"Dead weight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sat one day in the chair beside his, wondering as usual. I had felt heavy of late, with a soreness and languor in my bones, as if a dead weight hung continually on my shoulders, and another rested on my heart. A warmer colour in the Stranger's cheek caught my attention; and I bent forward, peering under the pendulous lids. His eyes were livelier and less profound. The melancholy was passing from them as ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the other side, and this dead weight was sufficient to keep the narrow craft from going completely over; she righted, and swept into the mouth of ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... do you mean?" she asked, her heart seeming to be a dead weight in her breast, heavy with suspicion over the dread significance in his voice and words. She watched ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... a crisis as this," he said, "when everything dear and valuable to us is assailed, when this party hangs upon the wheels of government as a dead weight, opposing every measure that is calculated for defense and self-preservation, abetting the nefarious views of another nation upon our rights, preferring, as long as they dare contend openly against the spirit and resentment of the people, the ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... skill could do. Snow was brought in to encourage back the life it had dismayed, and camphor and coffee awaited their turn to take part in the resuscitation. Slow and reluctant it was, like dragging a dead weight up from an unknown depth. More than another hour had passed away before Sophie's eyelids quivered, and a slight tremor moved her lips. By-and-by she opened her eyes, slowly and uncertainly, let them close again, and once more opened them; and, ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... the drear loneliness that had sat on her like a dead weight the last month before she turned her back on Granville and its unhappy associations. For one thing, Bill Wagstaff kept her intellectually on the jump. He was always precipitating an argument or discussion of ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... came to him, without speaking, and placed one hand under his father's chin, and lifted the Prince's countenance, like a dead weight, toward his own. Thus the two men regarded each the other. Their silence was ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... managed to get the young man up on level ground. As often happened, it was Max who conceived the easiest way of doing this. To lift a dead weight of a hundred and fifty pounds is no light task, and so he started to break away one side of the pit, thus raising the bottom of the interior until they were able to simply carry ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... round. Wilderspin was supporting with difficulty my mother's dead weight. For the first time (as I think) in her life, she whom, until I came to know Sinfi Lovell, I had believed to be the strongest, proudest, bravest ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... of dead weight, Blizzard lengthened his stride and took new courage. He was overhauling Stacy now ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... saw Cleigh stoop and put his arms under the body of his son, heave, and stand up under the dead weight. He staggered past her toward the main salon. ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... He staggered and gave way. A great joy rose up tremulous in Trevennack's heart. Even without his celestial sword, then, he had vanquished his enemy. He seized the Creature round the middle, dragged it, a dead weight, in his weary arms, to the edge of the precipice, and dropped it, feebly resisting, on to the bare ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... never contradicted, and I thought myself free—free to enjoy life, and the fortune that had so unexpectedly come to me; free to love and, alas! free to marry. And that is why," she pursued, in all the anguish of a dreadful retrospect, "I recoiled in such horror and hung, a dead weight on your arm, when on turning from the altar where we had just pledged ourselves to mutual love and mutual life, I saw among the faces before me the changed but still recognizable one of my brother, and beheld him make the fatal sign which meant, 'You are wanted. ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... reformatories, schools for the blind, deaf and mute, in insane asylums, in homes for the feeble-minded and epileptic—amounts practically to less than sixty-five thousand, an insignificant number compared to the total population, our eyes should be opened to the terrific cost to the community of this dead weight of human waste. ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... approaching. The author of The Great Boer War says of the charge before Kimberley: "It appears to have been one of the very few occasions during the campaign when that obsolete and absurd weapon the sword was anything but a dead weight to its bearer." And again: "The war has been a cruel one for the cavalry.... It is difficult to say that cavalry, as cavalry, have justified their existence. In the opinion of many the tendency of the future will be to convert the whole forces into mounted infantry.... A little training in ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... girl's dreadful expression relaxed instantly. It was as the lifting of a dead weight which had crushed her heart within her. She had been numbed, paralyzed. Actual suffering had not been hers, she had experienced a suspension of feeling which had resulted from the shock. But that suspension was far more dreadful ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... head—to keep the little business from disappearing altogether. It's been hard enough, I can tell you, these last few years, with the big jobbers cutting the hearts out of the small traders. I had the invalid husband to support for between three and four years—a dead weight on me every week—and then the children to look ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... been made to run tramcars with the electricity supplied by accumulators alone, but the system is not economical owing to the dead weight of the cells, and the periodical trouble of recharging them at the ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... till this snapped under the heavy strain, when finally the yoke strap which joined the two together also broke. Mansana's grasp of the bridle of the other horse helped him to save himself, and helped also, together with the dead weight of the fallen animal, to bring the whole cortege to a standstill. But the prostrate brute, feeling the carriage close upon him, struggled to free himself; his companion reared, the near shaft broke, a splinter pierced Mansana in the ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... strength that would last the fifteen or twenty minutes needed until this task was finished. Despite the darkness and the driving rain, he could now see the lights in his own camp, and bending forward a little to support the dead weight on his back, he walked in a straight course ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... however, remained as ground-ice, anchored to the kelp and stones on the bottom. Gazing down through the clear waters one saw a white, mamillated sheath covering the jungle of giant seaweed, recalling a forest after a heavy snowfall. The ice, instead of being a dead weight bearing down the branches, tended to float, and, when accumulated in large masses, sometimes succeeded in rising to the surface, uprooting and lifting great lengths of seaweed with it. One branching stem, found floating in the ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... out the kitchen lamp, and the two left the room, moving side by side, and it was to each of them as if they were in reality carrying with their united strength the heavy, dead weight of the secret. ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... family were to gather together for an hour, Laube, of whom my mother had been very fond, was my only companion. He expressed his anxiety at my unusually exhausted appearance, and when he afterwards accompanied me to the station, we discussed the unbearable burden which seemed to us to lie like a dead weight on every noble effort made to resist the tendency of the time to sink into utter worthlessness. On my return to Dresden the realisation of my complete loneliness came over me for the first time with full consciousness, as I could not help knowing that with the loss of my mother ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... exclaimed,—'O God! is the Count of Saldana indeed coming?'—'Look where he is,' replied the cruel King; 'and now go and greet him whom you have so long desired to see.' Bernardo went forward and took his father's hand to kiss it; but when he felt the dead weight of the hand, and saw the livid face of the corpse, he cried aloud, and said,—'Ah, Don Sandiaz, in an evil hour didst thou beget me!—Thou art dead, and I have given my stronghold for thee, and now I ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... DEAD WEIGHT. A vessel's lading when it consists of heavy goods, but particularly such as pay freight according to their weight ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... angry that Johnson was going to be a traveller; said 'he would be a dead weight for me to carry, and that I should never be able to lug him along through the Highlands and Hebrides.' Nor would he patiently allow me to enlarge upon Johnson's wonderful abilities; but exclaimed, 'Is he like Burke, who winds into a subject like a serpent?' 'But, (said I,) Johnson ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... could tell a foul-hooked fish," I asserted, positively. "This fellow is too alive—too limber. He doesn't sag like a dead weight." ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... to inspect a redstart's nest containing young, the female drops from the nest a dead weight and falls from branch to branch of any tree in the way, striking the ground with a dull thud. Her next move is to trail a helpless wing along the ground. At another time she flies from the nest and alights on the ground with spread wings and tail. The yellow markings on the ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... else, can't turn me out of dis house," she warned them, and in her words was the dead weight of finality. "An' ef you does, I ain't gwine leave de premises. Ise gwine camp right dere on de sidewalk an' dere I means to stay twell de policemens teks me up fur a vagrom. De shame of it won't be no greater fur me 'n 'tis fur you. Dat's all!" And ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... finally they swarmed forward with the bayonet and threw all their weight of numbers upon us. We gave them one terrible volley, but nothing could have stopped the ferocious impetus of their attack. For one terrible moment our ranks bent under the dead weight, but the Germans, too, wavered, and in that moment we gave them the bayonet, and hurled them back in disorder. It was then I got a bayonet thrust, but as I fell I heard our boys cheering and I knew we had ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... where my family was in danger. Suddenly my horse, which had already sustained several wounds, received on the flank his death blow. The animal stumbled and rolled upon me. My leg and thigh, pierced with two lance thrusts, were caught as in a vise between the ground and the dead weight of my fallen steed. In vain I struggled to disengage myself. One of my comrades who, at the time of my fall, was following me, ran against the fallen horse. Steed and rider tumbled over the obstacle, and were instantly despatched ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... that he must get up presently and go down to the office. Presently—when he could open his eyes. Just now there was a dead weight on them; he tried one after another in vain. The effort set him weakly trembling, and he wanted to cry again. Nonsense! He must get ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... David stepped hastily forward, his heart beating, seized her foot, never waited for her to spring, but went to work at once, and with a powerful and sustained effort raised her slowly and carefully like a dead weight, and settled her in the saddle. His gripe hurt her foot. She bore it like a Spartan sooner than lose the amusement of his simplicity and enormous strength, so drolly and unnecessarily exerted. It cost her a little struggle not to laugh right out, but she turned ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... May, 1862—the Americans are not fairly open to the charge of being unwilling to tax themselves. They have avoided none of the irritating annoyances of taxation, as also they have not avoided, or attempted to lighten for themselves, the dead weight of the burden. The dead weight they are right to endure without flinching; but their mode of laying it on their own backs justifies me, I think, in saying that they do not yet know how to obtain access to their own means. But this bill applies simply to matters of excise. ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... soon spent. It was a matter only of minutes before the sobbing ceased. But for a long while after she was quiet, all muscles relaxed, she lay just as he held her, a soft dead weight like a sleeping child. He wondered, indeed, if she had not fallen asleep and finally moved his head so that he could see her eyes. They were open, though, and at that movement of his she stirred, sighed and ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... man. Every civilized society has to carry below the lowest sections of the masses a dead weight of ignorance, poverty, crime, and disease. Every such society has, in the great central section of the masses, a great body which is neutral in all the policy of society. It lives by routine and tradition. It is not brutal, but it is shallow, narrow-minded, and ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... lately growing heavy and pensive in his affairs, which for some late years have mortify'd his mind.... This lately manifestly appeared in his change of complexion; his face fallen less; his colour and eyes turned yellow to a great degree; his stomach wasted and gone; and a dead weight presses continually, without sign of relief, on ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... sunny visions of love and joy were done! It was all over. When the sharp, fierce pain of the knife had done its worst, the consciousness of that remained a dead weight on her brain. When the paroxysm of weeping had worn itself out, yet brought no relief to her passionate nature, a kind of apathy succeeded. She cared nothing where she was or what became of her; the worst had happened, the worst been suffered. To be betrayed, cruelly, heartlessly, ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... leap over the dasher, falling on the prostrate horse, and grasping her by the head, pressed it to the ground. The mare lay motionless. Quincy rushed to Miss Mason and lifted her to her feet, but found her a dead weight in his arms. He looked in her face. She had evidently fainted. Her left arm hung by her side in a helpless sort of way; he touched it lightly between the elbow and shoulder. It was broken. Grasping her in his arms he ran to the back door and burst into the kitchen ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... twelve stone falling ten feet, and fourteen stone falling eight feet; and it may be useful to say that the strain upon a rope loaded with a weight of fourteen stone, and suddenly checked after a fall of eight feet, is nearly equal to that which is caused by a dead weight of two tons. None of these ropes, however, will bear a weight of fourteen stone falling ten feet; and the result of our experiments is, that no rope can be made, whether of hemp, flax, or silk, which is strong enough to bear that strain, and ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... liked the Version better than any one else, wished it to be reprinted. So I took it in hand, boiled it down to three-fourths of what it originally was, and (as you see) clapt it on the back of Omar, where I still believed it would hang somewhat of a dead weight; but that was Quaritch's look-out, not mine. I have never heard of any notice taken of it, but just now from you: and I believe that, say what you would, people would rather have the old Sinner alone. Therefore it is that I write all this to you. I doubt not that any of ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... triumph, and were accordingly jubilant; but they soon found that the mere control of the Assembly signified very little in the absence of Executive responsibility. The Legislative Council interposed its dead weight, and vetoed one bill after another sent ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... have made up my mind and I will not be turned. I shall get a job somewhere and look out for myself, and help you when I can. Possibly I can find a chance to get a little more schooling now and then, and yet not feel that I am a dead weight on you. My mind is not on school now, and there is no use in my trying to keep at ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... unusually "up"—proved too strong for them, for he made a sort of plunging somersault and carried the whole six along with him to the ground. Before he could rise, however, more troopers were on the top of him. Samson himself would have had to succumb to the dead weight. In a few seconds he was bound with ropes and led into the house. Ramblin' Peter had made a bold assault on a dragoon at the beginning of the fray, but could do nothing with his poor maimed hands, and ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... country,' 'foundation of the State,' 'the only real, and true, and substantial being;' while, on the other hand, those who presumed to differ from those sentiments were in the habit of styling him 'the dead weight,' 'the vampire,' 'the night-mare,' and other titles equally complimentary. They also maintained that, instead of being either real or substantial, he was, in fact, the most flimsy and fictitious personage in the whole island; and then, lashing themselves up into metaphor, they would call him a meteor, ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... top speed, not daring to look around again. He could feel that the wire was dragging and he wondered where its supporters could be; but he opened his cut-out to get every last bit of power and sped on with the accumulating train of wire becoming a dead weight behind him. ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the masters. It is mainly inspired by love, and takes a popular courtly or scholastic form. The style of Gianni had many of the faults of his predecessors. That of Cavalcanti, the friend and precursor of Dante, showed a tendency to stifle poetic imagery under the dead weight of philosophy. But the love poems of Cino are so mellow, so sweet, so musical, that they are only surpassed by those of Dante, who, as the author of the "Vita Nuova," belongs to this lyric school. In this book he tells the story of his love for Beatrice, which was from the first a high idealization ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... stopped: "I'll acknowledge, squire, that would make a difference—that would undoubtedly make a difference. I'm a practical man. Cabarreux with a steady income would be a dead weight which Bel might manage to shove along through the world; but Cabarreux with nothing is a millstone which would grind her to powder. I'd made up my mind to send her away next week. But ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... presence and began to think and to act as if Christ were indeed absent and would not return again for thousands of years. The presence of gigantic evils in the world with no apparent available means of redressing them, the dead weight of heathenism, and the disturbing influences of speculative Oriental philosophies impressed upon the conscience of the world a despairing pessimism. In the midst of this trial there was a revival of the Platonic philosophy. The treatise of Plato that made the most profound ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... weary, and a dead weight had fallen on her spirits. If Sir Richard had thought her bad form ten minutes before, his unspoken mind now declared her stupid. Meanwhile Kitty was saying to herself, as she watched ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... no time to cry out before my fingers locked upon his throat as jaws of iron. He staggered and caught my wrists, but did not immediately begin the frantic struggle I expected. His rifle fell to the soft earth with hardly a sound and, like a dead weight, he crumpled up; falling so quickly that I nearly came down on ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... I'll carry him or die! He has fainted. He is a dead weight now—but we leave this road together, or we stay here together." Muttering the last words, Malcolm set out, and he carried him safely over very rough ground, under a heavy shower of bullets and rockets, for one hundred and fifty ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... necessary to instruct the reader for his full comprehension of the story. Also it must often happen that various prolixities and redundancies occur in the course of an interchange of letters, which must hang as a dead weight on the progress of the narrative. To avoid this dilemma, some biographers have used the letters of the personages concerned, or liberal extracts from them, to describe particular incidents, or express the ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... Perkins Overcome by the Dead Weight of the Machine - Movement Against His Re-election Failed for Want of Leadership - Proceedings Without ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... think you are right, Maxime, in the main. Our people are in the awkward position of fighting the Constitution, and the old flag is a dead weight against us. We must take the initiative in an unnecessary war. This Abe Lincoln is no mere mad fool. I will send a messenger East, and urge that ten thousand Texan cavalry be pushed right over to Arizona. We must seize the coast. You ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... of holding their own in self-protection and self-support. The unemployable among the unemployed, the hopelessly criminal and vicious who cannot be rescued from their condition, the more permanently backward among the school pupils, the incompetent among parents, and the dead weight of the "born paupers," all these must somehow be socially carried with least expenditure of social force and at least cost to family stability and family well-being. We have not yet learned to do this, but in every field of social effort the primary need is to see what is the right thing to ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... was wholly forgotten"—that is, was unable to read and write. And the worst of it all was that the victim of this neglect was not disturbed over his situation. "The forgotten man was content to be forgotten. He became not only a dead weight, but a definite opponent of social progress. He faithfully heard the politician on the stump praise him for virtues that he did not have. The politicians told him that he lived in the best state in the Union; told him that ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... nearly as possible the method which he prescribed. The heaviest person in the party lies down upon two chairs, his legs being supported by the one and his back by the other. Four persons, one at each leg, and one at each shoulder, then try to raise him, and they find his dead weight to be very great, from the difficulty they experience in supporting him. When he is replaced in the chair, each of the four persons takes hold of the body as before, and the person to be lifted gives two signals by clapping his hands. At the first signal he himself and the four lifters begin to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... must confess it, found the old miserable feelings were all back again, and vainly tried to shake off the dead weight which had settled upon me from the moment that I had clearly understood that Aleck, and not I, was to possess ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous
... man who passed her she looked with eager eyes of hope. Every man's body that lay in street or lane she hovered over with caught breath and eyes of fear, nerving herself to stoop, to turn the dead weight that settled sullenly into itself as her hands left it; to scan the face by the light of her flaring torch. And the light showed her as ghastly as what she looked on; black hair streaming like smoke behind her, eyes wide with fear, pinched face glimmering pallid. No joyful handmaiden ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... ruinous consequences as to capacity, character, health, and life,—with this difference only, that gluttony stupefies and stultifies, while drunkenness maddens; and that the glutton is merely a dead weight on the community, while the drunkard is an active instrument of annoyance and peril. There are probably fewer who sink into an absolutely beastly condition by intemperance in food than by intemperance in drink; but of persons who do not expose themselves to open ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... finished my poem about a fortnight ago. I had looked forward to the day as a most happy one; ... But it was not a happy day for me; I was dejected on many accounts: when I looked back upon the performance, it seemed to have a dead weight about it,—the reality so far short of the expectation. It was the first long labour that I had finished; and the doubt whether I should ever live to write 'The Recluse', and the sense which I had of this poem being so far below what I seemed capable of executing, depressed ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... Boy and I worked harder than ever in our school in the cool pavilion. I had flung off the dead weight of my stubborn repinings, and my heart was light again. There were delightful discoveries of beauty in the artless, childish faces that greeted us every morning; and now the only wonder was that I had been so slow to penetrate the secret of their charm. That eager, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... entirely on keeping the two gravity mechanisms intact. If they were destroyed, or failed to function, he would be locked to the ground in a prison of metal and fabric: clamped down, literally, by a terrific dead weight! The suit was extremely heavy, particularly the boots, and Carse learned that the wearer was able to walk in it only because a portion of the helmet's repulsive force was continually working to approximate ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... stopped short over the support. The result was that the ties between the rib and the slab, and also across the support, being lacking, some of the beams, the forms of which had been removed prematurely, cracked of their own dead weight, and, later, when the roof collapsed, owing to the deficient bracing of the centers, it carried with it each of the four floors to the basement, the beams giving way abruptly over the supports. Had an adequate tie of steel been provided across the supports, the collapse, ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... her eyes opened during the ride. But it was to see nothing and only to grip him tighter, if that were possible. Neale began to imagine that he had been too hopeful. Her body was a dead weight and cold. Those two glimpses he had of her opened eyes hurt him. What should he do when she did come to herself? She would be frantic with horror and grief and he would be helpless. In a case like hers it might have been better if she had ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... English soldiers could have marched fast enough to overtake Russians, more especially with such a being to command them, as —-, whom I, and indeed almost every one else have always considered a dead weight on the English service. I suppose, however, that both they and their commander were spurred on by ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... passed in a breathless state of tension. He stared at the eyes, and the eyes stared back at him. Once he endeavoured to rise, but a dead weight seemed to fall on his shoulders and hold him back; and twice, when he tried to speak—to make some sound, no matter what, to break the appalling silence—his throat closed as if under the ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... achievements, but we have not hitherto stopped thoughtfully enough to count the human cost, the cost of lives snuffed out, of energies overtaxed and broken, the fearful physical and spiritual cost to the men and women and children upon whom the dead weight and burden of it all has fallen pitilessly the years through. The groans and agony of it all had not yet reached our ears, the solemn, moving undertone of our life, coming up out of the mines and factories, and out of every home where the struggle had its ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... she always carried. She was like a girl who, in one withering tragic moment, had become old. But his aching love found no outlet, no word of regret or tenderness. It recoiled back on himself in a dead weight of pain. ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... scheme, which would be a mine to England; therefore the moneyed men will not touch it, will not listen to it. Their time is too valuable. What remains? An appeal to the people on the score of humanity, brotherhood, progress, what you please? My opinion is that the dead weight there could not be moved. The late war and the English share in it are too fresh in the public mind. The outlook to me is utterly ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... Goldsmith to revert to his own past travels, and to the reflection that he was unlikely again to set out upon them, unless sheltered like Johnson behind a pension. He assured Boswell that he would never be able to lug the dead weight of the Rambler through the Highlands. The enthusiastic pioneer, however, was loud in the praises of his companion; Goldsmith thought him not equal to Burke, 'who winds into a subject like a serpent.' The other, with more than wonted irrelevance, ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... about him, and, gently but powerfully lifting his dead weight of head and shoulders, drew him to her heart. She held him to her warm bosom, rocking him to and fro. "Oh, my beloved!" she murmured, "if you will live, I will be ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... a free goer," said the servant, dismounting to adjust the girths and stirrups,"he only pulls a little if he feels a dead weight on him." ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Boy saw the fangs sink into his friend's head, four sets of sharp claws circle his neck, a tense grey ball of fur hanging its dead weight below. The water ran red for a moment as both slowly sank ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... merciful breeze which swept down from the cooler atmosphere of the hills. Lynde wasted half an hour or more seeking a hiding-place for the saddle. It had grown a grievous burden to him; at every step it added a pound to its dead weight. He saw no way of relieving himself of it. There it was perched upon his shoulders, like the Old Man of the Sea on the back of Sindbad the Sailor. In sheer despair Lynde flung down his load on the curb-stone at a corner ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... over the gunwale without any resistance; then he had to surge against the sag of a dead weight. The fish had either given up the ghost or ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... second thought, he knew he had not done so. But there they stood upon the floor. Ladd and Lash must have taken them off when he was so exhausted and sleepy that he could not tell what was happening. He felt a dead weight of complete lassitude, and he did not want to move. A sudden pain in his hand caused him to hold it up. It was black and blue, swollen to almost twice its normal size, and stiff as a board. The knuckles were skinned and crusted with dry blood. Dick ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... against the current with the dead weight of the boy hindering him from making any perceptible way. It never even occurred to him that by letting his burden go he might at any rate save himself. And his English pluck came to his help. He wouldn't be beaten. He just had ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... that the union will count their increases, for it is the masses of unskilled, unorganized, ill-paid women and girl workers today, who in so many trades today increase the difficulties of the men tenfold. That dead weight removed, they could make better terms for themselves and enroll far more men into their ranks. What increase of power, what new and untried forces women may bring with them into the common store, just what these may be, and the manner of their working out, it ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... Cut off the length of highway on before, And left but narrow breadth to left and right Of wither'd holt or tilth or pasturage. On the nigh-naked tree the Robin piped Disconsolate, and thro' the dripping haze The dead weight of the dead leaf bore it down. Thicker the drizzle grew, deeper the gloom; Last, as it seem'd, a great mist-blotted light Flared on him, and he came ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... brilliant author of the Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory, died in 1819; under happier conditions his able work might have done for Inorganic Evolution what his great master failed to accomplish; but the dead weight of prejudice and the dread of anything that seemed to savour of infidelity was, at the time of the great European struggle against revolutionary France, too great to be removed even by his lucid statements and eloquent advocacy. James Hall and Leonard Horner, two faithful ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... late. Red-beard's arms were still about him. Suddenly he felt the dead weight of the islander's body. As he strove to break the man's hold he tottered on the brink of the ledge. He felt himself being dragged downward. Before his eyes flashed the rock-dappled waters of the cove. His only chance lay in clearing ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... to allow these strangers to carry him home by turns, but as he refused to hold on to such new acquaintances he was a dead weight and most exhausting. ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... sick man. But no dog was there, nor did he need comfort more. He had died with that cry on his lips, and as they gazed at his face, sunk low now in his pillow as if he had started up and fallen back, a dead weight, they felt the terror of the moment grow upon them till they, too, were speechless. For the aged features were drawn into lines of unspeakable ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... which pays, and an expenditure that is totally wasteful. Directors have made the discovery, that costly litigation, costly and fine stations, fine porticos and pillars, fine bridges, and finery in various other things, contribute really nothing to returns, but, on the contrary, hang a dead weight on the concern. No doubt, fine architecture is a good and proper thing in itself; but a railway company is not instituted for the purpose of embellishing towns with classic buildings. Its function is to carry ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... forget merely because Ralph desired it, and for some time she refused to listen to his expostulations, and walked about the room crying, but her anger could not long resist the dead weight of sleep that was oppressing her, and eventually she came and sat down in her own place by him. The next step to reconciliation was more easy. Kate was not vindictive, although quicktempered, and at last, amid some hysterical ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... thing you ought to learn is to be cheerful. You don't want to be a dead weight on anybody, do you? Well, you will be if you can't look ahead at all to anything bright. You and I are going to work and mend the family fortunes. Then we're going back to Fairacres and do all the good we can with ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... He jerked her back to him, hardly pausing in his stride. She struck at his face furiously, but he dragged her on toward the brink, mouthing at her with foul oaths. She fell to her knees, and hung, screaming, a dead weight. The baying of the hound sounded closer. Hodges threw a glance over his shoulder, and saw the dog charging from the grove. He would have fired, but the girl was in the way. With a final blasphemy, he dropped his rifle, and struck at her—full in the face. She sank down limply, unconscious. Her ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... a dead weight upon me; and as I first opened my eyes, I felt as if the best thing I could do would be to rouse up Esau, and go right away. But as I looked round, my eyes lit upon Mr Gunson lying insensible in his bed, with Mrs Dean seated patiently by his side, ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... very odd thing," said Tom. "I couldn't imagine what held us. After this I'll see that all is clear before I try to go up. Next time we may be held by a troop of baboons and it strains the machinery to have it pull against dead weight in that way." ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... written there—that story of mother love; where she staggered with fatigue; where she was forced to rest; where the baby walked a little way; and once or twice where the little one stumbled and fell as the sand proved too heavy for the little feet. And all the while the desert, dragging with dead weight at the wheels, seemed to fight against them. It was as though the dreadful land knew that only time was needed to complete its work. Then the hot sun dropped beyond the purple wall of mountain and the mystery of the ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... names, then—and not before—you can begin to study what has been attempted in the way of classifying and ticketing literature. Manuals and treatises are excellent things in their kind, but they are simply dead weight at the start. You can only acquire really useful general ideas by first acquiring particular ideas, and putting those particular ideas together. You cannot make bricks without straw. Do not worry about literature in the ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... to see his visa. He showed it them by sheer mechanical instinct, and slept again in that dead weight of slumber the moment he was alone. When he had taken his ticket, and they had asked him to where it should be, he had answered to their amaze, "to the farthest place it goes," and he was borne on now unwitting ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... should endeavour to lean as lightly, and give as little trouble, as possible; for, however flattering to the vanity of the nobler sex may be the idea of feminine dependence, we question whether the reality, in the shape of a dead weight upon their aching arms throughout a Polka or Valse of twenty minutes' duration, would be acceptable to even the most ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... Republican leaders were glad of an opportunity to make an end of the corrupt and tragic farce of Reconstruction; to unload their party of a dead weight which had been burdensome and was growing dangerous; mayhap to punish their Southern agents, who had demanded so much for doctoring the returns and making an exhibit in ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... average, we have a right to ask for an improvement in their practice, even if they have inherited a great many handicaps from their predecessors and it is not easy to throw off the past, which acts as a dead weight ever tending to check progress. The tendency of the times is for fuller, freer and more sincere service in every line, for evolving out of the useless into the greatest helpfulness. It is not asking too much when we demand of the doctors that they rid themselves of the injurious drug superstition ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... but the stolen motor car was a dead weight on Renwick's conscience, and the danger of detection was still most unpleasant. If an excuse were needed for his arrest, a pretext which would hide the real secret of the mission of his pursuers, the larceny of the machine would now furnish it. He ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... your body is buoyant, not a dead weight in the water, and that swimming should come as naturally to you as to the wild creatures, it may help you to gain the confidence so essential in learning to swim. If you are not afraid of the water ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... moment the good shopkeeper's little mouth became as round as his round little eyes and his round little face; then he laid his hands on the counter, and jumping neatly over flung his dead weight on to Friedrich, and ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... it has been imposed upon certain missionaries and others who regard the Divine command as practical and sensible men should do: "Go ye and teach all nations." All cannot go to the ends of the earth; but all might cease to hinder by the dead weight of their indifference, and their contempt of all men of colour. Dr. Livingstone rebuked the Boers for contemptuously calling all coloured men Kaffirs, to whatever race they belonged. Englishmen deserve still more such a rebuke for their ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... Lyell had to bear the brunt of battle for Uniformitarianism quite alone, and it is to be feared that he found himself sadly overmatched when opposed by the eloquence of Sedgwick, the sarcasm of Buckland, and the dead weight of incredulity on the part of Greenough, Conybeare, Murchison and other members of the band of pioneer workers. As time went on there is evidence that the opposition of De la Beche and Whewell somewhat relaxed; the brilliant "Paddy" Fitton (as ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... often found herself leaning on Nancy nowadays; not as a dead weight, but with just the hint of need, just the suggestion of confidence, that youth and strength and buoyancy respond to so gladly. It had been decided that the house should be vacated as soon as a ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the startled animal plunged in terror. It was a corpse they gripped, already stiff with cold, the eyes wide-open and staring. Carroll, bruised and limping, came to their help, groaning with pain, and the three men together managed to lift the dead weight to the horse's back, and to bind it safely with the turn of a rope. Then, breathless from exhaustion, crouching behind the animals, bunched helplessly together, the howl of the wind like the scream of lost souls, the three men looked ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... holding herself motionless and rigid with complete confidence in this master who had never failed her before. Fabian dug his heels into the ice, but could not hang on. The drowning horse was more than a dead weight. Presently it became a question of letting go or being dragged into the lake on top of the animals. With a sob the little Frenchman relinquished his hold. The water seemed slowly to rise and over-film the troubled look of ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... mean that you will marry him now, at once, and go out to India with him, as a dead weight round his neck?" ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... kind of goods than for another without a corresponding difference in the cost. When reasonably understood, this proposition does not apply to a higher charge for goods of greater bulk, as more per pound for feathers than for iron, the "dead weight" of car being much greater in one case than in the other. It does not apply where there is a difference in risk, as between bricks and powder, or coal and crockery; nor where there is a difference in trouble, as between live stock and wheat. Any difference ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... sometimes in the conditions under which the human race is actually living it may not so befall, but curiosity may prevail over necessity and knowledge over hunger, nevertheless the primordial fact is that curiosity sprang from the necessity of knowing in order to live, and this is the dead weight and gross matter carried in the matrix of science. Aspiring to be knowledge for the sake of knowledge, to know the truth for the sake of the truth itself, science is forced by the necessities of life to turn aside and put it itself ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno |
