"Frailty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... countless times that these [Greek: hetairai] were a mentally superior class of women, and on the strength of this information I assumed, in Romantic Love and Personal Beauty (79), that, notwithstanding their frailty, they may have been able, in some cases, to inspire a more refined, spiritual sort of love than the uneducated domestic women. A study of the original sources has now convinced me that this was a mistake. Aspasia no doubt was a remarkable woman, but she stands entirely by herself, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... first part of his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" Shelley dwells on the inconstancy and evanescence of the manifestation of beauty, which imparts to it an appearance of frailty and unreality: ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... there the wish that his wife should be as worldly-wise and as eager to please as the married lady whose charms had held his fancy through two mildly agitated years; without, of course, any hint of the frailty which had so nearly marred that unhappy being's life, and had disarranged his own plans for a ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... conditions of existence at Newport demand the exposure of every frailty and every folly; the skeleton must sit at the feast. There is no room for gossip where the facts are known. Nothing is whispered; the megaphone carries the tale. What a ghastly society, where no amount of finery hides the bald, the literal ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... which will not be in season until the third or fourth generation, if it lasts so long. His very creation supposes him nothing before, and as tailors rose by the fall of Adam, and came in, like thorns and thistles, with the curse, so did he by the frailty of his master. His very face is his gentleman-usher, that walks before him in state, and cries "Give way!" He is as stiff as if he had been dipped in petrifying water and turned into his own statue. He is always taking the name of his honour in vain, and will rather damn it like ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... have too contemptuously refused to attend to Grendel and the Firedrake,' and to leave it at that. I speak very cautiously because the manner of the late Professor Freeman, in especial, had a knack of provoking in gentle breasts a resentment which the mind in its frailty too easily converted to a prejudice against his matter: while to men trained to admire Thucydides and Tacitus and acquainted with Lucian's 'Way to Write History' ([Greek: Pos dei istorian suggraphein]) his loud insistence that the art was not an art but a science, and moreover ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... towards woman which reverences her delicacy, her frailty, which protects and cares for her, is, I think, the crown of manhood; and without it a man is only a rough animal. But our fair aristocrats and their knightly defenders need to be cautioned lest they lose their position, as many ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... strictness of speech not be termed beguilement, but rather retaliation; for, as it behoves woman to be most strictly virtuous, and to guard her chastity as her very life, nor on any account to allow herself to sully it, which notwithstanding, 'tis not possible by reason of our frailty that there should be as perfect an observance of this law as were meet, I affirm, that she that allows herself to infringe it for money merits the fire; whereas she that so offends under the prepotent ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... mother who had abased herself before them, had cast herself down and had writhed and screamed and implored her to consent; and the mother was driven to do this by the lash of his threats. He had stood there and demanded, and the woman on the floor had confessed her frailty, owned to her misdeeds, acknowledged her debt, and had frantically begged her daughter ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... senses enlightened him beyond the power of circumstances to deceive. "It's a lie," said he; "men are always lying and circumstances deceiving; there is no blush of shame upon these cheeks, no sin nor frailty in these pure eyes. You ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... tear, a momentous self-abasement, a sudden sinking of the soul, a thought that youth is flown for ever? None but the blessed few that, having dedicated their spring of life to Heaven, behold in the shedding of their vernal blossoms, a promise that the season of immortal fruit is near. It is a frailty, almost an instance of humanity, to aim at concealing that from others, of which ourselves are painfully conscious. The herculean Johnson keenly resented the least allusion to the shortness of his sight. So entirely is man a social animal, so dependent ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... Gardiner was not herself convinced. She regarded the colonel as too high-minded to be a fit judge of human frailty; and his over-caution in explanation had given her the feeling that he had a standard for a husband for their daughter which only another such rare man as himself could live up to. Further, she had always been extremely reserved in mother-and-daughter talk with Pauline, and thus could ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... crimson between her loosened rich braids of hair; her eyes shone deeply blue, and the fantastic costume, with its fluttering strips of leather and richly colored wampum, gave an extraordinary quality of youth and almost of frailty to ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... an infantine frailty's a scandal; All bye-gones are bye-gones—and somebody knows It was bliss such a baby to dance and to dandle, Your cheeks were ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... veil over this frailty of my unfortunate parent; but, being conscious that veracity is the very soul and essence of history, I feel myself imperatively called upon neither to disguise ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... Human frailty. The most accomplished human being is the finished liar. Never to forget a detail, to remember step by step the windings, over a ticklish road. And Cutty, for all his wide newspaper experience, was a poor ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... recommend his person and qualifications by the sure methods of contradiction, comparisons, revilings, and reproach; how to watch the paroxysms of her disposition, inflame her passions, and improve, for his advantage, those moments of frailty from which no woman is exempted. In short, this consummate politician taught his agent to poison the young lady's mind with insidious conversation, tending to inspire her with the love of guilty pleasure, to debauch her sentiments, and confound her ideas of dignity and virtue. After ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... too late, the work is done; Great Homer sang of glory and strong men And that fair Greek whose fault all these long years Wins no forgetfulness nor ever can; For yet cold eyes upon her frailty bend, For yet the world waits in the victor's tent Daily, and sees an old man honourable, His white head bowed, surprise to passionate tears Awestruck Achilles; sighing, 'I have endured, The like whereof ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... apoplexy of sense. Wisdom peeps through both thine eyes, like the unexpected apparition of a bed-ridden old woman at a garret window. Thou art the very owl of Minerva, and the little bill, that thou ever carriest with thee, is given thee for this purpose, to peck at man's frailty in the matter of repayment. Come, thou art in danger. I ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... philosophy taught in these plays were enlivened by tavern scenes, and by the gambols of a clown, fool, or buffoon, called Vice, armed, as Harlequin, with a wooden dagger. And often, such is human frailty, the beholders went, remembering nothing but the mad pranks of Vice. It was in their eyes the most important character in the play, and the part was accordingly entrusted to the best actor. Shakespeare had seen Vice still ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... ones are deserving of less punishment than he. And if by his arguments he gains the victory he is sent into exile, and appeases the State by means of prayers and sacrifices and good life ensuing. They do not torture those named by the accused person, but they warn them. Sins of frailty and ignorance are punished only with blaming, and with compulsory continuation as learners under the law and discipline of those sciences or arts against which they have sinned. And all these things ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... with a knife; and if he lays bare its throbs of guilt and weakness, and lets you into the secrets of its organization, he conceives his whole work is performed. This criticism applies even to his tragedy of "Women beware Women," a drama which shows a deep study of the sources of human frailty, considerable skill in exhibiting the passions in their consecutive, if not in their conflicting action, and a firm hold upon character; but it lacks pathos, tenderness, and humanity; its power is out of all proportion to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... tablets which you hold in your hand? Give me leave to look at them. They might suit my pedantic way of life. But," added he, as he examined their delicate workmanship, "came you honestly by this toy, my lord? What fair frailty have you cheated of this knack, that never, I will be sworn, was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... mineral spring, and a fountain, and an orchestra, and an Octagon Room for balls and refuge from wet evenings. The vocalists included Sophia Snow, afterwards as Mrs. Baddeley to become notorious for her beauty and frailty, and Thomas Lowe, the one-time favourite of Vauxhall, whose financial failure at Marylebone made him thankful to accept an engagement at this more lowly resort. But Finch's Grotto Gardens were not destined to ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... suppose no one not prominently engaged in journalism knows how widely spread is the human conviction that, failing all else, any one can "write for the papers," making a lucrative living on easy terms, amid agreeable circumstances. I have often wondered how Dickens, familiar as he was with this frailty, did not make use of it in the closing epoch of Micawber's life before he quitted England. Knowing what he did, as letters coming to light at this day testify, it would seem to be the most natural thing in the world ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... not 'feel washed out after each drawing,' he still urges them to 'put a new piece of goods in the window' every morning. In fact, he is quite severe on Mr. Ruskin for not recognising that 'a picture should denote the frailty of man,' and remarks with pleasing courtesy and felicitous grace that 'many phases of feeling . . . are as much a dead letter to this great art teacher, as Sanskrit to an Islington cabman.' Nor is Mr. Quilter one of those who fails to practice what he preaches. Far ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... beginning (p. 016) of his twenty-sixth year when he took up his abode at Mossgiel, where he remained for four years. Three things those years and that bare moorland farm witnessed,—the wreck of his hopes as a farmer, the revelation of his genius as a poet, and the frailty of his character as a man. The result of the immoral habits and "liberal opinions" which he had learnt at Irvine were soon apparent in that event of which he speaks in his Epistle to John Rankine with such unbecoming levity. ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... other respects very fair. It was Potatow who could descend to such meanness, from the high spirit of grandeur which he had formerly shewn. We expressed great indignation at his conduct, and rebuked him for his frailty."—G.F. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... warrant, to send Joan Bocher, a silly woman, to the stake. Yet Latimer never thought of his own conduct in his last moments; nor did Cranmer thrust his hand into the fire for a real crime, but for one which was venial, through the frailty of human nature. Our gracious Elizabeth could likewise burn people for religion. Two Dutchmen, Anabaptists, suffered in this place in 1675, and died, as Holinshed sagely remarks, with "roring and crieing." But let me say, (says Pennant,) that this was the only instance we have of her exerting ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... this, the guilty abode of guilty man?—with pity's tear still mournest thou, as yoked to the car of young desire, we bow the neck in degrading and slavish bondage? Or dost thou, the habitant of some bright star, where frailty such as ours is yet unknown, lend to lovers a rapture unalloyed by passion's grosser sense; as, symphonious with the tremulous zephyr, chastened vows of constancy are there exchanged? Ah! vainly does one solitary enthusiast, in his balmy youth, for a ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... for our exercise, With sharpe scourges of adversity Full often to be beat in sundry wise; Not for to know our will, for certes he, Ere we were born, knew all our frailty; And for our best is all his governance; Let us then ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... qualities made him significant. From ancient times, at least from the days of Greece and Rome, Democracy as a political ideal had been dreamed of, and had even been put into practice on a small scale here and there. But its shortcomings and the frailty of human nature made it the despair of practical men and the laughing stock of philosophers and ironists. Nevertheless, the conviction that no man has a right to enslave another would not die. And in modern ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... with a prescient insight into the mazes of human frailty that made it seem as if the doors of all hearts were open to him: the Pharisee, who paid tithes—mint, anise and cummin—and prayed daily on the street corners, and saw no need for repentance; the youth and the maiden, ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... Of philosophers who are orthodox in this sense, only the earliest or the most powerful, an Aristotle or a Spinoza, need to be remembered, in that they stamp their language and temper upon human reason itself. The rest of the orthodox are justly lost in the crowd and relegated to the chorus. The frailty of heretical philosophers is more conspicuous and interesting: it makes up the chronique scandaleuse of the mind, or the history of philosophy. Locke belongs to both camps: he was restive in his orthodoxy and timid in his heresies; ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... and carried him with her from the country; which was productive of much confusion. The regulations there in respect to incontinence have much severity, and fall particularly hard on the girl's father, who not only has his daughter spoiled but must also pay largely for her frailty. To the northward the offence is not punished with so much rigour, yet the instances are there said to be rarer, and marriage is more usually the consequence. In other respects the customs of Passummah and Rejang are the same ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... become strong by their conflict with difficulties. Hope is born in the long night of watching and tears. Faith visits us in defeat and disappointment, amid the consciousness of earthly frailty and ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... once mingled, Love first leaves the well-built nest; The weak one is singled To endure what it once possessed. O Love! who bewailest The frailty of all things here, Why choose you the frailest For your cradle, your home, and ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... dye of turpitude. It corrupted no man's principles. It attacked no man's life. It involved only a temporary and reparable injury. Of this, and of all other sins, you are earnestly to repent; and may God, who knoweth our frailty, and desireth not our death, accept your repentance, for the sake of His Son Jesus Christ ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... life, are now with Him become eternal and blessed and unto whom we,—belike not daring to address ourselves unto the proper presence of so august a judge,—proffer our petitions of the things which we deem needful unto ourselves, as unto advocates[29] informed by experience of our frailty. And this more we discern in Him, full as He is of compassionate liberality towards us, that, whereas it chanceth whiles (the keenness of mortal eyes availing not in any wise to penetrate the secrets of the Divine intent), that we peradventure, beguiled by report, make such an one ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... for our weakness and our frailty, we ought not to expect Him to indulge us in avoidable and needless errors. We made a mistake. Very well. We knew no better than to make it. But now that we do know better, we have no business repeating it. ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... I say, be as wonderful about their women as about all other matters. The sage of Bharat Khanda guards the frail sex strictly, knowing its frailty, and avoids teaching it to read and write, which it will assuredly use for a bad purpose. For women are ever subject to the god[FN178] with the sugar-cane bow and string of bees, and arrows tipped with heating blossoms, and to him they will ever surrender man, dhan, tan—mind, wealth, ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... "May-day" with Landor, for the world neither preaches nor practices that rarity, human charity. Its instinct is a species of divining-rod, the virtue of which seems to be limited to a fatal facility in discovering frailty. Great men and women live in glass houses, and what passer-by can resist the temptation to throw stones? Is it generous, or even just, in scoffers who are safely hidden behind bricks and mortar, to take ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... must sit alone, and think of herself as of a maid who had most unmaidenly proffered her affections and had the same rejected. And in the meanwhile I would be alone in some other place, and reading myself (whenever I was tempted to be angry) lessons upon human frailty and female delicacy. And altogether I suppose there were never two poor fools made themselves more unhappy in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... them for hearing no other. And if Mr Delvile was shunned through hatred, his lady no less was avoided through fear; high- spirited and fastidious, she was easily wearied and disgusted, she bore neither with frailty nor folly—those two principal ingredients in human nature! She required, to obtain her favour, the union of virtue and abilities with elegance, which meeting but rarely, she was rarely disposed to be pleased; and disdaining to conceal either ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... to deplore among certain classes of our people, which are often superinduced by their migratory habits and irregular mode of life. But they are commonly sins of frailty, and these are not the persons that are accustomed to approach the confessional. If they did their lives would be very different from what ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... 1: In giving evidence a man ought not to affirm as certain, as though he knew it, that about which he is not certain; and he should confess his doubt in doubtful terms, and that which he is certain about, in terms of certainty. Owing however to the frailty of the human memory, a man sometimes thinks he is certain about something that is not true; and then if after thinking over the matter with due care he deems himself certain about that false thing, he ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... thought I had detected him in such a state of frailty, as would but ill become his years and character. There is a decent sort of woman, not disagreeable in her person, that comes to the Well, with a poor emaciated child, far gone in a consumption. ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... a quivering, amber-tinted flight, resolved at rest into a delicate medley of green and white and saffron. It was the orange-tip, and the dormouse rejoiced, for the orange-tip meant spring. Such dainty frailty could ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... that I am silent, yet, Lady, though your rare beauties prompt my rhyme, When first I saw thee I recall the time Such as again no other can be met. But, with such burthen on my shoulders set. My mind, its frailty feeling, cannot climb, And shrinks alike from polish'd and sublime, While my vain utterance frozen terrors let. Often already have I sought to sing, But midway in my breast the voice was stay'd, For ah! so high what praise may ever ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... king, the Dukes of Nassau, Baden, and a host of continental princes, who entered familiarly into the amusements of ordinary mortals, dining incog. at the most renowned restaurants, and flirting with painted female frailty. ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... dames, Tied up in godly laces, Before ye gie poor Frailty names, Suppose a change o' cases; A dear-loved lad, convenience snug, A treacherous inclination,— But, let me whisper i' your lug, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... only you were graduating with me; that's my only sorrow! There! I hear the rumble of the wheels! People will be seeing our grand surprise now! Hug me once for luck, dear Emmie; a careful hug, remembering our butter-muslin frailty!" ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... O Lord, we commend the soul of this Thy servant, that, being dead to the world, he may, live to Thee: and the sins he hath committed through the frailty of his mortal nature, do Thou in Thy most merciful goodness, forgive ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... understands both—the void in his life, the powerlessness of his will. He understands that, like all other energy, Spiritual power is contained in Environment. He finds here at last the true root of all human frailty, emptiness, nothingness, sin. This is why "without Me ye can do nothing." Powerlessness is the normal state, not only of this, but of every organism—of every organism apart from its Environment. ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... vessel sailing for England. He is said to have been brought to the Tower muffled, according to an odious practice of Spanish despotism introduced into the country during the reign of Mary. Under the terror of such a surprise the awful alternative "Comply or burn" was laid before him. Human frailty under these trying circumstances prevailed; and in an evil hour this champion of light and learning was tempted to subscribe his false assent to the doctrine of the real presence and the whole list of Romish articles. This was ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... some little while. My amazement and slow understanding were spurred on by a sight of my hands lying on the rude coverlet which had been flung over me. Emaciated they had been for some months now. But at present they were as white as snow and almost as translucent in their extraordinary frailty. I became increasingly conscious, too, of the great weakness of my body and the great lassitude that ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... Frogs,[46] And Mire and Ordure are the Heav'n of Hogs. As well might Nothing bind Immensity, Or passive Matter Immaterials see, As these shou'd write by reason, rhime, and rule, Or we turn Wit, whom nature doom'd a Fool. If Dryden err'd, 'twas human frailty once, But blund'ring is the Essence ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... trust thee;—shall I trust thee? For conquerors have charms, and women frailty:— Farewell thou mayst behold me king again; My soul's not yet deposed:—why then farewell!— I'll say't as comfortably as I can: But O cursed Guise, for pressing on my time, And cutting off ten thousand ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... man, and bade him sin no more lest a worse thing should befall the sinner. We had been limited and shut up in a narrow space by the commandment of innocence. Nor should the infirmity and weakness of human frailty have anything it might do, unless the divine mercy, coming again in aid, should open some way of securing salvation by pointing out works of justice and mercy, so that by almsgiving we may wash away whatever ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... insight into his character which I obtained, on my side, widened the distance between us to its last limits. He was a confirmed opium-eater in secret—a prodigal in laudanum, though a miser in all besides. He never confessed his frailty, and I never told him I had found it out. He had his pleasure apart from me, and I had my pleasure apart from him. Week after week, month after month, there we sat, without a friendly word ever passing between ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... had to be examined physically, mentally and morally in the same manner as those applying for a license to practice a profession or desiring to marry. All were placed on the same footing. The law for divorce was enforced by the Department of Health, as doctors were, from their knowledge of human frailty, the best judges to decide whether a man and woman should live together in the married state or be separated, and while the law provided for a compulsory decree of divorce for adultery, which was a felony, it also allowed ...
— Eurasia • Christopher Evans
... flared all the frustration of months, of years, all the disappointments of all his chase, all the defeat of all his career. Even as she sat there in her pink and white frailty she knew and nursed the secret for which he had girdled the world. He felt that he must tear it from her, that he must crush it out of her body as the pit is squeezed from a cherry. And the corroding part of it was that he had been outwitted by a woman, that he was being ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... shame the newly-organized church seemed broken up. Jacob I. Scott was a man of spotless life and dauntless purpose, and feeling that it would be an unspeakable humiliation to allow everything to go to wreck because of the frailty of one unfortunate man, and learning that I had taken the field in the counties further south, he besought me to come over and help them. In no counties in this State have there been more churches than in Doniphan county, but in no county in the State have the churches been ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... punishment should always be deliberate. The hasty slap is nothing else than the motor discharge provoked by the irritability of the educator, and the child, who is a good observer on such points, discerns the truth and measures the frailty of ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... wish to inculcate action, the energy that is born of enthusiasm, the chivalry that is inspired by high ideals and unselfish motives. Raised thus from the region of mere chronicles of human passions, of woman's frailty and man's baseness, and exercising themselves with the political, social, and religious problems of the day, these works of imagination have become, alongside the Press, a powerful factor in the development of ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... (not friends or relatives), whom we have no obligation to, nor hope or expect anything-from.' The counterfeit of true charity is pity or compassion, which is a fellow-feeling for the sufferings of others. Pity is as much a frailty of our nature as anger, pride, or fear. The weakest minds (e.g., women and children) have generally the greatest share of it. It is excited through the eye or the ear; when the suffering does not strike our senses, the feeling is weak, and hardly ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... manner, and to cultivate a sweet plaintiveness, as of hidden sorrow bravely borne." It also declares that if any young lady has a robust frame, she must be careful to dissemble it, for it is in her frailty that woman can make her greatest appeal to man. No man wishes to marry an Amazon. It also earnestly commends a piece of sewing to be ever in the hand of the young lady who would attract the opposite sex! The use of large words or any show ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... injustice and iniquity. The scheme of engaging the abbots to surrender their monasteries had been conducted, as may easily be imagined, with many invidious circumstances: arts of all kinds had been employed; every motive that could work on the frailty of human nature had been set before them; and it was with great difficulty that these dignified conventuals were brought to make a concession, which most of them regarded as destructive of their interests, as well as sacrilegious and criminal in itself.[**] Three abbots had shown more constancy ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... Book to which he gave little heed, as long as he was contented with himself, and with doing just what pleased him, right or wrong. He soon finds out that he has no power of himself to help himself, that he is tied and bound with the burden of his sins, and that he cannot, by reason of his frailty, stand upright—that he actually is sore let and hindered by his own sins, from running the race set before him, and doing his duty where God has put him. All these sayings come home to him as actual facts, most painful facts, ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... through the long journey to sunset's old age. God never inspired a holier picture than the wrinkled face of a good old mother. The old eyes, with the peering promise of a near peace in them; the toothless mouth, whose words of cheer are records of the past; the wrinkled face, the sad token of human frailty; the gentle word of welcome which age trustingly bestows, all speak to younger hearts with hungry words, and we hope that their lot is one of peace and contentment ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... darling?" He gathered her close with a compassionate tenderness for the frailty of the little ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... sigh he surrendered to the flesh's frailty. An early cabby, cruising up from Cannon Street station on the off-chance of finding some one astir in the city, aside from the doves and sparrows, suffered the surprise of his life when Kirkwood hailed him. His face was blank with amazement when he reined in, ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... wisdom and the other sovereign goodness. St. John says, "God is Light," "God is Love." The Brahmin says, "God is the inexhaustible fount of poetry." Let us say, "God is perfection." And man? Man, for all his inexpressible insignificance and frailty, may still apprehend the idea of perfection, may help forward the supreme will, and die ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... escape wheel requires more drop than a club tooth must be admitted without argument, as this form of tooth requires from one-half to three-fourths of a degree more drop than a club tooth; (b) as regards the frailty of the teeth we hold this as of small import, as any workman who is competent to repair watches would never injure the delicate teeth of an escape wheel; (c) ratchet-tooth lever escapements will occasionally need to have the pallets oiled. The writer is inclined to think that this defect ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... creeds or dogmas. Impressible, quick in sympathy, his grim lip lighted often with a smile, and his war-worn cheek was no stranger to a tear. He forgave his enemies and forgot his friends. Many loved him; none but fools trusted him. Mingled of mortal good and ill, frailty and force, of all the kings who for two centuries and more sat on the throne of France Henry the Fourth alone ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... possessions, for the present baronet was his grandfather, and had long passed the ordinary limits of old age. The old man had outlived his own immediate natural heir, Ferdinand's father, and now, in spite of an extraordinary toughness of constitution, was showing signs of frailty which increased almost day by day. And apart from his own personal advantages, and the future baronetcy and the estates thereto appertaining, the young man felt that, as the chosen candidate of the constitutional party ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... lingered in gardens and orchards, infinitely lovable and capable of the noblest tenderness. On the contrary, Seward was precise, self-restrained, possessing the gravity and stillness of a youth who husbanded his resources as if conscious of physical frailty, yet wholesome and generous, and once, at least, splendidly reckless in his race for independence of a father who denied him the means of dressing in the fashion of other college students. By the time he ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... there is nothing in which the self-righteousness created by anti-slavery views and feelings is more conspicuous than in the way in which the South is judged and condemned by us with regard to this one sin. Had the pulpits of the South afforded such dreadful instances of frailty, for the last ten or fifteen years, as we have had at the North, what confirmation would we have found for our invectives against the corrupting and ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... judge too much by the Court, sir. There, indeed, you may say of frailty that its ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... dears looked so humble, and so wistful, and so tired. There was one lying quite flat, who had not even raised her head to see who had come in. That slumbering, pale, high cheek-boned face had a frailty as if a touch, a breath, would shatter it; a wisp of the blackest hair, finer than silk, lay across the forehead; the closed eyes were deep sunk; one hand, scarred almost to the bone with work, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... solemn green The neighbour shades wear, and what forms are seen In their large bowers, with that sad path and seat Which none but light-heel'd nymphs and fairies beat;[55] Their solitary life, and how exempt From common frailty, the severe contempt They have of man, their privilege to live A tree, or fountain, and in that reprieve What ages they consume, with the sad vale Of Diophania, and the mournful tale, Of th' bleeding vocal myrtle; these and more Thy ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... moved to some new prophecy of the truth and right; until to-day, as Professor Coe well says, "the aim of the modern church is to give education in the art of brotherhood," and to evoke "faith in a fatherly God and in a human destiny that outreaches all the accidents of our frailty." In the industrial order, still in the trial stage of conflict between the fixed status of the "hand" and the "master" and the contract of equal partners in a cooeperative enterprise, the movement is steadily toward the social requirement of equality, ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... watched her, the life flickering like a spent torch in the wind. The doctor had taken extreme measures to combat the disease, and his greatest fear was that his efforts to cure might have a contrary effect by reason of the frailty of the child. Once he despaired, but, looking up, caught a momentary glint of steel in Nancy's eyes. His very fear that she might detect his weakness compelled him to continue. For ten hours she sat with the child on a pillow in her lap, apparently impassive, yet conscious ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... tainted with all the failings of Mortality. It is not the Woman's beauty that fills me with such enthusiasm; It is the Painter's skill that I admire, it is the Divinity that I adore! Are not the passions dead in my bosom? Have I not freed myself from the frailty of Mankind? Fear not, Ambrosio! Take confidence in the strength of your virtue. Enter boldly into a world to whose failings you are superior; Reflect that you are now exempted from Humanity's defects, and defy all the arts of the Spirits ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... in the most passionate devotions, and voluntarily submitted to a spiritual tyranny that could hardly be surpassed in a Catholic monastery. They were to meet every week, to make an open and particular confession of every frailty, to submit to be crossexamined on all their thoughts, words, and deeds. The following among others were the questions asked at every meeting: "What known sin have you committed since our last meeting? What temptations have you met with? How were you delivered? What ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... of the latter times; and so many kings. After all these, where Eudoxus, Hipparchus, Archimedes; where so many other sharp, generous, industrious, subtile, peremptory dispositions; and among others, even they, that have been the greatest scoffers and deriders of the frailty and brevity of this our human life; as Menippus, and others, as many as there have been such as he. Of all these consider, that they long since are all dead, and gone. And what do they suffer by it! Nay they that have not so much as a ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... "Sweet Frailty," a poem by Mary Henrietta Lehr, contains all those elements of charm, delicacy, and ingenuity which mark its author as one of amateurdom's most cultivated ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... scarce trace and scarce comprehend his doings; and here also, in his ordered polities and rigorous justice, we see confessed the law of duty and the fact of individual sin. Does it stop, then, with the ant? Rather this desire of welldoing and this doom of frailty run through all the grades of life: rather is this earth, from the frosty top of Everest to the next margin of the internal fire, one stage of ineffectual virtues and one temple of pious tears and perseverance. The whole ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... clear that birds, sharing the frailty of some who are better than many sparrows, are often wanting in patience. As spring draws near they cannot wait for its coming. What it has been the fashion to call their unerring instinct is after all ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... I tremble when I think on Cato! In every view, in every thought, I tremble! Cato is stern and awful as a god; He knows not how to wink at human frailty, Or pardon ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... impossible for a married woman to remain virtuous in France, our enumeration of the celibates and the predestined, our remarks upon the education of girls, and our rapid survey of the difficulties which attend the choice of a wife will explain up to a certain point this national frailty. Thus, after indicating frankly the aching malady under which the social slate is laboring, we have sought for the causes in the imperfection of the laws, in the irrational condition of our manners, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... easier and likelier. The pernicious influence of bodily frailty and abnormality upon mind and morals has always been recognized (cf. the mens sana in corpore sano of the ancients), but was never so clearly seen as today. The lack of proper nutrition or circulation, the state of depressed vitality resulting from want of fresh air, exercise, or sleep, are important ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... you doing? Writing—reading—or musing of either? Are you a reviewer-man—in opposition to the writer? Once, reviewing was my besetting sin, but now it is only my frailty. Now that I lie here at the mercy of every reviewer, I save myself by an instinct of self-preservation from that 'gnawing tooth' (as Homer and Aeschylus did rightly call it), and spring forward into definite work and thought. Else, I should perish. Do you understand ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... reneweth the world, but shall passe through it to Salvation; but so, as to see, and relinquish their former Errours. The Builders, are the Pastors; the Foundation, that Jesus Is The Christ; the Stubble and Hay, False Consequences Drawn From It Through Ignorance, Or Frailty; the Gold, Silver, and pretious Stones, are their True Doctrines; and their Refining or Purging, the Relinquishing Of Their Errors. In all which there is no colour at all for the burning of Incorporeall, that is ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... thought had flashed across his mind: "Had Jeanne been like this, I should not have left her!" The mystics were right; penance and fasting were of no avail. But it had all disappeared now. Only the humiliating sense of a frailty essentially human remained, which, though it may have come forth triumphant from hard trials, may also reappear unexpectedly, and be overthrown by a breath. The little town was deserted. The storm over, the people from Trevi, Filettino, and Vallepietra had started homeward, discussing the events ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... me hasten over this portion of my narrative. It is sad to dwell upon the history of human frailty, or to relate the oft-told tale of passion and villainy triumphant over virtue. A few days before Christmas, when the marriage ceremony was to be performed, they unfortunately spent one evening together ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... therefore a shield of women, who are our temple of civilization, to be kept sacred; and he that loves a woman will assuredly esteem and pity her sex, and not drag her down for another example of their frailty. Fight ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... speculation, he cries out for that faith that needed no other confirmation than the tones of a mother's voice, and found God everywhere in the soft pressure of her love; and when his steps begin to hesitate, and he finds himself among the long shadows, and the frailty and fear of the body overcome the prophecies of the soul, and no religious assurance lights and lifts up his mind, how he wishes for some fountain of restoration that shall bring back his bloom and his strength, ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... place the next day at the grave dug in the public cemetery—a green area fenced in by the palisading tules. The words of Gideon were brief but humble; the strongest partisan of the dead man could find no fault in a confession of human frailty in which the speaker humbly confessed his share; and when the hymn was started by Hamlin and taken up by Gideon, the vast multitude, drawn by interest and curiosity, joined as in ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... 'Tis the finest sense Of justice which the human mind can frame, Intent each lurking frailty to disclaim, And guard the way of life from all ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... princes of the East. The wives of this subordinate class, though they are in reality no better than concubines, and are subject to the power and caprices of their lords, are yet allowed, in the eye of the severest moralists, to have some excuse for their frailty and their weakness; and they accordingly always do find a degree of favor in this world, and become the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... so strongly that he needs someone who can keep a hold on him when temptations assail him. That is the most winning thing about Jacob Engstrand; he comes to one like a helpless child and accuses himself and confesses his frailty. The last time he came and had a talk with me... Suppose now, Mrs. Alving, that it were really a necessity of his existence to have Regina at home ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... arrival on the northern shore, the story goes, he was politely escorted by an official to a table laid for one, and was courteously requested to elect whether he would have the engine roast or boiled. Alas! for the frailty of human nature, more especially where a sense of humour might stand us in good stead. The sceptic, disillusioned, is stated to have ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... "granting this in a measure, I should still like to know of some of these popular good-doers. We must make considerable allowance for human frailty. Perhaps I shall be able to pick out a real jewel, where you have believed them to be ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... human frailty we think of heaven as rest, his spirit corrects us. If in our partial understanding he seems to deserve release from labor, yet for the very reason that he "wrought with tireless hand through crowded days,"[22] we know in our moments of vision that for so knightly a ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... weakness has come short, Or frailty stept aside, Do thou, All-Good! for such Thou art, ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... that I have no Guilt hangs upon me, no unrepented Folly that retards me; but I pass away my last Hours in Reflection upon the Happiness we have lived in together, and in Sorrow that it is so soon to have an End. This is a Frailty which I hope is so far from criminal, that methinks there is a kind of Piety in being so unwilling to be separated from a State which is the Institution of Heaven, and in which we have lived according to its Laws. As we know no more of the next Life, but that it will be ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... of the general frailty of her sex, has a peculiar softness, beauty, and propriety. She admits the imputation with all the sympathy of woman for woman; yet with all the dignity of one who felt her own superiority ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... himself to Naumburg. Here the joy and confidence which his presence inspired, "as if he had been a god," far from elating him, awakened only in his mind a feeling of humility and a sorrowful presentiment that some disaster to himself would soon convince the Naumburgers of the frailty of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... The irrepressible look of humorous tolerance of all human frailty had suffused Poindexter's black eyes with mischievous moisture. "If you think it quite safe to confide to your wife this prospect of her improvement by widowhood, ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... upon flimsy paper and with worn type affirms that they contain over forty million souls, the first impression and not the second would be conveyed to the Monomotapan, mind. As a fact, however, they are not misinformed, for this singular frailty of theirs (as I conceive it to be) is moderated by one very wise countervailing mental habit of theirs, which is to believe whatever they hear asserted more than twenty-six times, so that even if the assertion be conveyed to them in bad print and upon poor paper, ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... said Mr. Erwyn; "and, indeed, I would, for her sake, that the errors of my past life were not so numerous, nor the frailty of my aspiring resolutions rendered apparent—ah, so many times!—to a gaping and censorious world. For, as you are aware, I cannot offer her an untried heart; 'tis somewhat worn by many barterings. But I know that this heart beats ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... confidence, is the first source of error. In favour of the presumptuous man, who wantonly incurs danger and braves temptation, heaven will not interest itself. There can be no mistake more destitute of foundation, than that which supposes man exempt from frailty. ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... for me to stop laughing, so likewise was it impossible for me to stop living. Some sort of action of the lungs was kept up, and complete asphyxia prevented; and, having smiled myself nearly to death, I smiled myself back to life again. Ever since, my convives, apprised of this mortal frailty of mine, time their remarks more prudently, and allow me to take alternately a ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... England, where he might write with greater freedom than in Italy. There he wrote this work and a history of the Council of Trent. His chief offence was his advocacy of the unchristian principles of toleration; he wished to reunite and reconcile the Christian communions. But alas for human frailty! he retracted his errors, many of them most sensible opinions, in London, and again at Rome, whither he returned. Pope Urban VIII., however, imprisoned him in the Castle of St. Angelo, where he is said to have ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... the true worship of God may not only not be abolished, but entirely restored to the primitive and genuine rule of simplicity; and that all those enormities may be corrected into which the lives and profession of the monks for a long time had deplorably lapsed, have, as far as human frailty will permit, endeavoured to the utmost that for the future the pure word of God may be taught in that place, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... effeminate, with a delicate childish voice, and a hunted, tormented expression and shrinking manner that show the painful sensitiveness that very swift and acute apprehensiveness produces in youth, before the character has grown to its full strength. Yet everything that his timidity and frailty suggests is contradicted by his face. He is miserably irresolute, does not know where to stand or what to do with his hands and feet, is afraid of Burgess, and would run away into solitude if he dared; but the very intensity ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... have reached his ear. As incidents of this kind will be not infrequent during the twenty years that follow in Crabbe's clerical career, it may be well to intimate at once that no peculiar blame attaches to him in the matter. He but "partook of the frailty of his times." During these latter years of the eighteenth century, as for long before and after, pluralism in the Church was rather the rule than the exception, and in consequence non-residence was recognised as inevitable, and hardly matter for comment. The two Dorsetshire livings ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... his own ambition and his own impulse that even at this early day gave direction to his course, and obtained opportunities which would scarcely have been offered spontaneously to one of his physical frailty. In this Arctic expedition he underwent the experiences common to all who tempt those icebound seas. During it occurred an incident illustrative of Nelson's recklessness of personal danger,—a very different thing from official ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... devout resembles a commoner who styles himself a marquis; he arrogates to himself a quality he does not possess. He thinks himself more worthy than his neighbour. One can forgive such foolishness in women; their frailty and their frivolity render them excusable; the poor creatures pass from a lover to a director in good faith: but one cannot pardon the rogues who direct them, who abuse their ignorance, who establish the throne of their pride ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... men who go through life building very small castles, and are no more discouraged by the frailty of the architecture than is a child with his toy-house. This was Gorman's case; and now that he had found a solution of his difficulties in the Walmoden Cuirassiers, he really dressed for dinner in very tolerable spirits. ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... resolution of his, to be honest without a thought of heaven or hell; and, indeed I found, upon a natural inclination, and inbred loyalty unto virtue, that I could serve her without a livery, yet not in that resolved and venerable way, but that the frailty of my nature, upon an easy temptation, might be induced to forget her. The life, therefore, and spirit of all our actions is the resurrection, and a stable apprehension that our ashes shall enjoy the fruit of our pious ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... bodily—"Give us this day our daily bread." And remembering that we are unprofitable and faithless and disloyal servants we ask forgiveness for our sins, well knowing that we can only be forgiven as we ourselves are ready to forgive. And so looking to the future and mindful of our frailty we pray that GOD will not lead us into "temptation" or trial, without at the same time providing a way of deliverance from the assaults of evil. The prayer customarily ends with an ascription of praise ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... in the world bore a double aspect Hearsay liable to be influenced by ignorance or malice Hopes they (enemies) should hereafter become our friends I should praise you more had you praised me less It is the usual frailty of our sex to be fond of flattery Mistrust is the sure forerunner of hatred Necessity is said to be the mother of invention Never approached any other man near enough to know a difference Not to repose too ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Court Memoirs of France • David Widger
... kindred as swarming about the palaces, and skipping up and down the back-stairs like so many fairies. They had been raised in early youth from a humble condition to this dazzling elevation, and it was only too much in accordance with the frailty of human nature that they should lose head—feel as if they were under no responsibility to their fellow-men—and, as Shakspeare says, 'play such fantastic tricks before high Heaven, as make the angels weep.' Such rapid and ill-founded ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... Mullins had not seen their faces and could rightfully insist it was his duty and prerogative to do so. The question was, how would the "commanding officer's lady" like and take it? Mullins therefore shook his head. "I hadn't the nerve," as he expressed it, long afterwards. But no such frailty oppressed the occupant of the adjoining house. Just as the two had reached the rear of Wren's quarters, and were barely fifty steps from safety, the captain himself, issuing again from the doorway, suddenly appeared upon ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... my case, would have settled the matter with the kirk-treasurer for a small sum of money; but the poor stibbler, the penniless dominie, having married his cousin of Kittlebasket, must next have proclaimed her frailty to the whole parish, by mounting the throne of Presbyterian penance, and proving, as Othello says, "his love a whore," in ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... frailty and thy need He friends and helpers doth prepare, Which thee shall cherish, clothe, and feed, For of thy weal they tender are. Sweet baby, then forbear to weep; Be still, my babe; sweet ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... counsel's fatal frenzy, Wretched primal source of evils, Gives to mortal hearts strange boldness,) And at last his heart be hardened His own child to slay as victim, Help in war that they were waging To avenge a woman's frailty, Victim for ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... more: your kindness wounds me to the death: Honour, be gone! what art thou but a breath? I'll live, proud of my infamy and shame, Graced with no triumph but a lover's name; Men can but say, love did his reason blind, And love's the noblest frailty of the mind.— Draw off my ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... short by difficulties? When he acts, does he never succumb to the temptations of pleasure? When he lives, is he free from pain? Do the diseases not claim him as their prey? When he dies, can he escape the common grave? Pride is not the heritage of man. Humility should dwell with frailty, and atone ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... cheerful, Mrs. Woffington had now but one care—to efface the memory of her former self, and to give as many years to purity and piety as had gone to folly and frailty. This was not to be! The Almighty did not permit, or perhaps I should say, did not ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... worst That may be told, and utter all it can; It cannot find a blemish to be enforced Against him, other than he was a man, And built of flesh and blood, and did live here, Within the region of infirmity; Where all perfections never did appear To meet in any one so really, But that his frailty ever did bewray Unto the world that ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... them. The poor are designed to excite our liberality; the miserable, our pity; the sick, our assistance; the ignorant, our instruction; those that are fallen, our helping hand. In those who are vain, we see the vanity of the world; in those who are wicked, our own frailty. When we see good men rewarded, it confirms our hope; and when evil men are punished, it excites our ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... now pretty well understood. But since we are explaining this epistle, you will not mind if we repeat what we have so often explained elsewhere. The article of justification must be sounded in our ears incessantly because the frailty of our flesh will not permit us to take hold of it perfectly and to believe it with ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... again, is a poignant cry for help and deliverance. It is the expostulation of the soul with Fate, the cry to a Power who should be a friend, but hides his face. There, is a pathetic sense of man's frailty and mortality. "Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear unto my cry; hold not thy peace at my tears, for I am a stranger with thee and a sojourner, as all my fathers were. O spare me, that I may recover strength, before I go hence, and ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... sometimes a crashing fall from the top. These accidents were understood. The result was the creation of a living atmosphere, not perhaps highly civilized, but highly sympathetic, charged with the comprehension of human frailty, into which one could carry one's dishonor, not wholly with equanimity, but at least with the knowledge that such burdens were not objects for astonishment. As she descended the hill, therefore, she felt, as she had never felt before, the comforting ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... prejudiced that he still counts the beam on which he stands secure, although a neighbour has faithfully given warning that it is about to fall; it may be that because he stands on it he cannot see its frailty. Let some friend who knows his danger, but wishes him well, approach the spot and hold a mirror in such a position that the infatuated man shall see reflected in it the under and ailing side of the beam that lies between him and the abyss. The work ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... Lady Mary, and yet you must needs confess that at least I have good store of patience, since I have not set my dogs upon your friends who have come between me and my ease. But even to the most virtuous there comes at last a time when poor human frailty may prevail, and so I pray you to remove both yourself, your priest and your valiant knight errant, lest perhaps there be more haste and less dignity when at last you do take your leave. Sit down, my fair love, and let us turn ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... magic tends to be displaced by religion, and the sorcerer by the priest. At this stage of thought the ultimate causes of things are conceived to be personal beings, many in number and often discordant in character, who partake of the nature and even of the frailty of man, though their might is greater than his, and their life far exceeds the span of his ephemeral existence. Their sharply-marked individualities, their clear-cut outlines have not yet begun, under the powerful ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... has lost its charms, and when, mind and person, she is all my own? Libertines are nicer, if at all nice, than other men. They seldom meet with the stand of virtue in the women whom they attempt. And, by the frailty of those they have triumphed over, they judge of all the rest. 'Importunity and opportunity no woman is proof against, especially from the persevering lover, who knows how to suit temptations to inclinations:' This, thou knowest, is a ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson |
