"Effete" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the masses be gathered together. General society is, however, more sober and sociable, many families opening their houses one day in the week to all their friends. The difference of caste is going out fast: the Creoles found that their intermarriages were gradually introducing a race as effete as the Bourbons appear to be in France; they are now therefore very sensibly seeking alliances with the go-ahead blood of the Anglo-Saxon, which will gradually absorb them entirely, and I expect that but little Trench will be spoken in New Orleans by the ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... preserve the order, the faith, the sacraments, and the worship of the Catholic Church, for which it is a trustee. As we kneel by the table of our common Lord we remember separated brothers. Division has multiplied division until infidelity sneers at Christianity as an effete superstition, and the modern Sadducee, more bold than his Jewish brother, denies the existence of God. Millions for whom Christ died have not so much as heard that there is a Saviour. It will heal no divisions to say, Who is at fault? The sin ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple
... schooner. In a few moments she had hove to alongside. But for the enormous red eyes upon her bow she was innocent of paint. She was grimed and shellacked with dirt and grease, and smelled abominably. Her crew were Chinamen; but such Chinamen! The coolies of the "Bertha Millner" were pampered and effete in comparison. The beach-combers, thirteen in number, were a smaller class of men, their faces almost black with tan and dirt. Though they still wore the queue, their heads were not shaven, and mats and ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... people like you who make one sick of the world. Parasites—servile flunkeys, bolstering up an effete aristocracy. Why don't you get some proper ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... of New York, whose broad and deeply wrinkled face he espied at the extreme end of one of the long tables, where it loomed up like a careworn lantern amidst a cluster of delicately tinted foliage. America, said his lordship, sought her great men, not from among the effete walks of the haristocracy, from the more legitimate hemisphere—the common walks of life. With a strange elongation of the body did our speaker emphasize the remark. Great men were the gift of an age, and a nation's fortune; and with which he was more than ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... volumes have been spun, of most effete and lamentable trash, to gratify the morbid appetites of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... doings come forth the conquered of Agincourt, a poor generation of effete nobles, in whose miniatures you shiver to see the falling away of their sorry limbs, as shown through the treacherous tightness of ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... languages recover by a secondary formation, which grows up slowly and imperceptibly at first in the speech of the people; till at last the reviving spirit rises upwards, and sweeps away, like the waters in spring, the frozen surface of an effete government, priesthood, literature, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... worthy of adoration in the 19th century, a superstition which makes a fetish of the writings of Plato and Aristotle, has been tolerated long enough, and as no one has attempted to give a critical estimate of this effete literature since Lord Bacon did something in that way, I shall not much longer postpone ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... fettered for all time by the prejudices and institutions in which it has clothed itself. When he had done stripping us, it was a nice question whether even our nakedness remained. He treated our prejudices and our effete institutions as though they were something external to us, which had come out of nowhere and could be flung into the void from whence they came. When you have called opinion a prejudice, or traced an institution to false reasoning, ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... concentration of British wit and British perseverance on the terrible business of war which carried us to our goal. Germany prided herself, above all, on "scientific war." But the nation she despised as slow-witted and effete has met her again and again on her own boasted ground, and, brain for ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... organisation, nor consequent in its action; neither completely moral, nor frankly dissolute; it did not corrupt, nor was it corrupted; it would neither wholly abandon the disputed points which damaged its cause, nor yet adopt the policy that might have saved it. In short, however effete individuals might be, the party as a whole was none the less armed with all the great principles which lie at the roots of national existence. What was there in the Faubourg that it should perish ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... into a crusading chivalry? Let us not dishonour our great fathers with the dream of it. The Christians, like the Stoics and the Epicureans, would have lived their little day among the ignoble sects of an effete civilisation, and would have passed off and been heard of no more. It was in another spirit that those first preachers of righteousness went out upon their warfare with evil. They preached, not enlightened prudence, but purity, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... just in time to see the dwarf jump into the coupe. He did not stop with his mouth open, but set out undaunted to overtake the fugitive; neither was he distanced, for Jim had not stayed in the effete East long enough to get pursy and to ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... is absolutely insensitive, so that the probe can be freely employed without the patient even being aware of it or suffering the least discomfort—a significant fact in diagnosis. The cavity is filled with effete and decomposing epidermis, which has a most offensive odour. The chronic and intractable character of the ulcer is due to interference with the trophic nerve-supply of the parts, and to the fact that the epithelium of the skin grows in and lines the track leading down to ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... the sight of the mighty figure reduced to pitiable inefficiency and weakness, despite the knowledge that her protector could no longer protect, the fear of the jungle faded from the heart of the young girl—she was no more a weak and trembling daughter of an effete civilization. Instead she was a lioness, watching over and protecting her sick mate. The analogy did not occur to her, but something else did as she saw the flushed face and fever wracked body of the man whose appeal to her she would have thought purely physical had she given the ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... by the smiling ways Of a charmed environment That lures him on to neglect and sin, And to final banishment Of the vital spark of an earnest man, And all that is noble and true, To the effete round of nothingness Which honor and strength ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... grow old, get old &c. adj.; age; decline, wane, dodder; senesce. Adj. aged; old &c. 124; elderly, geriatric, senile; matronly, anile|; in years; ripe, mellow, run to seed, declining, waning, past one's prime; gray, gray-headed; hoar, hoary; venerable, time-worn, antiquated, passe, effete, decrepit, superannuated; advanced in life, advanced in years; stricken in years; wrinkled, marked withthe crow's foot; having one foot in the grave; doting &c. (imbecile) 499; like the last of ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... is the end of a great military chieftain," said Joseph sadly; "the close of a magnificent career! May God preserve me from such a fate! Sooner would I pass from exuberant life to sudden death, than drag my effete manhood through years of weariness to gradual ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... impending decay of their body. So, then, the fact of such decay stood confessed. In most cases the very last persons to realize the unwelcome truth are those who hold the doctrines that are becoming effete. Quakerism must, I felt, be in a very bad condition indeed when its own disciples called together a conference to account for its passing away. Neither men nor communities, as a rule, act crowner's ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... had for eight or nine hundred years a casus belli of the best quality; but she had preciously laid it up like a relic, and there had seemed some probability that it would become effete, and no ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... the Gothic kingdom was thus being administered by a child and a woman, the Roman Empire, which had seemed effete and decaying, was astonishing the world by its recovered and increasing vigour. Since the death of Theodosius (more than one hundred and thirty years before that of Theodoric) no great historic name had illustrated the annals of the Eastern Empire, But now, a year after the accession ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... elevation to power of the popular classes. M. Garofalo, who is of an old aristocratic family, declares that "the Third Estate, which should have substituted youthful energies for the feebleness and corruption of an effete and degenerate aristocracy, has shown magnified a hundred-fold the defects and corruption of the latter" (p. 206). This is certainly not a correct historical judgment; for it is certain that the Third Estate, which with the French Revolution gained ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... I know, has dwelt like Christianity with such profound earnestness on the bisection of man—on the distinction within him, vital to the very last degree, between the higher and the lower, heaven and hell. What utter folly is it because of an antique vesture to condemn as effete what the vesture clothes! Its doctrine and its sacred story are fixtures in concrete form of precious thoughts purchased by blood ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... raged among its adherents: the Palace of Justice, the Hotel-Dieu and the cathedral of Notre-Dame escaped by the merest chance. They would destroy solely for the sake of destroying, would bury the effete, rotten humanity beneath the ruins of a world, in the hope that from the ashes might spring a new and innocent race that should realize the primitive legends of an earthly paradise. And all that night again did the sea of flame ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... he worked at the blanket. "It's all owin' to politics," continued the cowpuncher, rolling and lighting a cigarette. "Politics, an' the fact that the cow country is in its dotage. Choteau County is growin' effeminate, not to say right down effete when a lynchin', that by rights it would be stretching its importance even to refer to it in conversation, is raised to the dignity of a political issue. As everyone knows, a hangin' is always a ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... contrary, and that it is only too certain people can tax me with nothing but being too good-natured. Laugh at the preachings of an old grey-beard of a father; go on, I tell you, and mind them not. Upon my word, I am of opinion that these old, effete and grumpy libertines come to stupify us with their silly stories, and being virtuous, out of necessity, hope through sheer envy to deprive young people of all the pleasures of life! You know my talents; I am at ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... of a wrecked vessel. The hammer is the crank of a disused shaft of a cotton machine, the anvil is from an old "monkey," that drove the piles for the Suakim landing stage in 1884; the two cylinders are from an effete ice machine, and the steam and exhaust pipes come from a useless locomotive of the old railway. A lathe, a beautiful piece of workmanship, is fashioned out of one of the guns found at Tamai. And the building which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... other. It seemed incredible that Theodore Racksole, the ineffable Racksole, who owned a thousand miles of railway, several towns, and sixty votes in Congress, should be defied by a waiter, or even by a whole hotel. Yet so it was. When Europe's effete back is against the wall not a regiment of millionaires can turn its flank. Jules had the calm expression of a strong man sure of victory. His face said: 'You beat me once, but not this time, ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... Joan felt that his confidence was not merely the confidence of brave words. A single glance into his purposeful face left the definite impression that his was a strength that is given to few. It was the strength of a simple, honest mind as yet unfouled by the grosser evils of an effete civilization. His was the force and courage of the wild—the impulse which governs all creatures who live in ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... other of the banners were stationed as garrisons in the chief provincial centres, as at Canton, Fuchow and Hang-chow, &c., and their descendants still occupy the same position. As a fighting force the Manchu garrisons both in the capital and in the provinces had long become quite effete. In the capital, however, the elite of the Manchu soldiery were formed into a special corps termed the Peking Field Force. Its nominal strength was 20,000, the men were armed and drilled after the European fashion, and fairly well paid. There were other corps of picked Manchus better paid and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... superstitious devotion to abstract ideas which characterized the whole course of Robespierre's life. The oratory of Danton, like that of Marat, only excited the people to dissatisfaction; they struck down effete institutions, but they were not the men to inaugurate a new society. It is seldom we find the pioneers of civilization the best mechanics. They strike down the forest—they turn the undergrowth—they throw a log over ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... are sentimentally attached. But tact is not the leading virtue of Socialists; in fact, Jimmie made a boast of scorning it—if people asked his opinion, he "gave it to 'em straight". So now he caused this white angel to understand that he regarded the effete aristocracies of the old world with abysmal contempt; he meant to put them out of business right off the bat. In vain the white angel pleaded that some of them might be useful people, or at any rate well-meaning: Jimmie ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... stroke at commanding, and at coming to nothing or little,—only the Old Dessauer sulked at the office in this its fourfold state, and never would fairly have it, till, by decease of occupants, it came to be twofold again. This glimpse into the distracted effete interior of the poor old Reich and its Politics, with friends of ours concerned there, let it be welcome to the reader. [Leopoldi von Anhalt-Dessau Leben (by Ranfft), p. 127; Buchholz, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the last to forgive me should I make the conventional mistake of a scene or an aside. This old lady had taught me something. I went to the window, curious to know whether any nerve of association would vibrate again. Nothing stirred me; the machinery which had agitated and controlled me was effete. ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... decline, we come to the senile period of national life, when every energy and faculty, every national feeling and power of invention, are completely exhausted. As an example of this depressing condition, we may mention Turkey and several of the effete States of South America. Sometimes, when life is nearly extinct in the human body, physicians have made use of the power of galvanism, in order to revive the dying energies. This process of galvanizing ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... was no possibility of any intellectual revival. The barbarous races which had deluged Europe had to absorb their barbarism; the fragments of Roman civilization had either to be destroyed or assimilated; the Germanic nations had to receive culture and religion from the effete people they had superseded. It was further necessary that the modern nationalities should be defined, that the modern languages should be formed, that peace should be secured to some extent, and wealth accumulated, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... with explosive vapour, which the stupidity or malice of others has suffered to accumulate. But, after all, too much is made of this violation of constitutional forms and the sanctity of the Tribunate. [Sidenote: Defence of the conduct of Gracchus.] The first were effete, and all regular means of renovating the Republic seemed to be closed to the despairing patriot, by stolid obstinacy sheltering itself under the garb of law and order. The second was no longer what it had been—the recognised refuge and defence of the poor. The rich, as Tiberius in effect ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... contemplation. England, especially, has cast her Bible full in the face of her former God; and proclaimed, with open challenge to Him, her resolved worship of His declared enemy, Mammon. All the arts, therefore, founded on religion, and sculpture chiefly, are here in England effete and corrupt, to a degree which arts never were hitherto in the history of mankind: and it is possible to show you the condition of sculpture living, and sculpture dead, in accurate opposition, by simply comparing the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... feet of chamois fall, Free as the generous air, Strains nobler far than clarion call Wake freedom's welcome, where Minerva's silver sandals still Are loosed, and not effete; Where echoes still my day-dreams thrill, Woke by her ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy
... his likeness to the Author of nature, by confessing and expressing the permanent laws of Nature, undisturbed by fleeting appearances without, or fleeting tempers within. Hence it is that, as in all insincere and effete times, the poetry of the day deals more and more with conceits, and less and less with true metaphors. In fact, hinc illae lachrymae. This is, after all, the primary symptom of disease in the public taste, which has set us on writing this review—that critics all round are crying: "An ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... a fortune that might be called handsome, but it had not made him effete. His income had never warranted him in purchasing a pair of socks, so now, upon the removal of his shoepacs, his toes were fully at liberty to squirm and wriggle in the most soul-satisfying manner. He sat thus, battling with his problem, until Pliny Pickett, driver ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... skin is furnished with innumerable minute openings, known as the sebaceous follicles, which pour over its surface a thin limpid oil anointing it and rendering it soft and supple; but also causing the dust as well as the effete matter thrown out by the pores to adhere, and, if allowed to accumulate, finally obstructing its functions and causing disease. It also, especially in warm weather, emits an exceedingly disagreeable odor. Pure cold water will not wholly remove these oily accumulations. The occasional ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... bit spectrally in an old dim toilet-glass, he knew again, in a flash, the glow of righteous resentment. Who should be assured against coarse usage if a man of his really elegant, perhaps in fact a trifle over-refined or "effete" appearance, his absolutely gentlemanlike type, couldn't be? He never went so far as to rate himself, with exaggeration, a gentleman; but he would have maintained against all comers, with perfect candour and as claiming a high advantage, that he was, in spite of that ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... anxious to obey the letter of the Mosaic law, while indifferent to its true spirit, have construed this into a permission to exact usury of all Gentiles. Christian apologists for usury, who have not utterly discarded all laws given by Moses as effete and no longer binding, have tried hard to show that this clause authorizes the general taking of interest. To do this it is wrested from its natural connection, and the true historic reference ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... for furnishing a worn-out effete affair that was not in working order or a going concern, but he, by assuring me that it was all right, cajoled me into trying ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... no fight in his following; scarcely, indeed, was there a loyal supporter among all those who had eaten his salt for years. There was true manhood in this chief whom we were replacing by an effete puppet. The Dost, Koran in hand, rode among his perfidious troops, and conjured them in the name of God and the Prophet not to dishonour themselves by transferring their allegiance to one who had filled Afghanistan with infidels ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... intrinsic value are indeed perennial. Time at length effaces the others; they lose their associations, and become but meaningless lumber. But these significant works and personalities can never grow effete. They tell their own story to the succeeding generations, blessing them with visions of reality and preserving them from the ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... but he aimed at establishing an Asiatic empire, not conquering the European provinces. He was not so dangerous as even Pyrrhus had been. Moreover, the conquest of the East was comparatively easy,—over worn-out races and an effete civilization; it gave eclat to Sulla and Pompey,—as the conquest of India, with a handful of British troops, made Clive and Hastings famous; it required no remarkable military genius, nor was it necessary for the safety of Italy. Conquest over the Oriental monarchies ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... speak to you to-night about one of those old despotic empires which were in every case the earliest known form of civilisation. Were I minded to play the cynic or the mountebank, I should choose some corrupt and effete despotism, already grown weak and ridiculous by its decay—as did at last the Roman and then the Byzantine Empire—and, after raising a laugh at the expense of the old system say, See what a superior people you ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... completely convinced that the domination of Europe belonged to her by right of mental, moral and military superiority over her neighbours. Not in vain have Germany's educational institutions inculcated the belief in her population that the British Empire is an effete monstrosity with feet of clay; France a rotten, decaying empire, and Russia a barbarian Power with no new Kultur to offer Europe ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... quadrupled, the forces it has to overcome have grown eight times as great. Hence, to raise its body through a given space, its muscles have to be contracted with twice the intensity, at a double cost of matter expended." Again, as to the cost at which nutriment is distributed through the body, and effete matters removed from it, "Each increment of growth being added at the periphery of an organism, the force expended in the transfer of matter must increase in a rapid progression—a progression more rapid than that ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... impossibility of escaping it) which is the foundation of the Protestant Reformation, and which was the doctrine accepted by the vast majority of the Anglicans of my youth, before that backsliding towards the "beggarly rudiments" of an effete and idolatrous sacerdotalism which has, even now, provided us with the saddest spectacle which has been offered to the eyes of Englishmen in this generation. A high court of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, with a host of great lawyers in battle array, is and, for Heaven knows how long, will be, ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... one substance, which is known to us as 'Protein,' a complex compound of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, which alone possesses the property of manifesting vitality and of permanently supporting animal life. So that, you see, the waste products of the animal economy, the effete materials which are continually being thrown off by all living beings, in the form of organic matters, are constantly replaced by supplies of the necessary repairing and rebuilding materials drawn from the plants, which in their turn ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... away the empire of earth in order to slight an unknown man and insult a noble woman whose boots they are not fitted to unlatch. There are nations not blinded to Science, not given over hand and foot to effete snobocracies and Degenerate Decadents. In short, mark my words—THERE ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... and section in our old army-files? Why not a new man? Here is a new enterprise of Brook Farm, of Skeneateles, of Northampton: why so impatient to baptize them Essenes, or Port-Royalists, or Shakers, or by any known and effete name? Let it be a new way of living. Why have only two or three ways of life, and not thousands? Every man is wanted, and no man is wanted much. We came this time for condiments, not for corn. We want the great genius only for joy; for one star more in our constellation, ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... old-fashioned, work-increasing method of her mother's, she would speak to Florrie in a tone of sudden, transient intimacy, raising her for a moment to the rank of an intellectual equal as her voice hinted that her mother after all belonged to the effete generation. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... put the world right, at a happy moment when the din of theologists is out of its ears. We want a new practical religion; for Christianity, distorted and twisted through the centuries into its present outworn, effete, ignoble shape, is a mere political force or a money-making machine, according to the genius of the country which professes it. The golden key of the founder, which is lost, may be found again, but I think ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... age of Faith,—an age of Heroes! The very possibility of Heroism had been, as it were, formally abnegated in the minds of all. Heroism was gone forever; Triviality, Formulism and Commonplace were come forever. The 'age of miracles' had been, or perhaps had not been; but it was not any longer. An effete world; wherein Wonder, Greatness, Godhood could not now dwell;—in one word, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... blitheness and nationalness of the Continent;—but there is nothing French about it, it is wholly and essentially English, and in its communal enjoyment and its spontaneity it is a survival of Elizabethan England—I mean the music-hall; the French music-hall seems to me silly, effete, sophisticated, and lacking, not in the popularity, but in the vulgarity of an English hall—I will not say the Pavilion, which is too cosmopolitan, dreary French comics are heard there—for preference let us say the Royal. I shall not ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... "The 'effete East' has psychically and psychologically corralled you, hasn't it, Evan?—to put it in choice Bostonese. I thought maybe it would when I heard you were taking the post-graduate frills in the Harvard Law School. By the way, how much longer are you ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... host. I speak to you now unofficially, as an Englishman to his guest. I have been besieged through the night, and even this morning, with incomprehensible messages which come to me from those who administer the law in this country. Prince, I want you to remember that however effete you may find us as a nation from your somewhat romantic point of view, we have at least realized the highest ideals any nation has ever conceived in the administration of the law. Nobleman and pauper here ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his personal record, always seems to me only a form of infamy midway between blackmail and burglary. There is to me something in any man's personality that is sacred, something before which there should be a veil, never to be drawn aside save in secret places. An effete whim, no doubt. At any rate it explained why I had enjoyed no success as an interviewer, why I had come away from Mr. Carville without extracting from him his age, his income, his position, the names of his employers, ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... came back to him undiminished. He waxed eloquent (after his fashion) over the "beautiful" contrast between Callaghan's wholesome blood, "rich in the vivifying architectonic grey corpuscles which rebuild worn tissues," and the effete, impoverished, unvitalised fluid which stagnated in the sluggish veins of the dead patient. The carriers of oxygen had neglected their proper task; the granules whose duty it was to bring elaborated food-stuffs to supply the waste of brain and nerve and muscle had forgotten their ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... motives, or put on the right side because it happens to harmonise with their lower interests. Saints—so we are told—have been the cruellest persecutors; and kings, acting from purely selfish ambition, have consolidated nations or crushed effete and mischievous institutions. If we can make up our minds as to which was, on the whole, the best cause,—and, generally speaking, both sides represented some sound principle,—it does not follow that it was also the cause of all the ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... not touched hers, he reached for it and ate it also. Now he was watching the clock and, between liftings of laden fork to his mouth, verifying the clock's opinion of the hour by his own watch. He called for the bill, paid it, gave the waiter five cents—a concession to the tipping custom of the effete city which, judging by the waiter's expression, might as well not have been made. Still, Warham had not made it with an idea of promoting good feeling between himself and the waiter, but simply to show that he knew the city and its ways. He took up the shawl strap, said, ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... of our land, and in this case literally made the desert to blossom as the rose. Thus gloriously does our new civilization reclaim the errors of the past, building upon ancient ruins the enlightened institutions of to-day, and grafting fresh vigor upon effete races and nationalities. And now, at last, the Spanish Peaks, those mighty ancient sentinels whose twin spires, like eyes, have watched the slow rise and fall of stately but tottering dynasties in the long ago, are to look ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... think I must have this incident cabled to Europe," said Morton, "so the effete nations of your continent may know that a plain bank cashier isn't afraid to tackle the British navy. Indeed, Mr. Drummond, if you read history, you will learn that this is a dangerous coast for your warships. It ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... field was to be opened up in the line of opening up new routes to keep pace with the times apropos of the Fishguard-Rosslare route which, it was mooted, was once more on the tapis in the circumlocution departments with the usual quantity of red tape and dillydallying of effete fogeydom and dunderheads generally. A great opportunity there certainly was for push and enterprise to meet the travelling needs of the public at large, the average man, i.e. Brown, Robinson ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... do have some things so much better in America!" protested Baby Van Rensselaer, as yet uncorrupted by any worship of the effete monarchies of despotic Europe. "We make lots of things a great deal nicer than you can get them ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... after a fashion that sets back old Turnspit into the remotest corner under the backstairs of the Dark Ages. I have alluded to his alleged descendants, as pointed out to my observation in boyhood; but they were an effete and degenerate race, purposeless, and wallowing much with the pigs, whom their grandsires would have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... the "Wingdam Chronicle" of the next week, under the head of "Touching Reunion," said: "One of those beautiful and touching incidents, peculiar to California life, occurred last week in our city. The wife of one of Wingdam's eminent pioneers, tired of the effete civilization of the East and its inhospitable climate, resolved to join her noble husband upon these golden shores. Without informing him of her intention, she undertook the long journey, and arrived last week. The joy of the husband may be easier imagined than described. The meeting is said to ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... unexceptionable. I don't know why it is, but it seems to be the fashion for us Americans to speak and think of Englishmen as being of a different clay from ourselves, something infinitely inferior to us in every respect—effete, and all that sort of thing; and so much is this the case that a good many of us really come to believe it at last. There! I have made my confession, cried peccavi, and have been forgiven; and I feel ever so much happier. Now, please tell ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... When Oratory, rising to its loftiest flights upon the wings of Buncombe, denounces with withering scorn the effete and tyrannical monarchies of Europe, and proclaims the glorious fact that this is a Free Country, Fellow Citizens! it hardly does us justice. We are not only free, Mr. PUNCHINELLO, we are Free and Easy, sir. Breathes there a man so tortuously afflicted ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various
... not suggest themselves, until, remembering what was due to its native land, it began: "There can, however, illustrious son of Lien Chi Altangi, be no doubt that we are a very great and superior people, and that we have a very just pity and contempt for all the unhappy victims of the effete despotisms and hoary empires of the older world—not that we believe the other continents to be actually older, for our own favored continent doubtless emerged first from chaos, but it is an expression which, with the generosity of our institutions, ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... nobles in so-called "waiting" on the Monarch flattered the national vanity, while it ensured the absolute inefficacy of the class when it might have been useful in stemming the baneful absolutism of such lunatics as Felipe II. and the following Austrian monarchs, each becoming more and more effete and more and more mad. The very doubtful "glory" of the reign of the Catholic Kings in having driven out the Moors after eight centuries of conflict and effort, proved, in fact, no advantage to the country; but twenty thousand ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... Empire, fell more profoundly into decay. Those western towns looked on the Slav with disdain, they would not mingle with the rural population; but as these were much more active and were often strengthened by fresh immigrants, one thought that they would gradually swamp the more effete men of the towns. And, on the other hand, the townsmen weakened their position by continually breaking, on account of economic disputes, the ties between themselves and Venice. And as example of their frequent attitude towards Venice, we may take the words which the deputies of Triest used in ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... almost more difficult to remove them in this state than when you have the powerful lever of the trunk to aid you in tearing up the roots, setting aside the paramount advantage that, in the one case you possess a fresh and fertile soil, in the other an effete and barren one. ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... in the moonlight looked singularly earnest, and recalled to Marguerite's aching heart those happy days of courtship, before he had become the lazy nincompoop, the effete fop, whose life seemed spent in card ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... money into this handle to buy a whole new croquet set for the family. Ain't that awful! All this comes of takin' a daily newspaper once a month and readin' the advertisin' columns. We're going to be plumb effete, if we ain't mighty careful, down ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... nation becomes a community of dull, contented plodders, fixed in the ruts of a bygone age, suffering all its energy and life to rust away, day by day, in inaction. Such we find to be the case with those nations of the Old World which are still ruled by the effete systems of a feudal age. The governmental policy and the intellectual status of the masses mutually react upon each other, effectually neutralizing all progress, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... meanwhile there arose one more infamous and more bloody still.[354] We are not afraid of Vespasian. We trust his years and his natural moderation. But a good precedent outlives a good sovereign. Gentlemen, we are growing effete: we are no longer that senate which, after Nero had been killed, clamoured for the punishment of all informers and their menials according to our ancestors' rigorous prescription. The best chance comes on the day after the death of a ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... devoted to leisure, not only injure the body but also the soul: and as hidden waters overshadowed and stagnant get foul because they have no outlet, so the innate powers of unruffled lives, that neither imbibe nor pass on anything, even if they had any useful element in them once, seem to be effete and wasted. ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... authority; you must invest in those to whom you entrust the management of your co-operative establishment the same liberty of action that is possessed by the owner of works on the other side of the repudiation of the rotten and effete regime of the Bourbons, the French peasants and workmen imagined that they were inaugurating the millennium when they scrawled Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity across all the churches in every city of France. They carried their principles of freedom and license to the logical ultimate, ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... result from irritation of any part of the sympathetic nervous system, and they usually indicate an excessive action of the reflex motor centers. Spasms may be induced by various medicinal agents given in poisonous doses, or by effete materials in the circulation, such as nux vomica or its alkaloid strychnia, lead preparations, or an excess of the urea products in the circulation, etc. Spasms may be divided into two classes: Tonic spasm, when the cramp is continuous or results ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... lastly, that in this case, as in all others, when an organisation has become effete and inoperative for its legitimate purpose, it is employed for quite other ones—quite opposite ones. What is the usual plea put in for giving and attending these tedious assemblies? "I admit that they are stupid and frivolous enough," replies every ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... return from my spring wanderings, among the benighted and effete nations of the Old World, on whom the untravelled American looks down from the height of his superiority, I am struck anew by the contrast between the trim, well-groomed officials left behind on one side of the ocean ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... the heel of the enemy on her soil, German sentries in her streets, submission. Long and hard she had trained; while the outside world, thinking of the Paris of the boulevards, thought that she could not resist the Kaiser's legions. She was effeminate, effete. She was all right to run cafes and make artificial flowers, but she lacked beef. All the prestige was with her enemy. In '70 all the prestige had been with her. For there is no prestige like military prestige. It is all with those who won ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... name of "grand" as the wall on the north deserves the name of "great." Memorials of ancient times, they both still stand unrivalled by anything the Western world has to show, if one except the Siberian Railway. The Great Wan is an effete relic no longer of use; and it appears to be satire on human foresight that the Grand Canal should have been built by the very people whom the Great Wall was intended to exclude from China. The canal is as useful to-day ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... this Spanish Main, in spite of the distant view of the mighty Cordilleras, around whose summits perpetual thunderstorms seem to play, and from which fierce gales swoop down on the sea. Clammy, suffocating heat, fever-dealing swamps, decaying towns, with an effete population and a huge rainfall, do not constitute an attractive whole. Owing to the intense humidity, even the gales bring no ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... of elements, must modify the constitution of the blood; and so must modify the nutrition of all the other tissues. The heart's action, implying as it does a certain waste, necessitates an addition to the blood of effete matters, which must influence the rest of the system, and perhaps, as some think, cause the formation of excretory organs. The nervous connections established among the viscera must further multiply their mutual influences: and ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... man than the representative from Hamlin County. He had been returned several times by his constituents, and his life had been spent in localities more allied to effete civilization than was Barnesville. He knew his Washington and had an astute interest in the methods and characteristics of new members of Congress, particularly perhaps such as the rural districts loomed up behind as a background. Judge Rutherford he had observed at the outset ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... lifelong equality, the inhabitants used to feed at their own private tables. Since the regeneration of society all meals are taken in common. The last relic of barbarism was the use of plates,—one or even more to each individual. This "odious relic of an effete civilization," as they called it, has long been superseded by oblong hollow receptacles, one of which is allotted to each twelve persons. A great riot took place when an attempt was made by some fastidious and exclusive egotists to introduce partitions which should partially divide one portion ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... corps of Engineers, was the first cousin of the two girls who have been speaking, and was nephew and heir presumptive to the squire. His father, Colonel Dale, and his mother, Lady Fanny Dale, were still living at Torquay—an effete, invalid, listless couple, pretty well dead to all the world beyond the region of the Torquay card-tables. He it was who had made for himself quite a career in the Nineteenth Dragoons. This he did by eloping ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... majority of the more manly, had drawn knowledge at the wells of Cambridge—he was wooden spoon in the year 1850; and the flag upon the houseboat streamed on the afternoon air with the colours of that seat of Toryism, that cradle of Puseyism, that home of the inexact and the effete—Oxford. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the audience, his two sleeves who brings with fumes replete? Both by the lute and in the quilt, it lacks luck to abide! The dawn it marks; reports from cock and man renders effete! At midnight, maids no trouble have a new one to provide! The head, it glows during the day, as well as in the night! Its heart, it burns from day to day and 'gain from year to year! Time swiftly flies and mete it is that we should hold ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... hands of those who brought the war to a successful conclusion. But the relief from pressing anxiety when this horrible strife is over, and the feeling of gratitude to those who have delivered us must not be allowed to gild and consecrate, as it were, systems proved effete and policies which intelligent men recognise as bankrupt. The moment of deliverance will be too unique and too splendid to be left in the hands of men who have grown, if not cynical, at all events a little weary of the notorious defects of humanity, and who are, perhaps naturally, ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney
... being honored, boys. A party of effete Britishers are staying at the Lodge. Got in last night. I seen them when they got off the train—me lud and me lady, three young ladies that grade up A1, a Johnnie boy with an eyeglass, and another lad who looks like one ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... here, in effete Manuscripts, in abstruse meditations, in confusions old and new; sinking, as I may describe myself, through stratum after stratum of the Inane,— down to one knows not what depth! I unfortunately belong to the Opposition Party in many points, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... crowded pavements, their hustling traffic, and their noise. He was at home. And he was glad that he had been born in the most important city in the United States. San Francisco was provincial, New York was effete; the future of America lay in the development of its economic possibilities, and Chicago, by its position and by the energy of its citizens, was destined to become the real capital of ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... somewhat on the characters of Mouton and Fusilier, not only because of their great devotion to the Confederacy, but because there exists a wide-spread belief that the creole race has become effete and nerveless. In the annals of time no breed has produced nobler specimens of manhood than these two; and while descendants of the French colonists remain on the soil of Louisiana, their names and characters should be reverenced as are those of ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... "Maybe they live there still,' said the traveler, "for the Princess is of their kith and lineage." "A pretty fable, indeed," responded the scientific votary. "But we know now that all that kind of thing is sheer nonsense, and worse, for it is the basis of the effete old-world sentiment which forms the most formidable obstacle to Progress, and which Science even yet finds it hard to overthrow. But what is that strange singing I hear beneath your cloak?" It was the bird which the traveler had ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... Garrett. Robin remembered the last occasion, only a week ago, when he had made his confession. He had been afraid of hurting his aunt then, he remembered. He did not mind very much now ... he saw his aunt and uncle as two people suddenly grown effete, purposeless, incapable. They seemed to have changed altogether, which only meant that he was, at last, ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... answered Korner, puffing heavily. The slit in his nose was plain even in the moonlight. "To keep our hands in, as you would say. You Americans are a brave people—without the Schlager. But we fought that we might not become effete." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... progressive thought and scientific knowledge, at the point where it had been interrupted by the Germanic inroads of the fifth century. The unjaded vigour of the German races, indeed, counted for much; and Europe took up the lost thread of the dying empire with a youthful freshness very different from the effete listlessness of the Mediterranean culture in its last stage. Yet it is none the less true that our whole civilisation is even now the carrying out and completion of the Greek and Roman culture in new fields and with fresh intellects. ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... did not; neither that day nor for many days before. That was one of the things I had at last learned to consider among the superfluities of an effete civilization. I suppose I had no need of telling it to him, for it was plain to read in my face. He put his hand in his pocket and ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... conduct. Heaven, why did you give me a handle for despising you more by informing me of your descent! Here was I thinking you a new-sprung child of nature; there were you, the belated seedling of an effete aristocracy!" ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... you will." Well, I don't understand Spanish ceremony, but that's certainly good English. (Going to table.) Eh! (Smelling decanter.) Robinson County whiskey! Umph! I have observed that the spirit of American institutions, sir, are already penetrating the—er—er—superstitions of—er—foreign and effete civilizations. (Pours out glass of whiskey, and drinks; pours again, and observes MANUELA watching him respectfully.) What the Devil is that girl looking at? Eh! ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... of society without contributing anything to its welfare. But even males so occupied are compelled to expend a vast amount of energy and even a low intelligence in their callings; and, however injurious to their societies, they run no personal risk of handing down effete and enervated constitutions to their race. Whether beneficially or unbeneficially, the human male must, generally speaking, employ his intellect, ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... one degree less offensive than the ignorance of your modern journalist who degrades Englishmen by writing them down (or up, the poor fool imagines) as Anglo-Saxons. In truth, King Alfred was a noble fellow. No one in history has struggled more pluckily to rekindle fire in an effete race or to put spirit into an effete literature by pretending that ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... all this quite gravely. He had evidently studied the subject, and as I looked at him I felt he was perfectly right. If he represented the type of his race, it had certainly grown effete. ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... 1868, when Emporia was a pioneer village a hundred miles from a railroad. My father came to Emporia in 1859 and my mother in 1855. She was a pioneer school teacher and he a pioneer doctor. She was pure bred Irish, and he of Yankee lineage since 1639. When I was a year old, Emporia became too effete for my parents, and they moved to El Dorado, Kansas. There I grew up. El Dorado was a town of a dozen houses, located on the banks of the Walnut, a sluggish, but a clear and beautiful prairie stream, rock bottom, ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... Middle Ages has so long been silently playing. San Miniato belongs to the close of the Romanesque or Latin period. The early Christian school had expired in the midst of the general convulsions of the ninth and tenth centuries,—in the struggles of an effete and expiring antiquity with the brutal, blundering, but vigorous infancy of mediaeval Europe. During the three centuries which succeeded, there was rather a warming into unnatural life of the mighty corpse, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... what disguises they might adopt— should dare bid defiance to the forces of the British Constitution in order that they might wreak vengeance on those more enlightened compatriots who wished to see their country rescued from the effete ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... a witness, and in which Diogenes, if he were here, would be struck with the vast inconsistency between the creed of Christendom and its practice, and the vast disparity between the progress of modern knowledge and the effete system of education in our Universities. He would wonder why modern colleges are more interested in the details of Greek life and letters than in the beneficent sciences of to-day of which the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... you we have no souls to fire, no brains to weigh your arguments; that, after education such as this, we can stand silent witnesses while you sell our birthright of liberty, to save from a timely death an effete political organization? No, as we respect womanhood, we must protest against this desecration of the magna charta of American liberties; and with an importunity not to be repelled, our demand must ever be: "No compromise of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... irritability which evinces itself in nocturnal discharges, afterwards in inappreciable but exhaustive diurnal discharges, and subsequently in complete debility of the whole generative system. This seminal fluid, such indeed as it is—weak, effete and devoid of all generative power—is undoubtedly the fluid which the organs suffer to escape; and to prevent further its flow, as well as to give a healthy tone to the secretory and retentive vessels ought to form ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... '45. The Federalist faith, like Jacobitism, lingered in a few neighborhoods, and was maintained by a few old families, who managed to associate it with a sense of their own pride and dignity; but as an effective opposition or influential party organization it was effete, and no successor was rising out of its ruins. In a broad way, therefore, there was political harmony ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... Fact; that Freedom and Brotherhood are possible in this Earth, supposed always to be Belial's, which 'the Supreme Quack' was to inherit! Who will say that Church, State, Throne, Altar are not in danger; that the sacred Strong-box itself, last Palladium of effete Humanity, may not be blasphemously blown upon, and its ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... chivalry that animated all classes, general officers, medical officers, chaplains, and even stretcher-bearers, in this campaign has been the subject of much comment. It was thought that modernity had rendered effete some of the sons of Great Britain, and the war, if it should have done no other good, has served to prove that times may have changed, but not the tough and dauntless character of the men who have made the ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... mere exclusion of decay, but organization of it, so that the fury of corruption passes into fresh vital power. It is a cycle of changes, the type and show of which are the circulation, constantly removing effete particles and building up new, and therein giving its hue to the flesh. But sculpture supposes the current checked, and one aspect fit to stand for all the rest. The statue is not only a particle, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... English, French, and German sarcasm would our pigmy Four Hundred then become! In those remote realms they have already shrank aghast at the licentious tyrannies of our newspapers. England has freedom of the press, but she also has a law of libel which is not a cipher. Our law of libel is so horribly effete that the purest woman on our continent may to-morrow be vilely slandered, and yet obtain no adequate form of redress. This is what our extolled "liberty" has brought us—a despotism in its way as frightful as anything that Russia ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... woman, unthought of thirty years ago, yet the undercurrent of popular thought, as seen in our social habits, theological dogmas, and political theories, still reflects the same customs, creeds, and codes that degrade women in the effete civilizations of the old world. Educated in the best schools to logical reasoning, trained to liberal thought in politics, religion and social ethics under republican institutions, American women cannot brook the discriminations ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... heap. Thus all devouring Death—nay, nay! it is all sheltering, all restoring mother Nature, receiving again into her mighty matrix the stuff worn out in the fashioning toil of her wasteful, greedy, and slatternly children. In her genial bosom, the exhausted gathers life, the effete becomes generant, the disintegrate returns to resting and capable form. The rolling oscillating globe dips it for an aeon in growing sea, lifts it from the sinking waters of its thousand year bath to the furnace of the sun, remodels and remoulds, turns ashes into ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... impaction of feces usually extend to the sigmoid cavity. This cavity is 17-1/2 inches in length, shaped in a double curve like an italic S. Civilized man should consider the disturbance to the functional action of body and brain, and the danger to health and longevity involved in the storage of effete and fetid matter. The disturbance and danger are enhanced when the tissues of the sigmoid flexure and the rectum are invaded by inflammation. A healthy action of the sigmoid receptacle depends on the rectum (a conduit six to eight inches in length); and as it is the universal ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... in a sugar solution only, so the various microorganisms of disease thrive and multiply to the danger point only in their own peculiar and congenial kind of morbid matter. Thus, the typhoid fever bacillus thrives in a certain kind of effete matter which accumulates in the intestines; the pneumonia bacilli flourish best in the catarrhal secretions of the lungs, and meningitis bacilli in the diseased meninges of the ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... remember that when it gets tired of oppression it can come here to America and oppress us. We are used to it, and we rather like it. If we don't like it, we can get on the steamer and go abroad, where we may visit the effete monarchies and have ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... This is, however, quite insufficient to provide the necessary quantity of air for inhalation by the army of workers in the coal-mine, for the current thus set up does not even provide sufficient force to remove the effete air and impurities which accumulate from hundreds of ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... free, great, and most capacious, To come to poor old England (where the laws but make the many fit To lick a Royal person's boots), and all for England's benefit. To preach to us, and talk to us, to tell us how effete we are, How like a flock of silly sheep who merely baa and bleat we are. And how "this petty little land," which prates so much of loyalty, Is nothing but a laughing-stock to Pittsburg Iron-Royalty. How titles make a man a rake, a drunkard, and the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... said Santoris, quietly—"According to my knowledge or 'theory,' as you prefer to call it, there are no germs of actual death. There are germs which disintegrate effete forms of matter merely to allow the forces of life to rebuild them again—and these may propagate in the human system if it so happens that the human system is prepared to receive them. Their devastating process is called ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... is so quiet, some rash critics fancy that she may be termed effete. But this is far from the truth. The absence of military burdens, rendered needless by the intelligent selfishness, if not the conscience, of the rest of Europe, implies no decadence of masculine spirit in ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... edition of Science and Health), and compare that wise and sane and elevated and lucid and compact piece of work with the aforesaid Preface, and with Mrs. Eddy's poetry concerning the gymnastic trees, and Minerva's not yet effete sandals, and the wreaths imported from Erudition's bower for the decoration of Plymouth Rock, and the Plague-spot and Bacilli, and my other exhibits (turn back to my Chapters I. and II.) from the Autobiography, and finally with the late Communication concerning me, and see if he thinks anybody's ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... each other in everlasting succession, like the revolution of day and night; and individuals rise into importance only as they stand related to, are the agents of, this progress. The future is forever supplanting the present; the feud is immortal—the antagonism inevitable; if effete ideas and principles, which have accomplished their mission, refuse to retire and peaceably give place to their legitimate successors, conflict arises of necessity—a conflict in which the usurper must finally triumph, or the wheels ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... in Spain," replied Agatha, without any of that filial respect which our grandmothers were pleased to affect. There was nothing old-fashioned or effete about Agatha—she was, ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... Condorcet, have, within the bounds of the English nation itself, increased the intercourse between ranks to a degree unparalleled in the ancient world. The self-recuperative powers of the race have been strengthened by the course of its political and religious history. Fresh blood adds new energy to effete stocks. The effect of this restorative power from within is heightened in manifold ways by such a circumstance as the enormous facilities of locomotion which have arisen during ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... grant that folly is wisdom and the reverse. Erasmus knows the aloofness of the ground of all things: all consistent thinking out of the dogmas of faith leads to absurdity. Only look at the theological quiddities of effete scholasticism. The apostles would not have understood them: in the eyes of latter-day divines they would have been fools. Holy Scripture itself sides with folly. 'The foolishness of God is wiser than men,' says Saint Paul. ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... likewise, the French were too enterprising to be good neighbors. Under the leadership of a wonderfully able governor-general, Dupleix, who was appointed in 1741, they were prospering and were extending their influence in the effete empire of the Great Mogul. Dupleix exhibited a restless ambition; he began to interfere in native politics and to assume the pompous bearing, gorgeous apparel, and proud titles of a native prince. He conceived the idea of ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... some years has given grounds for alarm based on the system he has pursued in the management of his affairs, has reached, during the last twelvemonth, a deplorable depth of depression; that his infirm will was the first thing to show the results of the malady; and that its effete state leaves M. the Marquis d'Espard exposed to all the perils of his incompetency, as is ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... Indian as an inferior being, an opinion in which, on the whole, I heartily concur. But they go a step farther and include all Asiatics in the same category. I do not choose to be confounded with a race I consider worn out and effete. As for the men, it is different. They know I am rich and influential in many ways that are useful to them now, and they hope that the fortunes of war or revolution may give them a chance of robbing me hereafter, in which they are ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... diffident and prone to silence, but something in his effete nature gave him confidence with women. He had been flattered into a sort of assurance that they found him irresistible. They thought him clairvoyantly sympathetic—and he was by the very over-refinement of his music ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... America, superior in every detail to the crocodile of the effete monarchies of the Old World. Herodotus says the Indus is, with one exception, the only river that produces crocodiles, but they appear to have gone West and grown up with the other rivers. From the notches on his back the ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... "outs," it is far better than no furnace at all. It is, in fact, an excellent stop gap for the country house owner who is not prepared to invest in the more expensive heating plants at the moment. The more effete system can always be added later and the faithful old pipeless junked, moved to some other building, or left in place for an emergency, such as a ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... been a moral or political revolution that has furthered the general well-being of humanity, in which just and good men have not suffered. It would be delightful if freedom and progress could be secured, and effete institutions destroyed or reformed, without the accompaniment of disaster and death, but it ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... scenery, illustrating upon living "running deer" in turbans his views upon quick firing to his diminutive soldiers, who worshipped him as second only to the gods, and possessing his soul with that trustful patience which is rapidly becoming old-fashioned and effete. ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... republic of the north, and the seed of liberty grew for years in their minds. Chief among its advocates was a farmer's son named Miguel Hidalgo, a true scion of the people and an ardent lover of liberty, who for years longed to make his native Mexico independent of the effete royalty of Spain. He did not conceal his views on this subject, though his deeper projects were confided only to a few trusty friends, chief among whom was Ignacio Allende, a man of wealth and of noble Spanish ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... an ancient Spring dromenon, perhaps well-nigh effete. Without destroying the old he contrived to introduce the new, to add to the old plot of Summer and Winter the life-stories of heroes, and ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... had become as effete as the house of Valois in the sixteenth century; as effete as the Merovingians and Carlovingians had become in a previous age; but the strong chain of hereditary right bound up the fortunes of a great empire with the feeble brain and bestial ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... "where sons pull their fathers out of bed and kill them to save the disgrace of their dying in bed." He also cites mention of the "holy mawle which (they fancy) hung behind the church door, which, when the father was seventy, the son might fetch to knock his father on the head as effete and of no more use."[1036] Once in Iceland, in time of famine, it was decided by solemn resolution that all the old and unproductive should be killed. That determination was part of a system of legislation by which, in that country, the society was protected ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... fight. I'll go where I can get something but an argymint f'r me money an' where I won't have to rassle with th' man that bates me carpets, ayether,' I says, 'f'r fifty cints overcharge or good govermint,' I says. An' I pike off to what Hogan calls th' effete monarchies iv Europe an' no wan walks on me toes, an' ivry man I give a dollar to becomes an acrobat an' I live comfortably an' die a markess! ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... still being cooked and served whole somewhere this very day. And in that same neighborhood, if it lies to the eastward, there are cooks who know the art of planking a shad in season—not the arrangement of the effete East, consisting of a greased skin wrapped round a fine-tooth comb and reposing on a charred clapboard—but a real shad; and if it lies to the southward one will surely find in the same vicinity a possum of a prevalent dark brown tint, with sweet potatoes baked under him and a certain inimitable, ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... espoused the cause of the insurgent Georgians with intrepid zeal. Mr. JULIUS HARRISON is extolled in a leading article for finding a theme for an orchestral work, not in any of the misty or metaphysical abstractions which appealed to the effete Victorian composers, but in plums. And, mind you, not Carlsbad, but honest Worcestershire plums, without any Teutonic taint. Mr. JULIUS HARRISON'S patriotic example is not likely to be lost on his brother composers. Indeed it is asserted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... old, and the doctor had pronounced his professional opinion that the boy would not live another five years. The doctor was silky and effete, and counted for little, but his opinion was endorsed by Mrs. de Ropp, who counted for nearly everything. Mrs. De Ropp was Conradin's cousin and guardian, and in his eyes she represented those three-fifths of the world that ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki |
