"Infirmity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... peculiarities in Mr Sudberry's character, he was afflicted with a chronic tendency to dab his pen into the ink-bottle and split it to the feather, or double up its point so as to render it unserviceable. This infirmity, coupled with an uncommon capacity for upsetting ink-bottles, had induced him to hire a small clerk, whose principal duties were to mend pens, wipe up ink, and, generally, to attend to ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... said, on leaving his eastern home, after peace had been declared, for the then verge of civilization—the Ohio. Here the soldier lived to see the wilderness blossom like the rose, and here he died, grieving that infirmity prevented his flying from the din of the sledge hammer, and the busy hum of mechanical life. Mr. Duncan's father, in the vigor of manhood, crossed the Mississippi, and settled at the Cold Springs, a region then isolated from civilization, ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... of March 1823, Lord St Vincent was seized with a general feeling of infirmity which portended his speedy dissolution. He had a violent and convulsive cough; yet his intellects were strongly turned upon public events, and he expressed an anxiety to know all that could be known of events in France, which was then disturbed; of the Spanish revolution, which then threatened to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... suddenness. Everywhere the condition of the houses showed how hastily they had been abandoned; and the wild hurry of flight was shown still more clearly in the case of the woman—whose surroundings gave evidence that she had been a person of consequence—deserted in her age or infirmity and ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... from Zululand in T'Chaka's time—and she told me that all the people whom I had seen had died of fever. When they had died the other inhabitants of the kraal had taken the cattle and gone away, leaving the poor old woman, who was helpless from age and infirmity, to perish of starvation or disease, as the case might be. She had been sitting there for three days among the bodies when I found her. I took her on to the next kraal, and gave the headman a blanket ...
— Long Odds • H. Rider Haggard
... A king of Bavaria singing Wagner's operas among rocks and lakes; a brother of the king of Bavaria resembling Sigismund de Calderon by his epilepsy and insanity; Prince Rudolph showing that the double infirmity inherent in the paternal lineage of Charles the Rash and in the maternal line of Joanna the Mad continues in the Austrians; a recent king of Prussia itself shutting himself up in his room as in a gaol, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... he said? I have observed that the murderer dies with courage and firmness in many instances, but that does not make me think that it sanctified his crime; in fact, it makes no impression upon me one way or the other. When a man through old age or infirmity approaches death the intellectual faculties are dimmed, his senses become less and less, and as he loses these he goes back to his old superstition. Old age brings back the memories of childhood. And the great bard gave in the corrupt and besotted Falstaff—who ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... am undertaking? I have come to Paris this winter with the idea of collecting some; but if my horrible cold continues, my stay here will be useless! Am I going to become like the canon of Poitiers, of whom Montaigne speaks, who for thirty years did not leave his room "because of his melancholic infirmity," but who, however, was very well "except for a cold which had settled on his stomach." This is to tell you that I am seeing very few people. Moreover whom could I see? The war has opened many abysses. I have not ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... resistance. When he could free his eyes from the cloak he looked at the rescuer, who, unaware of his infirmity, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... is also represented in the Scripture as one who prays. We read in Rom. viii. 26, R. V., "And in like manner the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity; for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." It is plain from this passage that the Holy Spirit is not merely an influence that moves us to pray, not merely an illumination that teaches ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... not by fierce opposition to push doubt into error. When a drunkard died, he remembered that "his mother was an habitual drinker, and he was nursed on milk-punch, and the thirst was in his constitution"; so he hoped "that God saw it was a constitutional infirmity, like any other disease." He reduced the dogma of Total Depravity to the simple proposition, "that men by nature do not love God supremely, and their neighbor as themselves." He stoutly resisted the attempt to overawe belief, either his own or another's. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... bond of marriage to a squaw and to settle among the redskins, the coureurs de bois were none the less drones among their compatriots; they did not make up their minds to establish themselves in places where they might have become excellent farmers, until through age and infirmity they were rather a burden ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... habituated him to his present condition. Meek, uncomplaining, and zealous in the discharge of his duties, he has been allowed to hold his situation long beyond the usual period; and he will no doubt continue to hold it, until infirmity renders him incapable, or death releases him. As the grey-headed old man feebly paces up and down the sunny side of the little court-yard between school hours, it would be difficult, indeed, for the most intimate of his former friends to recognise their once gay and happy associate, in the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... God and holy Church? Child, if our holy Father the Pope were to tell me himself that she was there, I would not believe him. Do the angels go to Purgatory? Nay, I do verily believe that, seeing her infirmity, Christ our Lord did all the work of salvation for her, and that she sings now before ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... World for the benefit of members of the Convention. But if she were a confiding miss of "sweet sixteen," instead of the "strong-minded woman" that she is, and the blushes of all those brilliant signs were transfused into her own lovely cheeks, we suspect (such is the infirmity or the perversity of "those odious men") that she would make more conquests than she can reasonably expect to do with the intellectual blaze and brilliancy of this week's Revolution—splendid new signs and all. We fear the time is rather distant when ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... merely the speaking of a man. If it is, then it is certainly not worth coming to church for. Preaching, if it is of the right kind, is the voice of God. This we venture to say while well aware of its imperfections. In the best of preaching there is a large human element beset with infirmity; yet in all genuine preaching there is conveyed a message from Heaven. And, while it is good for people to go to church that they may speak to God, it is still better to go that He may speak to them. Nor, where God is authentically heard speaking to the heart, ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... mistress, with others their associates: see to what a condition they have reduced me by their incantations and witchcraft:" upon which he laid bare his arm, all shrivelled and decayed. But the counsellors, who knew that this infirmity had attended him from his birth, looked on each other with amazement; and, above all, Lord Hastings, who, as he had since Edward's death engaged in an intrigue with Jane Shore,[*] [20] was naturally anxious concerning the issue of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... professionalism; no doubt they could laugh at it themselves. But there is always a danger that we shall be enslaved by it; and it is the business of criticism to free us from that slavery, to make us aware of this last infirmity of great artists. We are on our guard easily enough against a professionalism that is out of fashion. The Wagnerian of a generation ago could sneer at the professionalism of Mozart; but the professionalism of Wagner seemed to him to be inspiration made constant and certain ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... England, materials for the early History of the State. An application made by Dr. Woods to Sir Thomas Phillipps revealed the existence of Hakluyt's Discourse. Dr. Woods set to work to edit this valuable document, but a fire destroyed most of his materials, and was followed by physical infirmity which forbade literary labour. Dr. Charles Deane's familiarity with the topics suggested by the matter in hand, and his position as a "Collaborateur" of Dr. Woods for some months, at once pointed him out as the right man to do the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... there were Lancastrian exiles who might take up the report. Her only safety was in being known, to the few who did meet her, as the convent-bred maiden whose home had been destroyed, and who was content to gain a livelihood as the assistant whom his wife's infirmity made needful. As to Sir Leonard, the knight's own grace and gratitude had endeared him, as well as the professional pleasure of curing him, and for the lady's sake he ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... no such thing here as poverty or lack of employment. There is work for all who are able to do it; and those who, by reason of age or infirmity, are unable to work, are all honourably provided for, so that they can live in the same comfort as though they did work. This is not charity or privilege, but the ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... toleration of helplessness which characterizes even relationship in its attendance upon chronic suffering and weakness, but to have acquired an unconscious habit of turning it to account. In his present sensitive condition, he even fancied that they flirted mildly over their parent's infirmity. ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... will not call her a ship twice in the same half-hour) leaked. She leaked fully, generously, overflowingly, all over— like a basket. I took an enthusiastic part in the excitement caused by that last infirmity of noble ships, without concerning myself much with the why or the wherefore. The surmise of my maturer years is that, bored by her interminable life, the venerable antiquity was simply yawning with ennui at every seam. But at the time I did not know; I knew generally very little, and ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... walking about as actively 261:15 as the youngest member of the company. This old man was so lame that he hobbled every day to the theatre, and sat aching in his chair till his cue was spoken, - a signal 261:18 which made him as oblivious of physical infirmity as if he had inhaled chloroform, though he was in the full pos- session of his ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... powerful emotion in these vast regions; and when beneath these immense domes you hear some old man dragging his feeble steps along the polished marble, watered with so many tears, you feel that man is imposing even by the infirmity of his nature which subjects his divine soul to so many sufferings; and that Christianity, the worship of suffering, contains the true guide for the conduct ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... object the worst That may be told, and utter all it can; It cannot find a blemish to be enforced Against him, other than he was a man, And built of flesh and blood, and did live here, Within the region of infirmity; Where all perfections never did appear To meet in any one so really, But that his frailty ever did bewray Unto the world that ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... ascribe to my own imbecility. No fault in thee Lord but in my infirmity, And want of respect in such gifts as ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... old [200] gentleman shewing himself at that instant, caused them to forbear the chase, and shelter themselves behind trees. He then endeavored to effect an escape, by flight, and the Indians followed after him. Age and consequent infirmity, rendered him unable long to continue out of their reach; and aware that they were gaining considerably on him, he wheeled to shoot. Both instantly sprang behind trees, and Morgan seeking shelter in the same manner, got behind a sugar, which ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... lame, aged, bedrid, or by real infirmity of body are unable to work, and otherwise incapable to provide for themselves, on proof made that it is really and honestly so they shall be taken into a college or hospital provided for that purpose, and ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... in the best things; for we hold those longest we take soonest, as the first scent of a vessel lasts, and the tint the wool first receives; therefore a master should temper his own powers, and descend to the other's infirmity. If you pour a glut of water upon a bottle, it receives little of it; but with a funnel, and by degrees, you shall fill many of them, and spill little of your own; to their capacity they will all receive and be full. And as it is fit to read the best authors to youth first, so ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... will always happen that in the space of ground on which a hundred men shall live, there will be always a number of persons who, by age and infirmity, are incapable of doing personal service, and as such persons are generally possessed of the greatest part of property in any country, their portion of service, therefore, will be to furnish each man with a blanket, which will make a regimental coat, jacket, and breeches, or clothes ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... clung to him through thirty years of practical life. Furthermore, if it must be admitted that he looked somewhat older than his sixty years, that fact was not to be accounted for by any acknowledged infirmity, unless, indeed, the stiff leg he had brought with him from his four years' service should ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... my country, and his people my brothers and sisters. He prays God to bless me and preserve me. How soft and gentle—how full of good-will and patience—are the manners of the blind in all countries! Full fed flesh and the prosperous are proud and cruel, those stricken with infirmity and misery show the milk of human kindness. This poor old gentleman prays all the day long. Prayer is his daily bread. The Arabs ask me if Said is my slave. I tell them the English have no slaves, and that it is against their religion, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... been heard in favor of downing the gallows. As usual the voice is a trifle vague and it babbles. Clear speech is the outcome of clear thought, and that is something to which Theosophists are not addicted. Considering their infirmity in that way, it would be hardly fair to take them as seriously as they take themselves, but when any considerable number of apparently earnest citizens unite in a petition to the Governor of their State, to commute the death sentence of a convicted assassin ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... the Second, generally conveyed from place to place by stage waggons. In the straw of these vehicles nestled a crowd of passengers, who could not afford to travel by coach or on horseback, and who were prevented by infirmity, or by the weight of their luggage, from going on foot. The expense of transmitting heavy goods in this way was enormous. From London to Birmingham the charge was seven pounds a ton; from London to Exeter twelve pounds a ton. [144] This was about ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... since he last appeared on our stage. Women had ceased to possess much attraction for his jaded eyes: gaming and speculation had gradually spread over the tastes once directed to other pursuits. His vivacity had deserted him in great measure, as years and infirmity began to stagnate and knot up the current of his veins; but conversation still possessed for and derived from him its wonted attraction. The sparkling jeu d'esprit had only sobered down into the quiet sarcasm; and if his wit rippled less freshly to the breeze of the ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of his natural character, and was accused, accordingly, of insulting arrogance and bad-heartedness. In this reversed character, we repeat, it was never our chance to see him. We know it from hearsay, and we mention it in connection with this sad infirmity of physical constitution; which puts it upon very nearly the ground of a ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... version. John, like all pious people, when he heard the lion's voice, followed by the "seven thunders," was filled with solemn awe, anticipating the coming dissolution of all things. It was not the only instance of his weakness and misapprehension, (ch. xix. 10;) nor is this infirmity peculiar to the apostle John; for we find other disciples mistaking "the times and the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power." (2 Thess. ii. 1-3.) These Thessalonians had misapprehended the language of Paul in his ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... the empire could rival him. He was the head of the Fudai Daimios. His family was called the Dodai or foundation-stone of the power of the Tokugawa dynasty. His ancestor, Ii Nawo Massa, had been lieutenant-general and right-hand man of Iyeyas. Ii Kamon No Kami, owing to the mental infirmity of the reigning Shogun, had lately become his regent. Bold, ambitious, able, and unscrupulous, Ii was the Richelieu of Japan. From this time on till his assassination on March 23, 1860, he virtually ruled the empire, ...
— The Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga
... usual calm dignity of demeanour, and thus adding to the strange fright that was growing upon Aurelia. "But you must understand that I would not—even in semblance—have dreamt of your being apparently linked to age, sorrow, and infirmity, save that—strange as it may seem—Lady Belamour has herself put into my hands the best means of protecting you, and finally, as I trust, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wrongs of life. That we should have any crosses to suffer at all; that there should be death and sickness and disease; that there should be poverty and misery, distress and worry, labor and sorrow; that there should exist any of these things, is to our infirmity, if we forget our sins and the sins of our race that have caused these evils, a trial and a test of fidelity. But still more is it difficult, except to minds that are deeply religious, to meet with the gentleness and serenity of faith the positive injuries—the ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... formula, ever after stereotype with him, that there are three concurring causes in the process of conversion: 'the Word of God, the Holy Spirit, and the human will, which, indeed, is not idle, but strives against its infirmity.'" (520.) ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... quickness of perception which most persons with his infirmity possess under such circumstances, transferred his glance from the professor to the young lady, and at once arrived at a pretty correct understanding of the difficulty. He was not embarrassed, for it had probably never occurred to him that his deafness was so much a defect as a difference of organization, ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... healthy-minded men he had an inherent suspicion of the abnormal. He could not but fear that persons unusually constituted in body must be the victims of some corresponding crookedness of spirit. But as the evening drew on he became easy on this point. Whatever Richard's physical infirmity, his nature was wholesome enough. Therefore when, at close upon ten o'clock, Lady Calmady arrived in person to insist that Dickie must go, there and then, straight to bed, she found a pleasant scene ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Presbytery, a single rival who is in any sense his match. The late Dr. Gibson was frequently accustomed to tackle him, and perhaps he sometimes did so successfully; but while the latter was undoubtedly an able debater, he lost ground from his impetuosity of temper—an infirmity to which Dr. Buchanan never gives way. In all circumstances he is cool, calculating, unruffled; he measures the full meaning and effect of every sentence; he can be fierce and withering, and still maintain a calm and composed ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... though at the first it did much dash and abash my spirit, yet being still by them desired and entreated, I consented to their request, and did twice at two several assemblies (but in private), though with much weakness and infirmity, discover my gift amongst them; at which they not only seemed to be, but did solemnly protest, as in the sight of the great God, they were both affected and comforted; and gave thanks to the Father of mercies, for the ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... voice: there be many imperfect sentences, many broken speeches, and many displaced words: according as the party that prayed, was either prevented with the swiftness of his thoughts, or interrupted with vehemency of joy or grief, or forced to surcease through infirmity, that he might recover more strength and cheerfulness by interminding God's former promises and benefits."[243] George Wither finds that the style of the Psalms demands a verse translation. "The language of the Muses," he declares, "in which the Psalms ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... the 5th of November found Seabury in Aberdeen. One might reasonably have supposed that all difficulties were now surmounted. But it was not so. It is not necessary to go into details; they would simply set forth a painful story of human infirmity and self-seeking. It is enough to say that while Seabury was travelling northward a letter—inspired at least by a clergyman in America—was sent from London to the Scottish Primus, containing a personal attack on the bishop-elect, ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... descended from the ancient Indians to the present lords of the soil. The Spanish historians who have written upon the conquest of Mexico, all mention the knowledge which the Mexican physicians had of herbs. It was supposed by these last, that for every infirmity there was a remedy in the herbs of the field; and to apply them according to the nature of the malady, was the chief science of these primitive professors of medicine. Much which is now used in European pharmacy is due to the research of Mexican doctors; such as sarsaparilla, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... remedy. Asaph began to cure himself when, instead of saying, "All things are against me," he said, "This is my infirmity," my fault; I am enough to turn a beehive sour. His cure was almost perfect when he said, "I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High." The cure for the blues is simple, then. First, own up to it that the largest part of your ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... but he is old enough to be my father; and if he were ever animated enough to be in love, must have long outlived every sensation of the kind. It is too ridiculous! When is a man to be safe from such wit, if age and infirmity will not ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... friend "E. V. K." has shown himself curiously unaffected by "that last infirmity of noble minds,"—his "clear spirit" heeds all too little its urgent "spur." The following sonnets are all we can pilfer from him. They ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... according to circumstances. In some instances the younger men and women were bound out to service for periods varying from three to twelve weeks. In others they were left free to maintain themselves by their own efforts, the state to provide for such as were incapable, through age or infirmity, of performing manual labour. Hundreds of those who were placed under control escaped and wandered, footsore and half clad, from town to town in the hope of meeting their relatives or of finding means to return to their former homes. Little record has been preserved of the journeyings of these ...
— The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline • Arthur G. Doughty
... and grow luminous,—uttering its fragment of the truth. Last, the voice of old age, and authority and matured experience, and divine illumination, old age encompassed by much doubt and weariness and human infirmity, a solemn, pondering voice, which, with God somewhere in the clear-obscure, goes sounding on a dim and perilous way, until in a moment this voice of the anxious explorer for truth changes to the voice of the unalterable justicer, the armed doomsman ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... strange to the attentive reader of Shakespeare. Hamlet seems the natural result of the mixture of father and mother in his temperament, the resolution and persistence of the one, like sound timber wormholed and made shaky, as it were, by the other's infirmity of will and discontinuity of purpose. In natures so imperfectly mixed it is not uncommon to find vehemence of intention the prelude and counterpoise of weak performance, the conscious nature striving to keep up its self-respect by a triumph ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... these months have an enervating effect on the system generally. In so far as the heat of summer produces disease, it at the same time tends to produce crime. Persons suffering from any kind of ailment or infirmity are far more liable to become criminals than are healthy members of the community. The intimate connection between disease and crime is a matter which must never be forgotten. In the present instance, however, the closeness of this connection ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... parties existed in both colonies; but Judge Pedder did not participate the political sympathies of Judge Forbes, and made no pretence to popular applause. To those who check the abuses of irresponsible power something is due; but when the balance of human infirmity is struck, it will not be always found in ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... at the moment of need. In her eagerness she committed the mistake of asking how he felt now, and received a tart reply. There was nothing the matter with him, nothing unusual—only his old complaint, increasing years and infirmity; still he was not to be treated ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... out of hearing, you may have noticed that I made no reply to this affecting speech. The old gentleman has grown quite deaf of late years,—an infirmity which was once a source of untold misery to his friends, to whom he was constantly appealing for their opinions, which they were obliged to shout in his ear. But now, happily, the world has about ceased ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... both have contributed splendid talents, spotless integrity, ardent patriotism, and disinterested sacrifices to the formation and administration of this Government, and that both have required a liberal indulgence for a portion of human infirmity and error. The revolutionary wars of Europe, commencing precisely at the moment when the Government of the United States first went into operation under this Constitution, excited a collision of sentiments and of sympathies which kindled all the passions and imbittered ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... disease with a stoicism worthy of the sages of antiquity and he had no illusion about the implacable illness which slowly but surely would result in his premature death. A constantly increasing deafness was his greatest trouble. This cruel infirmity had made frightful progress when, in 1899, the Arenes de Beziers opened its doors for the second time to Dejanire. In spite of everything, including his ill health which made the trip very painful, he wanted to see his work once more. He heard nothing, however—neither the artists, ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... one emotion than by another. For the strength of every emotion is defined by a comparison of our own power with the power of an external cause. Now the power of the mind is defined by knowledge only, and its infirmity or passion is defined by the privation of knowledge only: it therefore follows, that that mind is most passive, whose greatest part is made up of inadequate ideas, so that it may be characterized more readily by its passive ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... knocked down a hundred beggarly pandours, who respect neither sex nor infirmity. For the benefit of those who are not satisfied, I will state that I call myself Colonel Fougas of the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... manhood, it is my infirmity to look back upon those early days. Do I advance a paradox, when I say, that, skipping over the intervention of forty years, a man may have leave to love himself, without the imputation ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... had failed to catch, and Moina obeyed, but with so bad a grace, the Mme. d'Aiglemont had never permitted herself to make her modest request again. Ever since that day when Moina was talking or retailing a piece of news, her mother was careful to come near to listen; but this infirmity of deafness appeared to put the Countess out of patience, and she would grumble thoughtlessly about it. This instance is one from among very many that must have gone to the mother's heart; and yet nearly all of them might have ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... ophthalmology in a diagnosis of optical diseases, tell us of a symptom of infirmity which they call pseudoblepsis, or 'false sight.' Legal vision exhibits, now and then, a corresponding phase of unconscious perversion of sight, whereby objects are perceived that do not exist, and objects present become transformed, distorted; and such an ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... that others are more successful, but the popular renown of the specific survives in spite of all, probably thanks to a simple accident of identity between the name of the remedy and that of the infirmity: the Provencal for "chilblain" is tigno. From the moment when the chilblain and the nest of the Mantis were known by the same name were not the virtues of the latter obvious? So ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... heal their pains, they have recourse to another expedient, which however does not always prove equally efficacious; that is, to apply red hot iron to the part affected. Indeed, these Arabs are subject to few diseases. I have seen many old people, of both sexes, who were oppressed with no kind of infirmity. Sore eyes, and colics, are the most usual disorders among them. Children, above all, are exposed to these, though in other respects strong and robust. In the morning it is difficult for them to open their eyelids. With regard to the colic, I think it is occasioned by the verdigris which ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... public record, on the ground that the gross disparity between this punishment and that imposed for other more serious fines made it cruel and unusual, and as such, repugnant to the Bill of Rights.[14] No constitutional infirmity was discovered in a measure punishing as a separate offense each act of placing a letter in the mails in pursuance of a single ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... perfunctory letters, written with indifference by the daughter, and with difficulty by Mrs. Manstey, whose right hand was growing stiff with gout. Even had she felt a stronger desire for her daughter's companionship, Mrs. Manstey's increasing infirmity, which caused her to dread the three flights of stairs between her room and the street, would have given her pause on the eve of undertaking so long a journey; and without perhaps, formulating these reasons she had long ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... Bedott observed, we are all poor creatures. 'I do not speak as one that is exempt:' doubtless I have my full share of infirmity." ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... sufficient importance to convert the meagre pittance of a middling laird's younger brother into a decent maintenance, it is not improbable that a shrewd Scots wife may have thought his devotion to philosophy and poverty to be due to mere infirmity of purpose. But she lived till 1749, long enough to see more than the dawn of her son's literary fame and official importance, and probably changed her mind about "Davie's" force ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... much struck by the solemn figure of the mother, a very old woman, as she walked toward her old home with some of her remaining children. I had not thought to see her again, knowing her great age and infirmity. She was like a presence out of the last century, tall and still erect, dark-eyed and of striking features, and a firm look not modern, but as if her mind were still set upon an earlier and simpler scheme of life. An air of dominion cloaked her ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... difficult that I shall either have to relinquish it with shame or pursue it with opprobrium. Be that as it may, I neither do, nor ever shall judge it a fault, to support opinion by arguments, where it is not sought to impose them by violence or authority I maintain, then, that this infirmity with which historians tax the multitude, may with equal reason be charged against every individual man, but most of all against princes, since all who are not controlled by the laws, will commit the very same faults as are committed ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... times, and that of Principal Tulloch in our own more peaceful days. Nor did he cease to interest himself in the work of the Church which he loved so well and had served so faithfully. Perhaps it was to show his love for the Church as much as to gratify his own feelings that, amid great bodily infirmity, he undertook the journey to Edinburgh, in May 1898, to attend the General Assembly. He was unable, indeed, to be present there more than once or twice, and when on one occasion he occupied the Moderator's chair for a few minutes, a thrill of respectful sympathy ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... still shelter themselves against the storms of life. Christianity not only rescued a part of the population of the Roman empire from degradation and ruin; it not only had glorious witnesses or its transcendent power and beauty in every land, thus triumphing over human infirmity and misery as no other religion ever did; but it has also proved itself to be a progressively conquering power by the great and beneficent ideas which were planted in the minds of barbarians, as well as oriental Christians, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... the first gentleman's name. It was a mischance, sir, but so far as I can see one that might have happened to anybody. You say that even after apologising—for on reflection I am always willing to apologise for any conduct into which my infirmity of temper may have betrayed me—it is impossible for me to continue here as your assistant. I am glad, then, that prudence counselled me to provide two strings to my bow, and engage myself to Dr. Mathers of Bath, on the chance that you proved unsatisfactory; and I thank you for the month's salary, ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... (the last census date) there were 23.01 persons per thousand of population over 15 years of age, unable to work from sickness, accident and infirmity. Of these 12.72 were due to sickness and accident, ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... of the colours as he saw them, nor the wall of stars on either hand; and Brother Ambrose fell sick because of the exceeding great longing he had to limn the Holy City, and was very sad; but our Prior bade him thank God and remember the infirmity of the flesh, which, like the little grey cloud, veiled Jerusalem to ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... be conspicuously put up in the school): Provided that the Minister may, on the application of the Board, sanction the establishment of special classes for backward children—that is, children who, through physical infirmity, absence from school, or otherwise, are below the average standard of education reached by other children of ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... of his imagination, which led him to plan nobly; an accomplished writer; and as he was found worthy of the warm and unchanging friendship of Franklin, that sage who sought for excellence while he looked with a kindly eye upon human infirmity, we, too, may peruse the virtues of the man and smile ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... land, so that henceforth it may bear no fruit nor blade of grass, and be fit for nothing but a sepulchre for their unhallowed carcasses! So, on they go; and old George Jacobs has stumbled, by reason of his infirmity; but Goodman Proctor and his wife lean on one another, and walk at a reasonably steady pace, considering their age. Mr. Burroughs seems to administer counsel to Martha Carrier, whose face and mien, methinks, are milder and humbler than they were. Among ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... seem to have produced effects so decisive as would result from a similar disorganization in Broadway or Washington Street; for the charioteers still "drave them heavily." Hence we may infer that the wheels were of rude workmanship, making the chariots little less liable to the infirmity of friction than those Western vehicles called mud-boats, used to navigate semi-fluid regions which pass on the map for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... the bite of a dog, is surely excusable, and yet we ought to constrain him. In like manner, the man who cannot govern his passions, nor restrain them by the fear of the laws, though excusable on account of the infirmity of his nature, can nevertheless not enjoy peace, nor the knowledge and the love of God; and it is necessary that ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... son's love had supported her. She long had struggled with infirmity, Lingering to human life-scenes; for to die, 15 When fate has spared to rend some mental tie, Would many wish, and surely fewer dare. But, when the tyrant's bloodhounds forced the child For his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... could not bear to keep her blessings wholly to herself, she had set apart one corner of the grounds for a row of picturesque cottages, in which she had established a number of pensioners whom age or infirmity had rendered destitute, and whom she constantly visited with presents from her dairy or her fruit-trees. Roaming about the lawns and walks, which she had made herself, in a muslin gown and a plain straw hat, she could ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... his most intimate acquaintances called him, was destined to murder Alessandro; and it is worthy of notice that the Duke had received frequent warnings of his fate. A Perugian page, for instance, who suffered from some infirmity, saw in a dream that Lorenzino would kill his master. Astrologers predicted that the Duke must die by having his throat cut. One of them is said to have named Lorenzo de' Medici as the assassin; and another described ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the last infirmity of the determined reader in bed is his final decision to sit up and read in that fashion. Nothing could be better—for a certain more or less brief period. At the expiration of a few minutes, you realize that you are getting a sort ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... master were immediately reported to Hideyoshi. They roused him to hot anger. He is reported to have cried: "What! my States are filled with traitors, and their numbers increase every day. I have proscribed the foreign doctors, but out of compassion for the age and infirmity of some among them, I have allowed their remaining in Japan. I shut my eyes to the presence of several others because I fancied them to be quiet and incapable of forming bad designs, and they are serpents I have been ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... if one knew it. But Gerarde, who calls the plant Red Rattle, (it having indeed much in common with the Yellow Rattle), says, "It groweth in moist and moorish meadows; the herbe is not only unprofitable, but likewise hurtful, and an infirmity of the meadows." ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... with me, rebukes, commands, and dastards me. I have no conscience of marble, to resist the hammer of more heavy offences: nor yet so soft and waxen, as to take the impression of each single peccadillo or scape of infirmity. I am of a strange belief, that it is as easy to be forgiven some sins as to commit some others. For my original sin, I hold it to be washed away in my baptism; for my actual transgressions, I compute and reckon ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... the bare floor of the room, as this interrogatory was put; and there issued, from a door on the right hand; first, a feeble candle: and next, the form of the same individual who has been heretofore described as labouring under the infirmity of speaking through his nose, and officiating as waiter at the public-house ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... a just cause, must bring its spiritual punishment? Could the lust of blood be changed by a document into the love of one's brother? "I gave my youth in that war," he thought, "and I won from it—what? Disillusionment." With the reflection he felt again the exhaustion of the nerves, the infirmity of purpose against which he had struggled ever since his return. "If there were only something worth fighting for, worth believing in! If I could only believe earnestly, ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... did not increase his self-respect. He abandoned shaving as a dangerous exercise, and being shaved in a barber's shop meant exposure of his infirmity. He could not see that his clothes were properly brushed, and since he had never taken any care of his personal appearance he became every known variety of sloven. A blind man cannot deal with cleanliness till he has been some months used ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... whom their mayor gives false certificates of infirmity and marriage, who do not turn out when ordered out, who desert by hundreds on the way to headquarters, who form mobs and use guns in defending themselves against the troops,—such were the fruits of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... From the infirmity of our natures, and our proneness to evil, there is nothing so corrupting as the statistics of vice. Can young females remain pure in their ideas, who read with indifference details of the grossest nature? Can the youth of a nation ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... agony of which she was so long the victim, her peculiar fastidiousness of scent and touch are remembered. Throughout the whole of her illness she had adopted every measure to conceal, even from herself, the effects of her infirmity. She constantly held in her hand a large fan of Spanish leather, and saturated her linen with the most powerful perfumes. Her sense of contact was so acute and irritable that it was with the utmost difficulty that cambric could be ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... was translated from Chichester, and held the see for twenty years, when, owing to advanced age and increasing infirmity, he resigned in 1856. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate
... of the house she felt the infirmity of her knees; but in other respects, though she had been out only once before since her illness, she was conscious of a sufficient strength. A disinclination for any enterprise had prevented her from taking ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... dress, and stayed with him about two months, watching the order of his life, and the purity of his manner; how frequent he was in prayers, how humble in receiving brethren, severe in reproving them, eager in exhorting them; and how no infirmity ever broke through his continence, and the coarseness of his food. But, unable to bear longer the crowd which assembled round Antony, for various diseases and attacks of devils, he said that it was not consistent to endure in the desert the crowds of cities, but that he must rather begin ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... and far into the night, Herald Square was filled with a surging throng watching the bulletins from the chamber of death. It was a dignified end. There must have been a good deal of innate nobility in William McKinley. With all his vacillation and infirmity of political purpose, he must have been a man whose mind was saturated with fine thoughts, for to the very last, in those hours of weakness when the will no longer sways and each word is the half-unconscious muttering of the true self, he shone forth with unexpected grandeur ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... many things," said The Master gently, "but not in all. Remember that you have much to learn, hijo mio. I have taught you to prepare my little medicine, it is true. That is so you can take my place if age infirmity shall carry me away." The Master folded his hands with an air of pious resignation. "But you must learn policy. The Senorita Canalejas belongs to the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... smartish pull, they do say, from Knowl. I know a spell of it, only so far as the "Cat and Fiddle," near the Lunnon-road. Come up, will you? Would you like to come in first and talk a bit wi' the governor? Father, you know, he's a bit silly, he is, this while.' I found that the phrase meant only bodily infirmity. 'He took a pain o' Friday, newralgie—something or other he calls it—rheumatics it is when it takes old "Giblets" there; and he's sitting in his own room; or maybe you'd like better to come to your bedroom first, for it is dirty work travelling, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... have mentioned a part—was made about three weeks before his death, about which time, finding his strength to decay by reason of his constant infirmity, and a consumptive cough added to it, he retired to his chamber, expressing a desire to enjoy his last thoughts to himself in private, without disturbance or care, especially of what might concern this world. And that none of his Clergy—which are more numerous ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... and to the children which charmed him, and he did not know from what other existing source anything comparable to it could be supplied. Mrs Hopgood seldom went to church. The church, to be sure, was horribly dead, but she did not give that as a reason. She had, she said, an infirmity, a strange restlessness which prevented her from sitting still for an hour. She often pleaded this excuse, and her husband and daughters never, by word or smile, gave her the least reason to suppose that they ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... levity of the vulgar. Such complaints and humours have existed in all times; yet as all times have not been alike, true political sagacity manifests itself, in distinguishing that complaint which only characterises the general infirmity of human nature from those which are symptoms of the particular distemperature of our own ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... her. He needed her, as he had never felt the need of anyone before; his nature clamoured for her, imperiously, as it clamoured for light and air. He had no concern with anyone but her—her only—and he could not let her go. It was not love; it was a bodily weakness, a pitiable infirmity: he even felt it degrading that another person should be able to exercise such an influence over him, that there should be a part of himself over which he had no control. Not to see her, not to be able to gather fresh strength from each chance meeting, meant that the grip life had ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... petticoat, at her own corner of the fire on some tempestuous evening; now sitting each at her window, looking out upon the summer landscape sloping far below them towards the firth, and the field-paths where they had wandered hand in hand; or, as age and infirmity grew upon them and prolonged their toilettes, and their hands began to tremble and their heads to nod involuntarily, growing only the more steeled in enmity with years; until one fine day, at a word, a look, a visit, or the approach of death, their hearts would melt and the chalk boundary ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her; but she wasn't the sort to have stuck at that. "I'd have worked my hands to the bone for 'im, Poll, if 'e'd ONLY said the word." The one drawback to marriage with "you know 'oo" would have been his infirmity. "Some'ow, Polly, I can't picture myself dragging a husband with a gammy leg at my heels." From this, Tilly's mind glanced back to the suitor who had honourably declared himself. Of course "old O." hadn't a great deal of the gentleman about him; and their ages were ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... acts, and to show that his misconduct was the natural, or rather the necessary and inevitable result of the circumstances to which he was exposed, and nothing more than the every-day issues of human infirmity. If in discharging the office of a biographer, and canvassing the character of the dead, we are compelled to utter truths that will be unwelcome to many a heart, and to speak lightly of the bad members of a profession for the good ones of which we have a high respect, let it be ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... straight into the eyes of each and found his way out with the astonishing certainty of movement that made so many forget his infirmity. Possibly he was not desirous of encountering Draycott's embarrassed gratitude again, for in less than a minute they heard the swirl of ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... son of a Norman farmer. As long as his father and mother lived, he was more or less taken care of; he suffered little save from his horrible infirmity; but as soon as the old people were gone, an atrocious life of misery commenced for him. A dependent on a sister of his, everybody in the farmhouse treated him as a beggar who is eating the bread of others. At every meal the very food he swallowed was made a subject ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... Paradise. But out of Paradise our first parents were driven long ago, as anon I was to be from mine. For, as the Maid passed, I doffed my cap and waved it, since to shout "Noel" with the rest, I dared not, because of my infirmity. Now, it so fell that, glancing around, she saw and knew me, and bowed to me, with a gesture of her hand, as queenly as if she, a manant's child, had been a daughter of France. At that moment, noting the ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... health. The sober man digests with comfort; he is not overpowered by the weight of aliments; his ideas are clear and easy; he fulfills all his functions properly; he conducts his business with intelligence; his old age is exempt from infirmity; he does not spend his money in remedies, and he enjoys, in mirth and gladness, the wealth which chance and his own prudence have procured him. Thus, from one virtue alone, generous ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... with the half-apologetical air observable in a certain kind of Americans when some accident obliges them to confess the infirmity of the natural feelings. They do not ask your sympathy, and you offer it quite at your own risk, with a chance of having it thrown back upon your hands. The contributor assumed the risk so far as to say, "Pretty rough!" when the stranger paused; and ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... a remarkable passage in Paul's Roman letter about prayer and God's will.[39] "And in like manner the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered; and He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, that He maketh ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... runs on, its perpetual game to look with considerate good-nature at every object in existence, and dismiss it with a benison." While wit, the purely intellectual quality, sparkles and stings, humor, "touched with a feeling of our infirmity," would "gently scan thy brother ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... from the blindness and infirmity of his passion for Miss Walladmor: merely to see her—is perhaps some relief to his unhappy mind: that however is a gratification he can seldom have; for she now rarely stirs out of the castle. His old anxieties ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... never hear how it happened? One of the big boys, as he called him, tripped him up at school, and he fell on his hip. It kept him in bed for a year, and he's never been the same since; he will always be a cripple," grieved the mother. She wiped her eyes; she never could think of her boy's infirmity without weeping. "And what seemed the worst of all," she continued, "was that the boy who did it never expressed any regret for it, or acknowledged it by word or deed, though he must have known that Ben knew ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... activity of his movements; and from this circumstance, as well as from the skill with which the foot was disguised by means of long trousers, it would be difficult to conceive a defect of this kind less obtruding itself as a deformity; while the diffidence which a constant consciousness of the infirmity gave to his first approach and address made, in him, even lameness a source ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 474 - Vol. XVII. No. 474., Supplementary Number • Various
... Bible—find out and understand all I can; and on the strength of that, swallow the rest in a lump, by simple faith. Think me vain, if you will. Worldly greatness requires so much littleness to grow up in, that an infirmity more or less is not a matter ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... Statesman, who, in a long, a stormy, and at length an unfortunate administration, had many political opponents, almost without a personal enemy; who has retained, in his fall from power, many faithful and disinterested friends; and who, under the pressure of severe infirmity, enjoys the lively vigor of his mind, and the felicity of his incomparable temper. Lord North will permit me to express the feelings of friendship in the language of truth: but even truth and friendship should be silent, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... madness, who brags how many several persons he hath cured of it. Felix Platerus (de Mentis Alienat. cap. 3) reports of a woman in Basel whom he saw, that danced a whole month together. The Arabians call it a kind of palsie. Bodine, in his fifth book, speaks of this infirmity; Monavius, in his last epistle to Scoltizius, and in another to Dudithus, where you may read more of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... an evening school in the village; that is to say, she was a ridiculous old woman of limited means and unlimited infirmity, who used to go to sleep from six to seven every evening, in the society of youth who paid two pence per week each, for the improving opportunity of seeing her do it. She rented a small cottage, and Mr. Wopsle had the room up stairs, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... mausoleums cost from 4000l. to 5000l. Yet all the powerful, the wealthy, and the poor have descended to the dust from whence they sprung; and here, as everywhere else, nothing can disguise the fact that man, the feeble sport of passion and infirmity, can only claim for his inheritance at last the gloom of a silent grave, where he must sleep with the dust of his fathers. I observed only one verse of Scripture on a tombstone, and it contained the appropriate prayer, "So ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... the wisest men when they permit themselves to be perturbed with passion, and speak as in a fever, or as with the tongue of the foolish and the forward. And although thou hast been hasty to mark my infirmity, yet I grieve not that thou hast been a witness to it, seeing that the stumbles of the wise may be no less a caution to youth and inexperience, than is the fall ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... facts, official proofs of which exist in the Captain General's Office, clearly disprove the statement of Borrow, who ungrateful for the generous hospitality which he has received, and for the consideration displayed towards him on account of his infirmity, and out of deference to the request of the British Vice- Consul, makes an unfounded complaint against the very authorities who have used attentions towards him which he is certainly not deserving; it being worthy of ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... always inspiriting: he had escaped being a Pharisee, but he had not escaped that low estimate of possibilities which we rather hastily arrive at as an inference from our own failure. Lydgate thought that there was a pitiable infirmity of ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Pride was ever yet high enough to lift its possessor above the trials and fears and frailities of humanity. No human hand ever built the wall, nor ever shall, that will keep out affliction, pain, and infirmity. Sickness and sorrow, trouble and death, are dispensations that level everything. They know none, high nor low. The chief wants of life, the great and grave necessities of the human soul, give exemption ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... had been repeated, because people thought such ideas queer and showing lack of common-sense. He had heard them unthinkingly, but now, standing on Squire Merritt's door-step, looking at his old tree pensioners, whom he would not desert in their infirmity, he remembered, and the great man's love for his trees gave him reason, with a sudden leap of faith, to believe in his kindness towards him. "I'm better than an old tree," reasoned Jerome, and raised the knocker ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... I do not deny—was it not open to cite him, even though the citer were a bishop? Why, yes—uneasily one answers, yes; but still the case records a strange alteration, and still one could have wished to hear such a doctrine, which ascribes human infirmity (nay, human criminality) to every book of the Bible, uttered by anybody rather than by a father of the Church, and guaranteed by anybody rather than by an infidel, in triumph. A boy may fire his pistol unnoticed; but a sentinel, mounting ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... be adequate motives for a certain amount of saving, even if capital yielded no profit. There would be an inducement to lay by in good times a provision for bad; to reserve something for sickness and infirmity, or as a means of leisure and independence in the latter part of life, or a help to children in the outset of it. Savings, however, which have only these ends in view, have not much tendency to increase the amount of capital ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... his birthright for a mess of pottage, Gen. xxv. 29. When we yield to these propensities of the flesh, we lay a snare for our own souls, and expose our weakness to an adversary, ever ready to take advantage of our infirmity. It is a common fault in children to desire with greedy appetite such food as is pernicious, and to wish for more than even a mouth opened wide requires—till at length they learn to lust after forbidden things. And what ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... care was then the delight of many an unsophisticated laird's helpmate; and, to the contented Lady of Staneholme, it had quite made up for the partial deprivation of social intercourse to which her infirmity had subjected her. Joan, Madge, and Mysie, wearied of haughty Nelly after they had grown accustomed to the grand attire she wore, denied that they had ever been dazzled with it, and ceased to believe that she had danced minuets in the Assembly Rooms before Miss Jacky ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... Glory's old infirmity came back upon her, and she felt hot and humiliated. But her vanity was not so much wounded by the work that she was offered as her honour was hurt by the work she was doing. Mrs. Jupe's absences from home were now more frequent ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... and sailing-ships, as a rule, go to Santa Cruz; and the fame of our vessel having been spread abroad by our visitors of Friday, many of the poor people had come from villages far away over the mountains. We could not help feeling a certain respect for the determined way in which physical infirmity was mastered by curiosity for, though many experienced very serious inconvenience from the motion of the vessel, they still persevered in ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... We have known persons apparently travelling for pleasure, who were afraid to turn a few miles to the right or the left, for fear of subjecting themselves to the reproach of their own conscience for infirmity of purpose. They had "chalked out a route," and acted as if they had sworn a solemn oath to follow it. This is to be a slave among the boundless dominions of nature, where all are free. As the wind bloweth wherever it listeth, so move the moods of men's minds, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... King, "it is strange that thou, one of the most impatient fellows alive, should have so little sympathy with the like infirmity in our blunt and fiery cousin, Charles of Burgundy. Why, man, I mind his blustering messages no more than the towers of this Castle regard the whistling of the northeast wind, which comes from Flanders, as well ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... to allow the measuring and sod-turning to be continued. Why should a place of worship opposite to his gate be considered by him as an injury? Why should the psalm-singing of Christian brethren hurt his ears as he walked about his garden? And if, through the infirmity of his nature, his eyes and his ears were hurt, what was that to the great purport for which he had been sent into the parish? Was he not about to create enmity by his opposition; and was it not his special duty to foster love and goodwill among his people? After all he, ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... judgment, and sent home, by the delightful process of criticism, to the memory, there to exercise the mind to the last of life, to be the amusement of our declining years, and, when all the other faculties for receiving pleasure are impaired by old age and infirmity, to cast the sunshine of delight over the last ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... crave your pardon humbly for my vehemence, Prince of Clarence. I suddenly remember me that humility is the proper virtue of knighthood. Your Grace does indeed set a notable example of that virtue to the peers of England; and my poor brother's infirmity of pride will stand rebuked for aye, when he hears that George Plantagenet bore ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... He admits, however, that the intemperate, profligate, and criminal classes, whose duration of life is low, do not commonly marry; and it must likewise be admitted that men with a weak constitution, ill health, or any great infirmity in body or mind, will often not wish to marry, or will be rejected. Dr. Stark seems to have come to the conclusion that marriage in itself is a main cause of prolonged life, from finding that aged married men still have a considerable ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... peasantry. Little heed was paid to the admonitions of Count John, who was of a hotter temper than was the tranquil Prince. The stadholder gave way to fits of passion at the meanness and the insolence to which he was constantly exposed. He readily recognized his infirmity, and confessed himself unable to accommodate his irascibility to the "humores" of the inhabitants. There was often sufficient cause for his petulance. Never had praetor of a province a more penurious civil list. "The ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... disease is inherited. The following causes are considered in the inheritance of scrofula: great age, close relationship and infirmity of the parents; but the germ of scrofula is planted in the child by parents that are themselves afflicted with tuberculosis or scrofula. This is most frequently observed in children that have descended from parents, who were scrofulous in their youth ...
— Prof. Koch's Method to Cure Tuberculosis Popularly Treated • Max Birnbaum
... well for man that there is one Being who sees the suffering heart as it is, and not as it manifests itself through the repellances of outward infirmity, and who, perhaps, feels more for the stern and wayward than for those whose gentler feelings win for them human sympathy. With all his singularities, there was in the heart of Uncle Lot a depth of religious sincerity; but there are few characters where religion does any thing ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... contempt for money, stubborn persistence in the right, and courage in the face of danger. Some people thought him too ambitious, for even with philosophers 6 the passion for fame is often their last rag of infirmity. After Thrasea's fall Helvidius was banished, but he returned to Rome under Galba and proceeded to prosecute Eprius Marcellus,[251] who had informed against his father-in-law. This attempt to secure a revenge, as bold as ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... Cochegrue; and his creditors, the blockheads, citizens, and others, whose pockets he slit, called him the Mau-cinge, since he was as mischievous as strong; but he had moreover his back spoilt by the natural infirmity of a hump, and it would have been unwise to attempt to mount thereon to get a good view, for he would incontestably have run ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... resource, I would come to them and be married from their house. I made up my mind, and promised: then I implored him to be careful in his interview with my brother, for my sake—to calm his own natural anger, and to remember Edmund's infirmity. He promised, but I saw that he was slightly piqued by my dwelling so much on Edmund's feelings rather than on his. Ah! Nelly, he had never seen one ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... in which he lived, and which is for no other reason worthy of our knowledge,'—all proclaim his supremacy. Like many great men,—like Julius Caesar, with his epilepsy—or Sir Walter Scott and Byron, with their lameness—or Schleiermacher, with his deformed appearance,—a physical infirmity beset Alfred most of his life, and at last carried him off at a comparatively early age. This was a disease in his bowels, which had long afflicted him, 'without interrupting his designs, or souring ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... invalids, who have unfortunately a sensitive palate, and have been accustomed to a luxurious variety of savoury sauces, and highly seasoned viands; those who, from the infirmity of age, are become incapable of correcting habits created by absurd indulgence in youth, are entitled to some consideration; and, for their sake, the Elements of Opsology are explained in the most intelligent manner; ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner |
