the two, cannot we? There is the disease, the disease of an alienated heart, of a perverted will, of a swollen self, all of which we need to have cured and checked before we can do right. And there is weakness, the impotence to do what is good, 'how to perform I find not,' and we need to be strengthened as well as cured. There is only one thing that will do these two, and that is that Christ's power, ay, and Christ's own life, should ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... know the true financial strength and weakness of dwellers in those towns, just as the doctors know their physical ones. Mr. Edgar Thacher, which was the cashier's name in this instance, knew how much of an estate Cap'n Jim Phipps had left his daughter and how that estate ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... it had been the old woman's intention to move, and I knew where she would go; but I had not been informed she would go on that day. As I followed on their path, I soon ceased to suffer from cold, and felt that sleepy sensation which I knew preceded the last stage of weakness in such as die of cold. I redoubled my efforts, but with an entire consciousness of the danger of my situation; it was with no small difficulty that I could prevent myself from lying down. At length I lost all consciousness ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... be a misanthrope. He enjoyed life with sober judgment, and pursued the path most suited to himself, without declaring it to be the best for others. He was a little hard, perhaps, upon the errors that belong to weakness and conceit—not to those that have their source in great natures or generous thoughts. Among his characteristics was a profound admiration for England. His own country he half loved, yet half disdained. The impetuosity and levity of his compatriots ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and fetch water." At last the man took courage to approach. "Alas! Danna Sama, this Bancho[u], where the thieves are apparitions, and apparitions turn to women, frightens this Isuke."—"Fear or no fear, water must be had. Such milk livered fellows are not for man's work. Weakness of loins won't do. Off with you."—"But how?"—"In your scabbard, fool." For answer the chu[u]gen made a wry face and tugged at his weapon. As often the case with those men, it was of wood. Shu[u]zen laughed. Then he gave his own scabbard to the chu[u]gen. Off the fellow ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... were not a few earnest enough in the doctrine of Geneva to complain loudly and bitterly that no ministers had been sent with them. The burden of all grievances was thrown upon Laudonniere, whose greatest errors seem to have arisen from weakness and a lack of judgment,—fatal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... When he uttered this human suggestion the Shekinah cloud appeared and its glorious splendor covered them. Out of that cloud came the Father's voice vindicating the honor of His Son. Who is Moses? Who is Elias? Sinful men they were, man of failure and weakness. But here is another. This is my Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased; hear Him. And how that beloved Son ...
— The Lord of Glory - Meditations on the person, the work and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ • Arno Gaebelein
... that one long fragmint of ass's jaw has slain a million. Adapted to the weakness of human nature, which receives with rivirince ideas however childish, that come draped in long-tailed and exotic words, that aasimine polysyllable has riconciled the modern mind to the chimeras of th' ancients, and outbutchered the guillotine, the musket, and the ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... stab in my upper arm had bled a little, and the shirt-sleeve could not be pulled from it without pain. He drew a pair of scissors from his side-pocket and cut the linen away from around the wound: and then, having noted my weakness, helped me to wash and dress, drew on stockings and boots for me, nor left me until he had buckled on my sword-belt, and then only with an excuse that he must change his coat before waiting at table. Sir Luke and Lady Glynn (he assured me) would ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... is not done, what will certainly happen? Separation, first of one part then of another; weakness of each part and weakness all round. Think of the impetus that this would give to every force that makes for chaos among the three hundred millions over whom God in His providence has placed us. The work that the British Empire ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... obliged to make, from a sort of weakness, not to compromise his position, to certain extreme opinions in politics or religion, cloaking in reality personal hatred; are they not all ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... their doom. In Lynchburg he first found his true calling and there, too, he met with his first failure, the demise of the Lynchburg Express, of which he was part owner, and which went to the wall by reason of the well-known weakness of genius ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... confection and another drink of refreshing water made Tom feel better, and he was soon able to walk along without staggering from weakness. ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... white as a sheet. His teeth were chattering. When he saw that the secretary was gone, he tried to walk across to his private room. But he was seized with an attack of weakness and sank into a chair, where he remained for ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... lover as much as she dared. True, Walter came to Glencardine nearly every day, but she managed to avoid him whenever possible. Why? Because she knew her own weakness; she feared being compelled by his stronger nature, and by the true affection in which she held him, to confess. They walked together in the cool, shady glen beside the rippling burn, climbed the neighbouring hills, played tennis, or else she lay in the ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... every one, the king should protect the earth. Men of knowledge have said that everything has its root in self. The king should always reflect upon these, viz., What are his laches, to what evil habits he is addicted, what are the sources of his weakness, and what are the sources of his faults. The king should cause secret and trusted agents to wander through the kingdom for ascertaining whether his conduct as displayed on the previous day has or has not met with the approbation ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... respirations are very fast, up to 60 to 80; the breathing (inspiration) is hard, labored, while the wings of the nose dilate; expiration may be grunting. Face looks anxious and bluish. This color may increase, other symptoms decreasing as suffocation deepens, rattling in chest and death from heart weakness. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... at great length to Justine. Bessy had had a bad morning: the bronchial symptoms which had developed a day or two before had greatly increased her distress, and there had been, at dawn, a moment of weakness when it seemed that some pitiful power was about to defeat the relentless efforts of science. But Wyant had fought off the peril. By the prompt and audacious use of stimulants—by a rapid marshalling of resources, a display of self-reliance and authority, which Justine could not but admire ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... to submit to the will of her whom he respectfully called "the mistress," and of whom he was but the head clerk, he dared not oppose her. But, a red-tapist by nature, and hating innovations, owing to weakness of mind, he trembled inwardly and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... just a little while at this point in the girl's inner life; then, when all things whirled away to chaos; on this night, when nothing remained sure for her but death; in her hour of ultimate, unutterable weakness and at the dawn of a blank despair, came one last plea from Uncle Chirgwin. Mary had given up talking, fairly wearied out and convinced that to waste more words on Joan would be a culpable disposal of time; but Mr. Chirgwin blundered doggedly on with the humility ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... not kill us. Balth. You have been tried, condemned, and only wait For execution. Which shall I begin with? Lamp. The lady, by all means, sir. Balth. Come, prepare. (To the hostess.) Host. Have pity by the weakness of my sex! Balth. Tell me, thou quaking mountain of gross flesh, Tell me, and in a breath, how many poisons— If you attempt it—(To LAMPEDO, who is making off) you have cooked up for me? Host. None, as I hope for mercy! Balth. Is not thy wine a poison? ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... airy alcove, where the Honourable Mrs. Dennant, Miss Dennant, and the Honourable Charlotte Penguin, a maiden aunt with insufficient lungs, sat twice a day in their own atmosphere. A momentary weakness came on Shelton the first time he saw them sitting there at lunch. What was it gave them their look of strange detachment? Mrs. Dennant was bending above ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... we admit that her footprints are marked with blood—that her history has numberless pages written in blood—that her arrogance and avarice have blotted out her national virtue, and now work like a battering-ram her downfall. Yet, as arrogance is but another name for weakness, is it not better to brush off than kill the wasp? The principle herein contained we have, in the sublimity of our power, adopted as an example to the nations of the earth. Jonathan! we like your amiability; we esteem you as a keen fellow, who, large of ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... improve their country and their people. These men saw that their country was falling behind not only the nations of the West, but, as it seemed to them, even the nations of the East. They felt that radical changes were necessary in order to reform the awful poverty, disease, licentiousness, national weakness, decay of bodily powers, and the creeping paralysis of the Samurai intellect and spirit. How they were ostracized, persecuted, put under ban, hounded by the spies, thrown into prison; how they died ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... still in the realm of strange fancies. Wanting his coat, when he must have known that the pockets were empty! But the effort to talk had cost him something. The performance over, he relaxed and closed his eyes. Even as she watched, the sweat of weakness began to form on his forehead and under the nether lip. She wet some absorbent cotton with alcohol and refreshed his face and neck. This done, she waited at the side of the bed; but he gave no sign that he ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... knowledge. They find themselves suddenly plunged into a current that hurls them along resistlessly. Baptized with fire and blood, a new and strange life is thrust upon them and they face the struggle for existence under conditions which spare no weakness and relentlessly push idleness or incapacity to the wall. What will be the outcome no man can tell. To the student of history and of social evolution it will be ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... dogmatic spirit, as if we had been admitted to the council-chamber of heaven, and had there learned the exact day and hour on which the papal throne must fall, or our Lord reappear on earth, is a mark, not of wisdom, but of weakness ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... while the rebel forces were much less than half as great as ours, and within a day's march from us. What was the explanation of all this? Why had we not long before, driven in the rebel pickets, and given battle to the enemy, or at least ascertained the facts as to the weakness of his position? Could the commander be loyal who had opposed all the previous forward movements of our forces, and only made this advance after the enemy had evacuated? These were the questions canvassed by the members of the committee in their passionate impatience for decisive measures, ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... he insisted on saying them both at once. He wanted to think of an English Army as a small thing; but he also wanted to think of an English defeat as a big thing. He wanted to exult, at the same moment, in the utter weakness of the British Nation in their attack and the supreme skill and valor of the Germans in repelling such an attack. Somehow it must be made a common and obvious collapse for England and yet a daring and unexpected triumph for Germany. In trying to express these contradictory ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... and beer in her berth. Whether sober or not, she was equally voluble; and as her language was not only inelegant, but replete with coarseness and profanity, the annoyance was almost insupportable. She was a professed atheist, and as such justly an object of commiseration, the weakness of her unbelief being clearly manifested by the frequency with which she denied the existence of ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... her as she knows few, if any, of her friends; and that, because known, they are extraordinarily interesting. She will see Rachel drawn out of the haven of her staunch and critical common sense by her infatuation for Louis; threatened by the shipwreck of despair when she realises his weakness and her irrevocable mistake, and again putting into a new harbour of determination to pay the price of her love and make the best of things. And I should not be altogether surprised if even our romantic library-subscriber finds the next live-happily-ever-after story ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... her hand, and the blue certificate was presently in her fingers. She felt a sudden weakness in her knees, for it seemed she held the career of Carnac Grier, and it moved her as she had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... are by no means fools. He is then a medium sort of a man, and his education, reading, relations, and daily conversation have procured him a number of acquaintances whom he will try to use. Now for his mind. We know the weakness of his character; soft, feeble, vacillating, only acting in the last extremity. We have seen him shrinking from decisive steps, trying always to delay matters. He is given to being deceived by illusions, and to taking his desires for accomplished events. In short, ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... was the first mediatised sovereign that Vivian had ever met. At another time, and under other circumstances, he might have smiled at the idle parade and useless pomp which he had this day witnessed, or moralised on that weakness of human nature which seemed to consider the inconvenient appendages of a throne as the great end for which power was to be coveted; but at the present moment he only saw a kind and, as he believed, estimable individual disquieted and distressed. It was painful to witness the ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... the part of ministers, officers and members of the church, in their instruction, and in the tender interest which those of the same body should feel in each other. They are to be watched over, sought out and cared for in private and in public; to be borne with in their weakness and reclaimed in their wanderings. They are "Lambs" of the flock, dear to the good Shepherd, and to be loved and labored for, therefore, for his sake. Though they become openly wicked it is not beyond the province of the church to rebuke them for their sins, warn them of their danger, ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... city, and having turned two or three times to satisfy himself that he had no one after him, Paolo struck for Broadway; thence with staggering gait, the result of his weakness, he made straight for the City Hall, at which point he turned and so got into Chatham Street and the Bowery. At last, after a long walk, and when the man himself was almost failing from the exertion of it, he stopped before an open door in the dirtiest of ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... power to search his own heart, whether in condemnation or for approval. Life is a problem, and it requires a full lifetime to solve it. Only as we grow older do we come to know our own souls—our strength and our weakness, the measure of our true nobility of character and likewise the measure of our inherent meanness, the temptations not merely from without but from within that assail us, our power to conquer these or our miserable yielding at times, with no one, perhaps, even guessing at our degradation except ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... yielding to her hatred of Lodovico Sforza, and to the lust of territorial acquisition, consented to unite her arms with those of France against Milan, in consideration of a share (not the lion's share) of the spoils of victory. Florence, and many other inferior powers, whether from fear or weakness, or the short-sighted hope of assistance in their petty international feuds, consented either to throw their weight into the same scale, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... do something," he said in a low tone, frowning at the carpet. "I do not like his extreme weakness. His pulse is bad, very ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... of the dangers of over-work. On the contrary, even when sick we were held to our tasks as long as we could stand. Once in harvest-time I had the mumps and was unable to swallow any food except milk, but this was not allowed to make any difference, while I staggered with weakness and sometimes fell headlong among the sheaves. Only once was I allowed to leave the harvest-field—when I was stricken down with pneumonia. I lay gasping for weeks, but the Scotch are hard to kill and I pulled through. No physician was called, for father was an enthusiast, and always ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... down with sorrow, distraught, indifferent to all else, both the weightiest personal interests and the very triumph of the cause he had championed; and this because his pet dog had pined away for him, and was beyond all possibility of succour. It was of course a passing weakness with him; such weakness as may fall upon a man of kindly heart. In Zola's case it came, however, almost like a last blow amidst the sorrow and loneliness of the exile which he was enduring in silence for the sake of ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... painter like Rubens is entranced with his own actual vision of things; but Poussin tells us that he has never even seen anything as he wanted to see it. He is not a vague idealist dissatisfied with reality because of the weakness of his own senses or understanding. Rather he seems to cry, like Poe, of ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... down the partitions of the adjoining houses. Though these were only distant about twenty yards yet the increase of labour in carrying the wood fatigued him so much that by the evening he was exhausted. On the next day his weakness was such, especially in the arms of which he chiefly complained, that he with difficulty lifted the hatchet; still he persevered whilst Samandre and I assisted him in bringing in the wood, but our ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... numerous readers, in the capacity of an author, he would say Farewell, did not the "everlasting adieus," everlastingly repeated, warn him that he might at some future time be subject to the same infirmity, only rendered more conspicuous by weakness and irresolution. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Creation, Of every class, and in every station, All secretly cherish, what all yet disclaim, That feeling, which we curiosity name. Now our PEACOCK imperial, tho' too proud to own, That the fav'rite of Juno had ever been prone To a weakness, he always had wish'd to believe Was exclusively felt by the Daughters of Eve, Yet died with impatience to know who had written The elegant verses, with which he was smitten. His thoughts were all now ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown |
