"Feeble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... first Columbus had seen in the New World; and bows and arrows, with which they made feeble efforts to drive off the Spaniards who landed at Punta Arenal, near Icacque, and who, finding no streams, sank holes in the sand, and so filled their casks with fresh water, as may be done, it is said, at the same spot ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... occasionally a parson who had a church to build, or a dowager laden with the last morsel of town slander, or a poor author who could not get due payment for the efforts of his brain, or a poor governess on whose feeble stamina the weight of the world had borne too hardly. But men who by possibility could be lovers did not make their way thither, nor women who could be bores. In these latter days, that is, during the present London season, ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... at him as if he would like to carry out the latter part of his threat, but the young man was so frail, so thin, so feeble, that he felt suddenly ashamed of having threatened him. He rose, planted his back firmly against the mantelpiece, and pointed significantly to the door. "Go!" he said, ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... all of the cousin's family went downstairs to supper, and I was left alone to watch with Polly. The square, old-fashioned chamber in the lonely farmhouse was very cold and still, with nothing to be heard but the storm outside. Suddenly the great change came. I heard a feeble call of "Sarah," my mother's name, as the dying eyes were turned upon me, followed by a curious breathing and in place of the face familiar from my earliest childhood and associated with homely household cares, there lay upon the ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... was tragedy enacted on a gloomier theatre. An uncertain twilight glimmers gray at the entrance, from the narrow vestibule; but all within, for full two hundred feet, is black as with Egyptian darkness. As we passed onward with our one feeble light, along the dark mouldering walls and roof, which absorbed every straggling ray that reached them, and over the dingy floor, ropy and damp, the place called to recollection that hall in Roman story, hung and carpeted with black, into which ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... night had been spent by the bedside of a sick parishioner, hurrying homeward on the path beside the dyke, heard a groan, a feeble sound of one in mortal agony. Turning, he glanced, first here and there, and looking up, at last, he saw beside the dyke, the figure of a ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... who lives at Basle, and who spends his whole time in circulating religious books and tracts, written in German and French. This brother came, three days before our departure, to Stuttgart, so that I could arrange with him. Indeed step by step has the Lord prospered me in my feeble endeavours, mixed with sin as every one of them has been, and made it manifest, that, this time also, He bad sent me to Germany. On Thursday, September 18th, then, we set out, and while yet driving through the city of Stuttgart I began giving away tracts, thus to begin ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... dewy Damps my Limbs were child; My Blood with gentle Horrors thrill'd; My feeble Pulse forgot to play; I fainted, sunk, and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... that no one who had enjoyed the privilege of hearing her father could ever again take interest in the feeble efforts ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... abhorred. Salome, I have tried to prove myself a mother to you since the day that I took you under my roof; and now, when I am passing away from the world,—when a few short months will probably end my feeble life, I think you owe it to me to give me no sorrow that your hands can easily ward off. Don't leave me. When I am gone there will be time and to spare, for all your schemes. Stay here, and let me have peace and sunshine about me, in my last fading hours. Ah, dear, you can't ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... who was the pink of politeness, offered Miss Manners his arm; but the latter knew she would not offend him by refusing. One by one, he applied to the other girls; till, as a last resource, he made an appeal to Emily, who, after some feeble show of following their example, relented; and, while Miss Manners and the rest proceeded onwards, Green and Emily lagged gradually behind. Miss Manners escorted the party a considerable distance on their ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... four o'clock when he appeared at his place of business, the worse for his absence, in almost every sense of the word. He had been drinking, until he was half stupid, and was a loser at the gaming-table of nearly six hundred dollars. A feeble effort was made by him to go into an examination of the business of the day; but he found it impossible to fix his mind thereon, and so gave up the attempt. He remained at his store until ready to close up for the day, and then turned ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... successfully afloat, the society papers began to utter a feeble protest against it—thus increasing their own reputation for a refined morality. But they had no power to turn the tide, and the scandal floated on. In society itself judgment was divided. Whether "Laura" was or was not a ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... which is much more nutritious for camels and sheep than the luxuriant but insipid pastures on the banks of the Nile. After long wars the Szowaleha and Aleygat succeeded in reducing the Oulad Soleiman; many of their families were exterminated, others fled, and their feeble remains now live near Tor, where they still pride themselves upon having been the former lords of this peninsula. The Szowaleha and Aleygat, however, did not agree, and had frequent disputes among themselves. At that period there arrived at Sherm four families of ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... seen in our own time great talents, intense labor, and long meditation employed in this struggle against the spirit of the age, and employed, we will not say absolutely in vain, but with dubious success and feeble applause. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... of their infancy armed them with an inflexible code of morality, teaching them a religion without weakness and a sense of duty without any compromise. He, the son, had become a magistrate, and, wielding the weapon of the law, he struck down without pity the feeble and the erring. She, the daughter, quite penetrated with the virtue that had bathed her in this austere family, had become the spouse of God through ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... vili,—I said, laughing at my own expense. I don't doubt the medicament is quite as good as the patient deserves, and probably a great deal better,—I added, reinforcing my feeble compliment. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in Johnson's Museum (1792). Scott's version is made up of this copy, Riddell's, Herd's, and oral recitations, and contains feeble literary interpolations, not, of course, by Sir Walter. The Complaint of Scotland (1549) mentions the "Tale of the Young Tamlene" as then popular. It is needless here to enter into the subject of Fairyland, and captures of mortals by Fairies: the Editor has said his say in his edition of Kirk's ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... have declaimed against ruinous competition. With you they have ridiculed the let alone principle, that is to say, liberty. With you they have said that the law should not confine itself to being just, but should come to the aid of suffering industries, protect the feeble against the strong, secure profits to individuals at the expense of the community, etc., etc. In short, according to the expression of Mr. Charles Dupin, socialism has come to establish the theory of robbery. It has done what you have done, and that which ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... that her strength, already weakened by the sufferings she had undergone, was totally unprepared to bear up against a trial from which the strongest of the crew might have shrunk; but it turned out otherwise. The robust, healthy woman, with her feeble companion, left the wreck together, the former bearing in her arms an infant of nine months old. No doubt many a ready arm was stretched forth to assist them in their perilsome journey. But man could have done but little against the piercing winter's blast ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... Most of us, I fancy, will sympathize with George Eliot, who says in one of her letters: "To me the Development Theory, and all other explanations of processes by which things came to be, produce a feeble impression compared with the mystery that lies ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... feeble, stammered protest; he felt no dignity in it; he almost felt it to be the craven insult seen in it by O'Shea, who swore under his breath and glared ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... said the abbot, "a path full of danger. But also, as our brother saith, an enterprise both noble and knightly, for the saving of these men of God, and the feeble ones that are sheltered in our fold, not alone from death, but from ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... then shewed her the feeble instrument, and Leah seemed to regret what she had done. Before long she began to excite him again; but the fellow looked at his watch, pushed her away, and began to put on ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Approach, ye minstrels, try the soothing strain, Diffuse the tuneful lenitives of pain: No sounds, alas! would touch th' impervious ear, Though dancing mountains witness'd Orpheus near; Nor lute nor lyre his feeble pow'rs attend, Nor sweeter music of a virtuous friend; But everlasting dictates crowd his tongue, Perversely grave, or positively wrong. The still returning tale, and ling'ring jest, Perplex the fawning niece and pamper'd guest. While growing ...
— English Satires • Various
... This much is certain,—that the Roman people, if once the blind reverence they bear to the sanctity of the Pope, which is their only bridle, should relax, are naturally turbulent, ferocious, and headlong, whilst the police is defective, and the government feeble and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the broken-hearted schemer languidly compared the seamen's declaration with the logs; and, even in his feeble state of mind and body, made ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... true in this sense, that in every baptized Christian, who has not utterly apostatized, there is that faint sign of the Holy Spirit's still having a claim upon him; he is not yet utterly cast off. This is true; but it is not to our present purpose; such a feeble sign is a sign of God's yet unwearied mercy, but no sign of our salvation. The presence with which the parable is concerned, is a far more effectual presence than this; the house in which there is no more than such a faint sign of a divine inhabitant, is, in the language of the parable, empty. ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... cause of the detested foreigner, that obscured his lofty position as the moral bulwark and protector of the nation. For 1500 years the Holy See was the pivot of Italian history, and the source of the Italian influence in Europe. The nation and the See shared the same fortunes, and grew powerful or feeble together. It was not until the vices of Alexander VI. and his predecessors had destroyed the reverence which was the protection of Italy, that she became the prey of the invaders. None of the great Italian historians has failed to see that they would ruin themselves in raising their hands against ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... currents flow strong and free, muscle, bone and brain grow in symmetry and power, and there is cunning to devise and the strong right arm to execute. But if it be thin and poor, and its circulation feeble and uncertain, the will flags, the mind is weak and vacillating, the muscles grow puny, and the man becomes an unresisting prey to disease and circumstance. If it escape through a wound, strength ebbs ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... over me lay powerless, and still as any stone, The Corse that erst had so much fire, strength, spirit, of its own. My heart was still—my pulses stopp'd—midway 'twixt life and death, With pain unspeakable I fetch'd the fragment of a breath, Not vital air enough to frame one short and feeble sigh, Yet even that I loath'd because it would not let me die. Oh! slowly, slowly, slowly on, from starry night till morn, Time flapp'd along, with leaden wings, across that waste forlorn! I cursed the hour that brought me first within ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... till the whole block stood a mass of burning flames. The firemen came up tardily and reluctantly, many of them of the same class as the miscreants who surrounded them, and who cheered at their approach, but either made no attempt to perform their duty, or so feeble and farcical a one, as to bring disgrace upon a service they so generally ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... of his own lawful rights, and Germany is an empty name among nations! If the Germans were capable of an enlightened patriotism; if they would throw away their Anglomania, Gallonmania, Prussomania, and Austromania, they would be something more than the feeble echoes of intriguers and pedants.[Footnote: The emperor's own words. See "Joseph II., Correspondence," p. 176.] Each one thrusts his own little province forward, while all forget ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... am I? — this mortal flesh, These shrinking nerves, this feeble frame, For ever racked with ailments fresh And scarce from day to day the same — A fly within the spider's mesh, A moth that plays ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... step; a man must see the shame and guilt of his having lived such a life. Some people admit there is a spiritual life to live, and that they have not lived it, and they are sorry for themselves, and pity themselves, and think, "How sad that I am too feeble for it! How sad that God gives it to others, but has not given it to me!" They have great compassion upon themselves, instead of saying, "Alas! it has been our unfaithfulness, our unbelief, our disobedience, that has kept us from giving ourselves utterly to ...
— The Master's Indwelling • Andrew Murray
... that most fine given names were ruined by abbreviations, which was a sin and a shame. "I myself," he said, "am one of six brothers. We were all given good, old-fashioned Christian names, but all those names were shortened into meaningless or feeble monosyllables by our friends. I shall name my children so that it will be impracticable to ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... his train, Organ and bell with sound inane, The crimson cross, the book, the keys, The flag that spreads before the breeze, The triple-belted crown! It wends its way; and straw is sold— Yea! deadly drugs for heavy gold, To feeble hearts whose pulse is fear; And though some smile, and many sneer, There's none will ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... was always brilliant; for the Athenians lived in a land where blue sky, blue sea, and the massive rock blent together into such a galaxy of shifting color, that, in comparison, the lighting of almost any northern or western landscape would seem feeble and tame. The Athenians absorbed natural beauty with their ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... there came a financial crash that sent all of Mr. Crawford's half-million of dollars to the winds. He was in feeble health when it came, and the loss of his property hastened his death. The very same "panic" left Whittaker poor also. But the two boys took it very differently. Whittaker looked as crestfallen as if he had committed a crime. Dudley mourned the loss of his father, but ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... here. (Enter Quezox) Francos: But Bonset, list! 'Twere well to let them wait: To quick respond will lower dignity. The British mind doth breed a rev'rence deep For form and etiquette which swift cognition Might debase, and thus we on their mental Vision might mayhap but feeble impress Make as envoys by most noble Caesar sent To rule these Isles with gravity and state. Quezox: Most noble Sire! If I might but suggest, 'Twere well for Bonset to inquire each name And mental picture stamp upon his mind That he may fluent be when he presents ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... Harrison had been nominated in December, 1839, at Harrisburg, by the Whig party. He was a distinguished general in the War of 1812, but had lived mainly a quiet, modest life on his farm at South Bend, near Cincinnati. The Democratic papers ridiculed him as a feeble old man, living in a cabin and drinking hard cider. The Whigs turned these sarcasms with great effect upon their adversaries. They compared the old soldier and his excellent war record, living in a cabin with the latch string out and eating corn bread, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... were at as low an ebb as his own. One child, Adrienne, was the sole issue of this marriage, having been born in the year 1810. Both the parents died before the Restoration, leaving the little girl to the care of her pious grandmother, la vicomtesse, who survived, in a feeble old age, to descant on the former grandeur of her house, and to sigh, in common with so many others, for le bon vieux temps. At the Restoration, there was some difficulty in establishing the right ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... of that day, a few words in her mother's feeble voice rung in Elizabeth's ears more painfully even than the text she had mentioned the day before. It was, 'Lizzie, I know you will be a kind sister to Kate and poor ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... organ to account for is the electric organ of the skates. In these fishes it has been shown to be a true electric battery, but the discharges from this battery, even in the adults, are so feeble that they are of no practical use so far as has been ascertained. It is well known that the electric eel and the torpedo use their batteries for stunning other animals. It is evident that, according to the theory of natural selection, these batteries could ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... are forgotten. It is not from any unkindness on your part. Who would think for one moment, looking upon the kindly faces of this committee, that any man on it would do an injustice to women, especially if she were old and feeble? But because we have no right to vote, as I said, our interests are overlooked ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... and art combined, Famed thro' the north, long charmed my wondering mind: This morn, I deem'd it lost; and scarce believ'd Th' unwonted words my doubtful ear receiv'd. Can then a mighty monarch eye with fear The feeble motions of the mountaineer? Is Christiern dazzled with the empty boast Of Dalecarlia, and her rugged host? A fiery race, undisciplined and loud, They move to war, no army, but a crowd: Hot from the bowl they stagger to the fight, And rush impetuous with ungovern'd might. Shall ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... manufactures of clothing stuffs, flour, tobacco, and beer are extensive; the climate of Maryland is temperate and genial; education is free, and advanced; the John Hopkins University is in Baltimore; there is a State college in every county, and schools for blind, deaf, and feeble-minded children; colonisation began in 1634, and a policy of religious toleration and peace with the Indians led to prosperity; the State was active in the War of Independence, and remained with the North in the Civil War; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... innocent, just, and normal desire of my girlhood's heart,—no one to lend a hand, till my heart had broken with slavery and disappointment, and at less than thirty-five all that remained for me was a little barren waiting for its feeble fluctuating pumping ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... month after their arrival on the plantation, the overseer brutally beat an old negro who was working next to Mike. The old man resumed his work, but was so feeble that he in vain endeavored to use his hoe, and the overseer struck him to the ground with the butt end of his whip. Mike instinctively dropped his hoe and sprang to lift the old man to his feet. The infuriated overseer, enraged at this interference, brought down his whip on Mike's head and felled ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... the mere asking of the question how species has come about opened up a field into which speculation itself had hardly yet ventured to intrude. It was the mystery of mysteries; one of our greatest philosophers had said so; not one little feeble ray of light had ever yet been thrown upon it. Mr. Darwin knew all this, and was appalled at the greatness of the task that lay before him; still, after he had pondered on what he had seen in South America, it really did occur to him, that if he was very very patient, and went on reflecting ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... meat, that they were almost famished finding neither shepherd nor cottage to relieve them; and hunger growing on so extreme, Adam Spencer, being old, began first to faint, and sitting him down on a hill, and looking about him, espied where Rosader lay as feeble and as ill perplexed: which sight made him shed tears, and to fall ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... Slaying the rein-deer by their snow-built huts:— On, through the thickening perils of the way! Methought I held within my brain the clue Through that bewildering labyrinth of ice. For weeks the Sun, a pale and sinking ghost, With feeble eyes had glared upon the Pole. Nor with his wavering arrows could o'erthrow Even the airy domes of delicate sprites, Sitting and decking their etherial robes And turning them, sparkling, to his ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown
... could ha' made a man the master," said a feminine voice, in tones of feeble resignation, "theer's ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... less disposition now to disobey his grandmother than usual, for he had been sick, and was still pale and feeble; and this state of health often makes children ...
— Caleb in the Country • Jacob Abbott
... or so afterwards that amiable character Hendrik partially regained his senses, to find himself surrounded by a sea of fire, in which he perished miserably, not having power to move, and his feeble cries being totally swallowed up and lost in the fierce roaring of the flames. Such was the very appropriate end of Hendrik and of the ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... firstborn child. And as they stood there, under the darkening sky, her hand went groping blindly for his. She wrote of this, years and years after, when seventy winters had silvered her hair and her steps were feeble—she wrote of this, in her book called, "Souvenirs," and tells how, in that moment of supreme grief, when her life was whitened and purified by the fires of pain, her hand sought his. The deep current ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... Uttering a feeble shriek, Mrs. Heywood fell insensible within the threshold of the summer-house, while her daughter, less overwhelmed, but with feelings impossible to describe, stooped and chafed her mother's temples, and notwithstanding a horrid ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... consecrated his arms, for me he went into battle. When he fell, my honour fell with him. In the heaviness of my heart I swore an oath that if no man would take vengeance for his murder, I, a woman, would find the hardihood for it. Why, when sick and feeble you lay in my power, I did not strike, explain to yourself by easy interpretation: I cared for your wound, that a man in sound health should be struck down by the vengeful hand of him who won Isolde. ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... said T. X. contemptuously, "how very feeble,—I should have thought Kara could have gone one ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... and language of a general instinct, to which one must listen and according to which one must act. "Let no more Jews come in! And shut the doors, especially towards the East (also towards Austria)!"—thus commands the instinct of a people whose nature is still feeble and uncertain, so that it could be easily wiped out, easily extinguished, by a stronger race. The Jews, however, are beyond all doubt the strongest, toughest, and purest race at present living in Europe, they know how to succeed even under ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... to tell; but gradually he drew from Hilary a good deal. Johanna's feeble health, which caused her continuing to teach to be very unadvisable; and the gradual diminishing of the school—from what cause they could not account—which made it very doubtful whether some change would not soon or ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... debater and a politician. Mr. Hume, then in the zenith of his influence, followed up the blows so heavily dealt by Sir Robert and Mr. Roebuck. The efforts of Lord George's followers to cover his disastrous defeat were feeble and fruitless. It was not until the 20th that the amendment proposed by Sir William Somerville on the 9th was carried, and on the 29th the announcements were made in the lords and commons that ministers had resigned. The Duke of Wellington made it known to the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... plenty of money, but he kept them here to a dog's life in the shack, and they hated him for it. Besides, they had a keen grievance which obscured any worry about Bill—they were hungry, wildly hungry. The darkness set in, and the feeble light wandered from the smoked chimney of the lantern ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... night in the Bastille. All his infancy was his own fearful secret. His life, seen whole, had been a miracle. But none knew that except himself and Mr Shushions. Assuredly Edwin never even faintly suspected it. To Edwin Mr Shushions was nothing but a feeble and ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... artistic presentation may best be judged from an example, illustrating the vigorous assault of Salviati, the champion of the new theory, and the feeble retorts ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... "We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded with a sleep, you know; and here among the mountains it seems borne in on one forcibly that, as I told you my partner said, man's intellect is feeble and ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... have left in their writings deeper impressions of their personal feelings than Moliere. With strong passions in a feeble frame, he had duped his imagination that, like another Pygmalion, he would create a woman by his own art. In silence and agony he tasted the bitter fruits of the disordered habits of the life of a comedian, a manager, and a poet. His ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... designed that the entire set of volumes can go on a shelf twenty-seven feet long, or even longer. The first edition will be an edition de luxe bound in vellum, or perhaps in buckskin, and sold at five hundred dollars. It will be limited to five hundred copies and, of course, sold only to the feeble minded. The next edition will be the Literary Edition, sold to artists, authors, actors and contractors. After that will come the Boarding House Edition, bound in board and paid for in the ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... Flemings to import negroes to the colonies. It was not until the year 1517, that Las Casas gave his sanction of the traffic. It already existed, and he countenanced it solely with a view to having the hardy Africans substituted for the feeble Indians. It was advocated at the same time, and for the same reasons, by the Jeronimite friars, who were missionaries in the colonies. The motives of Las Casas were purely benevolent, though founded on erroneous ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... to have feeble children who could scarce have been mar- ried at Sparta, and those provident states who studied strong and healthful generations; which happen but contingently in mere pecuniary matches or marriages made by the candle, wherein notwithstanding there is little redress ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... exhausted her passion, as it seemed to do no good, was returning to her seat, with such a dreary step and forlorn expression that she seemed ten years older. She really looked very feeble, and Polly broke out impulsively, "Oh, let me read the other part of the paper, dear Mrs. ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... a land inhabited only by savages? My plan, I believe, is right, in accordance with probability and justice. You, Senor Ware, are a representative of a race that has crossed the mountains into a new region. You have there, in Kaintock, thin and feeble settlements ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... threw their arms around each other, and sank to their knees on the prairie. As they said a prayer of thanks together, the uneven glare of the lightning, which had kept up almost uninterruptedly ever since a few seconds before the cattle reached them, died away. One or two feeble flashes followed, and then the storm ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... he saw the stars glittering with a strange brilliancy. In the canyon, far below, there were a few twinkling lights to mark the Carleton ranch, and the old home of Sibyl, where Conrad Lagrange and Myra Willard waited. Miles away, the lights of the towns among the orange groves, twinkled like feeble stars in another feeble world. The cold wind moaned and wailed in the dark pines and swirled about the cliff in sudden gusts. A cougar screamed somewhere on the mountainside below. An answering scream came from the ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... the whispering had been occasioned by an event which was more or less rare—the entrance of visitors: lawyer Thatcher, accompanied by a very feeble and aged man; a fine, portly, middle-aged gentleman with iron-gray hair; and a dignified lady who was doubtless the latter's wife. The lady was leading a child. Tom had been restless and full of chafings and repinings; conscience-smitten, too—he could not meet ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... step inside, with all the best will in the world to make the best of it, it is hard to find, much to admire, and anything at all to love, in these acres of dismally whitewashed walls, and long, feeble lines of arcades without capitals. The inherent vice of Belgian architecture—its lack of really beautiful detail, and its fussy superfluity of pinnacle and panelling—seems to me here to culminate. Belgium has really beautiful churches—not merely of the thirteenth century, when building ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... if not architecturally imposing, was at least sufficiently venerable. At the present time the aisles were full of heaped-up holly and wreaths; a few lamps and a considerable number of tallow candles shed a rather feeble light amongst the pillars; a crowd of school children, not yet washed for the morrow, were busy under the directions of the schoolmistress in decorating the chancel; Mr. Thomas Reid the conservative sexton was at the top of a tall ladder, presumably using doubtful language to himself ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... Daylight brought but a feeble glimmer to Blair's dark prison-house, yet he welcomed it as the assurance of dawn—dawn which is ever welcome to the watcher, though it may usher in ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... there was certainly something very discouraging about the whole appearance of things in the eyes of the doctor, as he entered the costly furnished apartment. A fire, it is true, twinkled between the bars of the grate; but its few feeble sparks, in contrast with the prevailing surroundings of black coal and cinders, were suggestive to the feelings rather of the chilliness they were meant to counteract than of the warmth which they were designed to impart. Near the fire was a dwarf, round, three-legged table, on which lay ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... throughout Greece were eminent in art. Sculptors and architects vied with one another in adorning the young empress of the seas: then rose the masterpieces of Phidias, of Callic'rates, of Mnesicles, which, either in their broken remains, or in the feeble copies of imitators less inspired, still command so intense a wonder, and furnish models so immortal. And if, so to speak, their bones and relics excite our awe and envy, as testifying of a lovelier and grander race, which the deluge of time has swept away, what, in that day, must have ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... many thought that there would be no war. Whilst the reins were slipping from the hands—the too feeble hands—of Mr. Buchanan into the grasp of President Lincoln, there was a moment when men thought that we were about to see the wonderful example of a great question, which in all other countries would have involved a war, ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... little cottage, hid in the oak copse; had prepared it with her own hands; had gone to the hospital to fetch her husband. That never ending journey from the hospital to the cottage! His ceaseless babble, the foul overflow from his feeble mind, had ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... we meet with the squat Mongolian, with his high cheek bones set on a broad face, and his compressed, unintellectual, pig-like eyes; or encounter, in the Indian Archipelago or the Australian interior, the pitiably low Alforian races, with their narrow, retreating foreheads, slim, feeble limbs, and baboon-like faces. Or, finally, passing westward, we find the large-jawed, copper-colored Indians of the New World, vigorous in some of the northern tribes as animals, though feeble as men, but gradually ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... where one studies them. They very commonly fall into a routine, the basis of which is going to some lounging-place or other, a bar-room, a reading-room, or something of the kind. They grow slovenly in dress, and wear the same hat forever. They have a feeble curiosity for news perhaps, which they take daily as a man takes his bitters, and then fall silent and think they are thinking. But the mind goes out under this regimen, like a fire without a draught; and it is not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... worried. He knew that Jasper Jay was a bully. And there was no telling what he might do to anyone so small as Mr. Chippy was. So he tried his best to please Jasper. But he was so upset that he could manage only a feeble "Chip, chip, ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... in even savage bosoms There are longings, yearnings, strivings For the good they comprehend not; That the feeble hands and helpless, Groping blindly in the darkness, Touch God's ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... investments, took charge of his bank account, collected his dividends, became, so to speak, his financial guardian. Captain Barnabas, at first rebellious—"I've always bossed my own ship," he declared, "and I ain't so darned feeble-headed that I can't do it yet"—gradually grew reconciled and then contented. He, too, began to worship his daughter's husband as the daughter ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... The hesitating feeble gait of one who fears a pitfall at every step, so easily recognisable in the "numerous, successive, slight alterations" in the foregoing passage, may be traced in many another page of the "Origin of Species" by those who will be at the trouble of comparing the ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... [4228]Nicholas Leonicus hath a story of Solon, that besieging, I know not what city, steeped hellebore in a spring of water, which by pipes was conveyed into the middle of the town, and so either poisoned, or else made them so feeble and weak by purging, that they were not able to bear arms. Notwithstanding all these cavils and objections, most of our late writers do much approve of it. [4229] Gariopontus lib. 1. cap. 13. Codronchus com. de helleb. Fallopius lib. de med. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... to arrive. At ten o'clock in the evening he was already in front of the Countess's house. The weather was terrible; the wind blew with great violence, the sleety snow fell in large flakes, the lamps emitted a feeble light, the streets were deserted; from time to time a sledge drawn by a sorry-looking hack, passed by on the lookout for a belated passenger. Hermann was enveloped in a thick overcoat, and felt neither wind ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... arc lights swinging to and fro shed only a ghastly radiance through the dense fog, and grotesque shadows, dancing hither and thither to the vibratory motion of the lights, seemed trying to contest supremacy with the feeble rays. ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... my finger what I feel Limn, Love, nor do I know My bliss in song to vent; Nay, though I knew it, needs must I conceal, For, once divulged, I trow 'Twould turn to dreariment. Yet am I so content, All speech were halt and feeble, did I try The least thereof ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... filth, with pits, sellers, and vaults lying open and uncovered, to the great perill and danger of the inhabitants and other the King's subjects passing by the same; and some houses be very weak and feeble, ready to fall down, and therefore dangerous to pass by, to the great decay and hinderance of the ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... word of that strange interview. Charles saw again the face of the dying man; heard again the stern, feeble voice, ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... master George was of a disposition entirely the reverse. Feeble, languid, and inert, sitting motionless for hours at her window, or moving her small fingers over the strings of her guitar, to some soft and languishing air, she would have seemed to a stranger incapable of rousing herself from that indolent repose, in which mind as well as body participated. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... tired as were Nono's young arms, and feeble as were Pelle's. The distance was short by water, and the two were soon at the magistrate's office, where Pelle expected to find the delinquent boys. They were already there. Their wet clothes had been changed, and they were for the moment in private conversation ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... have striven, And mutually the grasp have given Of brotherhood, To work each other and the whole race good; What matter if the dream Come only partly true, And all the things accomplished seem Feeble and few? At least, when summer's flame burns low And on our heads the drifting snow Settles and stays, We shall rejoice that in our earlier days We boldly then ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... put away his food. He used to look across the table at me, with a feeble appeal for sympathy in his expression. Oftentimes he sighed deeply, and related anecdotes redolent of "red salmon" and "deer flesh," "strawberries as big as teacups" and "peaches as big as pint bowls," in places ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... unfriendly sky above us; though it must be said that through all those many, many weeks no cloud perched in the zenith. When there was light there was sun, and the courage of it entered into our bones, helping to save us. You may think I have been made feeble-minded by my sufferings, but I tell you plainly that, in the closing days of our journey, I used to see a tall figure walking beside me, who, whenever I would have spoken to him, laid a warning finger on his lips; but when I would have ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of Lincoln's regard for his step-mother, it is interesting also to learn her opinion of him. A gentleman visiting the old lady after her son's death says: "She is eighty-four years old, and quite feeble. She is a plain, unsophisticated old lady, with a frank, open countenance, a warm heart full of kindness toward others, and in many respects very much like the President. Abraham was evidently her idol; she speaks of him still as her 'good boy,' and with much feeling said, 'He ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... years of his solitary life, and his busy days as a country practitioner, he had become less and less inclined to take much part in what feeble efforts the rest of the townspeople made to entertain themselves. He was more apt to loiter along the street, stopping here and there to talk with his neighbors at their gates or their front-yard gardening, ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... which we write Squire Deaker was near eighty, and although feeble and broken down, he still exhibited the remains of a large, coarse, strong-boned animal, not without a vigorous twinkle of low cunning in his eye, and a duplicity of character and principle about his angular and ill-shaped eye-brows which could not be mistaken. He was ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... pail on his arm. At sight of Margarita his jaw dropped, he shivered violently and appeared ready to faint, but as she called encouragingly to him he mustered courage to approach and feel of her skirt timidly. He was evidently feeble-minded as well as dumb, for with a sort of croak he dropped the bucket and began to dance clumsily up and down, snapping his fingers the while. Plainly he had thought her gone for good and ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... our ability. If you concur, I think he would better be informed that we are not pushing him beyond this position; and that, in fact, our judgment is rather against his going beyond it. If he can only maintain this position, without more, this rebellion can only eke out a short and feeble existence, as an animal sometimes may with ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... where a mingled feeling of joy, surprise, and anxiety. The peasants blessed his return, and expressed their good wishes to him in their simple language; but when they saw his little troop, they looked on him with tender pity, and had no hope of his being triumphant with such feeble means. ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... only among the doctors, but actually among their patients. There are men and women whom the operating table seems to fascinate; half-alive people who through vanity, or hypochondria, or a craving to be the constant objects of anxious attention or what not, lose such feeble sense as they ever had of the value of their own organs and limbs. They seem to care as little for mutilation as lobsters or lizards, which at least have the excuse that they grow new claws and new tails if they lose the old ones. Whilst this book was being ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... white, surrounded me. The hard varnished bedstead (the mattress felt as if it were varnished) nearly filled the little room. Two stiff chairs, and a yellow window-shade which looked as if it were made of varnished wood, glittered in the feeble light of a glass lamp, while the ghastly grayish pallor of the ewer and basin on the wash-stand was thrown into bold relief by the intenser whiteness of the wall ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... California extinguished the final fires of enlightened patriotism and quenched in blood the monarchical revival. Thenceforth armed opposition to anarchy was confined to desultory and insignificant warfare waged by small gangs of mercenaries in the service of wealthy individuals and equally feeble bands of prescripts fighting for their lives. In that year, too, "the Three Presidents" were driven from their capitals, Cincinnati, New Orleans and Duluth, their armies dissolving by desertion and themselves meeting death at ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... they had left on the prairie to die. Her people had built for her a little shade or lodge, and had given her some provisions, sufficient to last her on her trip to the Happy Hunting grounds. This the Indians often do when pursued by an enemy, and one of their number becomes too old and feeble to travel any longer. This squaw was recognized by John Nelson who said that she was a relative of his wife. From her we learned that the flying Indians were known as Pawnee, Killer's band, and that they had lately killed ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... the beauty which had won her admiration, Eos became disgusted with his infirmities, and at last shut him up in a chamber, where soon little else was left of him but his voice, which had now sunk into a weak, feeble quaver. According to some of the later poets, he became so weary of his cheerless and miserable existence, that he entreated to be allowed to die. This was, however, impossible; but Eos, pitying his ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... for our nonsense; we never expected that they would accept it seriously as sense. Therefore I am all at sea about the existing situation; I scarcely know whether to be relieved or enraged by this substitution of the feeble platform lecture for the forcible curtain-lecture. I am lost without the trenchant and candid Mrs. Caudle. I really do not know what to do with the prostrate and penitent Miss Pankhurst. This surrender of ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... is at first puzzling. This perplexing question of distinction; the quality of being somehow fresh—individual. Really it is a perfectly simple matter. It is common knowledge that, after a prolonged fast, the brain works in a feeble manner, the current of one's thoughts is pallid and shallow, it is difficult to fix the attention and impossible to mobilise the full forces of the mind. On the other hand, immediately after a sound meal, the brain feels ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells |
