"Impotency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... water, and is stirred violently. Soon the victim begins to feel the effect of this treatment, and within a few hours becomes insane. To make him lame, it is only necessary to place poison on articles recently touched by his feet. Death or impotency can be produced by placing poison on his garments. A fly is named after a person, and is placed in a bamboo tube. This is set near the fire, and in a short time the victim of the plot is seized with ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... 3. Impotentia (agenesia). Impotency much seldomer happens to the male sex than sterility to the female sex. Sometimes a temporary impotence occurs from bashfulness, or the interference of some voluntary exertion in the production of an effect, which should be performed alone by ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... corpses of truths; and statements are to be found in every stage of approach to this final condition. Every time there is an impotency or unreality in their enunciation, they are borne a step nearer the sepulchre. If the smirking politician, who wishes to delude me into voting for him, bid me his bland "Good-morning," not only does he draw a film of eclipse over the sun, and cast a shadow on city and field, but he throws over the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... cow worried by dogs. He had a mad feeling against his rifle, which could only be used against one life at a time. He wished to rush forward and strangle with his fingers. He craved a power that would enable him to make a world-sweeping gesture and brush all back. His impotency appeared to him, and made his rage into ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... at Washington remained incredulous, stunned into impotency, while the din of murder filled the world, a few mere men, fed up on the mess, sickened while awaiting executive galvanization, and started east ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... the conspirator into a private apartment, and for a long time conversed with him alone. Here the tzar had opened before him, in the clearest manner, the intolerable burdens of the people, the oppression of the nobles, the impotency of the laws, the venality of the judges, the corruption which pervaded all departments of the government, legislative, executive and judiciary. The noble conspirator, whose mind was illumined with those views of ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... is a work of time. The majority of the people are unstable, thriftless improvident and ignorant. Slavery left its blight of impotency and profligacy upon them. They come and go as did their fathers a hundred years ago. Their tools and utensils are the same their great-grandparents used, and they are content with them. We never worked harder and saw less result in the conversion of sinners than while ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 01, January, 1884 • Various
... consciousness was absorbed by this sense of impotency, and now, after the stormy excitement of the last few hours, the deepest depression took possession of his mind. Exhausted, unstrung, full of loathing of himself and life, he sank down on a stone, and thought over the occurrences of the last ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... o'clock for a modest furnished apartment. Let us sum up in a few words the practical or theoretical ideas we have endeavored to place in relief in this episode of a prison life. We shall esteem ourselves very happy if we have shown the insufficiency, the impotency, and the danger of imprisonment in common. The disproportion which exists between the appreciation and punishment of certain crimes, and those of certain other offenses. And, finally, the material impossibility for the poorer classes ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... violent and too abrupt evolution has badly balanced his internal economy. Who, through the exaggeration of his governing forces, through the deterioration of his deep-seated organs, through the gradual impoverishment of his vital tissues is condemned to commit inconsiderate acts, to debility, to impotency, amidst sounder and better-balanced neighbors! In the organization, which France effected for herself at the beginning of the (19th) century, all the general lines of her contemporary history were traced. Her political revolutions, social Utopias, division of classes, role ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... replied the flexible King. "To little purpose is it to command what I cannot enforce; and, although I have the unhappiness to do so each day of my life, it were needless to give such a very public example of royal impotency before the crowds who may assemble to behold this spectacle. Let these savage men, therefore, work their bloody will to the uttermost upon each other: I will not attempt to forbid what I cannot prevent them from executing. Heaven help this wretched country! I will ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... somehow, to get out of the quandary he found himself in. But how? He felt unable to move his limbs. He had seen a little creature caught in bird-lime, and the sight was a nightmare to him. He began to feel mad with the rage of impotency. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... came into the face of the old Nomad the look it had not worn for many a day. The self-exiled ruler had paid a heavy price for his daughter's vow, though he had never acknowledged it to himself. His self-ordained impotency, in a camp that was never moved, within walls which never rose with the sunset and fell with the morning; where his feet trod the same roadway day after day; where no man asked for justice or sought his counsel or fell back on his protection; where he ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... bent head and a gloomy expression on his face. At that moment he felt all the impotency of youth against age, influence, and authority. He felt that the fetters of the patriarchial organisation of his family were growing heavy on him. And the mere thought of that small, thin, trembling woman's hand, which had shielded ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... effect-seeking writer, with all his genius, seemed less fitted than any one to express the natural and spontaneous. His Atala, who charms us so at the first reading, deals in studied emotions. As to Rene, his is the vain sentimentality parading its own impotency for higher feelings, a virtual boasting of want of soul,—the sickly dissatisfaction of Werther, without his passion for an excuse. M. Saint-Marc Girardin then follows up his subject through later authors, even in Madame George Sand and in Madame Emile ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... fact, the feeling of helpless impotency, that fired McGee's brain with reckless daring and sent him boring through the fog ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... lost or broken, its funeral rites must be performed. Divorce is allowed in the presence of the caste panchayat at the instance of either party for sufficient reason, as the misconduct or bad temper of the wife or the impotency of the husband. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... success of the mother country. Losses and contumely, that had been incurred by the besotting prejudices of European commanders were beginning to be forgotten in the pride of success. The blunders of Braddock, the indolence of Loudon, and the impotency of Abercrombie, were repaired by the vigour of Amherst, and the genius of Wolfe. In every quarter of the globe the arms of Britain were triumphant. The loyal provincials were among the loudest in their exultations and rejoicings; ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... of Communism in actual practice than existed in the belligerent European countries during the war years. To my mind this is one of the severest, albeit the most rarely mentioned, indictments of the Bolsheviks' vast communistic programme, since it reveals their impotency to attain their initial aim—the ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... be reduced to impotency by the re-establishment of the Kingdom of Poland, which should be united ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... intervention of the intelligence, at any rate up to the extracting of roots, after which there is a steep precipice which ends in darkness. But, even if we stop at the roots, the sudden discovery of an intellectual force so similar to our own, where we were accustomed to see but an irremediable impotency, is no doubt one of the most unexpected revelations that we have received since the invisible and the unknown began to press upon us with a persistence and an impatience which they had not displayed heretofore. It is not easy to foresee as yet the consequences and the promises of this ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... with rage and a sense of impotency. She felt her words and all her arts of pleasing were being nullified, and that she was up against an odious situation in which her strongest weapons were powerless. It made her nervous and very cross. She particularly resented not being able to ascertain ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... prepared for His children, but also because it gives life. It approaches man, dead in trespasses and sins, and quickens him into new life. It removes from the mind of man its natural blindness and from the will of man its innate impotency. It regenerates all the dead powers of the soul, and makes man walk in newness of life. The difficulty which original sin has created is not greater than the means and instruments which God has provided for coping with it. "God hath ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... to say that a confession of more amazing impotency, indecision and inefficiency it would be impossible to make. It brings before the mind as nothing else could the utter degradation of a Party which only a few brief years before was the terror of the British Parliament and the pride of the ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... glad to have the words you sent with the book,—which I should have seen at all events be sure, whether you had sent it or not. Should I not, do you think? And considering what the present generation of critics really is, the remarks on you may stand, although it is the dreariest impotency to complain of the want of flesh and blood and of human sympathy in general. Yet suffer them to say on—it is the stamp on the critical knife. There must be something eminently stupid, or farewell criticdom! And if anything more ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... Department of Agriculture, by an act of Congress of March 4, 1913, has had control of the manufacture of biological products for the treatment of domestic animals. The numerous complaints which were received from time to time relative to the impotency of some of the preparations, and also the fact that in some instances the use of the products were directly responsible in causing outbreaks of disease, made the necessity for such control obvious. This supervision is no doubt ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... Without authority, money, or any means of establishing the domination of the king, his brother, and of supporting his own renown, he took a disgust to a position which offered him no issue. Accustomed, hitherto, to rapid and brilliant enterprises, he desponded at his impotency; and already a prey to gnawing cares, which were leading him slowly to the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... sprung. You are a man, and consequently a sinner; and this may be a punishment to you for your sins: indeed in this sense it may be esteemed as a good, yea, as the greatest good, which satisfies the anger of Heaven, and averts that wrath which cannot continue without our destruction. Thirdly, our impotency of relieving ourselves demonstrates the folly and absurdity of our complaints: for whom do we resist, or against whom do we complain, but a power from whose shafts no armour can guard us, no speed can fly?—a power which leaves us no hope but in submission." "O sir!" cried Joseph, ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... impotency to recall the circumstances of that mysterious, perhaps prophetic dream; then in despair he gave it up, and stooping to a little secretaire, unlocked it with the idea of sending a note round to Annesley's chambers. As he did so ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... distinguished Paine, the rebellious Needleman;—some of whom may be chosen. As is most fit; for a Convention of this kind. In a word, Seven Hundred and Forty-five unshackled sovereigns, admired of the universe, shall replace this hapless impotency of a Legislative,—out of which, it is likely, the best members, and the Mountain in mass, may be re-elected. Roland is getting ready the Salles des Cent Suisses, as preliminary rendezvous for them; in that void Palace of the Tuileries, now void ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... brave appearance he was as useless in a crisis like this as Canby. Pinkey was more of a man than either of them. He would stop that steer somehow if he had only his pocketknife to do it. Her lip curled disdainfully for she had an innate contempt of impotency and failure. ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... to gaze at Lilama, who never moved from her crouching position some ten feet from the canyon's brink. Even Peters, the stoic, was moved—but moved to anger rather than to grief or fear. He inwardly chafed, and madly raved, by turns, at the impotency of his position; whilst Pym seemed frozen into statuesque despair. How much longer would this scene of terror last? Oh, the thought of that awful leap into space! The maniac might any moment end the scene—each ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... those of all truly great men, was open to conviction. He was a quick and powerful reasoner; and a moment's reflection sufficed to remind him of the impotency of his rage. It subsided as quickly as it had been roused. He panted for breath, and looked benignantly ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... lawyers have flung clouds of treatises over the legal difficulties which are born of marriage. There exist several works on the judicial investigation of impotency. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... disposition whatever to give voting rights to coloured people of any kind, but it is suggested that a more enlightened and a more just system of treatment would be adopted; and in any case it is to be presumed that there would be no appeals to the British Government, involving exhibitions of impotency on the part of the Empire to protect its subjects, followed by the deliberate repetition of treatment which might become the subject of remonstrance. The untutored mind is not given to subtleties and sophistries; direct cause and effect are as much as it can grasp. These it does grasp and firmly ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... was oppressed by a feeling of the unattainable in his relations with Ellen. Even to himself he could not explain the contradiction between the constant longing for more ample and stable conditions, for triumph and victory, and his impotency at home, where his fortunes were declining. He wearied himself in trying to puzzle it out, and he was seized by a desire that he might become indifferent to the whole matter. He felt no inclination to drink, but none the less something was working ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... and striking lesson," he said, "and I hope will not be lost upon those who have witnessed it. It shows the utter impotency of a struggle against the Divine will, and that when a man relies upon himself for preservation, he depends upon a broken reed. If I did not place myself under Heaven's protection, I should be sure that ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... goods to maintain a quasi peace. The settlers are not at any time secure against an Apache outbreak, and there are at the present time some Apaches on the war-path, which the government acknowledges its impotency to capture. "A Century of Dishonor" was a well written book, ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... hundreds of practically independent little states into a few well-organized monarchies, such a union as the present German empire would have been impossible, and the country must have remained indefinitely in its traditional impotency. ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... day the men themselves will see that strikes are far more disastrous to them than to any other class, and they will devise other ways and means; they will use the strength of their organizations to better advantage; above all, they will relegate to impotency the professional organizers and agitators who retain their positions by ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... address on the Fourth of July in which he had demanded "the destruction of every arbitrary power that can separately, secretly and of its single choice disturb the peace of the world, or, if it cannot be presently destroyed, at least its reduction to virtual impotency." He declared that the power which had hitherto controlled the German nation was of the sort thus described, and that its alteration actually constituted a condition ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... was no reader. 'I don't believe,' Johnson once said to him, 'you have borrowed from Waller. I wish you would enable yourself to borrow more.' Ante, April 16, 1775. Boswell wrote to Temple on March 18, 1775:—'I have a kind of impotency of study.' Two months later he wrote:—'I have promised to Dr. Johnson to read when I get to Scotland, and to keep an account of what I read. I shall let you know how I go on. My mind must be nourished.' Letters ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... intended to show the terrible effects of speculation and fraudulent company promotion, the culpable negligence of directors, and the impotency of the existing laws. It deals with the shady ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... whispered it to himself, his eyes on the slender figure of the woman ahead of him, swaying gently to the steady sweep of the paddle in her hands. Yet he could think of nothing. A feeling of irritation swept over him, disgust at his own mental impotency. And the dizzying sickness was brewing ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... crumble under our hands piece by piece. What we are now contending for in this matter is the very essence of the things that have made America a sovereign nation. She cannot yield them without conceding her own impotency as a Nation and making virtual surrender of her independent position among the nations of the world." This definite enunciation was in effect an appeal to the American people, which came as a relief to those who had suffered from presidential patience ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... rule. That fixed and immutable rule is so inward and intimate, that I am tempted to take it for myself. But it is above me, since it corrects and rectifies me; gives me a distrust of myself, and makes me sensible of my impotency. It is something that inspires me every moment, provided I hearken to it, and I never err or mistake except when I am not attentive to it. What inspires me would for ever preserve me from error, if I were docile, and acted without precipitation; for that inward inspiration ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... opinion with an energy which savored of rebuke, the Governor had gone further, and had asked calmly—"And what were you proposing to do about it?" After that Barclay had relinquished the unequal struggle, and resigned himself to the unavoidable conclusion of his impotency. ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... who had not yet entirely lost, with the people, that popularity which swept him, on so triumphant a billow, again into the office of Minister of the Interior, now, conscious of his utter impotency, presented to the Assembly his resignation of power which was merely nominal. Great efforts had for some time been made, by his adversaries, to turn the tide of popular hatred against him, and especially against his wife, whom Danton and Robespierre recognized and ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... to wonder that she talked thus contemptibly of M. de Beaufort, whom she always taxed with impotency, for it is certain that his love was purely Platonic, as he never asked any favour of her, and seemed very uneasy with her for eating flesh on Fridays. She was so sweet upon me, and withal such a charming beauty, that, being naturally indisposed to let such opportunities slip, ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... Alas! for the impotency of human wills! Only the demonstrations of love can be controlled, the emotion itself comes from heaven—or hell, and is omnipotent. Poor Tamara might as well have determined to keep the sun from rising as to keep herself from ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... cause of infertility, as with other fruits, is the impotency of pollen on the pistils of the same variety. There are a few cases in which pollen does not seem to be formed abundantly, but these are very few. There are a few cases, also, in which the pistil does not become receptive ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... half-barbarous nobles, and proud and unruly kings, protesting against wrong, passionately inculcating new and higher ideas of right, denouncing the darkness of the false gods, calling on all men to worship the cross and adore the mysteries of the true God? Compare now the impotency of the Protestant missionary, squatting in gross comfort with wife and babes among the savages he has come to convert, preaching a disputatious doctrine, wrangling openly with the rival sent by some other sect—compare this ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... He had scarcely heard what Cairy had been saying. His sickening sense of failure, of impotency, when he wished most for strength, had been succeeded by rage against the man, not because of his fluent argument, but because of himself; not against his theory of license, but against him. He saw Isabelle's life broken on the point of this glib egotism. ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... its impotency, or after it is chosen purposely rendered impotent, in order to be rendered subservient, will not be obeyed. The laws themselves will not be respected, when those who execute them are despised: and they will be despised, when their power is not immediate ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... said Zara el-Khala again. The Hindu shifted his grip from the neck to the arms of the Grand Duke. He pinioned him as is done in jiu-jitsu and forced him to stand upright. It was a curious spectacle—the impotency of this burly nobleman in the hands of his slight adversary. As they swayed to their feet, I thought I saw the glint of metal in the right hand of the Indian, but I could not be sure, for my attention was diverted. ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... something vital and real. Until the 9th February, 1917, what China had been doing was not really to maintain her neutrality, since she had been unable to defend her territory from being made a common battleground in 1914: she had been engaged in guarding and perpetuating her traditional impotency. For whilst it may be accurate to declare—a fact which few Westerners have realized—that to the mass of the Chinese nation the various members of the European Family are undistinguishable from one another, there being little to choose in ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... him to be compelled to leave her in a state bordering on perplexity, not to say bewilderment, as a result of his strange silence. A delicate subject requires a deft hand, and he sensed only too keenly his impotency in this respect. He, therefore, thought it best to avoid as much as possible any attempts at explanation, ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... that shocked me,—shocked me in one so young. On that occasion he turned very red in the face,—he was quite red before,—doubled up his ridiculous hands in the most threatening manner, and finally, in the impotency of rage, punched himself in the eye. When I think of the life he led his mother and Susan during the first eighteen months after his arrival, I shrink from the responsibility of allowing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... and hopelessness of your retrogression from all good that you should presume to ask such a question," answered Moretti, growing white under the natural darkness of his skin with an impotency of rage he could scarcely suppress, "Your sermon this morning was an open attack on the Church, and the amazing scene at its conclusion ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... death, save in the case of the very aged, seems, nearly always, brutally cruel, at least to those friends who survive. Parents know what it is to sit with bated breath and despairing heart beside the bed of a sinking child. Seconds seem hours, and hours weeks. The impotency to succour, the powerlessness to save, the dumb despair, the overwhelming grief, all these are sorrowful realities. How vividly are they pictured by Zola. And, added to this keenness of grief in the case of Helene Grandjean, was the sense that her fault had contributed ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... magnanimity of his at this time was due to the calumnies of Antony and of Lepidus and was intended to lay the blame of former unjust behavior upon them alone. Others said that since he was unable in any way to collect the debts he made of the people's impotency a favor that cost him nothing. In spite of this various talk that gained currency in different quarters they now resolved that a house be presented to him from the public treasury. He had made the place on the Palatine which ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... as Alan Bertie before him had done with his Irregular Cavalry in the Indian plains,—such a thought would never have crossed him; he was far too thorough a soldier not then to have been not only satisfied, but happy. What made his life in the barracks of Algiers so bitter were the impotency, the subjection, the compelled obedience to a bidding that he knew often capricious and unjust as it was cruel; which were so unendurable to his natural pride, yet to which he had hitherto rendered undeviating adhesion and submission, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... there sterile like dry bushes on a plot of land exhausted by over-cultivation. And the frightful sadness that one felt arose from the fact that so creative and great a past had culminated in such present-day impotency—Rome, who had covered the world with indestructible monuments, now so reduced that she could only ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... and to himself, when he was another man. See, I beseech you, how without a Christ, and thro' a Christ, makes one man differ from another; yea, and from himself, as much as can and cannot; all things and nothing; impotency and omnipotency, "Without me ye can do nothing." "Through Christ I can do all things." If therefore you would make a covenant with Eternity to eternity, study Christ more than ever, labour to "know nothing but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... neither nymphae, clitoris, nor urinary meatus. Mauriceau performed nymphotomy on a woman whose nymphae were so long as to render coitus difficult. Morand quotes a case of congenital malformation of the nymphae, to which he attributed impotency. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... not enabled to recover from the sense of impotency thus created by being referred to "intuition." Bergson is not the first to try this way out. It would be misleading, no doubt, to identify him with the members of the Scottish School of a hundred years ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... was not found to exhibit any virtue. Vermuyden, however, was not to be laughed out of his superstitious notions, although his companions took every opportunity of turning his expectations into ridicule, but he found a very plausible excuse for the impotency of his divining rod in the discovery, that its qualities had all been dried up by the heat of the climate, and that, under every circumstance, it was not an instrument adapted to the country in which it was to be carried into use. On one occasion, however, the ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... may also produce a local weakness of the sexual centres of the brain and spinal cord, with symptoms at least resembling those of partial impotency and great irritability of the sexual organs, or a complete impotence, with premature seminal discharge whenever coition is attempted. Many times this condition results from excessive intellectual labor, even with no ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... see countless myriads of Suns, rolling along in their appointed orbits, and thus on and on throughout eternity. What an idea of the limitless extent of Creative Power—filling up infinite space with the evidences of His Almighty Presence! The human mind feels its utter impotency in endeavouring to grasp ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... consistency, in urging the establishment of the latter, as no less necessary to guard the Union against the future powers and resources of a body constructed like the existing Congress, than to save it from the dangers threatened by the present impotency of that Assembly? I mean not, by any thing here said, to throw censure on the measures which have been pursued by Congress. I am sensible they could not have done otherwise. The public interest, the necessity of the case, imposed upon them the task of overleaping their constitutional ...
— The Federalist Papers
... a small table near by, and I took a common wooden chair which he thrust forward with his foot. I was looking around at the sordid scene, filled with a bitter sense of my own impotency to aid my missing friend, when that occurred which set my heart beating wildly at once with hope and excitement. Fletcher must have seen something of this in my ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... church stands was surrounded by the soldiers who are distributed in the missions, in order to add more effect to the counsels of the monks; and those Indians who were not entirely satisfied with respect to the consequences of the dance, and the impotency of the evil spirit, were brought to the festivity. The oldest and most timid of the Indians, however, imbued all the rest with a superstitious dread; all resolved to flee al monte, and the missionary adjourned his project of turning into derision the demon of the natives. What extravagant ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... state of degradation and impotency into which have fallen Syria, and that vast Peninsula which extends westward of the Euphrates, after having occupied so proud a place in the page of history, from the earliest traditionary periods down to the time when the Turkish Sultans abandoned Broussa for Adrianople, we naturally inquire ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... annulled on account of the consanguinity or affinity of the parties, or because of impotency, the issue shall be illegitimate, but when on account of non-age, or insanity, or idiocy, the issue is the legitimate issue of the party capable of contracting ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson
... particular interest in the unique performance. Here they were, but little better situated than at Oneida. True, they were no longer ill-treated and food was plentiful, but they were held here in a captivity no less irksome. They were prisoners of impotency. Chance and the god of whims had put them upon a sorry highway to the heart's desire. It mattered nothing that madame had said plainly that she loved none of them. The conceit of man is such that, like hope, ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... into the little room. To his surprise and gratification, the bonds on his wrists were removed. Afterward he was to know that there was method in this action of his gaolers: his own utter impotency was to be made more galling to him by the maddening knowledge that he possessed hands and feet and lungs—and could ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... and the whole fine fabric of international law might crumble under our hands piece by piece. What we are contending for in this matter is of the very essence of the things that have made America a sovereign nation. She cannot yield them without conceding her own impotency as a nation and making virtual surrender of her independent position among the nations of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... for the reading by telling here all the ingenious but reasonable complications which beset this man, how love withers under the unseen blight, how rest forsakes him, how success becomes a satire, and how the impervious will sinks into impotency when beset by intangible and inscrutable forces. It is enough to point out that in this book the author has planted his characters upon an elemental truth, and something of the efficacy of that truth gives a strange fascination and power to ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... thou lookest so closely at yonder shining world?" demanded Il Maledetto, with the superiority that the mariner afloat is wont successfully to assume over the unhappy wight of a landsman, who is very liable to admit his own impotency on the novel and dangerous element:—"the astrologer himself would not study it ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... or France than on the soil of one of our own States? Not at all. But the government of the United States is clothed with power to act with imperial sovereignty in the one case, while in the other its authority is limited to the degree of utter impotency, in certain circumstances. The State sovereignty excludes the Federal over most matters of dealing between man and man, and if the State laws are properly enforced there is not likely to be any ground of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... hotly within him, and strove with his love, and out of it there came a sickening sense of impotency which assailed his very soul. All his life he had had tangibilities to deal with. This was something in the air, and already he felt the apprehension of being baffled here, where he wrought for ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... man in the sphere of the understanding. Vauvenargues is thus confronted by two sinister pictures of humanity—the one of its moral meanness and littleness, the other of its intellectual poverty and impotency. He turned away from both of them, and found in magnanimous and unsophisticated feeling, of which he was conscious in himself and observant in others, a compensation alike for the selfishness of some men and the intellectual limitations ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... for the first time, too, that he gave a deep consideration to the condition of the Christian Church, revealed in otherworld judgment to be one of spiritual devastation and impotency. To serve in the revelation of "doctrine for a New Church" became his Divinely appointed work. He forwent his reputation as a man of science, gave up his assessorship, cleared his desk of everything but the Scriptures. He beheld in the Word of God ...
— The Gist of Swedenborg • Emanuel Swedenborg
... men stared at each other in blank impotency. Meantime the scarecrow was showing signs of returning consciousness and a message was dispatched for the physician. On his way he met Barnett, who asked and received permission to accompany him. The stranger was tossing restlessly in his bunk, ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... going to bear reproach no longer (for, though her husband never murmured, at least in words, his friends and her neighbors were ever ready to deepen her sorrow and humiliation by taunting her with her impotency), and her eyes rolled in frenzy as she almost shouted: I MUST AND SHALL HAVE A CHILD'! Why am I prohibited from having what many do not know how to value? Many of them cast their treasures from them; shall I, frantic with despair, ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... end; nor can it at any time prove available, independently of the blessing of God. With the use of that system of means which is established in the providential arrangements of Heaven, his concurring sanction may be expected; although, to show the impotency of mere means, and to fulfil the secret purposes of the divine government, they are sometimes totally inefficient. It was the privilege of Miriam to be born an Israelite, and to have pious relatives; and it is our advantage to live in an age, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... imagined when he saw three of these terrific monsters swim past the boat, exactly in the direction of his companion; he splashed his jacket in the water to scare them away, but they seemed quite aware of the impotency of the attack, and lazily pursued their course. The man swam well and strongly. There was no doubt he would pass within hail of the brig, provided the sharks did not interfere, and he, knowing ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... conception of the fatherhood of God, and its corollary the brotherhood of men. It was his lofty idea of the infinite worth of human nature and of the inherent greatness of the human soul, in contrast with the then prevailing doctrines of human vileness and impotency, which made him resent with such indignation the wrongs of slavery, intemperance, and war, and urge with such ardor every effort to deliver men from poverty and ignorance, and to make them gentler and juster ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... increasing community, and an adjoining one added to it. I have often visited this convent, which soon becomes dear to those who would fain help the many beloved ones removed from their sight, but feel the impotency of their own efforts, their want of holiness, of courage, and of perseverance in this blessed work. The sight of this religious house is very touching; the inscriptions on the walls, which are taken ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... your country, of the subjugation of which he had spoken with such lightness and such inconsideration, instead of dreading, despised his boasts and defied his threats. Indeed, never before did the Cabinet of St. James more opportunely expose the reality of his impotency, the impertinence of his menaces, and the folly of his parade for the invasion of your country, than by declaring all the ports containing his invincible armada in a state of blockade. I have heard from an officer who witnessed his fury when in May, 1799, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... which in our day would receive a harsher term, retained his large "practice" to the last, and died—still a young man—of the very disease to which he professed to be superior, thus conclusively proving better than anything else could have done the utter impotency of ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... The sense of impotency has not been confined to the land forces alone. In that matter it was felt that a nation of less than five millions could not compete with those that numbered forty and fifty millions. But the same sentiment exists also with regard to maritime power, where the competition ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... conceded by the medical profession that tobacco causes cancer of the tongue and lips, dimness of vision, deafness, dyspepsia, bronchitis, consumption, heart palpitation, spinal weakness, chronic tonsillitis, paralysis, impotency, apoplexy, and insanity. It is held by some men that tobacco aids digestion. Dr. McAllister, of Utica, New York, says that it "weakens the organs of Digestion and assimilation, and at length plunges one into all the horrors ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... disobedience. For if these mysterious visitants had the power of soaring into the air by a mere wave of the hand, what might it not be possible for them to do in the event of their being seriously provoked. Besides, he had already received a practical assurance of his impotency so far as they were concerned; moreover, he was consumed by curiosity to see for himself the marvels so graphically described by his lieutenant, to receive a moiety of those magnificent gifts which the strangers ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... aesthetic interest unduly dominates, in which action is transmuted into pulses of sensation, and the means of efficiency into the ends of contemplation, is an idle life, protected from the consequences of its own impotency only by the constructive labor of others. He who from prolonged gazing at the spoon forgets to carry it to his mouth, must die of hunger and cease from gazing altogether, or be fed by his friends. The instruments of achievement may be adorned, and made delightful ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... realization of their own impotency the "interests" launched forth upon a new campaign. This truly machiavellian scheme was devised to make it impossible for accused men to secure legal defense of any kind. All labor cases were to be tried simultaneously, ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... who will read this sentence with tears, and with complaint. I know there are those whose existence has been a long struggle with sickness and trial—whose lives have been crowded with great griefs and disappointments—who sit in darkness and impotency while the world rolls by them. They have seen no joy and felt no content since childhood, and many of them look with genuine pity upon children, because the careless creatures do not know into what a heritage of sin and sorrow they ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... trembling halberdier at the head of the flight, scarce commanded himself sufficiently to maintain that air of firmness which was exacted by discipline and professional pride. But there was no other show of military force, for the politic power which ruled in Venice, knew too well its momentary impotency, to irritate when it could not quell. The mob beneath was composed of nameless rioters, whose punishment could carry no other consequences than the suppression of immediate danger, and for that, those ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... to rub the fat of the tiger on the loins, and to eat a piece of the tongue or flesh, will cure impotency; and tiger fat, rubbed on a painful part of the body, is an accepted specific for rheumatic affections. It is a firmly settled belief, that the whiskers and teeth, worn on the body, will act as a charm, making the wearer proof against the attacks ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... that in these days such men become rogues? How is it that we see in such frightful instances the impotency of educated men to withstand the allurements of wealth? Men are not now more keen after the pleasures which wealth can buy than were their forefathers. One would rather say that they are less so. The rich labour now, and work with an assiduity that often puts to ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... Northampton, who had already felt the influence of the favourite displacing their own, saw in the girl's shame a chance of winning this influence to their side. With this view they resolved to break the marriage with Essex, and to wed her to Rochester. A charge of impotency was trumped up against Essex as a ground of divorce, and a commission was named for its investigation. The charge was disproved, and with this disproof the case broke utterly down; but a fresh allegation was made that the Earl lay under a spell of witchcraft ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... Pennsylvania itself were conforming themselves to the acts of excise, a few counties were resolved to frustrate them. It is now perceived that every expectation from the tenderness which had been hitherto pursued was unavailing, and that further delay could only create an opinion of impotency or irresolution in the Government. Legal process was therefore delivered to the marshal against ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... many physicians become the slaves of tobacco, opium in some form, and alcoholics as are to be found in any other class of people; they are quite as likely to be the victims of various chronic ailings as other people, and with equal impotency to relieve. Every day I see physicians going to the homes of the sick with cigars on fire, signals of the brain system in distress undergoing the lullaby of nicotine; going into rooms where the purest air of heaven ought to prevail, ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... his impotency, Captain Callomb came out of his tent one morning, and strolled across the curved bridge to the town proper. He knew that the Grand Jury was convening, and he meant to sit as a spectator in the court-house and study proceedings ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... understood this restlessness of hers, this sense of impotency, this secret rancor at contemplation of congenial forms of success! He, by some minute fault, some tiny slip of fate, had long ago been doomed to these same sensations. In the morning of youth, when gazing toward the future, he had seen the world ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... the rest, I abominate that incidental repentance which old age brings along with it. He, who said of old, that he was obliged to his age for having weaned him from pleasure, was of another opinion than I am; I can never think myself beholden to impotency for any good it ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... no means reduced to impotency. On the 15th September we saw them shoot down in flames six of our sausage balloons, all on the sector in front of us and apparently without loss to himself. On other days we saw more of our balloons coming down in flames, but it never seemed to make any difference, as soon after ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... race were at the commencement of their social career—in the first ages of civilization—they would perhaps be excusable for founding some hope of social good upon human science, upon the legislation of man; but long experience has proved the impotency of human legislation, and shown clearly that the world has nothing to hope from human laws ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... with him in love; if it do not discover thyself unto thyself, that in that light of God's glorious majesty thou mayest distinctly behold thy own vileness and wretched misery, thy darkness and deadness and utter impotency. The angels that Isaiah saw attending God in the temple, had wings covering their faces, and wings covering their feet. Those excellent spirits who must cover their feet from us, because we cannot behold their glory, as Moses behoved to be veiled, yet they cannot behold his glory, but ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... in others. When they go into the presence of a man of personality they lose their self-confidence and all of the pent-up courage which drove them forward flies out at the window. Their weakness multiplies with each failure until finally "the jig is up"—their impotency is complete. ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... these twelve arbiters, a conviction would certainly have resulted and the death penalty would have been imposed. But the law, rigid, passionless, even-eyed, has thrust in between you and the wrath of your fellows and saved you from it. I do not cry out against the impotency of the law; it is perhaps as wise as imperfect humanity could make it. I deplore, rather, the genius of evil men who, by cunning design, are enabled to slip through the fingers of this law. I have no word of censure or admonition for you, Victor Ancona. The law of New York compels me to acquit ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... omnipresent public sentiment reckless of human life, taking bloody vengeance on the spot for every imaginary affront, glorying in such assassinations as the only true honor and chivalry, successfully defying the civil arm, and laughing its impotency to scorn. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... genuine, but whether he authorized their sale by proprietary manufacturers or was himself rewarded in any way are questions for speculation. The versatile Dr. Larzetti seems to have experimented both with impotency and deafness, but his ear oil—a number of specimens of which were still on hand in the abandoned factory—was identical in every respect with Dr. McNair's oil, as the labels and directions, aside only from the names of the doctors, were exactly the ...
— History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills • Robert B. Shaw
... distance, not until now appearing in your presence, we mean upon New England, kneeling with the rest of your subjects before your Majesty as her restored King. We forget not our ineptness as to those approaches; we at present owne such impotence as renders us unable to excuse our impotency of speaking unto our Lord the King; yet contemplating such a King, who hath also seen adversity, that he knoweth the hearts of exiles, who himself hath been an exile, the aspect of Majesty extraordinarily ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... the white arms and the strong six feet of height, whom she had made and given to the world, to him she would have given the world and all the heavens had it been in her power. And, as things were, she could not even give him Cloom Manor and its fruitful acres. Of this impotency Archelaus was even more aware than usual as he sat beside her and glowered down the table at his ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... black-shouldered peacock. In all these cases we do not have abortions or monstrosities, but more or less harmonious forms often of great functional activity, endowed with marked viability and generative prepotency, except in the case of hybrids, when we often find even a more marked generative impotency. ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... smile died away. Jason Philip detected a lukewarm impotency creeping over his body. The sweat of solicitude trickled down across his forehead. Involuntarily he kneed his way closer to the edge of the platform, threw out his chest, jerked his hat from his head, opened his ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... satin-like skin. In his rare moments of content he felt proud of those few studies, the only ones which satisfied him, which, as it were, foretold a great painter, admirably gifted, but hampered by sudden and inexplicable fits of impotency. ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... riper years, he had incautiously put himself in the power of Morgan and had been hanged with short shrift. Benjamin, standing upon the outskirts of the crowd jesting and roaring around the foot of the gibbet, with a grief and rage in his heart at his impotency, presently found himself hating his old captain with a fierceness proportioned to his devotion in the past. For he had appealed for mercy personally to Morgan by the memory of his former services and had been sternly repulsed and coldly dismissed ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... together. For consider the great weakness of vicious men, who cannot come so far as their natural intention leadeth and almost compelleth them. And what if they were destitute of this so great and almost invincible help of the direction of nature? Ponder likewise the immense impotency of wicked men. For they are no light or trifling rewards[145] which they desire, and cannot obtain: but they fail in the very sum and top of things: neither can the poor wretches compass that which they only labour ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... the sceptre of Henry III., the Condes, who had placed their foot on the steps of the throne of Henry IV., and Gaston, who had tried upon his brow the crown of Louis XIII.,—all returned, at the voice of the minister, if not into nothingness, at least into impotency. All who struggled against the iron will, enclosed in that feeble body, were broken like glass. And all the struggle which Richelieu sustained, he did not sustain for his own sake, but for that of France. All the enemies, against whom he contended, were not his enemies merely, but those of the ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... times, however, when good men, though aware of this passing tendency of human efforts, and of the thankless impotency of a struggle against the public voice—that vox populi which wise men (so-called) have pronounced to be also vox Dei—will nevertheless return to what they believe to be a useful though unvalued labour. The present ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... back upon Ypres. He would try for it ... take it? Day after day the black budget of "falling back", "prisoners", "using up our man-power," put the wind up them to such an extent that they began to curse at their own impotency and helplessness; to fret angrily ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... they wheel back here after the operation." He motioned for her to bend closer for the sound of his voice was becoming weaker. "In my field I've seen a lot of crazy reactions to loss of basic ability. Personality reversals brought about by loss of hearing, impotency, or even the inability to bear a child." He stroked the back of her hand with his finger. "Bart Neely without a voice-box might be a stranger. I'm not sure you'd like him. I don't think I'd ...
— The Alternate Plan • Gerry Maddren
... look upon a sea of floating dead. Jeb had not noticed the sun. His face was lowered close to the planking of their frail refuge. The ocean had again become a thing of peace and beauty—and silence. Those who were on upturned boats had realized the impotency of screaming, and merely clung with dogged tenacity; those who had been too much lacerated to reach these places of imperfect shelter, had yielded to the cradling waves and were now asleep. Thus the minutes dragged. Then the sergeant gave a ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... taken by the advice of the Duke of Wellington, the immense concourse of the seditious was placed at the side of the river where they could do least mischief, and the passages of which by the bridges could be easily defended by a small force. The government thus showed the impotency of the chartist party, and its ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... talk of a sister of Denmark; others of a good virtuous Protestant here at home. The King disavows it; yet he has sayed in publick, he knew not why a woman may not be divorced for barrenness, as a man for impotency. The Lord Barclay went on Monday last for Ireland, the King to Newmarket. God keep, and increase you, in ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... down by Miss Kindermann herself that "She did not wish to let herself be carried away by sentiment," and that she would seek all possible proofs which were good logically. Having excluded the hypothesis of deceit, it is a further proof of the sheer impotency of the theory of signals, when regard is had to the available amount of the material observed and recorded in the authoress, if we ask how is it possible to imagine that she (knowing very well, as she says, the suspicion resting ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... 1786, above alluded to, fixed the causes of divorce at two—adultery or impotency of either of the parties, but allowed a divorce from bed and board for extreme cruelty. To this was added in 1810 the further cause of desertion, or refusal to furnish proper support to the wife. To the two causes above named the Legislature of 1836 added a ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... events had occurred in the lives of the wandering Ichabod and Camilla, which had been forgotten; but the memory of that day, the overwhelming, incontestible knowledge of the impotency of wee, restless, inconsequent man, they were never ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... and destroyed its victims. Heavens! but I was glad when the end came. My only anxiety was to have it come quickly, and I prayed that it might come, oh! so quick! It was a splendid realization of the judgment day. It was a magnificent realization of the impotency of man in a battle with such a combination of fire ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... and character. "Multifarious reading," said Robertson, of Brighton, "weakens the mind like smoking, and is an excuse for its lying dormant. It is the idlest of all idlenesses, and leaves more of impotency than any other." ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... seemed that Lillian had brought him there to prove that she had finished with him—had cast him aside, having used him for the day's excitement as she had used her poodles, her Persian cats, her crystal-gazing. All at once the impotency and uncertainty of his position goaded him. Turning swiftly in his seat, he glanced back to where she sat, slowly swaying her fan, her pale, golden hair and her pale-colored gown delicately silhouetted against the background of ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... ridiculous of all characters; and you cannot more affront a gentleman than to suppose him capable of it. Divorces are also introduced, and frequent enough; they have long been in fashion in Genoa; several of the finest and greatest ladies there having two husbands alive. The constant pretext is impotency, to which the man often pleads guilty, and though he marries again, and has children by another wife, the plea remains good by saying he was so in regard to his first; and when I told them that in England a complaint ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... remote from her surroundings. The carelessness of her attitude seemed to him rather masculine than feminine. His impulse to break up the constraint was chilled, and once more the exasperating sense of his own impotency returned to him. He could not help contrasting Katharine with his vision of the engaging, whimsical Cassandra; Katharine undemonstrative, inconsiderate, silent, and yet so notable that he could never do without ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... it is not a "passion nor a passion-like quality," which is in the sensitive part of the soul, as is proved in Physic. viii; and grace is principally in the mind. Nor is it in the second species, which is "natural power" or "impotence"; since grace is above nature and does not regard good and evil, as does natural power. Therefore it must be in the first species which is "habit" or "disposition." Now habits of the mind are virtues; ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... of aeroplanes and airships, of super-dreadnoughts, and cruisers with the speed of express trains. She was too far away to be concerned in European turmoils. To-day science is annihilating distance. America, leaving out of account altogether her military impotence, would need a fleet three times her present strength to enforce the Monroe Doctrine for the remainder—not of this ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the character of the slaves, failed to arrest the current of vice and profligacy. What few reformations were effected were very partial, leaving the more enormous immoralities as shameless and defiant as ever, up to the very day of abolition; demonstrating the utter impotence of all attempts to purify the streams while the fountain ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... injustice, and they turn upon the Church and ask, "Why have you not changed all this? Are you not, in fact, neglecting your duty in not changing it? Or if you are not neglecting your duty, you must at least confess to your impotence. Your self-confessed business is ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... act belied, My manner chill'd, restrain'd my love! E'en at the time my spirit died With aching tenderness, my eye, Encountering thine, was cold and dry! To maim intention, fondness,—came The sudden impotence of shame. Thy happiness was thriftless wealth, For I could only hoard by stealth! Affection's brightly-glowing ray Shone with such strong, o'erpowering sway, That ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... never was more miserable than at this moment. I am not sad because I feel that my career is drawing to a close—that I shall be unsuccessful in the struggle for undisputed power: it is sufficient for me that I die a king. I tremble because I have discovered the impotence of earthly things to gratify the cravings of an immortal soul—because, in finding that I have a capacity of enjoyment not to be appeased by the highest dignities on earth, I begin to comprehend my immortality. I see what a shadow I have pursued—how madly I have neglected ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... and he attempted, by the sanction of oaths [88] and penalties, to guard the integrity of his government: but at the end of a year of perjury, his rigorous edict was suspended, and corruption licentiously abused her triumph over the impotence of the laws. VI. The testament of Eulalius, count of the domestics, declared the emperor his sole heir, on condition, however, that he should discharge his debts and legacies, allow to his three daughters a decent maintenance, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... His impotence exasperated him. He was jealous of this Carthage which contained Salammbo, as if of some one who had possessed her. His nervelessness left him to be replaced by a mad and continual eagerness for action. With flaming cheek, ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... irresponsible rulers are not sufficiently conscious of danger from the mental activity of their subjects to be desirous of repressing it, the position itself is a repression. Endeavour is even more effectually restrained by the certainty of its impotence than by any positive discouragement. Between subjection to the will of others and the virtues of self-help and self-government there is a natural incompatibility. This is more or less complete according ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill |
