"Weakling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we know, there never was but one human being to whom they proved overwhelming, and he is a character in a popular work of fiction. "Miracles do not happen" broke the bruised reed of the Rev. Robert Elsmere's faith. That long-legged weakling, with his auburn hair and "boyish innocence of mood," and sweet ignorance of the wicked world, went down, it will be remembered, like a ninepin before the assaults of a sceptical squire who had ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... contrasting this supercilious, vacillating weakling with the stern, strong man who lode yonder. A sigh fluttered across her lips. Had things but been different. Had Ombreval been the Revolutionist and La Boulaye the Vicomte, how much better pleased might she ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... means to her end which was becoming progressively more and more inadmissible. Tirpitz describes the illegitimate means. Bethmann Hollweg describes the legitimate end. Tirpitz thinks Bethmann Hollweg was a weakling because he would not back up the means. Bethmann Hollweg, firm in his faith that the end was legitimate and thinking of this alone, dwells on it with little reference to what his colleague was about. ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... But it was not Marcel. A heavy gun was thrusting forward, and the muzzle of it was covering Steve's body. Helpless, impotent, the man who had taken and survived every chance the Northern world could offer him, stood like any weakling awaiting the shot that must rob him of life in the ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... long ago. Well, however that may be, he now let himself be persuaded easily enough. He was hearing on all sides that he had been here too long; and candidly, I think he was beginning to feel Louise a drag on him. I know of late they were not getting on well together. But to be such a coward and a weakling! To slink off in this fashion! Of course, when it came to the last, he was simply afraid of her, and of the scene she would make him. Bravery has as little room in his soul as honesty or manliness. He would always prefer a back-door ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... friend; for his sake spare me: Thyself art mighty; for thine own sake leave me: Myself a weakling; do not then ensnare me: Thou look'st not like deceit; do not deceive me. My sighs, like whirlwinds, labour hence to heave thee: If ever man were moved with woman's moans, Be moved with my ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... kinds of stories can, in the telling, be equally life-like and equally alluring to the reader. But what of the writer? Among his literary family is there not one nearer his heart than all the rest—his dream-child? It may be the stoutest of the breed or it may be the weakling; it may be the first-born, it often is the Benjamin. Fathers in the flesh know this secret tenderness. Many a child and many a book is brooded over with a special love even before its birth.—Loved thus, for no grace ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... seemed to him that he has heard the voice of mankind's arch-enemy speaking with Saxham's mouth, he discerns at this moment, reflected in Saxham's, the face of the primal murderer. And being, as well as a sincere and simple-hearted clergyman, something of a weakling, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... that I anticipated the approach of these giants, and they never disappointed my anticipations. Giant Discourager would call me all kinds of names, such as a sinner, a perfect failure, a no-good, a weakling, a coward. And he would tell me, 'You have no faith,' 'You never will get a home in Canaan,' 'You will be cast out at last,' and many such like things would he say ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... The life of Consul General Lee was threatened. The Spanish Minister at Washington, Senor de Lome, was exposed for having written to a friend a most insulting letter, describing President McKinley as a low politician and a weakling. For this he was recalled by Spain at the request of the ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... ran down the long walk to roadside. Jabez Potter was no weakling despite his age, while Ben was a giant of a fellow, able to handle two ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... ariseth weakling chief who bends the knee, As a withered fruitless sapling springeth from a ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... becomes over-meek, because he has to summon all his powers to fight his subconscious insurrection. Whether he be meek by nature or by training, he is likely to be a failure. Everybody knows that the child who is too good never amounts to anything. He who has never disobeyed is a weakling. Naturally resenting all authority, the normal individual, if he be well trained, soon learns that some authority is necessary. He rebels, but he learns to acquiesce, to a certain degree. If he acquiesces too easily, represses too severely his rebellious ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... to The Woodman, where Mr. Groves was surprised, and, it need scarcely be said, overjoyed to see him. To him, the young man was still "Mr. Stafford," and he eyed him with an amazed and respectful admiration; for though Stafford had never been a weakling, he had grown so hard and muscular and altogether "fit" that Mr. Groves could not refrain from expressing ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... be derived from the peaceful pursuit of science, knowledge, and power, instead of continuing this utter economic waste of continual war. You all close your senses to reason. You of Osnome accuse me of being an ingrate and a traitor; you of Urvania consider me a soft-headed, sentimental weakling, who may safely be disregarded—all because I think the welfare of the numberless peoples of the Universe more important than your narrow-minded, stubborn, selfish vanity. Think what you please. If brute force is your only logic, know ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... been goaded to the brink of surrender; till her brother grew impatient and spurned her as a weakling. Yet her ordeal had been sharper than his own. For him, mere moral suasion and threats of ostracism. For her, the immemorial methods of the Inside; forbidden by Sir Lakshman, but secretly applied, when flagrant ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... lust, nature or trick," and in the high nobility of such repentance as flings the worst of blame upon the other one, will grant himself lost, it is true, but "proud to feel such torments," to "pay the price of his deed" (ready with phrases now, he also!), as, poor weakling, he stabs himself, leaving his final word to her who had been for him all that she as yet ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... I've ever known. I've read your story in the newspaper, and so has the old man who saved your rotten life. We know you for the lying braggart that you are. You made yourself out a hero when you were a weakling and ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... believe you will find him to be the bugbear you imagine. He can take defeat like a man. He is devoted to you, he is devoted to me. Your decision no doubt wrecks his fondest hope in life, but it doesn't make a weakling ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... man of honour or nought but a mean, pitiful blackguard? You, the trusted agent of this poor, misused gentleman, are you not planning in your black heart how you shall rob him of that which, if he is a man at all, must be more to him than his liberty, or even his honour? Shame on you for a miserable weakling! Have done with these philanderings and keep your covenants like a gentleman—or, at least, ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... he might have done. Somewhere, not very far back, the sledge carrying Meleese and Jackpine had turned into the unknown. They two were alone. Why had he not made Croisset a prisoner, instead of allowing himself to be caged up like a weakling? He swore aloud as there dawned on him more and more a realization of the opportunity he had lost. At the point of a gun he could have forced Croisset to overtake the other sledge. He could have surprised Jackpine, as they had surprised him on the trail. And then? He smiled, but there ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... over Brenton, Olive, just because he is a pitiful weakling who, in spite of all his good intentions, has made a consistent mess of everything he's tried to do. Because a man is weak, he isn't necessarily more lovable. Because he has an incurable disease, he isn't, of necessity, any more a subject for idolatry. No; I don't mean that to lap over ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... her—whispering occasional words in Italian to her mistress—sat the Italian nurse, pale too, but motionless, a woman from the Campagna, of a Roman port and dignity, who would have scorned to give the master whom she detested any excuse for dubbing her a weakling. ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the brood. Five were hardy little fellows that made the water boil behind them as they scurried across the lake. But the sixth was a weakling. He had been hurt, by a hawk perhaps, or a big trout, or a mink; or he had swallowed a bone; or maybe he was just a weak little fellow with no accounting for it. Whenever the brood were startled, he struggled bravely a little while to keep up; then he always fell behind. ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... winnings against this girl," went on Hough, relentlessly. Scorn and a taunting dare and an insidious persuasion mingled with the passion of his offer. He knew how to inflame. Durade, as a gambler, was a weakling in the grasp of a giant. ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... loud call of drums, out of the idler and the weakling comes The hero valiant with self-sacrifice, ready to pay the price War asks of men, to help a suffering world. And out of the arms of pleasure, where they whirled In wild unreasoning mirth, behold the splendid women of the earth Living new selfless lives—the toiling mothers, sister, daughters, ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... it is from laziness, not from scruple. We desire to speak competently, but without affectation. We know that if our diction rises to this dual standard, it silently distinguishes us from the sluggard, the weakling, and the upstart. For such diction is not to be had on sudden notice, like a tailor-made suit. Nor can it, like such a suit, deceive anybody as to our true status. A man's utterance reveals what he is. It is the measure of his inward attainment. The assertion has been ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... little foot and faced Carr valiantly. "See here, Mr. Carr Parker!" she stormed. "I'm no weakling. I'm the daughter of my father and where he goes I go. You'll take me or I'll never speak ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... second son, was born on the 26th of February, 1802, at Besancon, France. Though a weakling, he was carried, with his boy-brothers, in the train of their father through the south of France, in pursuit of Fra Diavolo, the Italian brigand, ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... some of his predecessors. It was afterward hurled at Napoleon the Great, and also Napoleon the Little. In France, unless a royal personage was openly licentious, he was almost sure to be jeered at by the people as a weakling. ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... a weakling nor a coward, but he shrank from open encounter with Lund, and knew himself, without fear, the weaker man. The challenge of Lund, splendidly daring any one of them to come out against him alone, and challenging them en masse, had found in ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... is for the tried friend who raised me when I fell— A gift of weakling's tinsel oaths that ...
— The Dreamers - And Other Poems • Theodosia Garrison
... Johnson is not the man to be cheated out of a fortune without putting up a fight. Young Mitchell himself is neither fool nor weakling. He can shoot, too. We have had no news. Therefore—a conclusion that will not have escaped your sagacity—something has gone amiss with our little expeditionary force in the Gavilan. Johnson is quite the Paladin; but he could hardly exterminate ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... Franklin was working himself into a rage. Lee seemed to understand Franklin better now. A weakling. Inherently, with a complex of inferiority, the vague consciousness of it lashing him ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings
... scorning all instruction in the use of arms, declaring this to be, in his case, a silly waste of effort. Such an attitude very naturally aroused resentment among the other men; it was not long before they began to grumble at the liberty allowed this headstrong weakling. But upon the occasion of the very first fight this ill-will disappeared as if by magic, for, although Branch deliberately disobeyed orders, he nevertheless displayed such amazing audacity in the face of the enemy, such a theatrical contempt for bullets, as to stupefy every one. Moreover, he ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... We worked like dogs. Added to the drilling and shooting and digging, there was the all-night job of ore-carrying—at which we took turn and turn about—for one of us. Though I am not, and never have been, save in the parole starvation time, what one would call a weakling, my first trip to town with eighty-five pounds of ore on my back nearly killed me. A thousand times, it seemed to me, I had to stop and rest; and when I got down it was always an open question whether or not I could ever get up again with the ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... a weakling, thank you," retorted Mr. Prescott. "I'll do my share, and I recommend you to proclaim that any man who doesn't do his share doesn't eat to-night. But as for you, Sergeant Overton, I shall have a bad opinion of this outfit if they ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... taken into account and the temperature and frequency of the bath must be determined and regulated by the necessity and idiosyncrasies of each case. The amount of bathing that a strong, full-blooded person could endure would mop out the life of a thin, bloodless weakling. ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... gleam of dawn, a precipice at his feet. He looked at the princess with a bewildered air, and felt a cold chill running down his back. Diane thought for a moment that her man of genius was a weakling, but a flash from his eyes ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... wife, and that, in the second place, it was not the man who was to blame, nor the woman so much, as Sharpe himself. Indeed, Bobby somehow gained the impression that the others flouted and despised Sharpe and held him as a weakling. ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... was no weakling who could amuse himself with a hundred imitation love affairs. In his veins ran the fierce, red blood of a strong race that had ruled by the simple strength of manhood their half-wild mountain wilderness. As the tiny stream, flowing ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... aboard the ship which was taking him to the Promised Land would receive the moving farewell letter of his friend, his first reaction after his horror would be one of rage: "Idiot! Fool! Miserable hopeless weakling! A life ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... the beat of a drum and the shouts of the crowd, rising and falling with the wind, I felt a little sad, that the age, in its advancing refinement, is setting itself against these old-fashioned merry-makings, and shrinking like a weakling from all out-of-doors festivals, on the plea of their being disorderly, but in reality because they are believed to be vulgar. They come down to us from rough old days; but they are relics of a time when life, if rough, was at least kind and hearty. We admire that life on the stage, ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... thine, the midnight wolf Worries my sheep, on yonder tree you hang:' The blear-eyed idiot looked into my face, And smiled his disbelief. On that day week Two lambs lay dead. I hanged him on a tree. What tree? this tree! Why, this is passing strange! For, three nights since, I saw him in a dream: Weakling as wont he stood beside my bed, And, clutching at his wrenched and livid throat, Spake ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... weakling and when the doctor came into her room some time later, the effects of her potion wearing away, she awoke to full consciousness. He saw the imploring question in her eyes, before he took her pulse and answered it ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... workman's prison-house and set the children free, this poor child had been shut up from six in the morning till six at night in the fetid atmosphere of a cotton-mill. God knows what the economic value of such a weakling's labour may have been! One would think that a South Carolina planter would have been wiser than to work his "stock" at such an age. Be this as it may, my friend had passed through this terrible apprenticeship ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... slandering as they have begun—it will result finally in injuring themselves. The world will very soon see through this impudent, unabashed game; and it will finally side with the people which keeps to the truth, Only the weakling lies and swindles; the strong man loves and honors truth. Let us act like the strong man in ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... frontier, in the early days, a weakling staked out an agricultural or mining claim. A ruffian appears, who is a sure shot, jumps the claim and drives the other out. It was the rule of the strong arm, and it was evident on the frontier all ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... strength, Jack excelled Frank by far, although the latter was by no means a weakling. On the other hand again, Frank was a crack shot with either rifle or revolver; in fact, he was such an excellent marksman as to cause his chum no little degree of envy. Then, too, both lads were proficient in ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... so pleased was his tone. "Of course you would. I'm afraid that was too easy for you, wasn't it, Joe? But now suppose you were bent on proving to everybody, and particularly to those who had fathered it, what an unfortunate weakling this immature, unnamed child of constructive silence really was. In that event how do ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... looked at the weakling child with the deepest interest, and said, "This chavo ought not to look like that—with such a mother ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... the article on Nathan," said Lousteau. "Do you see now what journalism is, Lucien? Your revenge is beginning to tell. The Baron Chatelet came here this morning for your address. There was a cutting article upon him in this morning's issue; he is a weakling, that buck of the Empire, and he has lost his head. Have you seen the paper? It is a funny article. Look, 'Funeral of the Heron, and the Cuttlefish-bone's lament.' Mme. de Bargeton is called the Cuttlefish-bone now, and no mistake, and Chatelet is ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... obligations during the lifetime of the great conqueror Ajit Singh, under whose banners he had often ridden to victory, but had seen his opportunity in the feeble rule of Ajit Singh's successors. One concession after another had been wrung by his diplomacy from the hands of weakling or child, the right to raise troops in his own name, to fortify the city of Agpur, and—though this was still contested by certain Ranjitgarh stalwarts—the power of nominating his successor instead of merely recommending his eldest son to the favour of ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... patient dreads the pain and the nurse fears hurting her. Suppose she were to fail to give it on such grounds. This is an almost unthinkable case. But the very nurse who agrees that such an emotional weakling should not be allowed to train, will help her patient, even when recuperating nicely, to grow inexcusably self-centered, by sympathizing with every complaint, warning her at every turn, by allowing her and even encouraging her, ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... pick and choose her prizes. Seated motionless in the centre of her web, her eight legs wide-spread to feel the shaking of the network in any direction, she waits for what luck will bring her: now some giddy weakling unable to control its flight, anon some powerful prey rushing headlong with ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... strong—not for their badness, but for their strength. Mistaken men he loves in spite of their mistakes—if only they be not weaklings. There is no place anywhere in the Dean's philosophy of life for a weakling. I heard him tell a man once—nor shall I ever forget it—"You had better die like a man, sir, than live ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... from her fair height and laid her arm around the shoulders of the youth, drew his head against the beadwork of McElroy's gift, and kissed him upon the lips,—once, twice, yearningly, as a mother kisses a weakling child. ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... did not realise to the full the following promise of uniform victory, but was defeated at Ai and elsewhere. The reason was the same,—the faithlessness of the people. Unbelief and sin turn a Samson into a weakling, and make Israel flee before the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... in the right frame of mind man is capable of stoic endurances that excite wonder and admiration. Mr Pickering was no weakling. He had once upset his automobile in a ditch, and had waited for twenty minutes until help came to relieve a broken arm, and he had done it without a murmur. But on the present occasion there was a difference. His mind was not adjusted for the occurrence. ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... loved the Yellow-back. This Yellow-back was twenty-three or four, and he read books, and played a fiddle and drew strange pictures—and was weak in the heart when it came to a fight. But Elise loved him. She loved him for those very things that made him a fool and a weakling, m'sieu, the books and the fiddle and the pictures; and she stood up with the courage for them both. And she would have married him, too, and would have fought for him with a club if it had come to that, when the thing happened that made him run away. It was ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... grew dismal; they called us fatalists. Our fate—it was the fulness, the tension, the storing up of powers. We thirsted for the lightnings and great deeds; we kept as far as possible from the happiness of the weakling, from "resignation"... There was thunder in our air; nature, as we embodied it, became overcast—for we had not yet found the way. The formula of our happiness: a Yea, a Nay, a straight line, ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... not to be seen, and I could almost read the expression on each man's features, so close did the glasses draw them up. And failing to see her started me thinking that after all she might have given them the slip. I hoped it might be so. Lyn was no chicken-hearted weakling, to sit down and weep unavailingly in time of peril. Bred on the range, on speaking-terms with the turbulent frontier life, her wits weren't likely to forsake her in a ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... can never be anything to you but a sort of puling weakling, who must be nursed, and petted, and cared for. I know," he went on, his words coming with a rush in the height of his protesting passion, "if your thoughts, your secret thoughts and feelings, were put into words, I know what they would say of me, must say of me. Do I need to tell you? ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... Most annoying, too, was the fact that I dared not manifest the impatience which I naturally felt. I am not remarkable as a specimen of the strong man; quite the reverse indeed, for, while I am by no means a weakling, I am no adept in the fistic art. Hence, when my guide, Hippopopolis by name, as the sun sank behind the western hills, informed me that I was again to be disappointed, the fact that he stands six feet two in his stockings, ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... It was all of a piece and a whole yard wide, and the name of the brand was "Hell". We heard the call and we staked our all; we were plungers playing blind, And no man cared how his neighbor fared, and no man looked behind; For a ruthless greed was born of need, and the weakling went to the wall, And a curse might avail where a prayer would fail, and the gold lust ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... men who had not continued their education beyond the public grammar school, so the masses instinctively believed that insight, real energy and enterprise were better developed in the school of life than in the world of books. The college student was thought a weakling, in a way, who might have fine theories, but who would never help to solve the great national problems—a sort of academic "mug-wump," but not a leader. The banking house, factory, farm, the mine, law office and the political position were thought better places for ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... and honestly accommodate and plan, and so we remain at sixes and sevens. We've all a touch of Gladstone in us, and try to the last moment to deny we have made a turn. And so our poor broken-springed world jolts athwart its trackless destiny. Try to win into line with some fellow weakling, and see the little host of suspicions, aggressions, misrepresentations, your approach will stir—like summer flies on a high road—the way he will try to score a point and claim you as a convert to what he has always said, his fear lest the point ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... file, a half-dozen of them sometimes following a wise leader, stepping in his tracks and leaving but a single trail. It is partly, perhaps, to fool their old enemy, the wolf, and their new enemy, the man, by hiding the weakling's trail in the stride and hoof mark of a big buck; but it shows also the old habit, and the training which begins when the fawns first learn to ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... years in the service of the Freeland commonwealth, he must be at least fifty years old, but he looks to be scarcely forty. The younger of the sons, Emanuel, technician by calling, is a complete duplicate of David, though a little darker and more robust than the latter, who, as you know, is no weakling. The mother, Ellen by name, an American by birth, who—thanks, evidently, to David's reports of me—received me with a truly motherly welcome, must be, judging from the age of her children, about forty-five, but her ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... where Bethlehem blest appears. We bring the best of news; be not dismayed: A Saviour there is born more old than years, Amidst heaven's rolling heights this earth who stayed. In a poor cottage inned, a virgin maid, A weakling did him bear, who all upbears; There is he poorly swaddled, in manger laid, To whom too narrow swaddlings are our spheres: Run, shepherds, run, and solemnize his birth. This is that night—no, day, grown great with ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... had the courage for it. But morally I am a weakling—you know it. Do you remember that I once said to you if Desmond fell, I should go with him—or ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... transmigrated from one thing into another, in a seemingly endless procession of lives, experiencing all the peculiar sensations of the many bodies I temporarily inhabited. In some cases I was the big strong brute—either physically or mentally—taking advantage of the puny weakling. In others, I was the miserable weakling, being crushed by the over-powering strength of the bully. But whether strong or weak, either physically or mentally, I was always the moral coward and selfish creature, ready ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... no weakling. For a time she took in washing, what little she could get, devoting the intermediate hours to dressing the children, cooking, seeing that they got off to school, mending their clothes, waiting ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... males were good boys until the time came when their thews and sinews outmatched the strength of those who had borne them, and this, be it said, was at no early age, for the woman, hunting and working with the man, was no maternal weakling whose buffet was unworthy of notice. A blow from the cave mother's hand was something to be respected and avoided. The use of strength was the general law, and the cave woman, though she would die for her young, ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... With the hands and words of magic; But his hands had lost their cunning, And his magic gone to others. Thereupon the ancient minstrel Quick returning, heavy-hearted, To his native halls and hamlets, Thus addressed his brother-heroes: "Woman, he without his weapons, With no implements, a weakling! Sun and Moon have I discovered, But I could not force the Portals Leading to their rocky cavern In the copper bearing mountain. Spake the reckless Lemminkainen "O thou ancient Wainamoinen, Why was I not taken with thee To become, ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... either during the war, or in single combat. He concluded that it would not be difficult to conquer the German. The Krzyzak's shoulder bones appeared quite large under his dress of grey broadcloth; but he was only a weakling compared with Powala or with Paszko Zlodziej of Biskupice, or with both of the most famous Sulimczyks, or with Krzon of Kozieglowy or with many of the other knights, sitting at the ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... captain. "Yet I heard from one sealing captain the story of a young fellow whom it turned from a weak coward into a brave man. This lad, who was regarded as a weakling, saved himself and two companions from a terrible death simply by an act of almost sublime courage. Would you like to hear ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... river-bank, lived under the care of experienced parents ever ready and resolute in their defence, and became as shy and furtive as the wood-mice dwelling in the hollows of the hedge beside the pond, they were not always favoured by fortune. The weakling of the family died of disease; another of the youngsters, foraging alone in the wood, was killed by a bloodthirsty weasel; while a third, diving to pick up a root of water-weed, was caught by the neck in the fork of ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... little missionary as she laid the weakling before the fire and fed it barley water with an ink dropper. "I'm going to keep it for my very own. I've always ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... mine," and Tammas gave MacLure's hand a grip that would have crushed the bones of a weakling. Drumtochty felt in such moments the brotherliness of this ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... Nothing I could say.... It is morbid obstinacy.... She said that she felt there was something, some change in me.... If my convictions were calling me away, why this secrecy, as though she had been a coward or a weakling not safe to trust? 'As if my heart could play traitor to my children,' she said.... It was hardly to be borne. And she was smoothing my head all the time.... It was perfectly useless to protest. She is ill. ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... feeling of guilt, which in another might perhaps have been lulled by the news of her death, began to burn on my conscience with greater intensity than ever. I abused myself as a coward, a weakling, an adulterer, for something that no man on earth would ever have imputed to ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... of the postilion's whip told Victurnien that the fair romance of his first love was over. While peril lasted, Diane could still see her lover in the young Count; but out of danger, she despised him for the weakling that he was. ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... friends, who will excuse all other shortcomings because of his honesty. It gives him the unadulterated trust of his employer and it arouses a certain admiration among his narrow circle of acquaintances. If this is true with the dullard, the weakling, then what must it mean when possessed by the great? We know, for instance, how the nation instinctively turned to General Washington when it came to choosing their President after the Revolutionary War. He may have been gifted, he may have been one of ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... which we found to be dog (which animal is regularly butchered for food in Cho-Sen), and the pickles ungodly hot but which one learns to like exceeding well. And there was drink, real drink, not milky slush, but white, biting stuff distilled from rice, a pint of which would kill a weakling and make a strong man mad and merry. At the walled city of Chong-ho I put Kim and the city notables under the table with the stuff—or on the table, rather, for the table was the floor where we squatted to cramp-knots in my hams for the thousandth ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... could move he had seized her in her finery. Colina was no weakling, but within those steely arms she was helpless. She strained away her head. He could only reach her neck, under the ear. She ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... a weakling's symbol of a power That spins the luminous girdle of Saturn in sure hands, And frames the awful face of God in the shifting boreal light. My soul is destiny and immortality; It flashes in the eyes of the tempest, glows along The phosphorescent ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... be said for George Fleming that at least he was a hardy villain and no weakling. The men were like weather-vanes. They veered with each ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... decade Napoleon made much history, and he likewise did much for the royal palaces of France. After him a gap supervened until the advent of Napoleon III, who, weakling that he was, had the perspicacity to give the Baron Haussmann a chance to play his part in the making of modern Paris, and if the Tuileries and Saint Cloud had not disappeared as a result of his indiscretion the period of the Second Empire would not have been ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... me will have to account for the fact that, even in the historical plays written in early manhood, all his portraits of men of action are mere copies, while his genius shines in the portraits of a gentle saint like Henry VI., of a weakling like Richard II., or of a girlish youth like Arthur—all these favourite studies being alike in pathetic ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... treatment, but it is often rendered wholly futile by being mixed with "reward of shortening term for good behavior in prison." Good behavior inside prison walls gives no proof of ability to take good care of one's self outside those walls; it may be only a proof that the moral weakling has to have an external conscience and a strict watch in order to be amenable to even simple rules. The parole system is also liable to great misunderstanding and serious social dangers when it is used without the most scientific knowledge ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... down into unconsciousness, to wake again, weak and enfeebled by his illness, no longer able to break through the spell that drew him towards her. He called himself, in his heart, a traitor, a coward, a weakling, a miserable wretch without strength, or faith, or honour. There were no bounds to his self-abasement, no depths to which he did not sink in his self-judgment. He recalled that morning eighteen months ago when he had come ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... did not relish this. He flung Ruth aside, careless whether she fell or not. There was only one idea in his head now—to batter and bruise and crush this weakling, then cast him at the feet of his love-lorn wife. He brought into service all his Oriental bar-room tricks. Time after time he sent Spurlock into this corner or that; but always the boy regained his feet before the murderous ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... officer nor comrade need feel ashamed of that great body, which now reclines as appropriate an ornament of the battle-field as it once was of the dining-room. A pretty sight is a philosopher's body by its side, withered, squalid, and bearded; he was dead before the fight began, poor weakling. Who would not despise the city whose guards are such miserable creatures? Who would not suppose, seeing these pallid, hairy manikins scattered on the ground, that it had none to fight for it, and so had turned out its gaol-birds to fill the ranks? That is how the ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... which aroused her curiosity, Lady Kew sent a letter that night to Lady Ann Newcome, desiring that Ethel should be sent to see her grandmother; Ethel, who was no weakling in character despite her youth, and who always rebelled against her grandmother and always fought on her Aunt Julia's side when that amiable invalid lady, who lived with her mother, was oppressed by the ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... before this unfortunate Revolution. I feel that I am no longer so, therefore I regret the change. My heart sometimes seems tired with beating, it wants rest like my eyelids, which feel oppressed with so many watchings." Crevecoeur, an immigrant from Normandy, was certainly no weakling, but he felt that the great idyllic American adventure which he described so captivatingly in his chapter entitled "What is an American"—was ending tragically in civil war. Another whitesouled itinerant of that day was John Woolman of New Jersey, whose "Journal," ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... frenzy, which the Scandinavian minstrels call the "fury of the Berserk", was in his heart, and with a savage laugh at his own too impetuous blow, he shouted as the corpse fell to the ground: "I think the weakling had never a bone in ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... blood and nerve cells are lacking strength and vitality. As the blood races through your body—head and brain, every little cell should be brim full of life and power. Then you feel the vim and "go" that will make you a power among your fellow men. No nervousness, no indecision, no signs of the weakling if you use ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... son of Herog, was no weakling. Powerful by nature and rendered still more so in the throes of one of his maniacal fits of fury he was no mean antagonist, even for the mighty ape-man, and to this a distinct advantage for him was added by the ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... despite all his efforts, he never produces anything but a half-dead child. The talented actor animates, nurses, consolidates, fortifies and clothes it, suggests the proper gestures and attitudes, infuses his own health and strength into this weakling, gives it blood and, so to speak, makes it live. The playwright contributes the soul, it is true; but, the soul being intangible, it is only a pitiable gift so far as the ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... afraid of work, you are fairly accurate. I have an idea that you take pride in turning out a good piece of work. But you must learn to stand criticism and profit by it. We must all take it sometime, every one of us. A weakling goes under. A strong man or woman learns to value it, to make every bit of it count. That is what I hope you ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... not be easy to find his equal. He's as handsome as Minutscher, as clever as Piran Wisa, as strong as Rustem, and as benevolent and helpful as the god Soma. I wish you could have seen how well he threw those round metal plates he calls discs. I am no weakling, but when we wrestled he soon threw me. And then he could tell such famous stories—stories that made a man's ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... inherit the Harris property was upset on account of the girl quarrelling with her parents, and his ardour seems to have cooled off noticeably. But he was as keen for the property as ever. Riles was a weakling in the hands of a man like Travers, and no doubt he betrayed the fact that Harris was taking his money with him into the hills. Then the two of them framed up the plan which has resulted in the death of one and the arrest of the other." During ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... away, but now it made a strong bank with the current skimming above the surface. On this the stallion had struck, and whirling with the current he faced towards the source of the valley and looked into the volleying waters. Here, surely, was a sight to make a weakling tremble. But to the astonishment of Perris, he saw the head of the stallion raised, and the next moment the thunder of his neigh rang high above the voices of the river, as though he bade defiance to his destroyer, as ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... thrust him back. "Touch me not," said she, "you do not deserve my love. You are a weakling, as all men are. You can only coo like a pigeon, but when it comes to action, then sinks your arm, and you are powerless. Ah, the woman whom you profess to love begs of you a trifling service, the performance of which is of the highest importance to her, the ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... in its glare with one Indian club held by the end, like a footman with a stolen bottle. A good-looking, well-built, iron-gray, iron-jawed man; but a fool and a weakling at that moment, if he had never been ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... can, of course, be dangerous, but he doesn't approach the vicious deadliness of a weakling—with ...
— The Weakling • Everett B. Cole
... that he had not been seen for two days. In spite of the fact that Albany numbered nearly "six thousand living human souls," a brief search by the docksharps soon revealed the sinner's retreat. His worst enemy would have pitied him; a red-eyed wreck; a starved, sick and trembling weakling; conscience-stricken, for the letter intrusted to him was lost; the cargo stolen—so his comforters had said—and the raw country lad murdered and thrown out into the river. What wonder that he should shun the light of day! And when ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... will prove a great help in the desperately bad affair of this Diet. And you, my teacher, would do far better to imitate our father, the Doctor, also in this point. For with your miserable cares and your weakling tears you will accomplish nothing, but prepare a sad destruction for yourself and us all, who take pleasure in, and are benefited by nothing more than your welfare." (C. R. 2, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... reached one of those terrible moments when the practitioner becomes conscious of his own impotency; he had exhausted his strength, physical and moral, and taken this means to restore it. And yet he was not a weakling; he was steady of hand and firm of heart; but the inexorable question had presented itself to him: "What is the use?" The feeling that he could accomplish so little, that so much must be left undone, had suddenly paralyzed him. What was the use? since Death, in spite of his utmost effort, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... the sheep we had brought and pull the ship away from that land. Then when we had drawn a certain distance from the shore I could not forbear to shout my taunts into the cave of Polyphemus. "Cyclops," I cried, "you thought that you had the company of a fool and a weakling to eat. But you have been worsted by me, and your evil ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... shoulders—naturally well set—sagged with the weariness of excessive physical indulgence; while the sunken chest, the emaciated limbs, and the dejected posture of his misused body made him in appearance, at least, a wretched weakling. His clothing—of good material and well tailored—was disgustingly soiled and neglected;—the shoes thickly coated with dried mud, and the once-white shirt, slovenly unfastened at the throat, without collar or tie. The face which looked back from the mirror to the man was, without ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... were inconsistent with a true earnestness of purpose," said Mr. Brown. "And, after all, the girl we both love is no such weakling as to accept a man simply because he asks her. She will decide between ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... and legends. And a strange thing! While the painters try to bring the Christ nearer to the crowd, while Fritz von Uhde or Lhermitte put the Christ in a country school, in a workingman's house, the weakling writers, imitating poets, dress Him in old, faded, traditional clothes and surround Him with a theatrical light which they dare to call "mysticism." They are crowding the porticos of the temple, but they are merely ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... and shadowed eyes. He had no shame. He was simply in the grip of passion. Longstreth gazed with dark, controlled fury at this relative. In that look Duane saw a strong, unscrupulous man fallen into evil ways, but still a man. It betrayed Lawson to be the wild and passionate weakling. Duane seemed to see also how during all the years of association this strong man had upheld the weak one. But that time had gone for ever, both in intent on Longstreth's part and in possibility. Lawson, like the great majority of evil and unrestrained men on the border, had reached a ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... eldest children to his side, And gave them, in few words, his parting charge! 'My son and daughter, me ye see no more; The happy hunting-grounds await me, green With change of spring and summer through the year: But, for remembrance, after I am gone, Be kind to little Sheemah for my sake: Weakling he is and young, and knows not yet To set the trap, or draw the seasoned bow; 10 Therefore of both your loves he hath more need, And he, who needeth love, to love hath right; It is not like our furs and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... back into his mind. He was no longer as young as he once was, and even at his prime he shrewdly doubted his ability to cope with Riley Sinclair. With the weight of Gaspar thrown in, the thing became an impossibility. Gaspar might be a weakling, but a man who was capable of murder ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... passed on, the Tlahuicos, marrying among themselves, had greatly increased in numbers; and so far from remaining a weakling race, the had become, by reason of their frugal mode of living and of the wholesome, hearty labor in which they constantly were engaged, exceptionally hale and strong; the weak and crippled among them being mainly those who each year, because of such infirmities, were added to their number ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... seen him play. Into the darkness, into the night, what mattered whither, when such fierce anger boiled within him? Such self-contempt. What mattered whither when he knew how he had failed! Ay, failed and played the Tissot! The Tissot and the weakling! ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... her the second time. Now she's followed him over here, or got here first, tried the same game probably, met with a refusal, and this anonymous note is her revenge. The man she married was a crack-brained weakling who got into the army the fag end of the war, fell in love with her pretty face, married her, then they quarrelled, and he drank himself into a muddle-head. She ran him into debt; then he gambled away government funds, bolted, was caught, and ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... wedded, in the flower of her youth, to an Advocate of the Parlement, a man of a harsh temper and sorely set on the arraignment and punishing of unfortunate prisoners. For the rest, he was of sickly habit and a weakling, of such a sort he seemed more fit to give pain to folks outside his doors than pleasure to his wife within. The old fellow thought more of his blue bags than of his better half, though these were far otherwise shapen, being bulgy and fat and formless. But the lawyer spent ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... ideals ran quite otherwise: to a lodge in some vast wilderness, like the rock-strewn slopes of high Lebanon; to the company of the birds and trees, of the wide heavens and the shy wild creatures of the forest. But it is only the fool or the weakling who ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... will be as a faint haze on the sea, an illusive recollection; so now while standing on the last verge of the hill, I will look back on the valley I lingered in. Do I regret? I neither repent nor do I regret; and a fool and a weakling I should be if I did. I know the worth and the rarity of more than ten years of systematic enjoyment. Nature provided me with as perfect a digestive apparatus, mental and physical, as she ever turned ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... done, and as for the letters themselves, he believed they placed Keats indisputably among the highest masters of English epistolary style. He considered that all Keats's letters proved him to be no weakling, and that whatever walk he had chosen he must have been a master. He seemed particularly struck with the apparently intuitive perception of Shakspeare's subtlest meanings, which certain of the letters display. In a note ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... convalescence he had gone over in his mind many times the battle with the gorilla, and his first thought was to recover the wonderful little weapon which had transformed him from a hopelessly outclassed weakling to the superior of the mighty terror ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and delivered; the price paid for it, being shown by the pile of money on the table and the bunch of cancelled mortgages which the lawyer is presenting to the nobleman, who refuses to soil his elegant fingers with them. Over on the left is his weakling son, helping himself at this critical turn of his affairs, to a pinch of snuff while he gazes admiringly at his own figure in the mirror. The lady is equally indifferent; she has strung the ring on to her finger and is toying with it, while she listens to ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... a fair-sized stick-and-wattle house. He was a dapper little man, with a cleverish, weakling cast of face, and was all on the jump with the turn things had taken. He had just opened the door to us, and was eyeing us uncertainly, when the Colonel and the Chief, returning on foot from their inspection, having left their horses to be baited under ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... weakling as he was, Selim had his ambitions. He wished to signalise his reign by some great conquest, such as had added lustre to the rule of his father; and in consequence he laid claim to the island of Cyprus, then belonging to Venice, The Venetians, having strengthened the fortifications ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... wanted the girl above all things. But he wanted land, too. His was the large and confident greed of youth. And he could have the girl without making this concession. MacDougall wanted to take the best of his land and push him out of the game as a weakling, a negligible. He wouldn't submit. He would fight, and in his own way. What he wanted now was to end the interview, to get away from this ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... others he had told himself a thousand times to stop the longing he had to saddle his horse and go to her. What a weakling he was, he thought contemptuously, that he could not put her out of his mind and do the obviously right and proper thing by asking Beth to marry him, and so end forever this disquieting conflict within ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... all the grace and elegance of an Elizabethan courtier, as well as of a gentle and artistic temperament, Philip Sidney was no weakling. Under the costly trappings of his court finery beat a heart as bold and passionate ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... cause of Goober was the cause of anarchy and riot, while the cause of the district attorney and of Guffey's secret service was the cause of law and order. Peter was doing his best in this great cause, he was following the instructions of those above him, and how could he be blamed because one poor weakling of a girl had got in the way of the ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... was not only one of the longest, but that it was considered also "one of the most glorious that occurs in the annals of our nation" (vol. ii., p. 297). It is important to remember, further, that Edward was no timid weakling, ready to yield to others through weakness or fear. Quite the contrary. He was strong, war-like, and courageous. Hume informs us that "he curbed the licentiousness of the great; that he made his foremost nobles feel his power, and that they dared not even murmur against it, and that his valour ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... the so-called "conspiracy of the markets," M. Zola, whilst changing time and place to suit the requirements of his story, has simply followed historical lines. As for the Quenus, who play such prominent parts in the narrative, the husband is a weakling with no soul above his stewpans, whilst his wife, the beautiful Lisa, in reality wears the breeches and rules the roast. The manner in which she cures Quenu of his political proclivities, though savouring of ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... out after this manner, but there must be considerable chance that matters would not work so smoothly. For one thing it must be considered that Oswald Kearns was no weakling, but a more or less athletic figure, accustomed to feats of strength and agility beyond the measure of an ordinary man. Then, too, he was known to be irrational, even to the length of being considered dangerous when thoroughly ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... veil of human sight and sense. This veil may not ever be lifted; but very often the veil is pierced, and noting the broken place, men call it fire. Through these torn places men may glimpse the world that is real: and this glimpse dazzles their dimmed eyes and weakling forces, and this glimpse mocks at their lean might Through these rent places, when the opening is made large enough, a few men here and there, not quite so witless as their fellows, know how to summon us of Audela when ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... rage and vengeance sent a tingling current through the young man's veins. The moment had come. In the eye of a cautious man, he had been called upon for a dangerous declaration. He had a mighty man to accuse, no proof and little evidence at his command, and a weakling was to decide between them. But his cause equipped him with strength and a reckless courage. He faced the king fairly and made no search after ceremonious words. He ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... or another, who wrote the Book of Genesis was a man of literary genius. He was no child, no weakling. If God had said to him: "I made the world out of the fiery nebula, and I made the sea to bring forth the staple of life, and I caused all living things to develop from that seed or staple of life, and ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... prospects, that had been his predominant mood in London seemed to him at this moment of depression mere folly. What he really felt, he declared to himself, was a sort of cowardly shrinking from life and its tests—the recognition that at bottom he was a weakling, without ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Henderson should vanish unscathed into the future of a happy marriage, while he remained the doomed failure and outcast he knew himself to be. Rachel's implied confession rankled in him like a burn. Tanner!—that wretched weakling, with his miserable daubs that nobody wanted to buy. So Rachel had gone to him, as soon as she had driven her husband away, no doubt to complain of her ill-treatment, to air her woes. The fellow had philandered round her some time, ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his is no fancy picture—a poor weak creature, or was he a strong, heroic soul? Many will write him down the weakling; perhaps all but those who have themselves known much of that hope deferred which maketh the heart sick, and drains away the moral life-blood drop by drop. It may be that the registers of Heaven held appended to his name a different epithet. It is harder to wait ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... he urged. "You are making me out a miserable weakling indeed when you think I ambled off toward perdition just because you dared me to ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... loathsome, ill-smelling creature. I can not find adjectives enough to describe him. Everybody avoided him. It surely was a testing time for me. Also, I had trying experiences thereafter with this particular soul; for, though he certainly found salvation, he was such a weakling that he was ever leaning upon the arm of flesh; in consequence of which I endured much persecution. He haunted me much of the time, morning, noon, and night, so that I was subjected to unkind remarks and ridicule; ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... turned inquiringly toward Cavendish, but the survey brought with it no encouragement. The man meant well, no doubt, and would fight valiantly on occasion; he was no coward, no weakling—equally clear his was not the stuff from which leaders are made. There was uncertainty in his eyes, a lack of force in his face which told the story. Whatever was decided upon, or accomplished, must be by her volition; she could trust him ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... passion, gave him one wild look of reproach, and flew noiselessly like a spirit after the nurse to her child. Sir Tom, with his laugh still wavering about his mouth, half hysterically, though he was no weakling, tottered along the terrace to the open window, and stood there leaning against it, scarcely breathing, the light gone out of his eyes, his whole soul suspended, and every part of his strong body, waiting for what another ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... contrasts the largeness of God's promises and the miserable contradiction to them which the average Christian life of this generation presents, what can we say? 'Hath His mercy clean gone for ever? Doth His promise fail for evermore?' Ye weak Christian people, born weakling and weak ever since, as so many of you are, open your mouths wide. Rise to the height of the expectations and the desires which it is our sin not to cherish; and be sure of this, as we ask so shall we receive. 'Ye are not ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... a great power, but the thousand tons of this tree's vast weight must be lifted and sustained in defiance of it. So for a thousand years gravitation sees the tree rise higher and higher, till the great lesson is taught that it is a weakling compared with the power of life. There is not a place where one can put his finger that there are not a dozen forces in full play, every one of which is plastic, elastic, and ready to yield to any force ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... but somehow, despite the fact that Mr. C. KENNETT BURROW wields a practised and often picturesque pen, the whole affair remains a literary exercise and declines to come alive. Perhaps in justice I should except two characters, Roland, the sturdy-son born out of wedlock to Tony, and Phil, weakling child of old Heron by a second marriage. Both these and the relation of the pair to each other furnish a pleasant contrast to the anaemia which seems to affect the rest of the tale. Stay, there is yet another, Kenrick, the private tutor of Tony, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... rest and contentment in his own mental life, and is equally himself at the Corona d'Italia and on a western ranch; while the weakling runs back to earlier associations like a colt to its stable. But Homer is also Emersonian at times. What could be more so than Achilles's memorable saying, which is repeated by Ulysses in the Odyssey: "More hateful to me than ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... rebuffs and severe trials at the beginning of their career. It seems as though the ruling powers imposed an ordeal on every human being, in order to single out the strong and the worthy from the cowardly and worthless. The weakling who meets with trouble uplifts his voice in complaint and ceases to struggle against obstacles; the strong man or woman remains silent and strives on indomitably until success is achieved. It is strange to see how many complaining weaklings ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... with baneful eye, Even as mine arm descended, baffled me, And hurled upon my soul a frenzied plague, To stain my hand with these dumb victims' blood. And those mine enemies exult in safety,— Not with my will; but where a God misguides, Strong arms are thwarted and the weakling lives. Now, what remains? Heaven hates me, 'tis too clear: The Grecian host abhor me: Troy, with all This country round our camp, is my sworn foe. Shall I, across the Aegean sailing home, Leave these Atridae and their fleet forlorn? How shall I dare to ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... not swamp thee," said Darrel, with a smile that seemed to say, "Poor weakling, your trouble is only as the ripples of a tiny pool." They went on slowly, over green pastures, halting at a brook in the woods. There, again, they rested in a cool shade of ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... am no weakling that I should fear. Dost thou not know the motto of the Staffords: A l'outrance? (To the utmost) I am a Stafford. Therefore will I dare ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... Lying on a couch in utter weariness or pain, she had drifted off into the land of dreams, and he felt that he had a moment of respite. He could look and weigh the question: Love or a quick success? A weakling's paradise or the goal ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... saw these things stood looking up, enveloped in his ulster with the grey cowl thrust upon his forehead, like a monk. One candle cast a grotesque shadow of him on the plastered wall. And when his chance came, though he was but a weakling, he too climbed and for some moments hugged the beam, and felt the madness of the swinging bell. Descending, he wondered long and strangely whether he ascribed too much of feeling to the men he watched. But no, that was impossible. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... had been thoroughly out of luck before—and borne it as being part of his life's burden. He had a thick skull and a broad back—what good were they but for burdens; it was not his business to whimper or play the weakling. And fate had heaped troubles upon him: if he could bear that, then he can bear this!—till at last he would break down altogether under the burden. But his ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... penetrated to the other side of the Arabian Mountains. He still had that much freedom. He wanted to think things out. In bitter, frustrating reversal of all his former urges to get off the Earth, he wanted, like a desperate weakling, to be back home. ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... quarrels with and insults her lover, who commits suicide; he also drives to self-destruction a wretched little Hebrew who has become a freethinker and can't stand the strain of his apostasy; he is the remote cause of another suicide, that of a weakling, a student full of "modern" ideas, but whose will is quite sapped. Turgenieff's Fathers and Sons is recalled more than once, especially the character of Bazarov, the nihilist. Furthermore, when this student fails to reap the benefit of a good girl's love, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... heard before in the Arena chapel or at the end of a Bach fugue. It is the comment of sophisticated refinement that can neither sit still nor launch out into rapturous, but ill-bred, ecstasies, of the weakling who takes refuge in slang or jocularity for fear of becoming natural and being thought ridiculous. Miss Coleridge stood for Kensington and Culture, so she smiled and shrugged her shoulders at Medea, and called the Bacchae "Hallelujah Lasses." She and Kensington admired Greek literature ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... also that there was an aspect of it which was not silly. She was reminded by it that she had found no solution of the problem which had distracted her in Hornsey. 'What is your present condition?' Her present condition was still that of a weakling and a coward who had sunk down inertly before the great problem of sin. And now, in the growing strength of her moral convalescence, she was raising her eyes again to meet the problem. Her future seemed ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... still clinging to the fingers, every throb of which struck appealingly on his heartstrings. "Forgive me, and—yet—don't. Joan, little Joan, I can't take your money. It would make me a weakling. But I can make the Cross win. If it never had a chance before, it will have now. It must! God ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... had done its work. Any remorse which he may have felt at first, for thus acting against his own will and better judgment, and for yielding like a weakling to persuasion, which had no moral rectitude for basis, was momentarily smothered by the almost childish delight of winning, of seeing the pile of gold growing in front of him. He had never handled money ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... Steve, petulantly, because he did not much fancy allowing the others to make him out to be a weakling. ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... girl sat at the door and waited. The cock, a fine strong bird, tried to get out of the girl's arms. He drove his strong feet into her, pecked at her hand, let out from his throat a loud "Cock-a-doodle-doo!" protested as much as he could. But the girl was no weakling either. She thrust the head of the rooster under her arm and dug her ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... "Weakling!" It taunted me. "Puny from of old, how should you prevail? By your fear, the woman stays mine. Miserable earth-crawler, in whose hand the weapon was laid and who shrinking let it fall unused, ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... there is such an art in showing and making mention of weaknesses as shall make the tears stand in a parent's eyes, and as shall make him search to the bottom of his purse to find out what may do his weakling good. Christ, also, has that excellent art, as he is an Advocate with the Father for us; he can so make mention of us and of our infirmities, while he pleads before God, against the devil, for us, that he can make the bowels of the Almighty yearn towards us, and to wrap us up in their ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan |
