"Weakling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brood. Five were hardy little fellows that made the water boil behind them as they scurried across the lake. But the sixth was a weakling. He had been hurt, by a hawk perhaps, or a big trout, or a mink; or he had swallowed a bone; or maybe he was just a weak little fellow with no accounting for it. Whenever the brood were startled, he struggled bravely ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... cause of the district attorney and of Guffey's secret service was the cause of law and order. Peter was doing his best in this great cause, he was following the instructions of those above him, and how could he be blamed because one poor weakling of a girl had got in the way of the ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... kind goes unpunished because Kurt is powerful and has friends at court. In his two legitimate sons, Adler and Max (he has a host of illegitimate ones), the family temperament is modified, though in Max, who perpetuates the race, the modification is not radical. Adler is a weakling of enormous vanity, silent and moody, and addicted to the pleasures of the table. Max, on the other hand, is a man of inexhaustible vitality, violent like his father, but possessed of a gift of speech ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... good business woman; you are punctual, you are not afraid of work, you are fairly accurate. I have an idea that you take pride in turning out a good piece of work. But you must learn to stand criticism and profit by it. We must all take it sometime, every one of us. A weakling goes under. A strong man or woman learns to value it, to make every bit of it count. That is what ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... such repentance as flings the worst of blame upon the other one, will grant himself lost, it is true, but "proud to feel such torments," to "pay the price of his deed" (ready with phrases now, he also!), as, poor weakling, he stabs himself, leaving his final word to her who had been for him all that she as yet knew how ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... of honor! If she had not sunk to the streets it was through her own virtue, and none of his care! And now she was dead! and his child, but for the charity of a despised superstition, would have been left an outcast in the London streets, to wither into the old-faced weakling of ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... poverty. If we lack the ability to bend words to our use, it is from laziness, not from scruple. We desire to speak competently, but without affectation. We know that if our diction rises to this dual standard, it silently distinguishes us from the sluggard, the weakling, and the upstart. For such diction is not to be had on sudden notice, like a tailor-made suit. Nor can it, like such a suit, deceive anybody as to our true status. A man's utterance reveals what he is. It is the measure of his inward attainment. The assertion has been made that for a man to express ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... her to know that he did it himself. If he had been the sort of weakling that dies because he can't have a particular woman, he'd have been also the sort of weakling that leaves a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... right, Patches," returned the frightened weakling sullenly. "Nick has sure treated me like a dog, anyway. You won't let Nick get at me, ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... with the homage of her rustic admirers. Why was it that no one of them had the look and bearing of that young man she had seen but a moment the other evening? To think that he should have taken up with such a weakling as Susan Posey! She sighed, and not so much thought as felt how kind it would have been in Heaven to have made her such a man. But the image of the delicate blonde stood between her and all serious thought of ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... where I may feed upon it; Not send him hence beyond my reach. Aye! I'll fight with death to keep him for mine own. But, now— O, I must calm myself or miss my aim! For, like a hunter when first he sees the buck, My nerves are all unstrung. This weakling trick Of overearnestness betrays the fool In me; and yet we know it, though we profit not, The eager hand doth ever spill the cup That lifted carefully would quench our thirst. I must assume a wise placidity; As he ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... will often walk in single file, a half-dozen of them sometimes following a wise leader, stepping in his tracks and leaving but a single trail. It is partly, perhaps, to fool their old enemy, the wolf, and their new enemy, the man, by hiding the weakling's trail in the stride and hoof mark of a big buck; but it shows also the old habit, and the training which begins when the fawns first learn ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... all a touch of Gladstone in us, and try to the last moment to deny we have made a turn. And so our poor broken-springed world jolts athwart its trackless destiny. Try to win into line with some fellow weakling, and see the little host of suspicions, aggressions, misrepresentations, your approach will stir—like summer flies on a high road—the way he will try to score a point and claim you as a convert to what he ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... splendidly developed young woman, Ollie Stewart appeared but a weakling. His shoulders were too narrow and he stooped; his limbs were thin; his hair black and straight; ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... the child the "Future of the Race"? Is the term used seriously or ironically? What plea does the author make for all childhood? Does the portrait of the child seem real or exaggerated? Does the author place the blame for such conditions as made this child an unhappy weakling? Compare this portrait ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... not the land of the weakling And the men up here know what we need, And we're sick of your bunch from the Outside Who's only incentive is greed. We've stood for Pinchot's conservation And we've stood for your carpet-bag horde Who have grabbed off the jobs in Alaska As a ...
— Rhymes of a Roughneck • Pat O'Cotter
... was a terrible blow, but I had read enough of great men to know that they had to fight for their opportunities, and I was determined not to be a weakling and go down in the first skirmish. For a moment I stood bewildered at the entrance of The Record building, stunned by the unexpected outcome of my visit there. I was indignant at Boller for having raised my hopes so high. I was indignant at Mr. Carmody for not measuring up to Boller's estimate. ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... came about. And I, my friends, o'erwhelmed with terror, told All that I knew of that which he had done. Thereat he uttered piercing cries of grief, Such as had never come from him before, For in loud lamentations to indulge He ever held a craven weakling's part, And, stifling outcries, moaned not loud but deep, Like the deep roaring of a wounded bull. But in this plight, prostrate and desperate, Refusing food and drink, my hero lies Amidst the mangled bodies, motionless. That he is brooding on some fell design, ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... to be Dermot Melody! You that are but the cull and the weakling of a race! It is a queer game you played on me and a crooked game. I never would have brought my legs so far to meet with ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... "Here, weakling. You'd like to use this, wouldn't you? But you lack the will. That's why you're a mere lackey." Abruptly, he threw the ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... footing there, and either will do him good,' I said. If you had been beaten I should have seen to it that my only brother's son should never go wanting. Nay, wait 'til I have finished, but it would not have been the same. I had never a soft side for the beaten weakling, and I'm glad I bided. Now, when you've proved yourself what Tom's son should be, this is what I offer thee. There's the mill; I'm old and done, and while there's one of the old stock forward I would not turn it over to ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... looked at him steadily, first with speechless terror, then with a cowed and sullen rage. The glare in Fletcher's eyes fascinated him, and he stood motionless on his spot of carpet as if he were held there in an invisible vise. Weakling as he was, he had been humoured too long to bear the lash submissively at last, and beneath the tumult of words that overwhelmed him he felt his anger flow like an infusion of courage in his veins. The greater share of love was still on his grandfather's side, and the knowledge ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... battle with adversity. Nay, dear, don't look so shocked. I say that she unfitted me by instilling into my heart her own great grandeur, and her own grand courage. There is no room for such, I tell you. As a frail female weakling the slums would have cradled me; as a wife the world would have respected me; as a toiler for honest bread there is no place for me. My mother was to me a creature next to God, and I have sometimes dared to put her first when I have felt most deeply all her nobleness. My father died, then came ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... officer nor comrade need feel ashamed of that great body, which now reclines as appropriate an ornament of the battle-field as it once was of the dining-room. A pretty sight is a philosopher's body by its side, withered, squalid, and bearded; he was dead before the fight began, poor weakling. Who would not despise the city whose guards are such miserable creatures? Who would not suppose, seeing these pallid, hairy manikins scattered on the ground, that it had none to fight for it, and so had turned out its gaol-birds to fill the ranks? That is how the ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... hands and words of magic; But his hands had lost their cunning, And his magic gone to others. Thereupon the ancient minstrel Quick returning, heavy-hearted, To his native halls and hamlets, Thus addressed his brother-heroes: "Woman, he without his weapons, With no implements, a weakling! Sun and Moon have I discovered, But I could not force the Portals Leading to their rocky cavern In the copper bearing mountain. Spake the reckless Lemminkainen "O thou ancient Wainamoinen, Why was I not taken with thee To ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... deep voice from the side of the car. There stepped into view a man whom Glen had not seen before. He was evidently associated with Mr. Jervice, but he did not in the least resemble him, for instead of being a cringy weakling, he was ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... face fell into haggard lines, but the next instant he got a fresh grip of himself. He would show her, he would let her see that he was no weakling, no lovelorn swain pleading for denied favours. He squared his shoulders. He took up his hat and went into the street again. He called a taxi and gave the address of the hotel where Christine ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... born to obey, to be "hewers of wood and drawers of water." The Slav is born a slave to be controlled by the Germans. The Serbian is born a serf to be controlled by the Austrians. The Bohemian is an outcast. The Pole is a drunkard. The Celt is a weakling. The Anglo-Saxon is a mercenary. The Russian is a Tatar and ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... tell you, sir, the sight of that man's distress prevented my getting sleep for nights together! But, feel it as I did, this much I realized, that the man who knows how to get the money he is out for, even by selling up his debtor's wife, is a better man than I am. I confess it is beyond me—I am a weakling, my eyes fill with tears. If anybody can save our country it is these Kundus and these Chakravartis ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... must be determined and regulated by the necessity and idiosyncrasies of each case. The amount of bathing that a strong, full-blooded person could endure would mop out the life of a thin, bloodless weakling. ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... never noticed before that his partner was such a weakling in the presence of women, and he wondered over the man's stumbling awkwardness. "Oh no," Saunders stammered. "I have inscribed them to—to you, as a little personal ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... Bethlehem blest appears. We bring the best of news; be not dismayed: A Saviour there is born more old than years, Amidst heaven's rolling heights this earth who stayed. In a poor cottage inned, a virgin maid, A weakling did him bear, who all upbears; There is he poorly swaddled, in manger laid, To whom too narrow swaddlings are our spheres: Run, shepherds, run, and solemnize his birth. This is that night—no, day, grown great with bliss, In which the power of Satan broken is: In heaven ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... victory's proof of the skill you possess, Defeat is the proof of your grit; A weakling can smile in his days of success, But at trouble's first sign he will quit. So the test of the heart and the test of your pluck Isn't skies that are sunny and fair, But how do you stand to the blow that is struck And how do ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... he now let himself be persuaded easily enough. He was hearing on all sides that he had been here too long; and candidly, I think he was beginning to feel Louise a drag on him. I know of late they were not getting on well together. But to be such a coward and a weakling! To slink off in this fashion! Of course, when it came to the last, he was simply afraid of her, and of the scene she would make him. Bravery has as little room in his soul as honesty or manliness. He would always prefer a back-door exit. Such things excite a man, don't you know?—and ruffle the ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... their fingers! She liked men of sterner stuff. In her mountain country the men did as they wished, and sometimes beat their wives by way of showing their authority. Under no circumstances, she felt, would this young man ever beat his wife. He was a weakling. ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... eighty-one, Delights in talking of her only son, My gallant father, long since dead and gone. 'Ah, but he was the lad!' She says, and sighs, and looks at me askance. How well I read the meaning of that glance - 'Poor son of such a dad; Poor weakling, dull and sad.' I could, but would not tell her bitter truth ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Daily he looks around for fresh victims, and finally decides that the weedy offspring of the hated superior classes are the easiest prey. In company with others of his species, he annihilates the boy in Etons on his way to and from school, and the after recollections of the weakling's bloody nose and teardrops are as nectar to him. The cruelty germ develops apace. The bloody noses of the well-dressed classes are his mania now. He sees them at every turn and even dreams of them. He grows ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... admit, that, despite all his efforts, he never produces anything but a half-dead child. The talented actor animates, nurses, consolidates, fortifies and clothes it, suggests the proper gestures and attitudes, infuses his own health and strength into this weakling, gives it blood and, so to speak, makes it live. The playwright contributes the soul, it is true; but, the soul being intangible, it is only a pitiable gift so far as the dramatic ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... be forced," replied his mother. "It must always be won! Still, a lass loves a strong man and despises a weakling. Trust to ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... hundred years later, there sat upon the Muscovite throne, as nominal Tzar, the weakling Feodor I.; but behind the throne stood, as real Tzar, hard, strong ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... Gizeric, next received the kingdom, a ruler who was easily approached by his subjects and altogether gentle, and he shewed himself harsh neither to the Christians nor to anyone else, but in regard to affairs of war he was a weakling and did not wish this thing even to come to his ears. Hoamer, accordingly, his nephew and an able warrior, led the armies against any with whom the Vandals were at war; he it was whom they called the Achilles of ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... ex-captain had "bled" and blackmailed, had passed beyond the bar of human arraignment, "dying like a gentleman" even while captive in the hands of the authorities; and so did Nevins impress his uncontradicted tale of loyal service to the State on the old weakling in command, that Stevens had declared that there was no evidence on which to hold him, had ordered his release from custody on parole, unless the civil authorities desired to prosecute him for "personating an officer," and had written to the division ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... winning her love, yes, he would become great, rise purified from the slough of loose living. He had never killed a man dishonorably; he had won his duels by strength and dexterity alone. He had never taken an advantage of a weakling; for many a man had insulted him and still walked the earth, suffering only the slight inconvenience of a bandaged arm or a tender cheek, and a fortnight or so in bed. Conde had once said of him ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... new administration, and were received into favor, but the more violent of the loyal party remained defiant and abusive. Philip Ludwell, Beverley, Hill, Ballard and others openly denounced Jeffreys as a weakling, entirely unsuited for the important office he now occupied, and did their best to render him unpopular with the people.[844] The Lieutenant-Governor retaliated with considerable spirit, depriving some of their lucrative ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... "Nevertheless," continued the weakling, "if you will but slacken your agile proficiency with the pole, chieftain, our supper to-night may yet consist of something more substantial than the fish which it is ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... as man, which began when "first the morning stars sang together," and will continue till the end of time. That law applies to all creatures. Take for instance, the lower order of animals. In the tropics the deer is small, not much larger than a coyote. The weakling as well as the strong and vigorous can survive. Further north, where conditions are harder, the deer is larger. Continuing on north, where only the strong and vigorous can survive the rigors of winter, we ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... crouched in its glare with one Indian club held by the end, like a footman with a stolen bottle. A good-looking, well-built, iron-gray, iron-jawed man; but a fool and a weakling at that moment, if he had never ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... hours we sat down. The safari of twenty men was a very miscellaneous lot, consisting of the rag-tag-and-bobtail of the bazaars picked up in a hurry. They were soft and weak, and they straggled badly. The last weakling—prodded along by one of our two askaris—limped in only at the end of half an hour. Then we took ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... did not want her to see. She would be quite capable, he told himself savagely, of marrying him out of sheer pity if she ever guessed. And he was afraid—afraid, since he wanted her so much—that he would be fool and weakling enough to take her even on those terms. So ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... vessel of thine. Or if you would wish to have your turn, then I would thank you if you would lend me a hand over the side, for indeed I am but a useless weight upon your deck. Little did I think that Samkin Aylward could be turned into a weakling by an hour of salt water. Alas the day that ever my foot wandered from the ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cried: "An Oracle foretold it, but I waited for some man of might who should overcome me by his valor,—not a weakling! And now"—he lifted his hands and prayed,—"Father Poseidon, my father, look upon Odysseus, the son of Laertes of Ithaca, and grant me this revenge,—let him never see Ithaca again! Yet, if he must, may he come late, ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... samah.] It is the saying of those who had amply tasted of the joy of the soul. Those who have fully realised the soul have never talked in mournful accents of the sorrowfulness of life or of the bondage of action. They are not like the weakling flower whose stem-hold is so light that it drops away before attaining fruition. They hold on to life with all their might and say, "never will we let go till the fruit is ripe." They desire in their joy to express themselves strenuously in their ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... intense, and he walked the streets with pallid face and downcast eyes. The coarser-grained men with whom he was thrown in contact had no conception of the mental tortures he suffered, and their rude jests stung him to the quick. He despised himself as a weakling and a coward, but he did not get more than a transient victory over his enemy. The spark had struck a sensitive organization, and the fire of hell, smothered for the time, would blaze out again. He was fast becoming a common drunkard, the accursed appetite ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... conflicting emotions of Locke, Eva, Paul, and Zita was being enacted the two partners in the library were disputing hot and heavy. As they argued, almost it seemed as if Balcom's very face limned his thoughts—that he desired Brent out of the way, as a weakling in whom he had discovered some traces of conscience which, to Balcom, ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... suddenly, so adroitly, it made the Mexican such a weakling, so like a tumbled tenpin, that the shrill jabbering hushed. Gale knew this ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... yet should lie, for so the Goddess had sworn to him in sea-girt Ithaca. He spoke no word, he named no God, but sprang forward as a lion springs from his bed of reeds; and, lo! his buckler clashed against shields that barred the way, and invisible arms seized him to hurl him back. But no weakling was the Wanderer, thus to be pushed aside by magic, but the stoutest man left alive in the whole world now that Aias, Telamon's son, was dead. The priests wondered as they saw how he gave back never ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... precaution to be taken against insects and disease is to have them in a healthy, thriving, growing condition. It is a part of Nature's law of the survival of the fittest that any backward or weakling plant or tree seems to fall first prey to the ravages ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... of ditches must have been a weakling, for society is only useful to the puny. The savage and the philosopher, at either extreme of the moral scale, hold ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... against my conscience, but, alas! we can only choose between evils, and I think Totila is less of a tyrant than Justinian. You will not go to Constantinople, nor would I bid you, for there, assuredly, is nothing to be done worthy of a man; but you must act, or you perish. For me, a weakling and a dreamer, there is solace in the vita umbratilis; to you, it is naught. Arise, then, O Basil, ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... afraid of their God. There is no God. There is nature. Up to the place where man puts on trousers it's a battle of thews and teeth. And nature never intended pants to mark the line where she changes the order of things. And the servile, weakling, groveling, charitable, cowardly philosophy of Christ—it doesn't fool me, Henry. I'm a pagan and I want the advantage of all the force, all the power, that nature gave me, to live life as a dangerous, exhilarating experience. I shall live life to the full—live ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... Cho-Sen), and the pickles ungodly hot but which one learns to like exceeding well. And there was drink, real drink, not milky slush, but white, biting stuff distilled from rice, a pint of which would kill a weakling and make a strong man mad and merry. At the walled city of Chong-ho I put Kim and the city notables under the table with the stuff—or on the table, rather, for the table was the floor where we squatted ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... history provided more sober issues, and Browning's temperament habitually inclined him to stave off the violence of tragic passion which disturbs the subtle eddyings of thought and feeling. Charles is no Regan, hardly even an Albany, no weakling either, but a man of sensitive conscience, who shifts and gyrates responsively to the complex play of motive which Browning brings to bear upon him. Reluctantly he orders Victor's arrest, and when the old man, baffled and exasperated, is brought before him and imperiously demands the crown, he puts ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... still clinging to the fingers, every throb of which struck appealingly on his heartstrings. "Forgive me, and—yet—don't. Joan, little Joan, I can't take your money. It would make me a weakling. But I can make the Cross win. If it never had a chance before, it will have now. It must! God ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... he said to himself, "it is the religion of Bossuet, Pascal, Racine, Saint-Louis, Louis XIV., Raffaelle, Michel-Angelo, Ximenes, Bayard, du Guesclin; and how could I, weakling that I am, compare myself to those intellects, those statesmen, those ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... still industriously at work in the most important and vital places, practising sabotage upon a scale never dreamed of before in the history of any nation. They played upon the fears of the miserable weakling who was the nominal ruler of the vast Russian Empire, and frightened him into sanctioning the most suicidal policy of devising new measures of oppression instead of ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... father had been, or he could never have played the fool, wasting his time and losing his opportunities, as he had done. He had been spoiled with softness, with idle days, and the pleasant things of life, which he could not forget, and which, like a weakling, he was in his secret heart longing for still. And even his father had not won what men called success, and a firm footing among his fellows, till the best part ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... to feel that one must explain everything; but this impossible fellow was not an actual fool on all points, and he did not seem to be a weakling. He might learn certain things in time, and at all events one was no further personally responsible for him and his impossibilities than the business concerns of his estate would oblige any legal firm to be. Clients, whether highly desirable or otherwise, ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... for a weakling," said Mrs. Minturn. "She has urged me to divorce James, ever since ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... had sufficient energy and prudence to consolidate its weaker elements, and build up the tottering materials which were constantly threatening to fall asunder. As soon as the government had passed into the hands of the weakling Rehoboam, who had at the outset departed from his predecessors' policy, the component parts of the kingdom, which had for a few years been, held together, now became disintegrated without a shock, and as if by mutual consent. The old order of things which existed in the time of the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... of the kind of action most of his critics would demand of a man, Hamlet must have been the weakling they imagine him. When at length, after a righteous delay, partly willed, partly inevitable, he holds documents in the king's handwriting as proofs of his treachery—proofs which can be shown—giving him both right and power over the life of the ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... that this can not be doone without great perill and daunger / that such a weakling shuld vse an vnfaithfull Master / I thincke that he shuld abstayn ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr
... towards the door. And I, miserable weakling that I was, could not hold myself in check, ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... a weakling before—he had never thought to be called a weakling, but the strangeness of that was less strange than something in her eyes, her voice, her spirit, which seemed drawing ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... vitality. As the blood races through your body—head and brain, every little cell should be brim full of life and power. Then you feel the vim and "go" that will make you a power among your fellow men. No nervousness, no indecision, no signs of the weakling if ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... hopeful that they must overtake those they chased long before such utter weariness seized upon them. He knew that Hen Condit himself, although no weakling, could not stand hours upon hours of continual walking, especially when it consisted of such uncertain footing as fell to their ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... over Norway, Harold found Denmark slipping away from him. Sweyn had in him the blood of the race of Canute, and was no weakling to be swept aside at a king's will. Magnus had left him the kingdom and he was bent on having it, if his good sword could win and hold it. In this he was supported by the Danes, and Harold found that the most he could do ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... In like manner Joshua did not realise to the full the following promise of uniform victory, but was defeated at Ai and elsewhere. The reason was the same,—the faithlessness of the people. Unbelief and sin turn a Samson into a weakling, and make Israel flee before the ranks ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... men and women who are everywhere being driven hither and thither, led into this and into that which their own better selves would not enter into, simply because they have allowed the body to assume the mastery; while they have taken the place of the weakling, the slave, and all on account of their own weakness,—weakness through ignorance, ignorance of the tremendous forces and powers within, the forces and powers ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... lanterns. Beside her—whispering occasional words in Italian to her mistress—sat the Italian nurse, pale too, but motionless, a woman from the Campagna, of a Roman port and dignity, who would have scorned to give the master whom she detested any excuse for dubbing her a weakling. ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sympathy and forbearance. These are as necessary as courage and resolution; yet, since many often sacrifice firmness to sympathy, others will take the opposite line of riding roughshod over everyone, a harshness that confirms the weakling in his weakness. To note all this is but to note the difficulty; and if what is now written fails in its appeal, it need only be said to walk unerringly here would require the insight of a prophet and the balance ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... which titillated even his marrow, and after having rested all day, the prey of a convenient neuralgia, he experienced the unlimited pleasure of force overcoming mind, the blow of a fist crushing a weakling, as with a white cravat he appeared in some salon, in the greenroom of the ballet, or in the dressing-room of a premiere, saying with the mocking smile of triumph and the assurance attending a ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... cowardice or pride. Here and there may be born one who can so cut himself off from the parent stem as to endure a fruitful grafting upon an oriental stock, but I knew that I at least was none such. I was no more prepared for so uncompromising a renunciation than any other weakling who seeks prestige by parade of exotic wisdom, and deems himself a seer if he can but name the Triad, or tell the avatars of Vishnu, I had not the credulity which may justify the honest renegade, and the western blood still ran too warmly in my veins. I felt ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... a normal winter; but ever in this unprotected land the period was one of inevitable decimation, of a weeding out of the unfit. Here and there upon the range, dark against the now background of universal white, stared forth the carcass of a weakling. Over it for a few nights the coyotes and grey wolves howled and fought; then would come a fresh layer of white, and the spot where it had been would merge once more into the universal colour scheme. Even the prairie ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... believe that Thou hast sent Me." Hence Hilary says (De Trin. x): "He did not need prayer. It was for us He prayed, lest the Son should be unknown." Secondly, to give us an example of prayer; hence Ambrose says (on Luke 6:12): "Be not deceived, nor think that the Son of God prays as a weakling, in order to beseech what He cannot effect. For the Author of power, the Master of obedience persuades us to the precepts of virtue by His example." Hence Augustine says (Tract. civ in Joan.): "Our Lord in the form of a servant could have prayed in silence, if need be, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... gaiters; he was so timid that he could not utter two words without stuttering, almost voiceless, continually sucking jujubes, which completed the confusion of his speech. One asked what such a weakling as he had come to do in the Assembly, what feminine ambition run mad had urged into public life this being useless for no matter ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... trouble eluding the Spaniards, or even cutting your way through them, were I not with you. Yet this is not beyond remedy. I had sincerely hoped to prove of service when I usurped the slave's place in the boat; instead, I am an encumbrance, a weakling whom you must protect at the risk of your own lives. Fortunately it is not yet too late to leave you free; it cannot be many miles back to New Orleans, and the current would bear me swiftly downward. I have loyal friends in the town to hide the daughter of Lafreniere, should the Spaniards ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... the aged Vainamoinen, "I have little cause to fret me Either for your sword or wisdom, For your sword-point or your judgment. But, apart from this at present, I will draw no sword upon you, So contemptible a fellow, And so pitiful a weakling." 270 ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... Russian history there ran stories of terrible crime, cruelties, infamies, immoralities and degradation. Following the death of Ivan the Terrible came Fedor, one of his sons, who was a weakling in the hands of the Duma of five, one of whom was Boris Godounoff. Fedor reigned but a few years, and Godounoff was elected Czar. He was ambitious, and was founder of the system of serfdom, and also of the Russian State Church, ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... gleam, half-challenging, half-consoling, regal, roguish—what you would—that sat between her dark eyelashes, like white sunlight on the fringed smooth roll of water by a weir. Such a dimple, and such a gleam of eyes, would have been keys to the face of a weakling, and it was the more fascinating from the disregard of any minor charm notable upon this grand visage, which could not suffer a betrayal. You saw, and there was no effort to conceal, that the spirit animating it was intensely human; but it was human of the highest chords of humanity, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... second half. What makes me sick is to think of Scott turning out GUY MANNERING in three weeks! What a pull of work: heavens, what thews and sinews! And here am I, my head spinning from having only re-written seven not very difficult pages - and not very good when done. Weakling generation. It makes me sick of myself, to make such a fash and bobbery over a rotten end of an old nursery yarn, not worth spitting on when done. Still, there is no doubt I turn out my work more easily ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to be told that his chief would have jumped any job no matter how big, rather than hurt a poor weakling like ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... passed on, the Tlahuicos, marrying among themselves, had greatly increased in numbers; and so far from remaining a weakling race, the had become, by reason of their frugal mode of living and of the wholesome, hearty labor in which they constantly were engaged, exceptionally hale and strong; the weak and crippled among them being mainly those who each year, because of such infirmities, were added to their number ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... "You have found a weakling to protect, and an invalid to nurse," he answered. "To have your compassion, Cynthia, is all ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... watching; well swaddled it is cast into a corner and its cries are unheeded. So long as the nurse's negligence escapes notice, so long as the nursling does not break its arms or legs, what matter if it dies or becomes a weakling for life. Its limbs are kept safe at the expense of its body, and if anything goes wrong it is not the ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... must tear it from her, that he must crush it out of her body as the pit is squeezed from a cherry. And the corroding part of it was that he had been outwitted by a woman, that he was being defied by a physical weakling, a slender-limbed thing of ribbons and laces whose back he could bend and break across ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... knowledge, and power, instead of continuing this utter economic waste of continual war. You all close your senses to reason. You of Osnome accuse me of being an ingrate and a traitor; you of Urvania consider me a soft-headed, sentimental weakling, who may safely be disregarded—all because I think the welfare of the numberless peoples of the Universe more important than your narrow-minded, stubborn, selfish vanity. Think what you please. If brute force is your only logic, know now that I can, and ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... weakling, a dawdler like himself, must reply to a hero like that!... Rafael began to be afraid; and to recover his spirits he swept the hall with his eyes. What the regular hangers-on of the sessions would have called a medium-sized ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... from the shoulder to the loin. The barbarian frenzy, which the Scandinavian minstrels call the "fury of the Berserk", was in his heart, and with a savage laugh at his own too impetuous blow, he shouted as the corpse fell to the ground: "I think the weakling had never a ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... old oracles are fulfilled, for long ago there came to this land one Telemus, a prophet, and dwelt among us even to old age. This man foretold me that one Ulysses would rob me of my sight. But I looked for a great man and a strong, who should subdue me by force, and now a weakling has done the deed, having cheated me with wine. But come thou hither, Ulysses, and I will be a host indeed to thee. Or, at least, may Poseidon give thee such a voyage to thy home as I would wish thee to have. For know that Poseidon is my sire. May be that he may ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... frontier, in the early days, a weakling staked out an agricultural or mining claim. A ruffian appears, who is a sure shot, jumps the claim and drives the other out. It was the rule of the strong arm, and it was evident on the frontier all ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... stooped from her fair height and laid her arm around the shoulders of the youth, drew his head against the beadwork of McElroy's gift, and kissed him upon the lips,—once, twice, yearningly, as a mother kisses a weakling child. ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... reported that he had not been seen for two days. In spite of the fact that Albany numbered nearly "six thousand living human souls," a brief search by the docksharps soon revealed the sinner's retreat. His worst enemy would have pitied him; a red-eyed wreck; a starved, sick and trembling weakling; conscience-stricken, for the letter intrusted to him was lost; the cargo stolen—so his comforters had said—and the raw country lad murdered and thrown out into the river. What wonder that he ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... you are, my beloved!" replied Jean-Christophe. "Forgive me, but your weakling fear enrages me. How can you ask whether I shall cease to love you! For me to live is to love you. Death is powerless against my love. You yourself could do nothing if you wished to destroy it. Even if you betrayed me, even if you rent my heart, I should die with a blessing upon ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... worthless as a Russian university; for the simple Protestantism of the people is to be substituted the fetishism of the Russo-Greek Church. It is the saddest spectacle of our time. Previous emperors, however much they wished to do so, did not dare break their oaths to Finland; but the present weakling sovereign, in his indifference, carelessness, and absolute unfitness to rule, has allowed the dominant reactionary clique about him to accomplish its own good pleasure. I put on record here the prophecy that his dynasty, if not himself, will ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... "Shame on us, have we come here fellow-voyagers with women, calling on Cypris for help and not on the mighty strength of Enyalius? And do ye look to doves and hawks to save yourselves from contests? Away with you, take thought not for deeds of war, but by supplication to beguile weakling girls." ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... I rehearse the story, How a weakling faint and worn, Was o'er rocks and through deep waters, To eternal glory borne: Jesus wholly, Shall absorb the ...
— Favourite Welsh Hymns - Translated into English • Joseph Morris
... Winter slept; but although her head was full of two babies, a grown-girl one and a tiny weakling one, together in a soiled pink room, it was not of them that she dreamed. She was sitting once more at a balcony table in the quiet red restaurant with the big mirrors, facing an unusual kind of man who cared as little what she thought ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... single mile-stone of event along his highway. And yet the development of Ivan's secret self was swift; unusual; tremendous. During this period he grappled frequently with mighty, rising passions; crushed rebellions; bowed to revolutions carried on within the kingdom of his soul. Yet he was no weakling, to keep a diary of moods. And our only testimony of him, is from—let us say—his landlady, the ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... A cold, weakling gray-light was touching with ghastly fresco the Belly Buttes when A'tim stretched out his paw and scratched impatiently at Shag's leather side. The Bull came back slowly out of ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... hospitality—my trust. Next to a cache robber you're the meanest kind of a thief I've ever known. I've read your story in the newspaper, and so has the old man who saved your rotten life. We know you for the lying braggart that you are. You made yourself out a hero when you were a weakling and ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... influential men who had not continued their education beyond the public grammar school, so the masses instinctively believed that insight, real energy and enterprise were better developed in the school of life than in the world of books. The college student was thought a weakling, in a way, who might have fine theories, but who would never help to solve the great national problems—a sort of academic "mug-wump," but not a leader. The banking house, factory, farm, the mine, law office and the political position were thought better places for the young (American) ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... she went on. "I think there must be something in you of the weakling, you know, something that appeals to the mothering instinct in women. I know that my first feeling for you was that I wanted to help you. Tell me what you think of yourself, Mr. Philip Merton Ware? Are you a faithful person? Are you conscientious? Have ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of this conversation, which aroused her curiosity, Lady Kew sent a letter that night to Lady Ann Newcome, desiring that Ethel should be sent to see her grandmother; Ethel, who was no weakling in character despite her youth, and who always rebelled against her grandmother and always fought on her Aunt Julia's side when that amiable invalid lady, who lived with her mother, was oppressed by the dominating ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... woe no man may tell; It was all of a piece and a whole yard wide, and the name of the brand was "Hell". We heard the call and we staked our all; we were plungers playing blind, And no man cared how his neighbor fared, and no man looked behind; For a ruthless greed was born of need, and the weakling went to the wall, And a curse might avail where a prayer would fail, and the gold ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... consultation to carry on with his foreman, Tibble, whose quiet- looking brown animal was evidently on the best of terms with Poppet. By daylight Tibble looked even more sallow, lean, and sickly, and Stephen could not help saying to the serving-man nearest to him, "Can such a weakling verily be an armourer?" ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... courage. We grew dismal; they called us fatalists. Our fate—it was the fulness, the tension, the storing up of powers. We thirsted for the lightnings and great deeds; we kept as far as possible from the happiness of the weakling, from "resignation"... There was thunder in our air; nature, as we embodied it, became overcast—for we had not yet found the way. The formula of our happiness: a Yea, a Nay, a straight line, ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... even as we gazed upward a flash of lightning split the clouds asunder; peal of thunder followed on peal, the rain came down not in drops nor bucketfuls but in sheets, and with weight and force sufficient to beat a child or a weakling to the earth, It was a veritable godsend; we caught the beautiful cool water in our hands ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... his way. Nelson put him in many a sketch and story. Not once during the long months had the Banfield ex-junior acted the part of a weakling. Evan reflected that it was easy enough for himself to keep within bounds, speaking after the manner of Physical Culture, being mentally engaged all the time; but Henty seemed to contain himself by ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... the King sees what a weakling Sir James has brought him, he will be but too glad to exchange Patie for me, and leave me safe in these ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... runs with his great key in the dawn to take down his master's shutter! In a musty play, observe the jailor at the dungeon door! Without massive keys jingling at the belt the older drama must have been a weakling. Only lovers, then, dared to laugh at locksmiths. But now locksmiths sit brooding on the past, shriveled to mean uses, ready for ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... had been made against some of his predecessors. It was afterward hurled at Napoleon the Great, and also Napoleon the Little. In France, unless a royal personage was openly licentious, he was almost sure to be jeered at by the people as a weakling. ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... shrewd suggestion. But no weakling broke off that bedpost in Henry M. Gillespie's room. I assumed the theory that the phenomena of that night were symptomatic rather than accidental. Therefore, I set out to find in what other places the mysterious H. M. G. ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... facts themselves, but our feeling about them, that makes tragedy and comedy, and death is more joyful in Rostand than life in Maeterlinck. The same apparent contradiction holds good in the case of the drama of 'L'Aiglon,' now being performed with so much success. Although the hero is a weakling, the subject a fiasco, the end a premature death and a personal disillusionment, yet, in spite of this theme, which might have been chosen for its depressing qualities, the unconquerable paean of the praise of things, the ungovernable gaiety of the poet's ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... continued the shrewd Hugh, well knowing that by making an individual appeal he would be more apt to receive a favorable response, because it goes against the average boy's pride to be accounted a weakling, or one addicted to believing old wives' fairy stories of goblins, and all ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... foot and faced Carr valiantly. "See here, Mr. Carr Parker!" she stormed. "I'm no weakling. I'm the daughter of my father and where he goes I go. You'll take me or I'll ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... he said suddenly at the end. "So much that what you want done is the thing that I must do. But you must see very clearly that the time has come when I must play the man's part or the weakling's." ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... move away. They depended on him. Unless he could save it their fight was lost. To her he was a prophet of the better civilization that would some day rise on the ruins of an Individualism grown topheavy. But he was neither a dreamer nor a weakling. His idealism was sane and practical, and he would fight to the last ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... gossips of Woodville, came back into his mind. He was no longer as young as he once was, and even at his prime he shrewdly doubted his ability to cope with Riley Sinclair. With the weight of Gaspar thrown in, the thing became an impossibility. Gaspar might be a weakling, but a man who was capable of murder was ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... thy friend; for his sake spare me: Thyself art mighty; for thine own sake leave me: Myself a weakling; do not then ensnare me: Thou look'st not like deceit; do not deceive me. My sighs, like whirlwinds, labour hence to heave thee: If ever man were moved with woman's moans, Be moved with my tears, my ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... no weakling—and never have been. My experience in the hard life of the inner world has turned my thews to steel. Even such giants as Ghak the Hairy One have praised my strength; but to it is added another ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs |
