"Crippling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ship-of-the-line, and the instantaneousness of the injury by torpedo, whose attack fails or succeeds at once, whereas that of the fire-ship required time for effecting the object, which in both cases is total destruction of the hostile ship, instead of crippling or otherwise reducing it. An appreciation of the character of fire-ships, of the circumstances under which they attained their greatest usefulness, and of the causes which led to their disappearance, may perhaps help in the decision to which nations ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... pity, I say, that he should run the risk of crippling himself by his opinions. Times ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... fired, the monster had sounded, headfirst. I fired a second shot at his tail, in hope of crippling his steering gear, but that was a clean miss, too, and then the ship was up to about five thousand feet. My helper pulled out the partly empty clip and replaced it with a full one, giving me five ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... refused to fight with her in this present war of aggression. Germany has also bent Turkey to her purpose, and has dragged the Turks into the war. An alliance with America! Well, to have gained the help of America in crushing France and crippling England, and ravaging and conquering Belgium was quite beyond the power of German diplomacy and intrigue! Still Germany's attempts to win at least America's moral support in this war are vigorous, ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... three shots into her with telling effect, when she made a run for it. This vessel was supposed to be the Quaker City. We then engaged a schooner-rigged propeller and a large sidewheel steamer, partially crippling both, and setting the latter on fire, causing her to strike her flag; at this time the latter vessel, supposed to be the Keystone State, was completely at my mercy, I having taken position astern, distant some two hundred yards. ...
— Life of Rear Admiral John Randolph Tucker • James Henry Rochelle
... all the force of the popular opinion against this venerable senate; and at length, though not openly assisted by Pericles, who took no prominent part in the contention, that influential statesman succeeded in crippling its ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... scout. Had the pilot been aiming for the Survey camp, the absence of any rider beam from there warning him off so that he made the detour which brought him here? Or had the Throgs tried to blast the Terran ship in the upper atmosphere, crippling it, making this a forced landing? But at least this battle had cost the Throgs, settling a small portion of the Terran debt ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... Anastasius, appears to have occupied him uninterruptedly for ten years. During its continuance Rome took advantage of her rival's difficulties to continue the system (introduced under the younger Theodosius) of augmenting her own power, and crippling that of Persia, by establishing strongly fortified posts upon her border in the immediate vicinity of Persian territory. Not content with restoring Theodosiopolis and greatly strengthening it defences, Anastasius ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... "Blood and Iron" policy, made a huge blunder in not perceiving that in the modern world spiritual forces are arising which must for ever discredit the same. He emphasized the blunder by wresting Alsace-Lorraine from France, and again by crippling Russia in the treaty of 1878—thus making enemies where generosity might have brought him friends. The German Executive in July of last year (1914) showed extraordinary want of tact in not seeing that Russia, rebuffed in 1908 over Bosnia ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... cannot do naturally and happily. But lay your stress on the inner and spiritual effort to appreciate, to feel, to imagine out the tale; and let the expressiveness of your body grow gradually with the increasing freedom from crippling self-consciousness. The physique will become more mobile as the ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... you. But you are right; it would be a disgrace for our whole family if it did not furnish a single soldier to the king and the fatherland, and if no substitute should enlist in your father's place, and revenge him on the French for crippling hiin at Jena. I will go with you to the military commission to-morrow, and we will pray the gentlemen to accept you, although you are still under age. We will pray them until they overlook your youth and enroll your name. But say nothing about it to father until ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... of a correct offensive-defensive is Nelson's defense of England, which he carried on in the Mediterranean, in the West Indies, and wherever the enemy fleet might be, finally defeating Napoleon's plan for invading England—not by waiting off the coast of England, but by attacking and crippling Napoleon's fleet off the Spanish coast ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... finds that things have, after all, gone less smoothly than he had imagined. There were withered carcasses scattered through the coulee bottoms and upon side hills that had some time made slippery climbing for a poor, weak cow. The loss was not crippling, but it was greater than he had expected. He remembered certain biting storms which had hidden deep the grasses, and certain short-lived chinooks that had served only to soften the surface of the snow so that the cold, coming after, ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... amazing possibilities. The civil war confirmed the unity of the nation and wiped away the blot and curse of slavery. The present war with Spain is waged for the humane purpose of delivering Cuba, our near neighbor, from manifold forms of oppression, crippling its life, hindering its industries and impoverishing its people. It is earnestly to be hoped that the results of the struggle will secure deliverance from ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 2, June, 1898 • Various
... foreign markets were being closed. The sanguine expectations of the Free-Traders had not been realised; America, France, Russia, had high tariffs; German manufactured goods were excluded from these countries. What could they look forward to in the future but a ruined peasantry and the crippling of the iron and weaving industries? "I had the impression," said Bismarck, "that under Free Trade we ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... and could only acquiesce (though with a stifled sigh) in Madam Trevern's oft repeated axiom that "whenever Dick wedded, his bride must bring with her sufficient dowry to free the estate" from some of the mortgages which were crushing and crippling it. Mary knew that a marriage between herself and Dick could only result in bringing troubles upon both—and yet—and yet—love and prudence do not often go hand-in-hand—and although no word of actual wooing had ever passed between the young folk, both had, ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... involutions, for the better hampering, crippling, and muzzling of my antagonists. This is performed by the use of ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... the strong-minded among the ladies wanted to interfere in politics, and that there is a general liking for visiting, chattering, and gossip (and China women can chatter and gossip), both and all of which inclinations their lords desired, and desire, to stop by crippling them." ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... darkly, "she needs to drop a peg in her own esteem. Conceit is mighty crippling to the runner in the race that Ju's picked out for herself. I'd hate her to be a fizzle, and I'm going to see to it that she ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... lives to you. It was thanks to your quickness of wit that we regained our boat, for I would not have given a ducat for our chances had you not thought of that scheme. In the second place, we should assuredly have been overtaken again had it not been for your happy thought of crippling them by burning their sails. By St. George, Harcourt, this young countryman of ours is as quick and as ready of wit as he has shown himself a brave and gallant fighter! We have no lack of sturdy fighters; but the wit to devise and to seize upon the right thing in the moment of danger is vastly ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... fancy, this is an outbreak of that artistic paganism which is so prevalent among the so-called "advanced" Hebrews. The idea that obedience to law is degrading; that conformity to traditional morals is soul-crippling and unworthy of a free spirit; that only by giving sway to passion will the individual attain that joy which is his right, and that self-development which should be his highest aim, has found one of its ablest and most dangerous advocates ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... days later, word came to Tolchaco that Ross Van Shaw had recovered sufficiently to be taken home and that he would probably suffer no permanent crippling from his fall, Helen found herself simply in a mild way glad to know the fact, but that was all, and Van Shaw faded out of her mind even more quickly than he had blossomed ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... been sent out by the Company of New France. Ships, colonists, annual supplies, building materials—all fell into the hands of the enterprising Kirkes, who then sailed for England with their booty. Alike to Champlain and to the Hundred Associates it was a crippling blow. ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... hear that your wound was not really serious. There was no sense in merely crippling you—my only chance lay in procuring your untimely demise. Having failed, however, I want to tell you, with the utmost sincerity, that I never had the slightest intention of carrying out my abominable threat in regard to the fair lady who ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... release from social convention, which liberated my spirit and gave me the courage to honestly assert and maintain myself, at the same time had a crippling effect upon my powers. When the knight had buckled his coat of mail he could no longer ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... union; discord prevails amongst them. A part of our allies have left us, under the pretext that France will not pay the promised gold. Charles the Seventh is flying from place to place, and our poor land is groaning under the burdens of a crippling and exhausting war. We must put an end to this. In such dire need and necessity it is better to die an honorable death than to bear disgrace, to live like beggars by the grace of our enemies. I have not the insolence and courage of cowardice so to live. I will ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... imaginatively misdescribed in the 'Ingoldsby Legends,' but really having the famous blood-stained stairway. He had an expensive private education, which was nearly ended with his life at the age of fourteen by a carriage accident which shattered and mangled his right arm, crippling it permanently. As so often happens, the disaster was really a piece of good fortune: it turned him to or confirmed him in quiet antiquarian scholarship, and established connections which ultimately led to the 'Legends'; he may owe immortality ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... its provisions again with the utmost care. He made no attack on Slavery, or the slave-holder. He was striking the blow against the wealth and power of the South for the sole purpose of crippling her resources and weakening her power to continue the struggle to divide the Union. There was in it not one word concerning the rights of man or the equal rights of black and white men. His mind was absolutely clear on that point. The negro when freed would be an alien race so low ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... constitution. If America was under a Parliamentary government, she would soon be convinced that in maintaining this great surplus and in paying this high taxation she would be doing herself great harm. She is not performing a great duty, but perpetrating a great injustice. She is injuring posterity by crippling and displacing industry, far more than she is aiding it by reducing the taxes it will have to pay. In the first place, the maintenance of the present high taxation compels the retention of many taxes which are contrary ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... and crippling deprivations we have lost the collective sense of greatness as a race that infused every participator in the splendid pageant of such an event as the Impeachment of Warren Hastings. One has but to imagine an impeachment to-day with the dominant personages in it chosen from the ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... moke on the variety stage who plays a dozen instruments equally badly is a musician. It is a psychological impossibility to pass through the apprenticeship stage of learning foreign languages at the age when the vernacular is setting without crippling it. The extremes are the youth in ancient Greece studying his own language only and the modern high school boy and girl dabbling in three or perhaps four languages. Latin, which in the eight years preceding 1898 increased one hundred and seventy-four per cent. in American high schools, while ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... great differences of feeling and cultivation amongst them; and then, every household has a story of its own, which no statistics can tell. There is hardly a family which has not had some sickness, some stroke of disaster, some peculiar sorrow, or crippling hindrance, arising within itself, which makes its condition unlike the rest. In this respect each family is one string in the great harp of humanity—a string which, touched by the finger of Heaven, contributes ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... had surrendered and the end was near. Disbandment and readjustment, to a civil basis, was then in order. Whatever work I did after this was of that character. I was no longer to chase my dream of crippling Mosby. Probably he did not know I lived. He might have smiled at my proposition, but I enjoyed ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... hirelings; and bad as it was in itself, it was liable to more monstrous abuse. Then came the "sugar bill," imposing enormous duties on various articles of merchandise from the West Indies, and greatly crippling Colonial commerce: then the infamous Stamp Act, by which every legal instrument, in order to validity, must have the seal of the British Government—deeds, diplomas, &c., costing from thirty-six cents to ten dollars apiece: then the duty on tea; ...
— Government and Rebellion • E. E. Adams
... on the divide to the north over the culmination of the various lines of cliffs, where I would have to pass to go to Salt Lake, was very heavy. On the 7th the mail rider failed to get through. We learned also that an epizooetic had come to Utah and many horses were laid up by it, crippling the stage lines. It had been planned that I should go north with our own horses till I could connect with some stage line, and then take that for the remainder of the distance to the Utah Southern Railway, which then had been extended south from ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... we had a number of set-backs; beginning with the crippling of a wheel while passing through a growth of timber. As we examined the broken spokes, we realized that they would soon have to be replaced by new ones, and that the wise thing to do was to provide for them while in the region of timber; so we stopped, cut jack-oak, made it into ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... knows? We have been growing very friendly with Russia of late; and as England has spies all over the world, doubtless her Government knew before the speech was made that it was coming; so the police appear to think that the whole resources of the British Government were set at the task of crippling Austria ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... off the financial support of European families to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars per year. The physical destruction of capital through the devastation of crops, the burning and demolishing of merchant ships and buildings, the crippling of industry through the sudden withdrawal of labor and raw materials, the introduction of new trade risks, and the cutting off of transportation, both internal and foreign, make up a sum of items ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... of ours, the disablement of many more than that, had depleted our ranks of labor, and there was a paralysis of all our industry, owing to the dislocation of its machinery for purposes of war, the soaring cost of raw material, the crippling effect of high taxation, the rise in wages to meet high prices, and the lethargy of the workers. Ruin, immense, engulfing, annihilating to our strength as a nation and as an empire, stares us brutally in the eyes at the time I write this book, and I find no consolation ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... the exhortation," answered Cole. "Your studies seem to me tenfold more crippling than mine: mine take all this earth's restraints from me, and yours seem only to remind you that all earth is restraint: mine show me whatever worlds the fondest fancy could desire; yours only the follies and chains of this. ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... might lead to inquiries into her babyhood, and which would only bring her sorrow when she learned of her mother's fate. My brother, always clever in his rascalities, learned that Helen knew nothing of my existence. He sent her a letter, when Miss Scovill was away, telling Helen that he had been crippling himself financially to keep her in school, and now he needed her at this ranch. Before Miss Scovill had returned, Helen, acting on the impulse of the moment, had departed for my brother's place. Miss Scovill was greatly alarmed, and sent me a telegram. As soon ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... failings. It will cure us of small jealousies and suppress all spirit of revenge. It will save us from idle worry and fruitless rebellion against such ills as cannot be cured. In short, it will free our lives from the crippling influence of negative moods and critical attitudes. It will teach us to be ruled by our admirations ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... persons shall constitute the executive? What shall the term be? How shall the executive be chosen? What powers, other than those which are purely executive, shall be vested in this branch? How shall this branch be held responsible, without crippling its efficiency? ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary |
