"Weakness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sunshine revived her, the sub-acid of the strawberry seemed to furnish the very tonic she needed, and the beauty that abounded on every side, and that was daily brought to her couch, conferred a happiness that few could understand. Long years of weakness, in which only her mind could be active, had developed in the invalid a refinement scarcely possible to those who must daily meet the practical questions of life, and whose more robust natures could enjoy the material ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... his rise was due to something other than mere talent and exertion —that it was the result of talent and exertion originating in noble instincts and directed to worthy ends. Garfield's life proves this abundantly, and whatever may have been his temporary weakness under the fearful pressure brought upon him toward the end of his career, these instincts and purposes remained his main guiding influences from first ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... Many nationalities may compose a nation (such is the case of the British, Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Turkish Empires, of the Swiss Republic, of our own Union), and then the relation between the nationalities will determine the strength or the weakness of the nation. Again, a single nationality may be divided among many nations (such is the case of the Poles, of the Serbs and other Slavs, of the Jews), and then the stability of the nations will be largely determined by their effect on the nationalities ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... on the strength of his having a daughter who was a schoolmistress at Rainford village, in Lancashire. He was quite a jovial old man, and typical of "a real old English gentleman, one of the olden time." He told us he was a Wesleyan local preacher, but had developed a weakness for "a pipe of tobacco and a good glass of ale." He said that when Dick Turpin rode from London to York, his famous horse, "Black Bess," fell down dead when within sight of the towers of the Minster, but the exact spot he had not been ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... which, in the present work, in which the circle is 3-1/5 diameters. This volume is of 981 good folio pages, and treats of all things, mental and material. The author is not at all mad, only wrong on {136} many points. It is the weakness of the orthodox follower of any received system to impute insanity to the solitary dissentient: which is voted (in due time) a very wrong opinion about Copernicus, Columbus, or Galileo, but quite right about Robert Greene. If ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... nature, impulsive and easily led. Even the Quixotic honour which had led him to entangle himself in complications at another's bidding showed a mind incapable of clear judgment—or he would have renounced the rash promise when it began to involve others. Sadly enough she realised the weakness implied in this, and yet it only infused a new element of pity and protection in the love she felt for him, and she adapted herself bravely to the changed ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... had grown thin and languid with the illness that still hung about her. Around her enlarged eyes lay faint, purplish shadows, that deepened their sad expression; but, with all her weakness, a look of settled resolution lay on ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... eulogies that were lavished upon her.[887] On Monday, the ninth of June, she died, sincerely mourned by the Huguenots, who felt that in her they had lost one of their most able and efficient supports, the weakness of whose sex had not made her inferior to the most active and resolute man of the party. Even Catharine de' Medici, who had hated her with all her cowardly heart, made some show of admiring her virtues, now that she was no longer formidable and her straightforward ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... them forward as arguments. To say that he is merely "describing a New Testament fact in Old Testament phraseology'' may be true of the result rather than of his design. (2) Much beeides in the Bible—parable, metaphor, &c.—has been called an "accommodation,'' or divine condescension to human weakness. (3) German 18th-century rationalism (see APOLOGETICS) held that the Biblical writers made great use of conscious accommodation—intending moral commonplaces when they seemed to be enunciating Christian dogmas. Another expression for this, used, e.g., by J. S. Semler, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... were in the cabin a fit of moral weakness seemed to overcome Bickley, the first and I may add the last from which I ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... of his inches" in the regiment. Mulvaney had taught personal cleanliness and efficiency as the first articles of his companions' creed. "A dhirty man," he was used to say, in the speech of his kind, "goes to Clink for a weakness in the knees, an' is coort-martialled for a pair av socks missin'; but a clane man, such as is an ornament to his service—a man whose buttons are gold, whose coat is wax upon him, an' whose 'coutrements are widout a speck—that man may, spakin' in reason, do fwhat he likes an' dhrink ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... there was very little that was private in the private letters. His hilarity had almost a kind of hardness about it; no man's letters, I should think, ever needed less expurgation on the ground of weakness or undue confession. The main part, and certainly the best part, of such a book as Pictures from Italy can certainly be criticised best as part of that perpetual torrent of entertaining autobiography which he flung at his children as if they were his readers and his ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... was discussed throughout the whole day between Lady Sarah and her mother, the former bearing the old woman's plaintive weakness with the utmost patience, and almost succeeding, before the evening came, in inducing her mother to agree to rebel against the tyranny of her son. There were peculiar difficulties and peculiar hardships in the case. ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... Unsteadfast, and that cannot find Its centre of rest and harmony! For evermore before mine eyes This ghastly phantom flits and flies, And as a madman through a crowd, With frantic gestures and wild cries, It hurries onward, and aloud Repeats its awful prophecies! Weakness is wretchedness! To be strong Is to be happy! I am weak, And cannot find the good I seek, Because I feel and fear ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the tears ran down his cheek: "'Tain't weakness, Jack, 'tain't that—it's joy, it's love of God, Whose done so much for me. It's the glory, glory of them lines—Oh, ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... its downy poll and puckered face, her warm breath making the tiny lips twitch in sleep as it travelled across them. Then she lifted the little nightgown and looked at the pink feet nestling in their flannel wrapping. A glow sprang into her cheek; her great eyes devoured the sleeping creature. Its weakness and helplessness, its plasticity to anything she might choose to do with it, seemed to intoxicate her. She looked round her furtively, then bent and laid a hot covetous kiss on the small clenched hand. The child moved; had it been a little older it would have wakened; but Louie, hastily ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... able to search out a universal antidote to disease? Will he discover the means of supplying the human frame with such recuperative power as will nullify the law that prescribes to all flesh the dilapidation and decay of age, of weakness and of death? Will he search out some secret agency which will hold his body in perpetual youth, defying alike the attritions of age, and the ravages of disease? Will he discover how it is that time saps the strength, and steals away the ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... in a hole," he grumbled. "But as long as Winnie has no notion of throwing me over, I shall not let any coyote weakness get the better of me! Not ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... his prescription. A potion, was accordingly prepared, of which one ingredient was a spoonful of calomel! Having administered this, the Frenchman proceeded on his voyage, leaving the patient to abide the consequences of his docility. Such, however, was the weakness of his system, that he could neither throw it off, nor take it into circulation for five days. The crude poison was then voided, and a distressing salivation ensued, in the course of which all other morbid symptoms disappeared: by the middle of February, he was restored to health ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... palace, and laying the country under tribute. Azeem Khan made a precipitate retreat before the army of the Sikhs towards Cabool, without attempting to arrest their progress, and was so stung with remorse at the weakness of his conduct that he died on reaching that city. With the death of Azeem the royal authority was extinguished. The king fled to Lahore, and lived under the protection of his conqueror. Herat alone remained in the possession of one of the Suddoozye family. The brothers ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... I should plant my felicity in your general saying, good, or well, etc., were a weakness which the better sort of you might worthily contemn, if ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... that now he must have fallen very low in her estimation. And the idea that Iris must scorn him in her heart, however charitably she might strive to think of him, was a terrible one to the man who had fought so heroically for her sake to overcome his weakness, and had failed only when it had seemed to him that his failure—now—could mean nothing to ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... I. "There's a few million others with the same weakness, not countin' the ones that sleep in New Jersey but always register from here. Gone into some kind ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... the floor and delivered a telling speech. With trenchant and well chosen phrases he set forth the reasons why Normandy ought to be an intrinsic part of the French realm. The advantages of centralisation, the weakness of decentralisation, were skilfully drawn. The matter was one affecting the kingdom as a whole, in perpetuity; it was not for the temporal interests of the present incumbent of regal authority, who had only part ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... shall resort to any definitive measures. We have indeed a reputation in Europe for saying so much and doing so little that we shall not be believed in earnest until we act in a manner not to be mistaken." "I am persuaded this Government has presumed much on our weakness and divisions, and that it continues to believe that we have not energy and union enough to make effective war. Nor is this confined to the ministry, but extends to the leaders of the Opposition." "Mr. Perceval is well known to calculate ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... we can control ourselves. If we couldn't, remorse would lose half its meaning. I could never feel remorse because I had been mad—horror, perhaps, but not remorse. It seems to me that remorse is our sorrow for our own weakness, the heart's cry of 'I need not have done the hateful thing, and I did it, I chose to do it!' But I could pity, I could pity, and ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... not necessary. Do you understand—absolutely, never necessary. That which took place yesterday—well, that's an accident. My weakness, let's say. Even more, a momentary baseness, perhaps. But, by God, believe me, I didn't at all want to make a mistress out of you. I want to see you my friend, my sister, my comrade ... Well, that's ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... slumber drowned my eyes, and seeing that the struggle was hopeless, I let my hands drop in weariness, and was once more carried to the shores of delusion.... Serapion exhorted me most fervently, and never ceased reproaching me with my weakness and my lack of zeal. One day, when I had been more agitated than usual, he said to me, "There is only one way to relieve you from this haunting plague, and, though it be extreme, we must try it. Great evils need heroic remedies. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... of Indian negotiation, all having in view the relieving of Kansas from her aboriginal encumbrance. No means were too underhand, too far-fetched, too villainous to be resorted to. Every advantage was taken of the Indian's predicament, of his pitiful weakness, political and moral. The reputed treason of the southern tribes was made the most of. Reconstruction measures had begun for the Indians before the war was over and while its issue was very far from being determined ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... resultant of that second factor's forces. Moreover, very subtle men do not aim at things of this sort, or aiming, fail, because subtlety of intelligence involves subtlety of character, a certain fastidiousness and a certain weakness. Now that the garrulous period, when a flow of language and a certain effectiveness of manner was a necessary condition to political pre-eminence, is passing away, political control falls more and more entirely into the hands of a barristerish ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... crimped border that had been Ellen's own when she was a baby and her mother's pride, and I brought it and put it in her arms, and it was clay-cold in my hands as I carried it. And she laid its head on her breast as well as she could for her weakness; and father, who was leaning over her, nigh mad with love and being so ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... proof of this, in that when the year was up on May 10, 1843, no Report was published, and no meetings on the subject were held; and also when the second year had passed away, I still did not publish another account, because a weakness in one of my eyes seemed to point it out that the Lord's time had not yet come, although by forcing the matter I might even then have written the Report. But whilst I do not write the Reports for the sake of obtaining money, ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller
... had done without any authority from her grandson, simply encouraged in her object by his saying in his weakness, that he would think of her proposition. So intent was she on her business that she was resolved to have everything ready if only he could once be brought to say that Peter Morton should be his heir. Having abandoned all hopes for her ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... with passionate reverence upon the teaching of their adored master. Conspicuous among these was Arthur Clough. Having been sent to Rugby at the age of ten, he quickly entered into every phase of school life, though, we are told, 'a weakness in his ankles prevented him from taking a prominent part in the games of the place'. At the age of sixteen, he was in the Sixth Form, and not merely a Praepostor, but head of the School House. Never did Dr. Arnold have an apter pupil. This earnest adolescent, ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... influences of spring. Light natures develop best in sunshine: and so long as life asked no hard things of her, Evelyn could be admirably sweet-tempered and self-forgetful—even to the extent of curbing her weakness for superfluous hats and gloves and shoes. A genuine sacrifice, this last, if not on a very high plane. But the limits of such natures are set, and their feats of virtue or ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... times look dark. Deaths prevail among us, also hunger and naked. We almost conclude (that we will have) to stay all winter At noon drawd meat and rice. Cold increases. At night suffer with cold and hunger. Nights verry long and tiresome, weakness prevails. ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... and aid of Christ; then commit the keeping of his person to his true friends; then suspect and avoid all strange folk, and liars, and such people as she had already warned him against; then beware of presuming on his strength, or the weakness of his adversary, and neglecting to guard his person — for every wise man dreadeth his enemy; then he should evermore be on the watch against ambush and all espial, even in what seems a place of safety; though ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... now overshadows us does not arise from real grievances. Plotters for disunion avail themselves of the weakness of the executive to precipitate revolution. South Carolina has taken the lead. The movement would be utterly insignificant if confined to that state. She is still in the Union, and neither the President nor Congress has the power to consent to her withdrawal. This can only be by a change in the ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... at him with a countenance full of unutterable woe and weakness. What was he to say on such a subject in such a company? There sat his wife and daughter, his veritable wife and true-born daughter, on whom he was now dependent, and in whose hands he lay, as a sick man does lie in the hands of women: ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... meantime Dorothy was reproaching herself for her weakness in surrendering. She would meet Quentin, perhaps be placed beside him. While she could not or would not speak to him, the situation was sure to be uncomfortable. And they would think she was giving in to them, and he would think she was ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... remembered; when we recollect the exhaustion of Austria, the menacing insurrection of Hungary, the feuds and jealousies of the German princes, the strength and activity of the Jacobite party in England, the imbecility of nearly all the Dutch statesmen of the time, and the weakness of Holland if deprived of her allies, we may adopt his words in speculating on what would have ensued, if France had been victorious in the battle, and "if a power, animated by the ambition, guided by the fanaticism and directed by the ability of that of Louis ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... with him that impressed itself very distinctly upon my mind was about religion. He had been thinking—so he told me—very deeply about Christianity, its strength and weakness. "Its weakness, nowadays," he said, "is the mistake of confusing it with the principles advocated by any one of the bodies that profess to represent it. When one sees in the world so many bodies—backed by wealth, tradition, prestige—shouting, 'We are the ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... "none of them very conclusive! I like to meet my friends in the first place; and then a liturgy has a charm for me. It has a beauty of its own, and I like ceremony. It is not that I think it sacred—only beautiful. But I quite admit the weakness of it, which is simply that it does not appeal to everyone, and I don't think that our Anglican service is an ideal service. It is too refined and formal; and many people would feel it was more religious if it were ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... as ridiculous the promised millennium of supreme reason and perfected man. From a long experience in the management of public affairs, they learned that our new government was in danger from its weakness rather than from its strength; hence they rejected the fatal doctrine of State rights, the root of the greatest political evil, Secession. In the theories and in the measures of the Democrats, in the very absurdity of the accusations made against themselves, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." He supported this in a long and comprehensive speech covering the whole ground on which the demand is based, quoting from the favorable reports of the judiciary committees, exposing the weakness and fallacy of the objections, and making an unanswerable argument on the justice of ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... To forget and forgive. Ah, Katrine, time helps us there! It does almost all of the work, so it's little credit we need take either for the forgiving or forgetting. But to try to understand! When those we love have hurt us or injured us, to study why it was done: what inherited weakness in them, what fault of their environment brought it about, to study to understand, ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... three having forgotten their slight differences in making common, secret cause against the Dauntreys, or, rather, against Lady Dauntrey; for they were inclined to like and be sorry for her husband, pitying him because misfortune or weakness had brought him to the pass of marrying such a woman. "You could make a whole macadamized road out of her ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... subcutaneous injection of morphia. The curtains part, and the Colonel, in waterproof and a dreadnought cap, comes noiselessly in. "No change," Saxham answers to the mute inquiry. "I anticipate none before midnight. Of course, the weakness is progressive." ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Lord Himself, I know it, has also willed it should be given for some time past, but I had not the courage to attempt it. And I pray it may be to His praise and glory, and a help to my confessors; who, knowing me better, may succour my weakness, so that I may render to our Lord some portion of the service I owe Him. May all creatures ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... had made the attempt to board as stowaway an outward-bound steamship and sailing vessel for a South American port; but he had failed, for the Eyes were upon him—always the Eyes wherever he went, whenever he looked, Eyes that were spotting him. In the weakness consequent upon prolonged fasting and the protracted exposure during his journey from Maine, this horror was becoming an obsession bordering on delirium. It was even now beginning to dull the two senses of sight and hearing—at ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... Bishop to go further. He admitted Morales into minor orders, gave him the tonsure, and thus, having placed him above the temporal power, enabled him to brave the Governor openly. The Bishop's nephew, taking the Governor's kindness for weakness, broke publicly into insulting terms about him. The Governor's brother, Father Hinostrosa, pressed him to vindicate his dignity, but he refused, saying he wanted peace at any price. This policy the Bishop did not understand, for all ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... bad nature of the water, fever, which carried off many of the men and reduced others to the greatest state of weakness, broke out on board. To so helpless a condition was the crew reduced that they were unable to carry the ship into Cape Town Harbour, and would have had to keep at sea had not a Dutch captain sent a hundred men on board to take ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... check. You see there must have been a weakness in the strata at that point—perhaps it had already started to check there, when the force of the explosion split it wide open. The opening is large enough to admit a man's body. Hold your lights down here while I examine this rubbish that has ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... himself been there; one part of us remained idle, and we were too much blended in one another when we were together; the distance of place rendered the conjunction of our wills more rich. This insatiable desire of personal presence a little implies weakness in the fruition ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... schemes. A glance at a girl's dressing-table is sufficient for the intimate friend—she does not need to ask questions; and indeed, there are few situations in life in which the necessity for direct questions is not a confession of individual weakness. ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... those days war was a matter of personal valour and of individual bravery. On that account, therefore, the men who were selected as their soldiers were among the healthiest of the nation. Those who by reason of bodily infirmity or inherent weakness were unfitted for military prowess were left alone. But, as Maclaren has well pointed out, the object of systematic and proper exercise is not for the production of a race of soldiers, though a certain proportion of the population ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... your fear and suspicion are leaving you, and curiosity is balancing against indolence. I do not bid you to make an effort to will; I leave it entirely to you to determine now whether you will struggle against weakness or submit to it; whether you will begin to use your sleeping will-power or else ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... dangerous to grant aught to force; and that if the rabble be suffered to become, even for an hour, the masters, they will soon become as wild beasts. It was so in France, and it will be so wherever, by the weakness of the authorities, the mob is allowed to raise its head and to deem itself master of everything. All this evil has been brought about by the cowardice of the garrison of Rochester Castle. Had they done their duty they could have defended the place for weeks ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... out upon us from the best portraits of Luther tell us a great deal about the man. Strong, massive, not at all elegant; he stands there, firm and resolute, on his own legs, grasping a Bible in a muscular hand. There is plenty of animalism—a source of power as well as of weakness—in the thick neck; an iron will in the square chin; eloquence on the full, loose lips; a mystic, dreamy tenderness and sadness in the steadfast eyes— altogether a true king and a leader ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... to Vercingetorix, as he fell down and cast his arms at Caesar's feet, these words: "Bravest of men, thou hast conquered a brave man." It is not necessary to have faith in the rhetorical compliment, or to likewise reject the mixture of pride and weakness attributed to Vercingetorix in the account of Dion Cassius. It would not be the only example of a hero seeking yet some chance of safety in the extremity of defeat, and abasing himself for the sake of preserving ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... heart the eager, rejoicing power to meet all demand. Before him, desolation and great darkness! And his soul was not shaken. His countrymen were thrilled with instant, profound and universal sympathy. Masterful in his mortal weakness, he became the center of a nation's love, enshrined in the prayers of a world. But all the love and all the sympathy could not share with him his suffering. He trod the wine-press alone. With unfaltering front he faced death. With unfailing tenderness he took leave of life. Above ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... inclined to rule his dukedom, for he grew a stranger to his estate, so transported and wrapt was he in secret studies. He confesses that his library was dukedom enough for him, and that he had volumes that he prized above his dukedom. This was his weakness, and upon this his false brother preyed, until one night in the dead of darkness the Duke and the crying Miranda were set adrift in the rotten carcass of a boat, which the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... others did not laugh. They knew their chum too well for that. He had proven more than once that when it came to a pinch he could conquer his natural weakness, and show the right spirit of bravery, especially if it were one of his comrades who ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... in a few hasty words, what I intended, directing her to get into the smallest canoe the moment we reached the beach, and then lie down flat in the bottom of it. We hurried forward, for increasing weakness and an occasional swimming of objects before my sight, warned me that my strength was rapidly failing with the blood which was ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... be fluid or clotted; it is usually of dark color. The longer it remains in the stomach the darker it becomes. There may be great weakness and faint feeling on attempting to rise before a vomiting of blood. The contents of the bowels when passed ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... I approached the door and tried it. It was locked, but at the sound of the turning knob a sad, dreary moan arose from within—a cry of mingled fear and weakness. The sound of that moaning voice seemed familiar to my ear. What ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... prophecies; and men Who made earth tremble with majestic deeds, Trembled themselves at fortune's lightest threat. I like it not. My father named this match While I boiled over with vindictive wrath Towards Guido and Ravenna. Straight my heart Sank down like lead; a weakness seized on me, A dismal gloom that I could not resist; I lacked the power to take my stand, and say— Bluntly, I will not! Am I in the toils? Has fate so weakened me, to work its end? There seems a fascination in it, too,— A morbid ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... gentleman who has taken a little more culture than is good for the fibre of his character. He is certainly a man of many attainments and of very considerable native faculty, but he staggers under the weight of his own excellences. The weakness is common enough in itself, but it is not common in combination with such powers as Mr. James possesses. He is vastly the superior of the common run of men, but he makes his own knowledge of that fact too clear. It is ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... came from on board men-of-war. He was rarely troubled with visits from inspecting officers; in fact, after a certain memorable occurrence, the commander of the station let him alone. A very shrewd officer wished to show his own cleverness, and to find out his men's weakness; so one night, when thick clouds were flying across the moon, he crept round the bay in a six-oared cutter, ran ashore on the sand, hauled up half a dozen empty kegs, and told his men to bury them in the sand. This ingenious captain proceeded as he fancied smugglers would have done, and ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... were forced to leave our oxen with a guide, who was to take them to Magungo, and wait for our arrival. We commenced the descent of the steep pass on foot. I led the way, grasping a stout bamboo. My wife, in extreme weakness, tottered down the pass, supporting herself on my shoulder, and stopping to rest every twenty paces. After a toilsome descent of about two hours, weak with years of fever, but for the moment strengthened ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... be resorted to in aid of her direct endeavours. For instead of the muscles obtaining increased power and strength by these efforts (to enforce a good carriage), they are enfeebled, and soon become more and more incapable of performing what is required of them. This fact soon becomes perceptible; weakness is noticed; but instead of correcting this by the only rational mode, that of invigorating the weakened muscles, mechanical aid is called in to support them, and laced waistcoats are resorted to. These undoubtedly give support—nay, they may be so used as almost ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... did not feel safe from pursuit; and the total absence of all knowledge of her whereabouts in the midst of the wide expanse of dreary prairie around her, with the uncertainty of ever again looking upon a friendly face, caused her to realize most vividly her own weakness and entire dependence upon the Almighty, and she raised her thoughts to ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... over Minnie weepingly returned his ring, Told him his "unhappy weakness" stopped all ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... she began suddenly to droop and affect a languor and weakness she was far from feeling, for she had really never been better in her life, and Archie knew it, and watched her with dismay as she enacted the role of the interesting invalid to perfection. A little hacking ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... hear what the man has to say—no creation of mortal mind is perfect. Perchance he has detected a weakness that it will be well to know at once. Come, my good fellow, and what may be the one contingency I ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... design, came again the next morning the first thing; and when he spoke to his wife, and she answered, a toad sprang out of her mouth at every word, as a piece of gold had done before. So he asked what had happened, and the old woman said, "That is produced by her weakness, she will soon lose ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... also founded in natural truth and justice, has no binding power, even though it be supported by the army and navy of England. Humanity was on the side of America, and made her small numbers and physical weakness as strong as all that is good and right in the world. All appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, there is nothing real but right. Had America fought only for herself, she ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... in moist eyes and trembling hands. It was impossible to leave her alone at such a time. . . . Then had come the farewell. "God be with you, my son! Do your duty, but be prudent." Not a tear nor a sign of weakness. All her family had advised her not to accompany her son to the railway station, so his sister had gone with him. And upon returning home, Marguerite had found her mother rigid in her arm chair, with a set face, ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... His adversaries having begun the attack, he has the advantage of answering them, and remains unanswered himself. A solid reply might yet completely demolish what was too feebly attacked, and has gathered strength from the weakness of the attack. The merchants were certainly (except those of them who are English) as open-mouthed at first against the treaty, as any. But the general expression of indignation has alarmed them for the strength of the government. They have feared the shock would be too great, and have chosen ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Leucadian ship, he was induced by him to leave his occupation and travel; that, in company with this captain, he visited the various countries around the shores of the Mediterranean, and at last was left at Ithaca, in consequence of a weakness in his eyes. While in this island, he was entertained by a man of fortune named Mentor, who narrated to him the stories upon which afterwards the Odyssey was founded. On the return of Mentes, he accompanied him to Colophon, where he became totally blind. He then ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... her Understanding: and tho' here he has the liberty of telling what Lyes he pleases, as to the Prime-Cost, and the Money he has refused, yet he trusts not to them only; but attacking her Vanity, makes her believe the most incredible things in the World, concerning his own Weakness, and her superior Abilities. He had taken a Resolution, he says, never to part with that Piece or Set under such a Price, but she has the power of talking him out of his Goods beyond any body he ever sold to: ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... prefer to say "denuded"—brain may be fully capable of sane thought, except on some one topic, and able to exercise every intellectual function except of a particular order. Or there may be mental weakness and neurotic susceptibility in regard to a special class of impressions. It would be difficult to name any form of act or submission which may not be the outcome of incipient or limited disease. The practical difficulty ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... in the affair of the Blue Diamond, Ganimard caught him again. He has his weakness, Lupin—it's women. It's a very common weakness in these masters of crime. Ganimard and Holmlock Shears, in that affair, got the better of him by using his love for a woman—'the fair-haired lady,' she was called—to ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... novel organization, I cannot but admire their zeal and courage in dredging among the submerged masses with such spiritual apparatus as they can devise. They are doing a work that God has honored, and that has reached and rescued a vast number of outcasts. Their chief weakness is that they appeal mainly to the emotions, and give too little solid instruction to their ignorant hearers. Their chief danger is that when the strong arm of their founder is taken away he may not leave successors who can ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... rich quality the overtones just indicated are present in their fulness, while tone that is weak and thin is made so by the absence or weakness of the overtones. I have stated that the quality of a tone depends on the form of its vibrations, and that the form of its vibrations is determined by the character of the resonator. We can now amplify this by saying that while the relative presence or absence of ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... too good for this world," said Isabella, "as Manfred is execrable; but think not, lady, that thy weakness shall determine for me. I swear, hear me all ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... comfort, and protect her. It was as if to-night he had discovered the missing key to a puzzle or the missing element in some chemical combination. Like most big men, his mind was essentially a protective mind; weakness drew out the best that was in him. And it was only to-night that Elizabeth had given any sign of having any weakness in her composition. That clear vision which had come to him on his long walk came again now, that ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... believe that if these wrongs had been resented and resisted in the first instance the present war might have been avoided. One outrage, however, permitted to pass with impunity almost necessarily encouraged the perpetration of another, until at last Mexico seemed to attribute to weakness and indecision on our part a forbearance which was the offspring of magnanimity and of a sincere desire to preserve friendly relations with ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Polk • James Polk
... of it is, that when they suffer from this weakness, which you call sensitiveness, they think that they are made of finer material than other people. Men shouldn't be made of Sevres china, but of good stone earthenware. However, I don't want to abuse him, ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... old gentleman liked to feel that he had so much money at command (a weakness of human nature common enough), or whether he thought he could increase the produce of his farm by putting it in the soil, it is not possible to say. He certainly put the five hundred out of sight somewhere, for when his son succeeded him it was nowhere to be found. After ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... with his son about two hours, telling him of his own youth, of his toils, of men; their terrible power, and of their weakness; of how they live, and sometimes pretend to be unfortunate in order to live on other people's money; and then he told him of himself, and of how he rose from a plain working man to be proprietor of a large concern. The boy listened ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... Weakness from the loss of blood began to grow on me as Lieutenant Hartzell and I made our way through the deepening shadows of the wooded hillside in the rear of the field on which I had been shot. In an upright position of walking the pains in my head seemed to increase. We stopped ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... maiden on his arm, all wounded and bleeding, his own body lacerated and torn, yet unyielding as ever, does the brave Moscharr pursue his flight. But he feels as if the moment of death was near at hand. Exhausted by his almost superhuman efforts to escape, he finds a weakness and trembling stealing over his limbs, and he faints, and falls with his lovely burthen to the earth, at the very moment of victory and safety. The Manitou has reached him, and, with a fiend-like laugh on his horrid face, bends exultingly forward to seize his helpless ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... am in is used for secession soldiers exclusively. One man, about forty years of age, emaciated with diarrhoea, I was attracted to, as he lay with his eyes turn'd up, looking like death. His weakness was so extreme that it took a minute or so, every time, for him to talk with anything like consecutive meaning; yet he was evidently a man of good intelligence and education. As I said anything, he would lie a moment perfectly still, then, with ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... long been the battle-ground of the Bourbons and the Hapsburgs; and their rivalries, aided by civic dissensions, had reduced the people that once had given laws to Europe into a condition of miserable weakness. Europe was once the battle-field of the Romans: Italy was now the battle-field of Europe. The Hapsburgs dominated the north, where they held the rich Duchy of Milan, along with the great stronghold of Mantua, and some scattered imperial fiefs. A ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... the rope hung loose. 'O sir,' he added when the sad tale was told—'O sir, be warned by me, and never let yourself stray into his presence! His subtle tongue, like dropping honey, melts into the heart, and ere one be aware, his power is gone and weakness doth remain.' ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... and sank into a chair. His hands were trembling, this sign of weakness angered him and he got up and rang the bell and ordered his valet who had come up with him, to ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... vanity and his weakness for women. From Tom Morse he had heard of his offer to McRae for the girl. Now he had no doubt what ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... Cinchona acutifolia of Ruiz and Pavon. To moderate the pleasures of this discovery, the examinador came up leaning upon the shoulder of his principal assistant, Eusebio, complaining of a frightful headache, and a weakness so extreme that he could not put one foot before ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... most selfish and turbulent characters we find in the whole aboriginal history of Long Island. Had he and his tribe been more powerful than they were, they would have left a bloody page on the annals of Long Island; as it was, it was his weakness alone ...
— John Eliot's First Indian Teacher and Interpreter Cockenoe-de-Long Island and The Story of His Career from the Early Records • William Wallace Tooker
... Marlowe got into the habit of walking two or three times a day past the cottage of Mrs. Barton, in the hope of seeing the mysterious stranger. He did this for several days, but did not succeed in his object. The reason was that Mr. Barton was confined by weakness first to the bed, and then to the ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... result of very simple tricks. "The most astonishing feature of Monsieur Davey's investigation," writes the author of this account, "is not the marvellousness of the tricks themselves, but the extreme weakness of the reports made with respect to them by the noninitiated witnesses. It is clear, then," he says, "that witnesses even in number may give circumstantial relations which are completely erroneous, but whose result is THAT, IF THEIR DESCRIPTIONS ARE ACCEPTED AS EXACT, ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... became sore, my bowels were constipated, and my prospects for recovery were not very flattering. I stated my case to another physician, and he advised me to take five to ten drops of Magende's solution of morphine, two or three times a day, for the weakness and distress in my stomach, and a blue pill every other night to relieve the constipation. The morphine produced such a deathly nausea that I could not take it, and the blue pill failed to relieve ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... not pluck it up by the roots. The flax is reduced to a smoking ember; but He will fan the decaying flame. Why wound thy loving Saviour's heart by these repeated declensions? He will not—cannot give thee up. Go, mourn thy weakness and unbelief. Cry unto the Strong for strength. Weary and faint one! thou hast an Omnipotent arm to lean on. "He fainteth not, neither is weary!" Listen to His own gracious assurance: "Fear not, for I am with thee. Be not dismayed, for I am thy God. I will strengthen thee; yea, I ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... can smile in the teeth of death, and usually does. But he then smiles for the same reason that he smiles at other times. There is neither defiance nor hypocrisy in the smile; nor is it to be confounded with that smile of sickly resignation which we are apt to associate with weakness of character. It is an elaborate and long-cultivated etiquette. It is also a silent language. But any effort to interpret it according to Western notions of physiognomical expression would be just about as successful as an attempt to interpret Chinese ideographs ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... things we relieved our hunger; but nothing could relieve our grief, fatigue and want of sleep, and we were so sore depressed by the dreadful situation in which we were placed, that we were ready to die, and were reduced to extreme weakness. Having lost all hope of rejoining the ships, which we now concluded were either lost or gone homewards, we knew not how to conduct ourselves. We were in a strange and distant country, inhabited by a people whose manners and customs were entirely different from ours; and to attempt ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... character, for he had long passed the charm of youth. His hair, worn long, was white as snow; he must have been verging upon sixty. His face was pale and very pure in expression; his eyes were large, dark, and singularly soft and luminous, without a trace of age about them, or of their early weakness. He was tall and powerfully made, and a tendency to embonpoint only added to his dignity and importance. He had a fund of quiet humour about him also, which ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... leave it all behind her when she is older. Sentimentality may be considered the last disease of childhood; measles, hooping-cough, and scarlatina having been successfully overcome, if the girl passes through this peril unscathed, and no weakness is left in her mental constitution, she will probably be a woman of sane body and mind. Alice is much given to day-dreams, and to reading novels by stealth; she is very romantic, and would dearly ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... Henry. It is not in man to control his destiny, and mine appears to be to love with a fervor that must bear me, ere long, to my grave. Of this, however, be assured—that, whatever my weakness, or infatuation, as you may be pleased to call it, THAT passion shall never be gratified at the expense of my honor. Deeply— madly as I doat upon her image, Miss Montgomerie and I have met ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... although she was to the average eye a stout, able-bodied, middle-aged woman; but David had not the average eye, and he saw her as she really was, not as she seemed. There had always been about her a little weakness and dependency which had appealed to him. Now they seemed fairly to cry out to him like the despairing voices of the children whom he had never had, and he knew he loved her as he had never loved her before, with a love which had budded and flowered and fruited and survived ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... that the excitement of the journey overland had kept him up or not, but as we went on he became much weaker and slept more, until Royce became anxious and alarmed about him. But he did not know it himself; he had grown so sure of his recovery then that he did not understand what the weakness meant. He fell off into long spells of sleep or unconsciousness, and woke only to be fed, and would then fall back to sleep again. And in one of these spells of unconsciousness he died. He died within two days of land. He had no home and no country and no family, as I told you, and we ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... louder roared the howling wind and brighter the glaring lightning flashed, while fiercer grew the conflict in Fanny's bosom. Her faith was weak, and well nigh blotted with tears of human weakness. But He, whose power could stay the storm without, could also still the agony within, and o'er the troubled waters of that aching heart ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... cause (the pradhana) will be so likewise. This is what the Sutra means to say.—We have thus established a second reason, proving that the circumstance of there being no room left for certain Sm/ri/tis does not constitute a valid objection to our doctrine.—The weakness of the trust in reasoning (apparently favouring the Sa@nkhya doctrine) will be shown later on under II, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... not mean weakness or moral cowardice. The dignity that forbids one to be rude also forbids one to endure insolence. A gentleman may scathe a liar in plain unvarnished terms, and yet not lose a particle of his own repose of manner; and the higher his own standards ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... your interest is sweet and salutary to me. It is weakness, but I cannot hear a young girl spoken of without thinking of ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... said, a free woman, and who can gainsay you? But I have known you, Edith, since we played as boy and girl on the heather-hills together. I will save you from this man's cunning and from your own foolish weakness." ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... violently and not attempting to move. At this juncture I chanced to slip my hand into my jacket pocket, when it came into contact with some half-dozen small sweet biscuits for which I had rather a weakness. These I had slipped into my pocket the last thing before leaving the wagon and had then entirely forgotten; and the fancy seized me to offer one of them to the colt. He smelt at it for a moment or two, and then, somewhat hesitatingly, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... to hate my mistress swear, But soon my weakness find; I make my oaths when she's severe, But break ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... that he was. Three times they tried and suffered. Their boldest were lying about him. The first to go down was the Bulldog. Learning wisdom now, the Dogs held back, less sure; but his square-built chest showed never a sign of weakness yet, and after waiting impatiently he advanced a few steps, and thus, alas! gave to the gunners their long-expected chance. Three rifles rang, and in the snow Garou went down at last, his ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... his hand healed, and he resumed his accustomed avocations; but no invitation, however urgent, could win him again to the house of Mr. Cavendish. "I have proved my own weakness—I will not place myself again in the way of temptation," was the language of his heart. Apologies became awkward. He felt that he must seem to his friend ungracious if not ungrateful; and one day observing unusual seriousness in ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... the imperative necessities of his nature that he moulds for himself these outward emblems of his ideas and aspirations. Yet they are only emblems; and since, like all other human things, they partake of the ignorance and weakness of the times in which they were framed, it is inevitable that with the growth of knowledge and the expansion of thought they must presently be outgrown. When this happens, there follows what Carlyle calls the "superannuation of symbols." Men wake to the fact that ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... looked into her pale face, I could not help fearing that she was close to her Father's house in a higher sense than she meant the words—close to that "house of many mansions, eternal in the heavens;" for she seemed to have, in her weakness, but little hold upon ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... the retreat of this elder, the magician was visited by one of those worthies known among the Romans by the appellation of haeredipetae, who had amassed a large for-tune by a close attention to the immediate wants and weakness of raw, inexperienced heirs. This honourable usurer had sold an annuity upon the life of a young spendthrift, being thereto induced by the affirmation of his physician, who had assured him his patient's constitution ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... for obtaining money, for he could not bring himself to renounce this delightful life. He loved the woman too well to cross the freaks of the mistress. He was one of those men who, through self-love or through weakness of character, can refuse nothing to a woman; false shame overpowers them, and they rather face ruin than make the admissions: "I cannot——" "My means will not ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... minister of Queensland, known to his intimates as Merry Matt, and to the whole continent as a jolly good fellow. Being at Brisbane when the news of the wreck came, he instantly decided to join Captain Warren's rescue party. If he had a weakness for hearing his own voice, what could be expected in a man whose speeches filled volumes of legislative reports, but who was now in his retirement, deprived of these daily opportunities of addressing his ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... young inventor was returning to the wreck, he was halted halfway by a curious trembling feeling. At first he thought it was a weakness of his legs, caused by his cut, but a moment later he realized with a curious, sickening sensation that it was the ground—the island itself—that was ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... realise how tired and hungry he was until he had done a considerable distance, stumbling at every step, and at times falling prone upon the ground. His bruises he hardly felt until he had almost reached the foot of the long slope down which he was speeding. Then a great weakness came upon him, and his body trembled. Then he knew that he was very hungry and a long way from Big Draw. What should he do? How could he drag his tired body any farther through the night, with no trail to ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... dawning of the fifth day on the prayer trail. A little way he walked, and the world reeled about him,—to escape from the cloud of weakness he ran the way of the brook towards the far river—and then as a brook falls into the shadows of a cavern place, Tahn-te fell and lay where he fell. In the darkness closing over him he heard the rustle of ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... a gun without recoil and a great rapidity of loading is most urgently required. If the Cavalry is thus equipped with all that the conditions of War demand and modern technical skill can supply, then it will find in these—at least in part—compensation for its numerical weakness on condition that at the same time it also succeeds in raising its training to ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... ye, or I'll be comin' up to ye wid a bat in me hand," he concluded, knowing that it was not the time to display any sign of weakness. Then he went down the companion, entered the water, which had drained out with the ebbing tide until it reached no higher than to his waist, and waded aft to the lost captain's berth. He felt decidedly uneasy, shot glances to right and left at the narrow doors of the state-rooms and experienced ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... tribes have become extinct and others have left but remnants to preserve for awhile their once terrible names. Surrounded by the whites with their arts of civilization, which by destroying the resources of the savage doom him to weakness and decay, the fate of the Mohegan, the Narragansett, and the Delaware is fast overtaking the Choctaw, the Cherokee, and the Creek. That this fate surely awaits them if they remain within the limits of the States does not admit of a doubt. Humanity and national honor demand that every ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... in the same year. To me it is one of his most beautiful things: not perhaps at first, but after one has returned to it again and again, and then for ever. It has a quality that his earlier works lack, both of simplicity and pathos. The very weakness of ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... and I am glad I did so. She found in her simple, womanly heart just the counsel that I needed. One feels that she is used to giving consolation. She possesses the secret of that feminine deftness which is the great set-off to feminine weakness. Weak? Yes, women perhaps are weak, yet less weak than we, the strong sex, for they can raise us to our feet. She called me, "My dear Monsieur Fabien," and there was balm in the very way she said the words. I used to think she wanted refinement; she does not, she only lacks reading, ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... the enemy, the officer commanding it is to act in such manner as shall in his judgment be the most effectual for the total defeat of the enemy; either by reinforcing those parts of the fleet which are opposed to superior force, or by attacking such parts of the enemy's line as, by their weakness, may afford reasonable hopes of ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... subsisted on such limpets as he could find among the rocks, and the rain water which he discovered in their crevices. He was growing weaker and weaker, for though he had seen several vessels pass, he was unable from weakness to hail them; till, on the morning of the ninth day, an American schooner, the Adams, of Marblehead, Massachusetts, hove in sight, and his signal being seen, the master came on shore and saved him from the death which probably would have soon overtaken him. He was landed at Marblehead, ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... frame that gradually seemed to shrink back to my heart, and expire there in a feeling of mingled joy and pain. Perhaps the state of my health rendered me peculiarly susceptible of strong emotions: I am afraid I wept. The darkness, however, prevented this weakness from being witnessed by Ali, who came to announce that my dinner was ready. I went down the winding staircase to the vast lonely hall, where I usually ate alone—the master of the house being absent on a journey; but though my appetite ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... of game, and did not succeed in killing it, they prognosticated evil. If a woman, barefooted, crossed the road before them, they seized her, and drew blood from her forehead." This mixture of fear of visionary evils, and courage in opposing real ones, of credulity and distrust, strength and weakness, presents a singular view of the Highland character. It had, however, in many respects, no inconsiderable influence upon the contests of 1715 ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... substance, and is necessarily inadequacy of inward experience. Strictly speaking, there cannot be substantial error; for error, in regard to the substance of truth, is purely negative. It is not-seeing. It is failing to perceive the truth, either from want of opportunity, weakness of vision, or neglect in looking. But formal error is not merely defect: it may also be mistake. We may misstate the truth, and say what is radically false. From this source come contradictions; and, where two ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... of deplorable anarchy, the populace using the arms with which they had driven out the Austrians, to establish a reign of murder and pillage. L.C. Farini restored something like order, but the general weakness of the power of government ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... been well acquainted with poverty: his father was a poor minister in Haynichen, with thirteen children; and Gellert, when quite a little fellow, was obliged to be a copying office-clerk: who can tell whether he did n't then contract that physical weakness of his? And now that he 's an old man, things will never go better with him; he has often no wood, and must be pinched with cold. It is with him, perhaps, as with that student of whom your brother has told us, ...
— Christian Gellert's Last Christmas - From "German Tales" Published by the American Publishers' Corporation • Berthold Auerbach
... peculiar to the Sierra country, had died, Amy closed her eyes, raised her hand to her heart, and sank slowly to the bank of the little creek. Her vivid colour, which had for a moment returned under the influence of her strong will and her indignation over her weakness, had again ebbed from ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... the floor, tried to hide himself without uttering one word of abuse, enduring their insults in silence. But at last they left him alone and gave up taunting him with being a "regular girl," and what's more they looked upon it with compassion as a weakness. He was always one of the best in the ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... in the rest of the church, you will always find the chapel of the Virgin bright with flowers and lights, for it seems as if all the religious tenderness of Brittany has concentrated there; it is the softest spot of its heart; it is its weakness, its passion, its treasure. Though there are no flowers in these parts, there are flowers in the church; though the people are poor, the Virgin is always sumptuous and beautiful. She smiles at you, and despairing souls go to warm ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... according to what it considers 'safe' principles—that is, according to the received maxims of the mercantile world then and thereand in this manner the directors of the Bank of England have acted nearly uniformly. Their strength and their weakness were curiously exemplified at the time when they had the most power. After the suspension of cash payments in 1797, the directors of the Bank of England could issue what notes they liked. There was no check; these notes could not come back upon the ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... with her request, giving every detail of my afternoon's experience. I reread the letter, and handed it to her, that she might read it herself. I described Mrs. Briggs and what I had seen of Mrs. Briggs' lodging-house. I described Miss Morley as best I could, dark eyes, dark hair and the look of weakness and frailty. I repeated our conversation word for word; I had forgotten nothing of that. Hephzy listened in silence. When ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... met a month before at Strong's rooms, came together again in Esther's studio to sit upon and judge the portrait they had suggested. Mr. Dudley, with some effort, climbed up from his library; Mrs. Murray again acted as chaperon, and even Mr. Murray, whose fancy for pictures was his only known weakness, came to see what Esther had made of Catherine. The portrait was placed in a light that showed all its best points and concealed as far as possible all its weak ones; and Esther herself poured out ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... have been in prison if I had not been so blindly forgetful of his weakness, poor man! I ought to have known better. But my vanity misled me; I must needs publish a great book, as if [said Mr. Caxton, looking round the shelves] there were not great books enough in the world! I must needs, too, think of advancing ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... shape of his folly absorbed him to the exclusion of all else, he would sit before his fire with the poker clutched in his hands and his elbows resting on his knees, poking between the bars of the grate, poking moodily, while under his breath he cursed the weakness that had ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... led WILLIAM to the Mercy Seat; And, oh, his visits there were truly sweet! Nor was it vain; two precious lives were spared, And the young parents were, afresh, prepared To grapple with their duties—growing large— Conscious of weakness in their full discharge. The babe proved cross and fretful; and, for years, Frequent convulsive fits filled them with fears; And quite unfitted her, in after life, For bearing a just share of toil and strife. This proved an exercise for faith and prayer, Until the fully felt that God's ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... expense to which he had been put in connection with the divorce proceedings? Was all that money to be wasted? Mr. Tapster suddenly saw the whole of his little world rising up in judgment, smiling pityingly at his folly and weakness. During the whole of a long and of what had been, till this last year, a very prosperous life, Mr. Tapster had always steered his safe course by what may be called the compass of public opinion, and now, when navigating an unknown sea, he could not afford ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various |
