"Feebleness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on the dreamlike strangeness of it, his mind was doing its practical work. If Winifred and Mrs. Martha were in the vehicle he had seen, what time they would gain while driving on the road they would be apt to lose by their feebleness on the mountain path, which he and Sophia could ascend so much more lightly. Wherever their goal, and whatever their purpose, he was sanguine that he would find and stop them before they joined the main party. He communicated the grounds ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... of the Republic be cajoled into a friendly attitude towards this blood-thirsty dastard, because that, in the feebleness and fear that have now overtaken her, she essays to gloze over the infamous acts of which she stands convicted before the nations, and assumes an air of friendship towards them. Had the Union fallen, through her infernal machinations, not a city throughout her dominions ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... conical shadow of the earth ended, according to Ptolemy, at the heaven of Venus. Philalethes suggests that there may be here an allegorical meaning, the shadow of the earth being shown in feebleness of will, worldly ambition, and inordinate love, which have allotted the souls who appear in these first heavens to the lowest grades ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... among men, he may have infinite other accomplishments. The whole universe, O king, dependeth upon virtue. There is nothing higher than virtue. And virtue, O king, is attainable by one that hath plenty of wealth. Wealth cannot be earned by leading a mendicant life, nor by a life of feebleness. Wealth, however, can be earned by intelligence directed by virtue. In thy case, O king, begging, which is successful with Brahmanas, hath been forbidden. Therefore, O bull amongst men, strive for the acquisition of wealth by exerting ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... breaking of the heart compared to the breaking of the bones? but because as when the bones are broken, the outward man is disabled as to what it was wont to do; so when the spirit is broken, the inward man is disabled as to what vanity and folly it before delighted in; hence, feebleness is joined with this brokenness of heart. 'I am feeble,' saith he, 'and sore broken' (Psa 38:8). I have lost my strength and former vigour, as to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... were pariahs, and reckoned as little better than animals. Hirata probably referred to the four great classes only—samurai, farmers, artizans, and merchants. But even in that case what are we to think of his ascription of divinity to the race, in view of the moral and physical feebleness of human nature? The moral side of the question is answered by the Shinto theory of evil deities, "gods of crookedness," who were alleged to have "originated from the impurities contracted by [119] Izanagi during his visit to ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... approached with considerable feebleness, passed slowly into the study, advanced to the table, and reached out his hands as if to lift something which he expected to find there. Seeing nothing, he glanced in astonishment up at the book shelves and then back to the table, shook his head, and ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... death, and raised to life to join the new song. Nations will see it and fear and trust Jehovah. At last the great new song of resurrection and the new creation will swell in its divinely revealed length and breadth, heighth and depth. Now He sings the song, and His co-heirs sing it too in feebleness, yet by His Grace and through His Spirit. Ere long in His presence all the Redeemed will praise in Glory with glorified lips. Heavenly beings will utter their praise and in a wider circle down on earth, ...
— The Lord of Glory - Meditations on the person, the work and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ • Arno Gaebelein
... of the Charles Bal, who chanced to be only 10 miles south of the volcano, also compared the sounds to discharges of artillery, but this only shows the feebleness of ordinary language in attempting to describe such extraordinary sounds, for if they were comparable to close artillery at Batavia, the same comparison is inappropriate at only ten miles' distance. He also mentions the crackling ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... way you've delivered yourself on my other books, which are feebleness itself compared with this one, I must say your present attitude ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... blow once and die, was incapable of a second growth of love; but I now felt the fallacy of that doctrine, and was at first humiliated by the discovery. It struck me like a great heresy against truth and purity; it seemed to lay bare before me the corruptibility and feebleness of poor human nature. To strive against it, however, was idle. The second growth was in full flower, yet with a difference from the first, which I could detect even against the grain of the passion ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... shorter by the head than his two sons in the scene, etc. In conclusion, Starkey appears to have been one of those mild spirits, which, not originally deficient in understanding, are crushed by penury into dejection and feebleness. He might have proved a useful adjunct, if not an ornament to society, if Fortune had taken him into a very little fostering; but wanting that, he became a Captain,—a by-word,—and lived and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... of her usual assumption of feebleness; "don't mention it, if you don't want me to die. We won't have snow, if you please, until I can ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... their way to Lanark, he was met by Dugald, the wounded man who had rushed into the room to apprise us of the advance of the English forces. During the confusion of that horrible night, and in the midst of the contention, in spite of his feebleness he crept away, and concealed himself from the soldiers amongst the bushes of the glen. When all was over, he came from his hiding-place; and finding the English soldier's helmet and cloak, poor Dugald, still fearful of falling in with any straggling party of Heselrigge's, disguised himself ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... For, look you, there are at least nine chances in ten that he writes POOR verses. Now the habit of chewing on rhymes without sense and soul to match them is, like that of using any other narcotic, at once a proof of feebleness and a debilitating agent. A young man can get rid of the presumption against him afforded by his writing verses only by convincing us that they are ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... immediately after birth, and is due to nonclosure of the foramen ovale, which allows a mixture of the venous with the arterial blood in the left cavities of the heart. It is characterized by a dark purple or bluish color of the visible mucous membranes, shortness of breath, and a general feebleness. Foals thus affected generally live only ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... day, since the upper floor commanded the bottoms of the links; and at night, when I could venture farther, the lower windows were barricaded as if to stand a siege. Sometimes I thought the tall man must be confined to bed, for I remembered the feebleness of his gait; and sometimes I thought he must have gone clear away, and that Northmour and the young lady remained alone together in the pavilion. The idea, even then, ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... when the worst of the danger was over, appointed the 4th of October as a fast-day. The Bishop arranged the services, but was too unwell to attend them. This was the beginning of his last illness; and though he held an ordination some weeks later, these latter weeks were all sinking, and increasing feebleness. A sea-voyage was twice attempted, but without success; and on the 1st of January, 1858, his trembling hand wrote, "All going on well, but I am dead almost.—D. C. ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the argument from Design, it was observed that Mill's presentation of it is merely a resuscitation of the argument as presented by Paley, Bell, and Chalmers. And indeed we saw that the first-named writer treated this whole subject with a feebleness and inaccuracy very surprising in him; for while he has failed to assign anything like due weight to the inductive evidence of organic evolution, he did not hesitate to rush into a supernatural explanation of biological phenomena. ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... incapacitated the judge for the bench,—the parish clergyman may take some share in the much-loved duty in which he has labored so long. He may still, though briefly, and only now and then, address his flock from the pulpit, in words which his very feebleness will make far more touchingly effective than the most vigorous eloquence and the richest and fullest tones of his young coadjutors. There never will be, within the sacred walls, a silence and reverence more profound ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... time enjoining him to make a prudent use of it? Baker had written to his father-in-law making inquiry about the securities for his wife's portion; Defoe answers with profuse expressions of affection, a touching picture of his old age and feebleness, and the imminent ruin of his family through the possible treachery of the son to whom he has entrusted their means of support, and an adjuration to his son-in-law to stand by them with comfort and counsel when he is gone. The inquiry about the securities ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... the reason undisturbed by the emotions seems to be the ideal at which Plato aims in his later dialogues. There is no mystic enthusiasm or rapturous contemplation of ideas. Whether we attribute this change to the greater feebleness of age, or to the development of the quarrel between philosophy and poetry in Plato's own mind, or perhaps, in some degree, to a carelessness about artistic effect, when he was absorbed in abstract ideas, we can hardly be wrong in assuming, amid such a variety of indications, ...
— Philebus • Plato
... contracted and dry; and the little fat that there may be is friable, and shrunk within its integuments. The flesh of animals slaughtered whilst under considerable depression of vital energy (as from previous bleeding) has a diminished tendency to stiffen after death, the feebleness of this tendency being in proportion to the degree of depression. It presents, also, an unnatural blue or pallid appearance, has a faint and slightly sour smell, and soon becomes putrid. When an animal has died otherwise than by slaughtering, its flesh is flaccid and clammy, emits a peculiar ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... the exact tone and value of the color you see in nature at that point. Until you are enough of a master of your brush to get an effect in this way, do not meddle with the more complex methods of after-painting. You will never do good work by subsequent manipulation, if you have a groundwork of feebleness and indecision. Direct painting is the fundamental ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... Percy and his prejudice; with the gossiping world; with her friends for making this a trial of power; with Arthur for having put forward his poor young wife when it cost her so much. 'He knew I should not have given way to him! Feebleness is a tyrant to the strong. It was like putting the women and children on the battlements of a besieged city. It was cowardly; unkind to her, unfair on me. ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... notwithstanding the swiftness with which he passed as has been described, the Knight of the Rueful Countenance observed and noted all these trifles, and though he made the attempt, he was unable to follow him, for it was not granted to the feebleness of Rocinante to make way over such rough ground, he being, moreover, slow-paced and sluggish by nature. Don Quixote at once came to the conclusion that this was the owner of the saddle-pad and of the valise, and made up his ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... that the circumstances of the Jews made it impossible for them to compel their residence and service. They were few in number, without resources, defensive fortifications, or munitions of war, and surrounded withal by a host of foes, scoffing at their feebleness and inviting desertion from their ranks. Yet so far from the Jews attempting in any way to restrain their servants, or resorting to precautions to prevent escape, they put arms into their hands, and enrolled them as a night-guard, for ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... had considered all these things, but he owed to Timagenes the hint that Arius was the man whom Octavianus most trusted. So the august prelate secretly entered into communication with Barine's uncle. But the dignity of his high office, and the feebleness of extreme age, forbade Anubis to seek the man who was suspected of friendship for the Romans. He had therefore sent his trusted secretary, the young Serapion, to make a compact as his representative with the friend of Octavianus, whose severe injuries prevented his leaving the house to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... pretensions of the parliament, the want of rules and leadership in the administration,.. in such a way that one breathes on reaching the epoch when one enjoys the benefits of that which is due to the unity of the laws, administration and territory." The constant feebleness of the government under Louis XIV, even, under Louis XV. and Louis XVI., "should inspire the need of sustaining the newly accomplished work and its acquired preponderance." On the 18th of Brumaire (19-11-1799), France ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... protested the old man, as earnestly as his feebleness would permit, "there's lots of big business in this world that don't need so long a head as this one does—bein' as how you're goin' to run it shipshape. You need brains; that you do, nephy. It'll keep you studyin' all the time. When you ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... "See that it is done, and done properly. I suffer from a delicacy of the constitution and a little feebleness of the legs these days, so that I cannot handle the tools properly. I must leave this work to thee, gacheur. And stand up and touch a hand to thy cap when ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... be saints and to be ministers. He who called us will help us. With man the call seems quixotic, impossible; with Him all things are possible. At times when the call is loudest we can but reply, 'Ah! Lord, I am but a little child.' We are intensely conscious of feebleness and, what is worse, of treachery and meanness within; we half love what we are called upon to denounce; we play with the sin we are to teach men to abhor. Yet the call is sure, is definite, is perpetual, and again and again you will in all probability find what a help it is to look back to that ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... dangers to which babies and children are exposed are more subtle in form and more complex in action. They are less within than without the average home. They are those that give the high death-rate of infants, the crippled limbs of children, the weakness of body and defectiveness of mind and feebleness or perversion of moral nature that make so many human beings unequal to life's demands. They are the dangers, personal and social, summed up in the antitheses of "health" and "disease," of "normal" and ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... obscurity alone. Fortunately he had "won golden opinions from all sorts of people." He had friends among all classes, who did not permit themselves to sleep while he was in danger. Their activity supplied the loss of his own. They watched while he slept. They assisted his feebleness. In the moment of alarm, he was sped from house to house, from tree to thicket, from the thicket to the swamp. His "hair-breadth 'scapes" under these frequent exigencies, were, no doubt, among the most interesting adventures of his life, ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... wrote to a correspondent, "I have the pleasure to inform you, that my health is restored, but a feebleness still hangs upon me, and I am much incommoded by the incision, which was made in a very large and painful tumor on the protuberance of my thigh. This prevents me from walking or sitting. However, the ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... deficient in strength. Debilitated is used of physical weakness, in most instances brought on by excesses and abuses. Feeble denotes decided or extreme weakness, which may excite pity or contempt. Infirm is applied to a person whose weakness or feebleness is due to age. Decrepit is used in reference to a person broken down or worn out by infirmities, age, or sickness. Impotent implies such loss or lack of strength or vitality as ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... break the fine spirit of love and honour that was in him. When the end was very near, and the son-in-law to whom these Letters were addressed found him one morning entirely himself, though in the last extreme of feebleness: his eye was clear and calm—every trace of the wild fire of delirium was extinguished: "Lockhart," he said, "I may have but a minute to speak to you. My dear, be a good man—be virtuous, be religious—be a good ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... made the life wearisome to him; but he could not endure the idea that it should be written in history that he had allowed himself to be made a faineant Prime Minister, and then had failed even in that. History would forget what he had done as a working Minister in recording the feebleness of the Ministry which ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... frankness, reckless audacity, or the hated vices of feebleness, cowardice, deceit, humility. Those who have won fame by puissant feats and who die in battle are snatched by the Valkyrs from the sod to Valhalla. To die in arms is ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... poor creature began to rave—her child, her husband, and little Mary. She shrieked for them louder and louder, that her voice might rise above the wild, strong cries that swelled as she thought in defiance of her feebleness. ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... and butter. Keep cool. Personally, I would sooner that you, at your age, did smell of bread and butter than whisky. Well, you think that Caesar is going straight to the bow-wows because he plays bridge. You accuse him in your own little mind of feebleness, and so forth. Yes, just so. And it's doosid unfair to Caesar, because he's given up his walk to-day entirely on your account. Ah! I thought that would make you ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... gracefully, and made inquiries about my journey, then sank back into his chair listlessly, and allowed Helen to pull the tiger-skin which formed his lap-robe over his knees. There was a peculiar feebleness about his whole attitude as he sat—something almost abased in the sinking of his chin upon his breast. It was hard for me to realize that he was the owner of all this magnificence, and, dressed although he was with faultless elegance, and although luxurious appurtenances filled the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... and myself thus encouraged, I shall proceed to make good the charge in which the honor of the Commons, that is, the national honor, is so deeply concerned. For, my Lords, if any circumstance of weakness, if any feebleness of nerve, if any yielding to weak and popular opinions and delusions were to shake us, consider what the situation of this country would be. This prosecution, if weakly conceived, ill digested, or intemperately pursued, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... these rights infringed; but they showed little appreciation of their own duties to the Union. For certain of the positions which they assumed no excuse can be offered. They harped continually on the feebleness of the Federal authorities, and the inability of these authorities to do them justice or offer them adequate protection against the Indian and the Spaniard; yet they bitterly opposed the adoption of the very Constitution which ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... even if I kept alive, I might become so weak as not to be able to hold on to the tree. My seat was far from being an easy one. The tree was small—the branch was slender. It was already cutting into my thighs. I might, in my feebleness, be compelled to ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... own bitter draught. But I speak not to you—you need to teach and warn one another. And more than one voice rises in earnestness. And all that women say to the heart that has once chosen the evil path is considered prudery, or ignorance, or perhaps a feebleness of nature which exempts ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the near waves, so as to bring out a stream of light behind; and though he did this in a more legitimate way than they, that is to say, expressing the light by touches on the foam, and indicating the shadow as cast on foamy surface, still the habit has induced much feebleness and conventionality in the pictures of the period. His drawing of the waves was also somewhat petty and divided, small forms covered with white flat spray, a condition which I doubt not the artist has seen on some of the shallow Dutch seas, ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... such a see-saw of profits versus wages the superior power of capital has the odds all in its favor. He learns to regard the whole state of the industrial world as one in which might makes right, and feebleness is ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... Buffington is even farther from Oxenbridge than Barbury Green. The creature was well mounted (ominous, when he came to override my caprice!) and he looked bigger, and, yes, handsomer, though that doesn't signify, and still more determined than when I saw him last; although goodness knows that timidity and feebleness of purpose were not in striking evidence on that memorable occasion. I had drawn up under the shade of a tree ostensibly to eat some cherries, thinking that if I turned my face away I might pass unrecognised. It was a stupid plan, for if I had whipped up the mare and driven ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... hundred and twenty miles which lay between them and Twofold Bay? John Mangles and Lord Glenarvan examined the surviving horses with great uneasiness, but there was not the slightest symptom of illness or feebleness in them. The animals were in perfect health, and bravely bearing the fatigues of the voyage. This somewhat reassured Glenarvan, and made him hope the malady would strike no more victims. Ayrton agreed ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... robust, steady-going, persevering, self-denying; Daniel, careless of work, eager for play, often sick, always slender and weakly, and regarded rather as a burden upon the family than a help to it. His feebleness early habituated him to being a recipient of aid and favor, and it decided his destiny. It has been the custom in New England, from the earliest time, to bring up one son of a prosperous family to a profession, and the one selected was usually ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... the sunset of mankind. For the first time I began to realize an odd consequence of the social effort in which we are at present engaged. And yet, come to think, it is a logical consequence enough. Strength is the outcome of need; security sets a premium on feebleness. The work of ameliorating the conditions of life—the true civilizing process that makes life more and more secure—had gone steadily on to a climax. One triumph of a united humanity over Nature had followed another. Things that are now mere dreams had become projects deliberately put in ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... with hysteria. Then the never-to-be-forgotten night that ensued, when he descended into the pit, horrified at what he supposed he had done, at one moment ridden with remorse, at another raging against his own feebleness, his lack of courage, his wretched, vacillating spirit. But morning had come, and with it the knowledge that he had failed, and the baser assurance that he was not even remotely suspected. His own escape had been no less miraculous than that of his enemy, and he had fallen ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... a jug containing a little muddy water; not a drop of milk, and the cow was lost in the wood! Petrea would have given her heart's blood for a few drops of wine, for she saw that Sara was ready to die from feebleness. And now, with feelings which are not to be told, must she give Sara to drink from the muddy water, in which, however, to make it more refreshing, she bruised some bilberries. Sara thanked her for it as if ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... illustrate the strong and weak points of Hindu tradition. The feebleness of the historical sense may be seen in the account of Devadatta's doings in the Cullavagga[641] where the compiler seems unable to give a clear account of what he must have regarded as momentous incidents. Yet the same treatise ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... coming time Shall be remembered. Men will praise an act By likening it to Bimbasara's gift. You offer me the half of your domain. I in return beseech you share with me Better than wealth, better than kingly power, The peace and joy that follows lusts subdued. Wait not on age—for age brings feebleness— But this great battle needs our utmost strength. If you will come, then welcome to our cave; If not, may wisdom all your actions guide. Ruling your empire in all righteousness, Preserve your country and ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... of your lips; in this canticle, composed by the Mother of God, the honor and glory of your sex, or rather by the Holy Ghost Himself, who inspired her, He has inscribed all the rights and glories of women, by celebrating in it the power of her feebleness, the greatness of her humility and of all those modest virtues which so well ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... you may not be at the mercy of a troublesome impression, certain precautions must be taken. In the state of weakness and feebleness in which you are, a disagreeable face, an unlucky word, antipathetic surroundings, a mere nothing would be enough to rout you—is it ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... but little to mitigate the severity of the judgment passed on the writer himself. In fact, we are inclined to believe that Mr. Froude's want of judgment rather helps to deepen the surprise and disappointment with which the book has been received, as affording an additional proof of the feebleness of Carlyle's own powers in estimating the people about him. That, after heaping contempt on so many of whom the world has been accustomed to think highly, he should have retained to the last his confidence in, and respect for, a person capable of dealing his fame such a deadly blow as Mr. Froude, ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... proofs of our project, I did not despair, thanks to the nature of the criminal laws of England, of escaping death; but such were the feebleness and fright of my wretched partner, that I had no doubt of our common downfall if I were compelled to appear before the tribunals in association with that cowardly wretch. To obviate the aggravation of my own misfortunes, which could not ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... impulses, and in putting down all that is felt. . . . The manner in which some of the hoary saints in these pictures pore over their books and carry their decrepit old age, full of a bent and absorbed feebleness—the set limbs of the warriors on horseback—the sidelong unequivocal looks of some of the ladies playing on harps and conscious of their ornaments—the people of fashion seated in rows, with Time coming up unawares to destroy ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... rather dreaded the comments her father might be pleased to pass on it. But her kinsman, Lord Meadshire, Lord-Lieutenant of the county, a great magnate in the eyes of the world, was to her just a very kind and playful old man, whose jokes only, because of their inherent feebleness, caused her any discomfort. Cousin Humphrey would preserve her from the results of her fault ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... platform, and called upon to address the Convention. The venerable ex-President of the United States first rose responsive to the call, but remarked that the exhaustion incident to his recent incessant labors, and the nature of his emotions at such a momentous crisis, superadded to the feebleness of age, rendered him physically unable to utter what he felt and thought on such an occasion. Nevertheless, he seemed to acquire supernatural strength as he proceeded, and he spoke most effectively ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... of it; he surrenders his imagination to the enthusiasm of hell, which lends him all its forces; Paris crowned him, Sodom would have banished him.[3] Locke, again, did not understand himself. His distinguishing characteristics are feebleness and precipitancy of judgment. Vagueness and irresolution reign in his expressions as they do in his thoughts. He constantly exhibits that most decisive sign of mediocrity—he passes close by the greatest questions without perceiving ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... three were alone Julie turned to the boy. For some moments she regarded him shrewdly. She saw he was no longer the wild young savage she had brought up; there was a certain nervous, blase feebleness about his movements as he sat uneasily in his chair, his hands thrust in the pockets of his hunting coat, his chin sunk on his chest. She noticed too, the unnatural redness of his lips and the haggard pallor ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... others again were beyond all controversy inferior to the established text of the passages; and it seemed not a little difficult to reconcile the critical acumen and poetical insight of many of the corrections with the feebleness and prosaic triviality ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... science knows, Yet has not strength to keep in check the foes That rise within him, mars his Fortune's fame, And brings her by his feebleness to shame. ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... have been nowhere. You feel, by your weak heart and weary frame, that, if you had been sent to the Crimea in that dreadful first winter, you would certainly have died. And you feel, too, by your lack of moral stamina, by your feebleness of resolution, that it has been your preservation from you know not what depths of shame and misery, that you never were pressed very hard by temptation. Do not range yourself with those who found fault with a certain ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... bell for my boots, and, to the open-mouthed dismay of Mrs Pearson, left the vicarage leaning on Tom's arm. But such was the commotion in my mind, that I had become quite unconscious of illness or even feebleness. Hurrying on in more terror than I can well express lest I should be too late, I reached Mr Templeton's house just as a small mahogany table was being hoisted into a spring-cart which stood at the door. Breathless with haste, I was ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... many irksome social functions; but she does not shun these when it is clear to her that her people wish her to undertake them. Witness her willingness to take part in the Jubilee Thanksgiving services and pageant, despite the feebleness of her advanced age. ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... why then those critics are right who hold that Art is exhausted and the world too worn out for poetry. I do not, for my part, believe this: and I believe the so-called necessity of Art to be the mere feebleness of the artist. Let us all aspire rather to Life, and let the dead bury their dead. If we have but courage to face these conventions, to touch this low ground, we shall take strength from it instead of losing it; and of that, I am intimately persuaded. For there is poetry ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... imitation. Almost all the poets of that period, however different in the degree and quality of their talents, are characterised by great exaggeration, and as a necessary consequence, great coldness of sentiment; by a passion for frivolous and tawdry ornament; and, above all, by an extreme feebleness and diffuseness of style. Tasso, Marino, Guarini, Metastasio, and a crowd of writers of inferior merit and celebrity, were spell-bound in the enchanted gardens of a gaudy and meretricious Alcina, who concealed ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to nibble at an unlawful spot. Is this due to feebleness of the teeth? By no means: the Cetonia's skin is no tougher on the back than on the belly; moreover, the grub is capable of perforating the skin when it leaves the egg; a fortiori, it must be more capable of doing so now ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... Or am I one of those who cannot point to direct answers to pleading prayer, because I never did plead? Is there not a cause? Look at what James has said in his epistle, iv. 2-4. Is not this "friendship with the world" the cause of this feebleness in prayer? We want all that we can get in pleasure and self-indulgence, and to see our church become a power also. The two things cannot be. This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting, and if we wish to see England won to Christ we must ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... sere range into abundant and peaceful pasture, the physical side of her being rounded out, glowing with the fires of youth, at the same time that the poor old Captain sank slowly but surely into inactivity and feebleness. She did not perceive his decline, for he talked bravely of his future, and called her attention to his increasing weight, which was indeed a ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... we find peculiar manifestations of family devotion exemplifying that touching affection which rises to unusual sacrifice because it is close to pity and feebleness. "My cousin and his family had to go back to Italy. He got to Ellis Island with his wife and five children, but they wouldn't let in the feeble-minded boy, so of course they all went back with him. ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... consummation of her wish. Yet her charms, far from melting away with her constitution, seemed to triumph over the decays of nature. Her shape and features still retained that harmony for which they had always been distinguished. A mixture of majesty and sweetness diffused itself in her looks, and her feebleness added to that soft and feminine grace which attracts the sympathy, and engages the protection of every humane beholder. The associates thus baffled in their attempts to excite her ideas of pleasure, again shifted their plan, and resolved to attack this ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... dissipated and diseased, had something sturdy inside him. He guessed that Lafayette, however brave and victorious, had nothing inside him. He supported the lawlessness of Cromwell, because across two centuries he almost physically felt the feebleness and hopelessness of the moderate Parliamentarians. He said a word of sympathy for the universally vituperated Jacobins of the Mountain, because through thick veils of national prejudice and misrepresentation, ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... far more to the French, deprived of concert of purpose, than to the British, whose general course was sufficiently defined by the confusion of the enemy, and the accident of a small group surrounding their commander-in-chief, to capture whom was always a recognized principal object. The very feebleness of the breeze favored them by comparison; for they had but to go before it with all their light sails, while their opponents, in order to join, were constrained to lateral movement, which did not allow ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... rabbi, born in Cordova in the year 1135 A.D., among his works on medicine, has left directions in regard to circumcision which have been the guides of the mohels. Among the Hebraic physicians it was considered that the child partook of the constitutional strength or feebleness of the mother; hence the rule above mentioned, in regard to exemption to circumcision, only was in operation when the two who had formerly died belonged to the same mother as the third one, who would thereby be exempt; but if ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... against a strong wrist, but his agility was superior to all force. The Swiss received two wounds and was not aware of it, by reason of the cold; but suddenly feebleness, occasioned by loss of blood, obliged ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... purposes at the front, as well as for illuminating watch-dials and the scales of instruments. Wooden buttons two or three inches in diameter covered with self-luminous paint could be fixed wherever desired and thus serve as landmarks. They are visible only at short distances and the feebleness of their light made them particularly valuable for various purposes at the battle front. They could be used in the hand for giving optical signals at a short distance where silence was essential. Self-luminous arrows and signs directed troops and trucks at night and even ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... manner evidencing his willingness to serve, marking no eagerness. He did not notice that there might be a secret meaning, hidden under this question. When he related to me what had passed between him and the King, I blamed the feebleness of his reply, and represented to him the ill effect it would create if at such a time he evinced any desire to keep out of the campaign. He appeared convinced by my arguments, and to wish with more eagerness than before ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... at the bedside holding Ernestine's hand, and over them all the autumn sunshine fell, warm and sweet, as with a touch of loving benediction; and the trill of Jeanie's canary down stairs, was the only sound, save Ernestine's low voice, sad and sweet, in its feebleness. ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... all round, wondering how he got there, and moved off toward the T—— bridge. He was pale and his eyes were hot, and feebleness was in all his members, but he seemed to breathe easier. He felt that he had thrown off the old time which had been so oppressive; and in its place had come peace and light. "Lord!" he prayed, "show me my way, that I may renounce these ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... the child of poor parents, natives of Oederan in the Erzgebirge in Saxony. Her father was no ordinary man; he possessed enormous vitality, but in his old age showed traces of some feebleness of mind. In his young days he had been a trumpeter in Saxony, and in this capacity had taken part in a campaign against the French, and had also been present at the battle of Wagram. He afterwards became a mechanic, and took ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... think of it, why this prejudice against miracles? Why is Mr. Wells so sternly opposed to the bare idea of Providence? "Fear and feebleness," he says, "go straight to the Heresies that God is Magic or that God is Providence" (p. 27)—as though it were disgracefully pusillanimous to prefer a well-governed to an ungoverned world. God, in the ordinary sense of the word, the sense we all understand, ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... of the apparent gain from it, which is not gain; and this is the real meaning of his punishment in hell—eternal toil and recoil (the modern idol of capital being, indeed, the stone of Sisyphus with a vengeance, crushing in its recoil). But, throughout, the old ideas of the cloud power and cloud feebleness,—the deceit of its hiding,—and the emptiness of its banishing,—the Autolycus enchantment of making black seem white,—and the disappointed fury of Ixion (taking shadow for power), mingle in the moral meaning ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... will be a law to me, if made on due reflection. This growing feebleness, however, alarms me; and I cannot justify it to myself not ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... highest sense of the word, an intellectual race; but they never allowed the mind to tyrannize over the body. Spiritual perfection, accompanied by corporeal feebleness, was the invention of asceticism; and the Greeks were never ascetics. Diogenes might scorn superfluous luxuries, but if he ever rolled and tumbled his tub about as Rabelais says he did, it is clear that ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... of their going in one direction and God in another. If Daniel be delivered, what will become of Darius? But, like most men, he is illogical, and that question does not seem to have occurred to him. Surely this man may sit for a portrait of a weak, passionate nature, in the feebleness of his resistance to evil, the half hopes that wrong would be kept from turning out so badly as it promised, the childish moanings over wickedness that might still have been mended, and the incapacity to take in the grave, personal consequences ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... length of time during which—to use a funny phrase which somebody got up for him—he has been "afflicted with a loose tail-board to his mortal sand-cart." Some benevolent friend was so much distressed about the feebleness of "Old Sands of Life" as to send him one day a large parcel by express, marked "C. O. D.," and costing quite a figure. "Old Sands" paid, and opening the parcel, found half a bushel of ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... slave to him. "Oh! do not despise me for my feebleness! I have lived in the palace. I can wind like a viper through the walls. Come! in the Ancestor's Chamber there is an ingot of gold beneath every flagstone; an underground path leads ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... firmness in their faith. The pious lessons of their mothers, profoundly engraved on the hearts of their daughters, sufficed more than once to save them from apostasy, which was rendered all the more easy by the feebleness of their youth and the perfidious suggestions by ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... than because, I know she does indeed want to come. She'd like to be with father, of course; and I think she's—well, she intimated one day that she feared it might even happen that she wouldn't get to see him again. At the time I thought she referred to his age and feebleness, but on the boat, coming home, I remembered the little look of wistfulness, yet of resignation, with which she said it, and it struck me all at once that I'd been mistaken: I saw she was really thinking of her own state ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... meaning of the composition perished, and offices which had been poetry were no longer even good prose; antiphons, hymns, benedictions, invocations, shovelled away; Scripture lessons turned into chapters; heaviness, feebleness, unwieldiness, where the Catholic rites had had the lightness and airiness of a spirit; vestments chucked off, lights quenched, jewels stolen, the pomp and circumstances of worship annihilated; a dreariness which could be felt, and which seemed the token of an incipient Socinianism, ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis
... them." "Better," remarks Plutarch, "not believe in a God at all than cringe before a god who is worse than the worst of men." In the actual worship of images none of them believe. One conspicuous writer of the time says: "To look for a form and shape to a god, I consider to be a mark of human feebleness of mind." Concerning the schools of thought and in particular the tenets of those Stoics and Epicureans whom St. Paul met at Athens, and whom he could meet in educated circles all over the Roman Empire, we shall have to speak ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... 2. p.182.—Letter of the bailiff of Mirabau, August 23, 1770. "This feudal order was merely vigorous, even though they have pronounced it barbarous, because France, which once had the vices of strength, now has only those of feebleness, and because the flock which was formerly devoured by wolves is now eaten up with lice. . . . Three or four kicks or blows with a stick were not half so injurious to a poor man's family, nor to himself, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... vehemence she had shown to the little lame orphan; she was quite ready to chat and laugh upon occasion with Father Leadham, who had a pleasant wit, and now and then deliberately sought her society; and, owing to the feebleness of Augustina, she, quite unconsciously, established certain household ways which spoke the woman, and were new to Bannisdale. She filled the drawing-room with daffodils; she made the tea-table by the hall fire a cheerful place for any who might visit it; she flitted about the house ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... has said that these petitions are unjust in principle, and on that ground ought not to be granted? Who has said that slavery is not an evil? Who has said it does not tarnish the fair fame of our country? Who has said it does not bring dissipation and feebleness to one race, and poverty and wretchedness to another, in its train? Who has said, it is not unjust to the slave, and injurious to the happiness and best interest of the master? Who has said it does not break the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... they could no longer brandish a weapon in her defence. It has afflicted the feeble and dependent wife for the imaginary faults of the husband. It has stricken down Innocence in its beauty, Youth in its freshness, Manhood in its vigor, and Age in its feebleness and decrepitude. Whatever other plea or apology may be set up for the sweeping, ruthless exercise of this civil guillotine at the present day, in the name of LIBERTY let us be spared this fearful one of STATE NECESSITY, ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to his charge, he is very wicked. But we have no proof that he has spoken and acted in the manner supposed. Moreover, good sirs, had we this proof, it would behove us to consider further the extreme simplicity of the man and the feebleness of his understanding. He was the laughing-stock of the children in the Public Square. He is ignorant; he has done a thousand extravagances. For my own part I believe he is beside himself. What he ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... a magnificent Indian hookah lay on his knee; the enameled coils lay like a serpent in the room, but he had forgotten to draw out its fresh perfume. And yet there was a complete contradiction between the general feebleness of his young frame and the blue eyes, where all his vitality seemed to dwell; an extraordinary intelligence seemed to look out from them and to grasp ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... on my feet, for my feebleness was gone, and hasted to the closet. A lancet and other small instruments were preserved in a case which I had deposited here. Inattentive as I was to foreign considerations, my ears were still open to any sound of mysterious import that should occur. I thought I heard a step in ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... speaks of a woman who fell unconscious at sunset and did not recover till it reappeared on the horizon. The celebrated Chancellor Bacon, according to Mead, was very delicate, and was accustomed to fall into a state of great feebleness at every moon-set without any other imaginable cause. He never recovered from his ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... and marvelled at the feebleness of human reason. A proposition is true or false, but no art can prove it to be one or the other, in the midst of the uncertainties of science and the conflicting lessons of experience, until a new incident disperses the clouds of doubt; I was poor, I become rich, and I am not to ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... lips he had drifted into talk of the sea and tried to sing a sailor's song. Often he fancied himself on a pirate ship and begged not to be put off on some lonely island. He fiercely resisted. But his feebleness was no match for Zura's young strength, and as she held him she would begin ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... to see people do with their might whatsoever their hands or their tongues or their feet find to do. A half-and-half performance of the right is just about as mischievous as the perpetration of the wrong. It is vacillation, hesitation, lack of will, feebleness of purpose, imperfect execution, that works ill in all life. Be monarch of all you survey. If a woman decides to do her own housework, let her go in royally among her pots and kettles, and set everything a-stewing and baking and broiling and boiling, as a queen might. If she decides not to do ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... and the company of Captain Jervoise was one of those selected for the work. Its officers were delighted at the prospect of a change, and, when the party started, Captain Jervoise was proud of the show made by his men, whose active and vigorous condition contrasted strongly with the debility and feebleness evident, so generally, among the ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... evening fires far into the night with the cynicism of expression common to aristocratic Malays, and with a malicious pleasure in the domestic misfortunes of the Orang Blando—the hated Dutchman. Almayer went on struggling desperately, but with a feebleness of purpose depriving him of all chance of success against men so unscrupulous and resolute as his rivals the Arabs. The trade fell away from the large godowns, and the godowns themselves rotted piecemeal. The old man's banker, Hudig of Macassar, failed, and with this went ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... Eureka College, to preach the baccalaureate sermon. I arranged to make the trip as easy as possible, on account of my feebleness, by stopping over at Indianapolis for the night, in both going and returning. The trip was every way pleasant, and the associations there very agreeable. I hoped it would be a benefit to me in the way of ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... sake, Stephen, hush. If the King heard you speak of his feebleness in such a way there would be a sudden end to both you ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... have taken him for something far more distinguished. His manner is good. There is a suavity without feebleness or smallness." ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... education may have to do in forming his taste for a mixed diet it is difficult to estimate. Habit has certainly great influence in attaching us to particular kinds of aliment. One who has long been accustomed to animal food cannot at once abstain from it without experiencing some feebleness for the want of its stimulation, and perhaps even temporary emaciation. And, on the other hand, he who has long been confined to a vegetable diet is apt to lose his relish for flesh, and, on recurring suddenly to its use, ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... Puritanism to inspire with unconquerable principle, to infuse public spirit, to purify the character from frivolity and feebleness, to lift the soul to an all-enduring heroism and to exalt it to a lofty standard of Christian excellence, is grandly illustrated by the life of Margaret Winthrop, one of the pioneer-matrons ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... shoved with his right leg and clawed at the bank of the sand-trap. Inch by inch he wormed up, slipping, scraping. The sand grated into his battered face and seeped through onto his tongue; he coughed and spluttered, groaning from the effort and his feebleness. Spots of blood showed black against the crazy course he left behind him; ages seemed to pass before he thrust his head over the top of the bank, dug his chin into it and pulled onto level ground. Ages, but in reality only ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... about Philip Carey. She ran to take off her bonnet, while Henrietta went to announce her coming. She knocked at the door, Henrietta opened it, and coming in, she saw Fred lying on the sofa by the fire, in his dressing-gown, stretched out in that languid listless manner that betokens great feebleness. There were the purple marks of leeches on his temples; his hair had been cropped close to his head; his face was long and thin, without a shade of colour, but his eyes looked large and bright; and he smiled and held out his hand: "Ah, Queenie, ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... commerce), in the by no means certain expectation that its advantages would all fall to the share of England. But the king of France resolved to support the republic. The king of Denmark, too, formed an alliance with them, after a series of the most strange tergiversations. Spain, reduced to feebleness, and menaced with invasion by France, showed no alacrity to meet Charles's overtures for an offensive treaty. Van Galen, bishop of Munster, a restless prelate, was the only ally he could acquire. This bishop, at the head of ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... not indeed what we ordinarily call a good Companion, but essentially is such, and in all the Parts of his Conversation has something friendly in his Behaviour, which conciliates Men's Minds more than the highest Sallies of Wit or Starts of Humour can possibly do. The Feebleness of Age in a Man of this Turn, has something which should be treated with respect even in a Man no otherwise venerable. The Forwardness of Youth, when it proceeds from Alacrity and not Insolence, has also its Allowances. The Companion who is formed for such by Nature, gives to every Character ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... to the ship, shocked at his feebleness; but for Sampayo he would scarcely have been able ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... transferring them to our neighbor to-morrow! How tantalizing this conflict, in which victory changes with the fashion, and we feel weak or strong according to the verdict of a clique! And all these rivalries and envies and aspirations, what a confession of personal feebleness they really are! How slightly a true man feels them, who knows that he is not mere silk or furniture, and never frets about his place in the world; but just slides into it by the gravitation of his nature, ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... and beginning of the eighteenth centuries. The first perfectly simple in manufacture, trusting wholly to beauty of design, and the play of light on the naturally woven surface, while the latter eke out their gaudy feebleness with spots and ribs and long floats, and all kinds of meaningless tormenting of the web, till there is nothing to be learned from them ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... back and squared his shoulders with a characteristic movement. "It is better than the hypocrisy and feebleness of the condition of affairs at home; and I am very fond of the natives. They are most lovable, when one once gets their confidence and understands them. And the freedom is good, and the primitive conditions. The getting right down to the bedrock of nature, so to ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... is proved by the eagerness with which he threw himself into the cause of reform; and what would have discouraged another braced Yoshida for his task. As he professed the theory of arms, it was firstly the defences of Japan that occupied his mind. The external feebleness of that country was then illustrated by the manners of overriding barbarians, and the visit of big barbarian war ships: she was a country beleaguered. Thus the patriotism of Yoshida took a form ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... infantry were armed with the long and heavy arquebus in its primitive state, the feebleness of their fire caused Montaigne to say, certainly on military authority, "The arms have so little effect, except on the ears, that their use will be discontinued." Research is necessary to find any mention of their use in the ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... military discipline into a pacific oligarchy, and that into a mere plutocracy at last. And there are similar historic riddles to be unpicked in the similar forms of social address. There is something singularly forlorn about the modern word "Mister." Even in sound it has a simpering feebleness which marks the shrivelling of the strong word from which it came. Nor, indeed, is the symbol of the mere sound inaccurate. I remember seeing a German story of Samson in which he bore the unassuming name of ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... King of Egypt be gracious to me that I may live of his favor. And I render my homage to the mistress of the land, who is in his palace; may I hear the news of her children. Thus will my limbs grow young again. Now old age comes, feebleness seizes me, my eyes are heavy, my arms are feeble, my legs will not move, my heart is slow. Death draws nigh to me, soon shall they lead me to the city of eternity. Let me follow the mistress of all (the queen, his former mistress); lo! let her tell me the excellencies of ...
— Egyptian Literature
... Lorraine, Champagne, Burgundy, Berry, Dauphine, Provence, and even Aquitaine; but this inundation was transitory, and if the populations of those countries had much to suffer from it, the Gallo-Frankish dominion, in spite of inward disorder and the feebleness of the latter Carlovingians, was not seriously ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... benefited by such a practice, but great injury, sometimes life-long in its consequences, is inflicted upon the babe at her breast who takes the intoxicating poison at second hand, and is influenced in a fourfold degree from its feebleness and ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... on a sleepless war against sloth and feebleness, is one of the noblest of human spectacles. This warfare was rapidly and hourly changing the monotony and dreary aspects of rock and forest. Under the creative hands of art, temples of magnificence rose where the pines had fallen. Long and lovely ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... 'became the real founder of that sentimental comedy which exercised so pernicious an influence upon the progress of our dramatic literature.' 'It would be unjust,' he adds, 'to hold him responsible for the feebleness of successors who were altogether deficient in the comic power which he undoubtedly even as a dramatist exhibits; but in so far as their aberrations were the result of his example, he must be held to have contributed, though with the best of motives, to the decline of the ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... perceiving betimes and of not being sensible of the feebleness and extreme alteration that age naturally brings both upon body and mind, which, in my opinion, is equal, if indeed the soul has not more than half, has lost the reputation of most of the great men in the world. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... The draining of the Lake Fucinus occupied thirty thousand men for eleven years. While he executed vast engineering works to supply the city with water, he also amused the people with gladiatorial shows. In all things he showed the force of the old Roman character, in spite of bodily feebleness. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... varied accomplishments. His friends have lost much more. Since his last attack of influenza, those who knew him and loved him had been much concerned about him. The pallor of his complexion had greatly increased; so had his feebleness. As long ago as May last, when I called upon him at the Athenæum Club in order to join him at a luncheon he was giving at the Café Royal, I found that he had engaged a four-wheeled cab to take us over those few yards. The expression in his ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... little thoughts can frame a conception of, but a Christ according to the greatness of the heart and the love of God. Oh, come and accept this Christ, and rejoice in Him! Be content now to leave all your feebleness, and foolishness, and faithlessness to Him, in the quiet confidence that He will do for you more than you can think. And so let it henceforth be, as it is written, He that glorieth, let him ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray
... splendour of the sun. For during all that year the circle of the sun rose pale and without rays, and the warmth that came down from it was weak and feeble, so that the air as it moved was dark and heavy owing to the feebleness of the warmth which penetrated it, and the fruits withered and fell off when they were half ripened and imperfect on account of the coldness of the atmosphere. But chief of all, the phantom that appeared to Brutus showed that Caesar's murder was not ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... was his, every perch of land, and every brick of edifice to Richard's half-sister Ruth. At present things were not so bad for the worthless boy. Ruth worshipped him. He was a sacred charge to her from their dead father, who, knowing the stoutness of her soul and the feebleness of Richard's, had in dying imposed on her the care and guidance of her graceless brother. But Ruth, in all things strong, was weak with Richard out of her very fondness for him. To what she had he might help himself, and thus it was that ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... life. But my determination was, never to do my duty with frantic impetuosity, helped on by the fiery liquor of excitement. I know Bimala finds it difficult to respect me for this, taking my scruples for feebleness—and she is quite angry with me because I am not running amuck crying ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... pleasant as were these first days. There was always something new to show us or to tell us. We would walk out every day and often step into a carriage and take a long ride. Our friends were famous walkers but were considerate of our feebleness, and still our returning strength, added to the great buoyancy of our bodies on that smaller planet, soon gave us ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... brandy-flask, which he had found in his greatcoat. His lordship stretched out both hands to it, more eagerly even than when he welcomed the cob-webbed magnum of claret—hands trembling with feebleness and hunger for strength. Heedless of his host's offer of water and a glass, he put it to his mouth, and swallowed three great gulps hurriedly. Then he breathed a deep breath, seemed to say with Macbeth, "Ourselves again!" drew himself up ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... and power of the Mother of God is at our disposal to-day. To the feebleness of our prayers may be added the spiritual wisdom and strength of her intercession. He Whose will it is that we should pray for one another, wills too that the prayers of His Blessed Mother should be at the disposal of all who call upon her. Let us take the fact of the intercession of ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... What had once been a mere raft, with rows of formal benches, pushed along by laborious flap of oars, and with infinite fluttering of flags and swelling of poops above, gradually began to lean more heavily into the deep water, to sustain a gloomy weight of guns, to draw back its spider-like feebleness of limb, and open its bosom to the wind, and finally darkened down from all its painted {164} vanities into the long low hull, familiar with the over-flying foam; that has no other pride but in its daily duty and victory; while, through all these ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock |
